New bank account for budgeting - any suggestions?

mippy

I currently have a current account with Abbey, which is a standard account - I have a Visa Debit card and a chequebook, and also have an overdraft of....£1750.

I want to open a new account to help me budget, eventually I would like to have my wages paid into this account and transfer money into Abbey each month to start paying off my overdraft. I don't want to switch accounts straight away as I am paying off two accounts through collections agencies and they take this money from my account using my debit card number held on file.

I applied for a HSBC current account in 2006 and a First Direct one this year, and have been turned down for both. Is it worth me trying again with HSBC? I was turned down by them before being given my overdraft and upgraded from a Visa Electron to a Visa Debit card (I hate electron!). Or should I get a basic account? At the moment, I want to leave my direct debits going out as usual but put my weekly spending/food/expenses money into a separate account so that I can budget week by week.

I'm not particularly happy with Abbey in general, needless to say!

456789

It should be better to get a basic account - barclays basic has a visa debit card then after clearing the overdraft try for a current account with HSBC if you want

mippy

Thanks for that. I'd like to keep a visa debit card for online shopping etc. and if Barclays offer this then that means I can switch accounts sooner.

getmore4less

Have you looked at why can you not budget using the account you have?

Rather than another account you could just use cash and limit yourself weekly which is all you will do with another account to start with.

mippy

I'm overdrawn at the moment, which makes it hard to realise when I am and am not spending. I have a lot of trouble managing money - I'm bipolar so organisation is not my strong point. I need to strip it down to simple budgeting - sticking to exactly the money in my bank account at that time, not borrowing from next week, or the end of the month.

getmore4less

mippy wrote: »

I'm overdrawn at the moment, which makes it hard to realise when I am and am not spending. I have a lot of trouble managing money - I'm bipolar so organisation is not my strong point. I need to strip it down to simple budgeting - sticking to exactly the money in my bank account at that time, not borrowing from next week, or the end of the month.

I understand that some people find it difficult managing an account down to some number that is not Zero.

Your plan is to open an account and decide how much to transfer for spending and use that down to zero.

My suggestion is to take that amount out as cash(not transfer to another account) and use that till it runs out, same end result but without using another account.

If you tend to run out before the end of the month split it into chunks for each catagory of spending that you know you will have that month, food,petrol etc, and split the rest into the number of days in the month.

The real trick is to cut out all uneccessary spending, if you have none then the plan cannot work.

A realy good idea is to start a spending diary and keep this up to date so you can actualy see where you money goes.

The main problem is you are trying to use the account ballance to manage spends this can never work properly on its own and must have a plan(budget) allong side to make sure there is money for the future bills as well.

Lokolo

If you are overdrawn on an account and stop using it the bank will more than likely demand the money you owe straight away. So I wouldn't stop using it.