Financial advice for new married couple?

agsnu

Nationwide used to pay reasonable amount of credit interest, but now pay zilch. They used to have extremely reasonable overdraft interest rates, but now they're pretty much the same as anywhere else. They used to have fairly solid savings accounts, and having a FlexAccount made it easy to use these, but that's not really the case any more.

The only real advantage to a Nationwide current account is that it's still very cheap to use their cards abroad.

sho_me_da_money

Not sure here but A&L seems to be an MSE favoruite.

wriggly

agsnu wrote: »

The only real advantage to a Nationwide current account is that it's still very cheap to use their cards abroad.

Yep, as well as interest, you should also consider any other "features" an account might have. See http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-travel-money for example.

Also consider which banks have convenient branches near you - being married tends to lead to more complex financial transactions, which may require one or both of you to physically visit a branch.

jamesd

For this reply it doesn't matter whether the accounts are joint or not.

First, set up an account for all of the regular monthly bills, including all direct debits and standing orders. Put at least one month's payments into this account and top it up every month so even at the lowest time it still has a full month's worth of payment money in it as a reserve. Also ask for an overdraft facility on it that would cover at least another month of bills. The job of this account is to always have money in it to pay the bills so they are always on time without overdraft costs or negative effects on credit scores. The one month extra in it also gives you at least a month to react to any problems with transfers or whatever else goes wrong.

Then you can operate another account for unpredictable amounts and day to day spending, without harming most of your credit record if there's a mistake somewhere. Pay variable credit card bills out of this one, while the minimum comes out of the first account so you always pay at least that much on time. This way the big variability you can see in card bills or any communication misktakes between you won't hurt your credit record.

You can feed both of those from a savings account and top that up from the second account as funds allow.

Hatone

Whilst I agree Nationwide are not particularly competitive in terms of interest on savings, (in this current climate, it's kind of understandable) they are still a reptuable society with a good range accounts to choose from - their flex account makes internet banking very quick and efficient. It's pain transferring money from different accounts to another, when you can do it all with one provider. Each to their own I guess.

Personally I'd stay away from their cash ISAs and look elsewhere.

agsnu

Hatone wrote: »

Whilst I agree Nationwide are not particularly competitive in terms of interest on savings, (in this current climate, it's kind of understandable) they are still a reptuable society with a good range accounts to choose from - their flex account makes internet banking very quick and efficient. It's pain transferring money from different accounts to another, when you can do it all with one provider. Each to their own I guess.

Their internet banking hasn't changed in about 10 years. They have specatcularly failed to implement Faster Payments at all for existing customers - A YEAR AFTER IT LAUNCHED. Even Abbey have beaten them to incoming transfers. There are a few other minor annoyances too - it's slower at showing pending card transactions than e.g. RBS, it won't show you DD/BACS details other than "Payment" or whatever until a day after they hit the account, etc.

isofa

Setup a LTSB current account for the joint one with Vantage Interest, all free no fees and a good rate for 5-7K balances.

But I'd be keeping both your personal accounts, why not both pay in say x amount to the joint account per month to cover bills and such, but keep your salaries going into your personal accounts?

Each year, providing you have the funds, open an cash ISA each, 3600 is the limit for this year per person, but it will rise after next year.

Jake'sGran

Rollinghome wrote: »

Could I ask why?
My own view would be that if I didn't trust someone then I wouldn't get married in the first place, but whatever floats your boat...

Hi Margaret, I seem to remember that you have been married twice. Forgive me if I am wrong. We did have a joint account for a short time but it soon became obvious that it would never work. I was so naive at he beginning. Now, after 50 years my OH has not got a clue about anything concerned with finance. This suits him very much. Everything has been done for him. And, I do resent it although I know that if I had not kept the finances in good order we would probably be very poor now. I was the major earner.The point I am making is that it is not always about trust.