Joint Account QUery / Mergin Overdrafts

swshaun

Hello there folks,

Long time reader, second time poster!

My other half and I want to combine our income which in turn helps us combat our debt by killing it off in large chunks rather than little bits here and there.

The question I have is that both of us have overdrafts with our respective banks, and we want to make a clean break and start banking with someone else to make a fresh start on this front.

The overdrafts in total come to approx £1800. We were wondering if we moved banks and repaid our overdrafts from the new one, would this be acceptable to the banks? Or would they attempt to reclaim the overdrafts as soon as they realised what was going on?

Having tried to come to apparently amicable arrangements with banks on something like this, they have let me down before, so would like to try and seek advice from other folks who have tried this before.

I am aware we could get an overdraft at the new bank, but I doubt we could get very far due to our credit rating.

Thanks.

Shaun.

Tixy

Hi Shaun

One thing to be careful about before you get a joint account (and if you are not already financially linked -ie have any joint financial products) is that if one of you has a substantially worse credit rating than the other then this will have an impact of your credit report.

You need to check the T&C of your current accounts - some bank accounts require a set amount paid into the account each month (typically around £1000) to ensure that it is the customers main current account.

Providing you have no such requirement then you could go ahead and set up new accounts with a bank you don't owe money to and move your salary and dds across to those accounts. Then you can write to your current bank and offer a fixed monthly repayment plan, based on what you can afford after having paid priority expenses. You could also ask the bank to freeze interest & charges (sometimes they will and it never hurts to ask).

Usually a bank will eventually accept such a repayment plan (although it make take a few letters). Set up a standing order for the monthly repayment even if they don't agree to accept it to show you willinginess to repay.

If you have poor credit ratings and are struggling to open new accounts then ask for a basic bank account which has no credit check (as it has no overdraft)