Best JOINT savings account?

goonieman

Me and the Mrs have just got married and are looking to set up a joint savings account. We will be paying in about £200 a month between us from our individual accounts and opening the account with about £1500. Any recommendations? Also we recived several cheques made out to Mr and Mrs *******. Could i pay these into my account then move the money into our savings account or would we have to have a joint account set up to pay thm into??
Ta in advance!

goonieman

Anyone??????

nic82

I've just set up an ICICI joint account with my bf for savings. It's currently paying 5.15% interest.

I believe ING Direct is also good, but they've got a lower interest rate (about 4.5% I think).

We also have an A&L one for our joint current account.

jockettuk

your bank might let you pay them in but in reality they shouldnt and it should be paid into a joint account

CopperPlate_2

To my knowledge you have to pay cheques made out to Mr & Mrs X into the joint account, but that's only from experience, not regulations, etc.

Sure someone out there will know.

humfer

Be careful if one of your is a higher rate tax payer (i.e. 40%). If for instance you are, and your partner isn't its best to have the savings account in the lower tax payers name

goonieman

Thanks for the replys guys. I'll have a look at the icici account.
Hunter, were both in the lower tax band so no worries there.

zar

I think you'll need a joint account for the cheques - you could choose to either add one spouse on to one of your existing accounts or you could open a new one with both of you on it. It's quite useful to have a nationwide flexaccount for when you go abroad if neither of you already have one, so perhaps it'd be worth opening one of those to pay the cheques into.

We had a similar thing when we got married, except some of the Mr and Mrs cheques were in Euros so had to find the cheapest way of paying those in! We used Nationwide for that as it was cheaper than Natwest, though still expensive. We manage our money jointly so it was just a case of converting accounts into joint ones.

Our savings are in separate names even though we have shared finances, as ISAs can only be in one person's name and you have to pay tax otherwise. If you haven't used your ISA allowances then you'd probably get more interest by each paying £100 each into your own ISA each month.