Moving salary between current accounts

Crazylegs2011

Hi All,

I have been an avid reader of threads on this site and the advice they have provided me has proved invaluable whilst sorting out my financial situation - so before I begin, a massive thank you to all for that!

Apologies if this has already been addressed somewhere, I can't seem to find anything quite like it (but then again I am blind as a bat)...

I will start from the beginning with a bit of background about me. I work freelance as a dance performer and although I am registered self employed, my incomings vary vastly depending on the work that I do (some months I earn just £200 and some months I earn over £3000!). This coupled with the fact that I have never really managed to build much of a credit history (have only just got my first credit card about 6 months ago and it's a sub-prime one, since then I got all three of the sub-prime cards, barclaycard initial, vanquis and capital one in the hope of expanding my credit history) .

I am now thinking about my future financial standing and want to make sure that over the next 2-3 years I can build a decent credit history with the view of one day gettting a mortgage. I have one basic bank account with Lloyds TSB (but this is just one year old), one full current account (Flexaccount, just 6 months old) with Nationwide and I just applied for a new full current account with HSBC (advance) which has been approved. Lloyds TSB aren't interested in upgrading my basic account to a proper current account which is why I went for Nationwide, but Nationwide have now closed my local branch so I chose to open an account with HSBC. Okay, background is over, here are my questions:

1. I no longer feel I need my basic account with Lloyds as I have the two proper accounts with Nationwide and HSBC, do you think I should close the account or will this look bad on my credit file considering it's the account I have had the longest?

2. I would like to keep both the Nationwide and HSBC as my "main accounts" (for different reasons/perks offered). Obviously I need to put my "salary" through my main account - but I thought that maybe I could just move (what is essentially the same) £1500 via standing order between the two accounts so it looked like this money was being paid in every month on the same date (like a salary) - does that work? Or are there rules against this sort of thing? I want to appear to have a stable income and this seems like a good option, does anyone have any other ideas?


Massive Thanks in advance for any help/advice on this!!