advice if you have direct debits all over the place

gtone28

First question is do you have direct debits coming out on different days leaving you wondering how much money is yours and how much is for bill's?

This was happening to me so I decided to add all of direct debits up then multiply them by 12 then divided by 52 to get a weekly figure ( I get paid weekly). Takes about five minutes to do.

example;

phone+gas+electric+rent+tv licence+council tax+water+car = ?x 12/52=

not the hardest sum to do!

I then opened another account and got my wages paid into the new account. I set up a standing order for the weekly amount I got and now I know how much money I have to spare each week. I very rarely get into trouble so I set up a overdaft just in case I got sick and my wages went down.

If this helps you try taking advantage of one the big banks offering free cash to join them like the halifax or rbs. (£100 pound to switch to them) or A+L £25 refer a friend.

computerwoman

Hi what I do is leave my money in each week (I realise some people cant do this ) and it took me sometime to do it myself. so every thursday my money goes in to the bank all my DD's go out, 2-3-4-th week then whats left in that account on the 1st of the month is mine to do what I want with.
the advantages of this is I never miss a DD or SO and I am never overdrawn so I dont need an overdraft.

gtone28

computerwoman wrote:

Hi what I do is leave my money in each week (I realise some people cant do this ) and it took me sometime to do it myself. so every thursday my money goes in to the bank all my DD's go out, 2-3-4-th week then whats left in that account on the 1st of the month is mine to do what I want with.
the advantages of this is I never miss a DD or SO and I am never overdrawn so I dont need an overdraft.

I used to do this but friends would ask me to go out for a drink. I would go out and spend the money I left in then I would'nt have any wages the following week because I needed to make the money up I'd spent. Then It would happen again and again alway's with good intention to leave money in.

iceicebaby

Good god Im so glad I dont have to do all that fiddling about!

I get paid on the last day of the month, my dd's go out on the next day (1st) whats left is then mine (or not as the case may be!)

gtone28

iceicebaby wrote:

Good god Im so glad I dont have to do all that fiddling about!

takes about five minutes to write down and add up direct debit's. Very easy sum to do plus you can take advantage of all these banks offering you free money.

Most people are n't lucky enough to have their direct debits going out on the same day.

itsarichmansworld

most of mine come out the beginning of the month, ask the companies most are pretty decent

computerwoman

thats me then, I have tried but failed to get all my DD's going out on the same day, most firms wont let you. so I have 2 small ones going out the 2nd week 1 going out the 3rd week and the rest going out the 4th week whats left is mine to do what I want with. this is the only way I know I can afford things like the new fridge/freezer I have just got from currys,

jackieb

I opened up a separate account for all my direct debits. Dh's pay is paid on the 25th of the month. A standing order has been set up from our current account into the one with all the direct debits. Each pay day £1250 is transferred from the current account into the direct debit one. We have over a dozen direct debits set up and before we did this we were always getting charged as i'd forget which day there was a DD due.

Dh changed his job last year and his pay day was changed from the 15th to the 25th of the month. The bank changed the date of the standing order and we set up an overdraft to cover any DD's which came out in the 10 days of that first month, but it got paid off by the following month.

It's so simple. I'm surprised more people don't do it.

gtone28

jackieb wrote:

I opened up a separate account for all my direct debits. Dh's pay is paid on the 25th of the month. A standing order has been set up from our current account into the one with all the direct debits. Each pay day £1250 is transferred from the current account into the direct debit one. We have over a dozen direct debits set up and before we did this we were always getting charged as i'd forget which day there was a DD due.

Dh changed his job last year and his pay day was changed from the 15th to the 25th of the month. The bank changed the date of the standing order and we set up an overdraft to cover any DD's which came out in the 10 days of that first month, but it got paid off by the following month.

It's so simple. I'm surprised more people don't do it.

glad to see someone else thinks the same way, as you said it's so simple and you know exactly how much money you can spend on things.

jackieb

I would never have thought of it, but the bank called us in for a review and noticed all the charges we were getting. We've been doing this for years and haven't had a charge since. I don't speak to a lot of people about their banking but of those I have none of them have it set up this way, except our son.

We got our son to get his set up like this too, as he was always complaining he could never remember what came out when.

gtone28

it was my mum who told me to set it up this way