How do you split you pots of money?

Standingtall

I have just started budgeting efficiently at Christmas:)

I have my current account 'bills' into which my wages go. This is used for all my monthly payments, food and petrol.

I have savings account one 'expenses and clothing'. This is instant access and also has a debit card so my works expenses are held in here until I have to pay works Amex card. My expenses can be in the 000's so I might aswell have some interest on them:j

Savings account 3, instant access but no debit card, is my car and Christmas fund. I am putting £45 a month in here.

E-isa - this is my emergency fund and maybe a holiday.

So far so good. It's all so much easier though thanks to online banking and quick transfers:T

oldtractor

I have several "pots" household .cars.pets.garden.holiday.savings.

kjp

I've got two current accounts, with four e-savers within them and an ISA

Current account 1 (Halifax Reward) - salary is paid into and all bills come from. Money is then transferred to pots as follows, leaving me £200 'me' money a month, which I then withdraw half of, and try to ignore the other half so it can go into my ISA at the end of the month.
E Saver 1 (Halifax) - 'Slush' - this is where any 'spare' money I might have sits so I don't see it on my current balance. I also move my loan payment into this on the 25th (payday), and move back on the 19th (20th being loan day) so I don't spend it accidently. At the end of the month, any 'slush' left goes into the ISA.
E Saver 2 (Halifax) - Holidays - I transfer across £50 a month into this account, which will pay for spending money and any holidays we take through the year, mostly UK breaks during Travelodge sales!
ISA (Halifax) - House fund - All 'unallocated' money a month gets transferred here, and any spare money will go in here too.

Current account 2 is my Barclays account, after an incident of card fraud a few years ago I've always kept two accounts, so worst comes to worst I've always got access to 'some' cash. The current account has £130 a month transferred into it, split as follows:
Current account - £50 - Christmas/present money. I put it in every month, regardless of whether there are birthdays, which means I get a nice little tidy pot of Christmas money at the end of the month. By using the current account like this, I can immediately pay for gifts using my debit card.
E-Saver 3 (Barclays) - £50 - car insurance. Quite nice watching this pile up without my even realising!
E-Saver 4 (Barclays) - £30 - car maintenance. Might need to up this next year but need to review car expenses this year, but it's such a relief to just transfer money out when something goes wrong with the car, rather than play the remaining CC balance game!

I started doing this last September, and it's been an absolute godsend. I tried to use just the one pot and split it out using a spreadsheet, but then found that I'd 'borrow' from another pot by accident. By having loads of e-savers, I can see immediately if I'm going to overspend and rebudget accordingly.

Hope this helps!

JulieGeorgiana

rising_from_the_ashes wrote: »

House insurance (so can pay this annually)

Do you need to do this? I never pay mine annually, I have always been given 12 months interest free (?!?!?!) Maybe it's just me! But I figure you should only pay annually if it's going to save you money (like car insurance)

NicChanna

Pots pots pots ... I love them and have many ... Mine are actually e-savings accounts inside my current acct with Nationwide.

A selection is detailed below:

Credit card
Driving lessons
Christmas
Birthdays
Edinburgh Fringe
Emergency fund
Parking permit
Road tax
MOT
Buy now pay next year furniture fund

Most of these haven't had much in them recently as we're trying to pay the credit card down, but there's nothing like thinking "Oh cluck, the car tax is due!" then realising that you've got the money sitting there untouched, waiting to fulfil it's purpose as planned.

rising_from_the_ashes

JulieGeorgiana wrote: »

Do you need to do this? I never pay mine annually, I have always been given 12 months interest free (?!?!?!) Maybe it's just me! But I figure you should only pay annually if it's going to save you money (like car insurance)

Usually I'd agree:) .... however, this year I got a much lower quote through one of the comparison sites - unfortunately, it wasn't really a company I wanted to go with:o.

I rang my current insurer & they said they'd match the price but only if I paid in a lump sum ..... as it was a pretty big saving (around the £100 mark) - it was worth it and have since been putting the money aside that would've gone on the monthly payments - just in case it happens again this year!

kazd

I do this, I have several savings accounts but they are all linked with my current account and they all offset against my mortgage.

Wages go into current account and then on 1st of each month a standing order goes out to each account.

Ex Curricular (Kids school trips) £100
Car (Tax, Insurance, service etc) £200
Household Insurance £40
Xmas/Birthday (just for kids) £125

Then I take off all our bills and skim off anything that's left into General savings, I leave a little for cash withdrawals. All expenditure is put on CC which we clear every month.

oopsadaisydoddle

We've been doing this for a few years and have one main current account that DD's are paid from. We also do a spreadsheet every month. We have the following:

General Savings: for birthdays/Xmas and unexpected things and car maintenance
Shopping/Petrol: transfer our budget for these for the month and then anything we spend grocery or petrol wise gets transferred back
Car Tax
Holiday
School Uniform
DIY: (we bought DH Grandma's house and needs renovating mainly decoration but few big things)
Xmas food Shopping: transfer £10 every month from our groceries budget to cover some extra treats.