New santander 123 account / budgeting problem

flyfto

hi i am opening a santander 1-2-3 current account for the interest and cashback benefits, but this is throwing up a budgeting headache. Looking for any ideas.

currently with RBS i have 3 current accounts, Spending account, Bills account and shopping account which i use to organise our monthly spending.
Also have a savings pot which we use (great idea from this site) to save for car tax, mot, christmas, holidays etc.

The problem being when all of this is lumped together in 123 account i should receive good interest and cashback on bills, but will have trouble organising monthly spend.
Easy i suppose to open other 123 accounts if they let u have more than one, but then would incurr £2 a month charge for each.
any comments/advice would be greatly appreciated cheers

psychic_teabag

Lloyds is an alternative, also paying interest (with no monthly fee). But like Santander, the interest rate is tiered, and unless you can keep the minimum qualifying balance in each account, you'd be missing out on interest. (Which could be more valuable than the £2 fee.)

I guess the 123 account is most useful for the bills account. And I assume the savings pot is a savings account rather than a current account. Can you open Everyday current account(s)s with Santander for the other stuff - no fee, but no interest - for your monthly spending ? Maybe you can redo your budgeting to be weekly / fortnightly rather than monthly so that you can keep more of the money in a savings account until it's needed ?

I do all my day-to-day spending on a cashback credit card, which I then see as a bill. Maybe it's harder for you to do your budgeting that way.

(Maybe it's too late, but you can get cashback from quidco for both 123 and everyday current accounts on Santander.)

molerat

I budget with an excel spreadsheet. It contains columns for 2 credit cards (cashback of course for all day to day spending), current account, budget account & savings. There is actually only 1 bank account in use for all of this, the 123 account. The last column is the running total in that account and the bottom of the current account column shows the total left to spend this month taking into account the credit card spend. A quick look shows the current and future balances of the account and how much you have got left this month. I currently run 3 months ahead as well. Money can be transferred between the "pots" to pay bills if necessary ie credit card is paid from current so if a bill from budget is paid with card the required amount is transferred to current. I find it the easiest way to manage with 4 income streams coming in at different dates and no risk of multiple bank charges which seems to be the major drawback of multiple accounts.