Saving with prepaid cards?

Bargainhunter83

Hi all, I need some advice....please
Last year I saved all year through park savings for love to shop vouchers for christmas. I ended up with about £350 which was great but the downside is I am an avid avoider of shops and you can't use these vouchers online thought it would be ok but it was a royal pain!
I want to save again for Xmas but I am rubbish at saving in my isa. Every time I credit it with money a week later I'm a bit skint so remove it again. I was thinking about paying the £10 p/w on to a pre paid card such as cash plus or ffrees but I've read loads of reviews saying they're rubbish and the last thing I want to do is lose my money! Does anyone have any suggestion/recommendation for how I could save money that I can spend online or shops?
Tia
Jess x

Drp8713

Why dont you either actually buy the presents now, or if you think youll be say shopping at Amazon once you get to £50 buy £50 of Amazon vouchers (for yourself)

lawriejones1

Open an account with a new bank, set up the direct debit and destroy the card or give it to a trusted family member.

Make not spending the money a new year's resolution that you keep!!!

Bargainhunter83

When you're buying for kids its hard to buy presents through the year as they change their minds so often about what they like! I do buy stocking filler bits as a go but that's all. I thought about a new bank account but my credit history is awful. Last time I applied for an account I was only offered a basic account without any cards I'm lucky I got the one account I have with Barclays as I opened it as soon as I lost my job and started defaulting on payments which I couldn't rectify at the time. Back to the drawing board I guess!

Porcupine

Try a regular saver account. Often the minimum deposit is something like £25/month, and you can get up to 6% interest. At the end of the year you get all the money back plus the interest. Generally it's awkward to withdraw money, though you can in an emergency but you lose the interest. If you can just open the savings account there's no credit check.

Might be a bit late for next Christmas though as you should have started the first payment in December. Unless there are 'Christmas saver' regular savers around this year?

serious_saver

It doesn't get me massive amounts of interest but I have an account with my local credit union.

They allow me to have a number of different accounts and label them with specific names. By naming my accounts I'm tend not to dip in to remove funds. I have one named 'wedding' and one named 'Christmas'.

Yes I have other savings which give better interest but I use the credit union accounts for very specific short term goals. These accounts give me relatively easy access but not quite as easy as my current account. If I want to dip in I have to actually make an effort and think about it.

Ethically speaking, it also make me feel good using a credit union.

F1F93

Bargainhunter83 wrote: »

I thought about a new bank account but my credit history is awful. Last time I applied for an account I was only offered a basic account without any cards

What's wrong with this? Surely that's exactly what you need! If you have a card you'll be likely to spend it before Christmas. This way, it'll be harder to get at your money, but not impossible. When you do need to do Christmas shopping, transfer it into your current account to buy online.

Set up a £30 standing order, then every year you'll have £360 saved in there for Christmas.

The top "open to all" regular savings accounts all allow at least one withdrawal, so you can set one up now and still access your money before christmas. You'll also gain a bit of interest, too.