The 'What's the best bank for piggybanking /jam-jar accounts?' Great Hunt

1jim

Agreed with above

I just have an instant access savings account that lays decent interest.
I use this to put a certain amount in each month, this will cover things like holiday, Christmas, car repairs, car tax, dentist and glasses expenditure etc etc. I then make a note of how much has been allocated or spent from each "fund", I do this in a notebook as whilst I could use a spreadsheet for me it's quicker to use notebook method (mostly use iPad). This works for me and saves having loads of accounts to keep track of, only one transfer to make a month rather than lots to set up and check. Works for me. It takes a few minutes once a month to do, I could even do this via standing order but I tend to combine with my cycling of money through 3 halifax accounts so it's just easier for me to do this myself

nettadear

I seem to be able to have as many HSBC instant savings and current accounts as I like and transfer from one to the other whenever I want to. It really helps me budget and it's always great to see that I have the money set aside when I need it.
I also have a few accounts with Natwest that work equally well but I prefer the HSBC website for functionality and user-friendliness.

mrmajika

Paxie86 wrote: »

2 Christmases ago my partner and I joined an online bank called Think Money. It's fantastic!! Your money gets paid in, and they holdback the money you need for bills in a salaries account ( weekly, monthly or whenever you have money going in, which we have twice a week and once a month), and then the rest will go onto your card account. It's fantastic. All my bills are paid as they set up everything for you. If you're not fantastic with money (or even if you are) it's perfect. I highly recommend.

Lots of the mainstream banks allow you to set up online savings accounts which you can rename and have separate pots for money. All the Lloyds group allow this, as does RBS/NatWest, Nationwide and no doubt countless others.

The main difference from them to what you propose is that they pay YOU money, as interest, for having your money there.

To pay £14.50 per month to ThinkMoney, like you suggest, to facilitate this is absurd.

I notice that you joined the board especially to make that suggestion and, if you're genuine, then fair enough, however, you'll forgive me for doubting your good intentions!

lawlie

For those of you which are relatively sensible with your money, I can see why you couldn't be bothered with separate accounts and can rely on e.g. using the Santander 1-2-3 account.

For people more like myself, who are likely to spend any money that's in their account as if there's no tomorrow (:p), the day after I am paid, all amounts required for rent and bills are siphoned off into a separate account, where all my direct debits come out of. This means that anything left in my current a/c is for spending and I can see exactly how I need to budget for the month.

StixUK

Yep, my wife and I do this.


Just started with a foolproof system this month, which was an improvement on the previous one I had.


The problem I faced with a spreadsheet was that it was too complicated for my wife to understand, so I restarted and simplified the whole process so that both of us could understand.


As I'm self-employed it complicates the process a little as have to siphon off TAX/NI and Student Loan, but I have the following.


ALL WITH LLOYDS TSB


Current Account (Joint)
Current Account (Business Income)


ALL WITH LLOYDS TSB - Savings Accounts


Food Pot
Car Maintenance Fund
Xmas and All other savings Pot (Monthly Saver)
My Work Pot
Spending Money


CASH ISA with NS&I - this is for my tax as generally have between £2,000 - £4,200 stuck in here so I can have easy access but maximise interest earned.


We also have a Tesco Credit Card for all family spending, which gets paid off every 1-2 days from the relevant pots. I have a Barlcaycard 1% cashback card for all my work spending (diesel and food, etc etc)


The reason I am with Lloyds is the fact that it is the only local branch I have, so if anything immediate pops up or a cheque needs to be paid, there is minimal delay.


But as we don't use cash as a family (or as little as possible) and with my wife needing to be part of the planning, we had to find a system to suit us both. This was the biggest challenge but after 8 years we are there!

gallygirl

I have a savings account which I pay money into on payday. One account, so simple to administer. But my spreadsheet has in and out columns for 11 'pots' - Xmas, house insurance & line rental, car insurance, clothing etc. I allocate a set amount to each pot but it means a pot can go 'overdrawn' if say the house insurance comes out early on in the year, without me physically having to find the cash from elsewhere. In theory it should balance to 0 at the end of the year - though somehow this year I seem to be projecting a small surplus :T:eek::D

claire1a

My mum used to have a woolwich (got taken over by barclays) jam jar account that she could split into as many "little" jars as she wanted. She loved it.

Unfortunalty I cannot find anything similar, so mine are all over the place as alot of banks (halifax and barclays) will only let you have one general savings account.

Halifax
Old cash card account (rent from lodgers)
current account (wages payed into and DD/SO come out)
savings account (car and house insurance)
ISA (emergencys)

Barlays
Graduate account (free overdraft) (Spending and bills)
Fixed savings account for one year (holiday and christmas)
online everyday savers account (birthdays)

Coop (from my career development loan) (cat)

I could really do with more accounts for petrol, food, going out etc. I am quite interested with the lloyd accounts if you can open multiple accounts!!!

killick_becki

I use Nationwide for all my accounts.

Whenever I speak to a physical person and they are doing the security check they are always amazed by how many accounts I have with them.

In summary I have 11 current accounts, 8 savings accounts, mortgage and ISAs.
Their online banking system makes everything really easy.

Having said this, I took up their offer of a flex account that pays 5% interest on balances up to £2,500 for the first year. So instead of splitting the money into the separate accounts, i've been keeping track on a spreadsheet. But once the year is up i'll be back onto using the separate accounts again.

I started doing this when I was living in a student house and I held a separate account for the household bills so it didn't get confused with my personal account.

Angelfeathers

I used to have loads of different accounts for my different budgets, but it got really complicated having to remember to make sure they were all in credit.

So now I just have everything in one account and a spreadsheet (which I always had) to keep track of it all, and if one account is in debt the others that are in credit balance it out (e.g. Christmas fund v. holiday fund, opposite sides of the year). I also earn more interest on the lump sum that's in there.

miznorti

I find it a lot easier to deal in cash only. We budget quite furiously for bills and standing orders then draw out what is left. This gets separated into envelopes for petrol and weekly groceries, the 'spare' money gets put to one side for emergencies. At the end of the month anything left goes towards a takeaway/treat then the rest gets split into our ISA and Present account.
My Husband works away during the week so it works better for us if we deal in cash rather than each spending on our debit card without the other realising.

Our biggest money saver is making a monthly meal plan, shopping according to that, then doing a small milk and veg shop each week, this also saves the hassle of working out what we are eating each night. An inventory of your freezer and cupboard helps too - we ate for nearly a month without doing any food shopping apart from milk and veg.