Current Account For A House of 2nd Year Students

ncfcstar

Hi everyone, hopefully you can help me! My friends and I are moving into a house for our second year at the University of Leicester, and I think (and my Dad recommended) setting up a current account (or something of the like) to pay utility bills, tv licence etc would be a good way for us to pay bills.

I was just wondering what you advise me to do, once I've set the account up I think I will make sure there are two signatorys for the account so no-one can withdraw money without someone else knowing!

Hope you can help me :beer:

violetviolin

i was just about to ask the same question! what's the best way for a house of 2nd yr students to pay bills? xxxx

bristol_pilot

It is not a good idea to have a joint account with your housemates ! Same goes for a gf/bf btw.

You are creating a financial link between all the names on the account. If one of you gets a poor credit rating it will affect the others. Also, there is joint and several liability for any debt run up on the account.

melancholly

i looked into this - i think you have to set up an account that you can get for a club or society. in the end, we didn't do it, but it may be worth each person in the house taking a different bill in their name, then there's more motivation to make sure things get paid!

jo132000

I've just done my second year and we lived in a house what we did was one girl did the internet bill and we paid her each month for that, one girl paid the tv license and they we split the cost of the bill and did it like that.

Also when the bills came one paid, (whoever had the most money at the time) and everyone paid her the spilt cost of the bill....don't open an account it could turn real nasty!!

ncfcstar

It wouldn't be a joint account though, it would be under one persons name, but with two signatorys, that's how it works isn't it? So no-one can withdraw money without the knowledge of the two signatorys, and the only money that would ever be in there would be money to pay bills at the end of the month/quarter etc. No other monies would be kept in the account...or is this still not advisable

Stubert

You can get an account in multiple names can't you? The same as you can get your utility bills in 5 different people names.

Last year we just all paid for different stuff and kept a record of it and split the amount at January and at the end of the year. We also did group shopping as well which I thought might be a lot of hassle but it turned out pretty well in the end :-)

JoeA81

I got a joint account in the 3rd year of uni, but only becuase our landlord insited that the rent was paid in full from one account. (He didnt want the 5 of us each paying 1/5 of the monthly rent from our seperate accounts for some reason!?) We only used it for the rent, and to be honset it was a pain the !!!! and I wouldnt reccomend doing it if you dont have to.

What I've always done in other years is each pay 1/5 of the rent into landlords account. And then for bills, we just gave each person the responsibity of one utility bill - one person had electricity, one had gas, one had TV licence, one had Phone line, one had internet etc etc. You just paid 'your' bill yourself, and then got the money back from everyone else afterwards. Becuase everyone had a bill to pay, there was incentive to pay people promptly!

Edit: I should say that the reason the joint account was such a pain was due to the unreliable people who never wanted to pay on time, and kept on making the account go overdrawn, or the standing order to pay the landlord would fail to work due to lack of funds incurring charges, etc etc. Unless everyone you live with is very well organised, honest and trustworthy, I would say its not worth the hassle!

Gingernutmeg

My partner and I looked into getting a joint account when we moved into a flat last year, just so that we could pay the rent from one account (we were asked to do this by our LA). However, because we were students we weren't allowed to have a joint current account with our bank (Barclays) and had to opt instead for a savings account. Our other option would have been a 'basic' bank account but again we weren't allowed to do this as the woman at the bank said 'it didn't look good' ... (no, I don't get that either lol). Anyway, neither of these accounts (savings or basic) allow you to set up direct debits, so we use it to 'store' the rent, as it has a fairly good interest rate, and then we have to transfer it manually. For bills we just have to be organised and either pay them off as they come or set up payment books, as we both felt it was fairer if we both had responsibility for them.

So as students you may not be able to set up a joint account. I have heard of some banks that do it but tbh I'd be reluctant to do it with someone I don't really know - remember that if you can all put money IN then you can also all take money OUT. JoeA81, I like your idea of joint responsibility Seems a bit fairer to me than giving one person responsibility, which is what often happens.

JoeA81

I know what you mean about one person sometimes taking all the responsiblity Gingernutmeg. I knew someone that ended up paying the landlord the whole houses rent out of his own current account, something like £1200 a month! And he had to rely on people paying him in time to avoid going hideously overdrawn...not a good situation to be in.

Its amazing how different employees at the same bank can say different things. We has no problem opening a Joint acount at Barclays between four of us, all students aged betweem 20 and 21. No-one batted an eyelid! We even got chequebooks and a debitcard! (Which we DIDNT ask for and quite quickly cancelled!)

Gingernutmeg

JoeA81 wrote: »

I know what you mean about one person sometimes taking all the responsiblity Gingernutmeg. I knew someone that ended up paying the landlord the whole houses rent out of his own current account, something like £1200 a month! And he had to rely on people paying him in time to avoid going hideously overdrawn...not a good situation to be in.

Its amazing how different employees at the same bank can say different things. We has no problem opening a Joint acount at Barclays between four of us, all students aged betweem 20 and 21. No-one batted an eyelid! We even got chequebooks and a debitcard! (Which we DIDNT ask for and quite quickly cancelled!)

I agree - I've heard of so many people getting into trouble because they've taken charge of bills and people have decided not to pay them. Almost everyone I know has had at least one experience of this in a student house, it's not what you need when you're studying.

And for the second point - typical Barclays!!!