How to bucket out savings for different things?

Chino

Shakin_Steve said:

Not sure how many jars you can have with Pingit, but I'm up to four.

Apparently the limit is five jars. From the "What's a Pingit Jar?" FAQ:

You can have up to five jars depending upon your account

ozaz

Archi_Bald said:

penners324 said:

Don't Revolut have a similar setup to Starling & Monzo for Spaces/Pots...

They might but they are not a good place for savings as they are not covered by FSCS. If they went bust, your money would almost certainly be gone. There are plenty of safe alternatives for savings

Re sentence highlighted in bold - that's not true. eMoney institutions like Revolut are supposed to safeguard client funds via ring-fenced bank accounts. It's true these funds are not FSCS-protected, but from what I've seen they are always at major banks like Barclays or Lloyds.

So assuming the emoney institution is acting according to regulations the money would almost certainly be safe. It would probably require the government allowing a major bank to fail for the money to be gone. 

So yes - more risky than using an FSCS account (in my mind that's mainly because there is a degree of trust the institution is acting according to regulations) but a long way from "your money would almost certainly be gone".
 

  

Polarpenguin

Starling has full FSCS protection
 https://www.starlingbank.com/legal/account/fscs-protection/

gsmh

I use my regular finance app for this, Money Manager EX (MMEX). When I have setup the main savings account I create as many pots or 'accounts' as I need and transfer money to and from them WITHOUT ever marking the transfers as reconciled. The only transactions you ever mark as reconciled are those that enter or leave your main savings account at the bank. This means that the main account in MMEX always shows the reconciled balance which is the one you will see if you access online banking and is your total savings, including what is in the pots, AND the 'actual' balance which is the balance that you are concerned about, ie. the balance of what is in the main savings account minus what you have put into your pots. Each pots 'account' clearly shows what you have set aside for each purpose. It is vastly more complicated to explain than it is to set up.

JosephK

Keep it simple. One easy access a/c with best rate for money you may require quickly and one (or more if over £85K limit) with longer notice or fixed term for more distant goals and just keep a note, spreadsheet or even pen and paper, of how much is allocated to what. Worked for me for years.

IvanOpinion

I must be old fashioned ... what is wrong with a spreadsheet.  That is all I use to manage money.

Shakin_Steve

Chino said:

Archi_Bald said:

Does Pingit come with FSCS cover?

Apparently money held in Pingit "jars" does not have FSCS cover. From the Pingit "What's a jar?" page:

Money in Jars is held securely by us at all times, but as an e-money product it is not covered by FSCS.

Fair enough, but as the money is held by Barclays, I doubt there's much chance of you losing it.

Archi_Bald

I suppose you have to have lived through the real risk of losing your savings before you fully appreciate the value of FSCS protection, and the real risks of not having it.

By all means, listen to those who say keeping your money in Pingit or Revolut etc isn‘t really risky. As long as you are aware that the people saying it can give you zero guarantees that your money will actually be safe, you‘ll be fine.

On the other hand, if you want to be really certain that you get all your money back, you simply choose an account which has FSCS protection, or you go with NS&I. 

gsmh

IvanOpinion said:

I must be old fashioned ... what is wrong with a spreadsheet.  That is all I use to manage money.

A spreadsheet is great for a specific task and for modelling, but why not use software which has been written specifically to manage your finances? A spreadsheet makes the job more difficult surely. I say this as an IT teacher who has taught such things for many years. What about direct debits? Say you have four monthly Council Tax debits left - how is this reflected in your spreadsheet? What about reconciling transactions as they appear in your bank account? How can you see a reconciled and actual balance? So many questions . . .

jackieblack

magritte said:

What I do: I put the money in various savings account/s that offer some interest (e.g. Marcus, NS&I, some regular savers etc.) and keep a simple Excel spreadsheet where I allocate the total to savings categories: renovation, emergency, holiday, new computer and so on. Every time I add money to the savings account I update the categories in Excel. 
There is more sophisticated software that you could use... YNAB comes to mind, but for me Excel does the job. 
The idea of virtual pots is cool, but I have yet to see a good interest rate that comes with it. 

I do similar, but have a notebook with columns for each ‘pot’