Cash for weekly shop - mortgage application

Helloht

Hello we are getting our ducks in a row to buy a house in the next year, we have agreed to budget £200 each for food shopping (to include general supermarket spend, cleaning products, toiletries, nappies etc) and we were thinking of just withdrawing £200 a month each and sticking it in an envelope, and using that to shop with, when we go ahead with a mortgage application are they going to think this is a red flag? We have a joint account with barclays we use for rent utilities and childcare but I don't want to use that account to spend on a debit card as we will lose track (set money goes in set money goes out)

Is there a way of adding another subsection to our existing joint account without having to set up another new bank account (I can't see any options on the barclays app) 
Partners current account is Halifax, mine is Lloyd's, I do also have a starling account if this makes any difference 

Catplan

Why stick it in an envelope? You appear to have other accounts…. If I read this right Barclays as a joint? your Partner has a Halifax account and you have Lloyds and Starling, why not transfer to those accounts and use them?

Helloht

Hello yes we would just like to have a separate shopping fund to make it easier to see what money is just for shopping rather than the monthly bills.
We will put 400 in there a month but some weeks we will use significantly less than this depending on what needs to be bought. partner is paid monthly and I am 2 weekly so different amounts go in and come out at different times, I would just like to be able to glance at our account and know we have x amount in the food budget account rather than figuring out what is due to go in and come out. (Especially now we are on a variable energy tarrif)

We intend to use this budget for the odd take away, meal out etc too so would be nice to know what we can afford without doing calculations constantly

Helloht

Sorry i should add this is also the reason I don’t want to use just mine or his normal current account for this as we will lose track of what is left for food purposes and what is our own personal money for daily spend, personal bills etc

ZeroSum

Whats your objection to a new bank account?

If you don't want a full bank account, you could try something like Tesco clubcard plus which is essentially a pre paid debit card. And you can earn extra clubcard points (but weirdly not in tesco, apart from the 3 month introductory offer)

Daliah

The ideal spending account is a Chase UK one as it pays cashback for a year on most everyday purchases. Chase don‘t carry out a hard credit check so it won‘t interfere with any mortgage application.

Rob5342

The easiest way would be to transfer your Barclays account to a joint Starling or Monzo account, create a space/pot for bills with the bills direct debits set up to come out of them, and then the main balance is your food budget.This is how we do ours, we both get notifications when anything gets spent, and either of us can just look at the balance to see what's left.

noh

Or perhaps set up a seperate space in your Starling account called "Shopping" each of you pay £200 a month into that. You can then get a Connected card for you parter to enable both of you to spend from that space.
https://www.starlingbank.com/features/connected-shopping-card/

Alternatively set up a joint account with Starling the application for which does not involve a hard credit search.

Helloht

Thanks everyone! I’ve ordered the connected card on my starling app for a section called shopping so will give this to my partner it says it can only hold £200 so I have added another space called savings and this can be the excess I can easily transfer in and out of

nb I didn’t want to set up another account because I have just closed a load of accounts from paying off debts so I wanted to avoid another active account/account opening to let my score settle for a bit 

Daliah

Your score is not impacted by applying for accounts which don‘t do hard searches. 

More importantly, your score never gets seen by any lender. It‘s merely a rough indicator for yourself.

penners324

Opening a 2nd / joint Starling account doesn't impact your report at all.