Saving Pots

Rob5342

Starling and Monzo have pots and spaces. I find them incredibly useful as you can have direct debits and standing orders coming out of them. The other banks will probably take 20 years to implement them!

Rob5342

MovingForwards said:

I'm starting to move back to using cash, for me it's more controlled.

I find the opposite. Cash tends to just disappear with no record of where. With a debit card I can see exactly where every penny has gone in my banking app. Also if I use a debit card then any change stays in my bank account so I can easily pay it into savings or off credit cards.

EarthBoy

Virgin Money has pots too.

EarthBoy

Rob5342 said:

MovingForwards said:

I'm starting to move back to using cash, for me it's more controlled.

I find the opposite. Cash tends to just disappear with no record of where. With a debit card I can see exactly where every penny has gone in my banking app. 

I couldn't agree more.  With cash I always knew how much I had left, but I had no idea of where I'd spent my money, unless I kept all the receipts (and who wants to do that?).  It's much easier to manage with debit cards, and no cash.  A cashless society can't come quick enough for me.

Rich1976

For all annual one off bills such as Christmas and birthdays we just use the money that is available out of our fun money for that month. This also includes car insurance, twice yearly water bills and TV Licence as we have sufficient left over each month to be able to pay these as and when they come up without the need to send them to separate accounts each month and withdraw at the relevant time.

we put aside usually between 400 and 800 a month into a savings account and use this to pay for any repairs as well as saving up for holidays and also acts as a general savings pot for home improvements and we are saving towards a replacement car in 2 or 3 years.

we used to do separate pots but found they didn’t work for us. So now whatever is not covered by that months bills or fun money goes into savings so I know we are building up savings for future known and unknown events.

pridehappy

I only really save in official savings accounts. I find it really useful that you can open as many Flex Instant Savers with Nationwide as you need, and as the interest rate is decent, I just use them.

Main Savings:
Virgin Money M Plus Saver - the main pot I’ve built up over the years for emergencies, furniture, anything general really.

Funeral:
Skipton Building Society Lifetime ISA - Yes, I’m saving for my funeral in my 40’s. Although, I don’t like the idea of funeral plans, so I’m saving in a lifetime ISA instead. Was previously used for house savings.

Inheritance:
Virgin Money 2 Year Fixed ISA - most of it fits into my ISA allowance at the moment, although will be too much in the future. 

All the rest are Nationwide Flex Instant Saver.

Insurance/Cars:
Enough to cover any car maintenance, MOT, servicing etc and also all the insurance (except for the current account insurance cost). 

Holiday:
Savings to go towards any foreign holiday, short breaks or travel we may have.

Occasions:
Savings for significant birthdays and Christmas, including any weddings which come up.

I also have a few empty old ones for specific items or reasons which I will utilise soon. Everything else comes out of monthly salary or general savings.

wiseonesomeofthetime

overspender22 said:

Whitewitch777 said:

June 2023. Can you say which Banks have accounts that have the "pots" or "jars" facility please, as I am having trouble replicating the one we currently have with Intelligent Finance (was St James's Place part of Halifax I think) which has decided to close. Need to move urgently - thank you!

Starling, Monzo, Chase, TSB are the ones I know of. Starlings’ interface in my opinion is the easiest to use / smoothest experience. 

While chase lets you assign the debit card to a particular pot and change whenever you like which is handy. Plus interest. 

True, however, I should clarify that the debit card can only be assigned to the current account (pot) that you wish to spend from, not to a savings account.

The current account currently attracts interest at 1% AER

That is 1% more than Monzo regular pots though, and 0.95% more than Starling Spaces.

Virgin pots, held within a single savings account number, can earn 3% now, but I believe you need a Virgin current account for that, just like you'd need a Monzo, Starling, Chase current account for the above.

ZeroSum

An annoyance with virgin is that the interest is just paid over in total to the unallocated pot, unlike with zopa where each pot earns its own interest.

Also (not sure if bug has been fixed yer as I still do it the long way just in case) virgin has a tendency to double count if you directly fund & withdraw from pots to current account, so need to transfer via the unallocated to prevent it from happening 

Purpleheart

I loved the original YNAB but it stopped working. I haven't found any software or spreadsheets that do zero based budgeting as well. 

I use a combination of Moneypoint software and my own spreadsheets to create virtual pots for saving and track my spending, I also have numerous accounts, savings pots, ISA etc. I just feel I could do better!

Does anyone have any recommendations for software/apps/spreadsheets that could give me the zero based budgeting I am after?

AmityNeon

Purpleheart said:

I loved the original YNAB but it stopped working. I haven't found any software or spreadsheets that do zero based budgeting as well. 

I use a combination of Moneypoint software and my own spreadsheets to create virtual pots for saving and track my spending, I also have numerous accounts, savings pots, ISA etc. I just feel I could do better!

Does anyone have any recommendations for software/apps/spreadsheets that could give me the zero based budgeting I am after?

You could try: https://www.budgetwithbuckets.com/

It's similar to the original YNAB, free to try (for as you long as you like), with a low one-time fee if you decide to purchase.