App for viewing upcoming direct debits

blue.peter

martyp said:

The reason is that I only have enough money in my account for the next direct debit and keep as much as I can in easy access savings. At the moment I just have alarms set to remind me to transfer the money in the day before the direct debit goes out so that it's in my savings account gaining interest for as long as possible.

I can understand, and sympathise with, your desire to maximise the interest that you earn. However, is it really worth the effort to go to this extreme? Have you actually worked out how much you gain from this extremely granular approach and compared it with the time and effort expended in operating it? And compared those answers with the cost and benefit of a simpler method?

Putting £100 into an easy-access savings account paying, say, 4.8% pa for a week gains you about £0.09. Is it really worth the effort expended?

FWIW, I do it on a monthly, rather than daily, basis. Once a month, I look at my income and the sum of all DDs and standing orders due out over the next month, add a little for cash spending, leave that amount in my current accounts and sweep the excess into savings. That's it for the next month. All I do in between is monitoring to ensure that all's going to plan. That monitoring is just a matter of comparing the reality of my accounts with the predictions of AceMoney.

martyp

Thanks all, good points with regards to the true value of the interest for smaller amounts. Also the risk involved transferring in at last minute etc. I have a couple of times gone overdrawn with the risk of costs much greater than the interest gained from the savings account. I'll aim to keep a higher balance in the current account as at the moment try and keep it to £100. My biggest DD-day is the 1st when nearly £1k comes out for bills, mortgage etc. So just need to ensure the money is in there for that.

martyp

Kroo also sounds good, will take a look. Thanks

Nasqueron

I use Kroo for this exact thing - soon as pay clears and all the final monthly payments go, money is moved there for a couple of weeks until needed, if they did the CASS then I would probably move over to them but I can't be bothered sorting out all the SO and DD I have so it's easier just to put the money over as transfers are instant

gt94sss2

martyp said:

Thanks all, good points with regards to the true value of the interest for smaller amounts. Also the risk involved transferring in at last minute etc. I have a couple of times gone overdrawn with the risk of costs much greater than the interest gained from the savings account. I'll aim to keep a higher balance in the current account as at the moment try and keep it to £100. My biggest DD-day is the 1st when nearly £1k comes out for bills, mortgage etc. So just need to ensure the money is in there for that.

Even if you don't keep enough money in the account, as long as you have a sufficiently large overdraft facility you should be fine.

All the big banks will notify you that your account has gone into an overdraft allowing you to add money to your account that day/avoiding OD fees while still honouring payments due

sausage_time

Hi @martyp I also try to keep £0.00 in my non-interest paying current account. Can you use a spreadsheet to track your regular direct debits?  Excel and Google Sheets both work well on an Android phone.  You could use the WEEKDAY function to track weekends if that's important for you.  I just to that in my head and arrange a transfer to land on Monday for debits that would fall at the weekend.

Doshwaster

sausage_time said:

Hi @martyp I also try to keep £0.00 in my non-interest paying current account. Can you use a spreadsheet to track your regular direct debits?  Excel and Google Sheets both work well on an Android phone.  You could use the WEEKDAY function to track weekends if that's important for you.  I just to that in my head and arrange a transfer to land on Monday for debits that would fall at the weekend.

If that works for you then fair enough but I can't see how it's worth the hassle of tracking everything and the risk of going overdrawn or having a DD rejected just to make a few pence a week interest.