Monthly Money Merry-go-round

ThePirates

I posted this in another thread but I'll do it here too and ask the question what do others do? What am I missing out on? 

My current merry-go-round sends £2520 into Lloyds, then the same into Halifax 1, leave £500, the rest to NatWest, leave £10, the rest to Halifax 2, leave £500, the rest to RBS, leave £10, send the rest to Halifax 3, leave £500, transfer the rest back to my Santander Edge Saver. 

The 3 x £500 are then transferred back to Santander, giving a total of of £2500, some of which is used to fund Regular Savers.

The £10 in NatWest & RBS pay the £2 fee and weekly £2 DDs to Moneybox and Plum giving me £10 a month in rewards.
The £500 left in each Halifax account is paid via Debit Card to Skipton, Yorkshire and Family Building Societies giving me £15 a month in rewards.
Lloyds give me Disney+
10 minutes work each month!

This week get a lot simpler in October when Halifax cancel their £5 reward. I'm still undecided on keeping all 3 accounts out just 1.

ColdIron

I just use a hub and spoke approach, all via standing orders. Completely automated and I don't have to lift a finger

The only manual one I do is Halifax to Skipton as it has to be a card payment and that will end in October

WillPS

Wages/expenses arrive in Barclays Premier joint (the only one I have which is fussy that money must come from salary).

1st of the month routine is:

1. Transfer the lot to Natwest Reward Joint (also covers 2 x sole Natwest Rewards)
2. Transfer the lot to Santander 123 Lite*
3. Transfer the lot to RBS Reward Joint (also covers 2 x sole RBS Rewards)
4. Transfer the lot to Mrs WillPS' Club Lloyds
5. Mrs WillPS transfers the lot to our joint Club Lloyds
6. Transfer the lot to my Club Lloyds
7. Transfer the lot to my 1st Halifax reward*
8. Transfer all but £500 to my second Halifax reward*
9. Transfer all but £500 to my third Halifax reward*
10. Repeat steps 7-9 for Mrs WillPS' Halifax rewards*
11. Mrs WillPS transfers the remainder to savings
12. Pay off credit cards using the 6 Halifax debit cards*

* denotes an account which will soon be redundant, sadly.

We've done this for about few years now and recently it has yielded us a monthly gain of:
£30 from Halifax
£6-7 from Santander
£9 from Natwest
£9 from RBS
(a total of £54-55/month)
Plus Disney+ and  2 magazine subscriptions from Club Lloyds
Apple TV+ from Barclays.

By the end of the year, this will sadly be down to £18/month plus the freebies, presuming nothing else comes along good or bad. Been nice while it's lasted.

PRAISETHESUN

Similar approach to ColdIron above. I have a series of matching SOs paying out from my hub account over the course of the month for each bank that needs it (eg. Bank 1 ---> Bank 2, and same day return of Bank 2 --> Bank 1, then Bank 1 --> Bank 3, etc). Each is 3-4 days apart so my hub account doesn't go into unarranged overdraft territory trying to pay out too many SOs on a single day if they occur on a weekend/bank holiday. Only manual intevention needed is the Halifax Rewards debit card transactions, cashing in the rewards from NatWest/RBS, and manually withdrawing my balance from MoneyBox + Plum back to their respective linked NatWest/RBS accounts every few weeks.

20122013

May I ask, when you setup your auto transfers / standing order using the same amount of money to transfer around different accounts, do you leave 1 day between each transfers ? as I keep getting text to say insufficient funds.

PRAISETHESUN

20122013 said:

May I ask, when you setup your auto transfers / standing order using the same amount of money to transfer around different accounts, do you leave 1 day between each transfers ? as I keep getting text to say insufficient funds.

Personally I let them go on the same day. Pretty much every bank will attempt to pay out SOs a second time later in the day (around 2-3pm) if they fail the first time. It either works first time, or it works towards the end of the day, example:

Scenario 1:

Bank 1 pays first, which means Bank 2 has sufficient funds to transfer back to Bank 1.

Scenario 2:

Bank 2 tries to pay first but has insufficient funds. Bank 1 then pays to Bank 2. Later in the day Bank 2 then retries the original SO, now having sufficient funds, and pays back to Bank 1.

Alternatively Bank 1 goes might allow the original SO to pay out and the account temporarily goes overdrawn. In this situation, scenario 1 plays out as expected. As long as Bank 1 is returned to a positive balance by the end of the day (which it will when Bank 2 pays it's SO), then no OD fees are charged.

20122013

@ PRAISETHESUN

I will try it and  will cancel the Over draft facility. 

Another question.

I have setup a lump sum transfer from Bank A  to Bank B, where Bank B has most of my Standing Order to internal and external bank accounts, and the internal bank accounts then use the funds to pay for DDs for some reason they debit the payment and then returns it, and Bank B says it is due to  'insufficient funds and Bank B does not try to take the payment again. So I have been doing a manual transfer but now I have set up a separate transfer for this particular internal transfer two days earlier. Is this common,  or is there a work around, please?

PRAISETHESUN

20122013 said:

@ PRAISETHESUN

I will try it and  will cancel the Over draft facility. 

Another question.

I have setup a lump sum transfer from Bank A  to Bank B, where Bank B has most of my Standing Order to internal and external bank accounts, and the internal bank accounts then use the funds to pay for DDs for some reason they debit the payment and then returns it, and Bank B says it is due to  'insufficient funds and Bank B does not try to take the payment again. So I have been doing a manual transfer but now I have set up a separate transfer for this particular internal transfer two days earlier. Is this common,  or is there a work around, please?

There shouldn't be any need to cancel your arranged overdraft. If anything it should make your life a little easier as it will stop you having to fallback to scenario 2 in my post above.

Out of interest, which banks are you using? Could be a quirky of Bank B in particular that they don't retry SOs a second time if the first one fails? Alternatively, you mention "internal" transfers, which might be treated differently to SOs to external banks?

20122013

There shouldn't be any need to cancel your arranged overdraft. If anything it should make your life a little easier as it will stop you having to fallback to scenario 2 in my post above.

Out of interest, which banks are you using? Could be a quirky of Bank B in particular that they don't retry SOs a second time if the first one fails? Alternatively, you mention "internal" transfers, which might be treated differently to SOs to external banks?

@ PRAISETHESUN

Bank B is Nationwide, and I have a £200 OD with them and it charges interest if it goes over, hence, it tried to take the payment but as it exceeds the £200 it bounces and does not attempt to debit again.

I think I will do a separate transfer for this internal account, as it is great to read that most posters does not spend too log to sort their payment out - very encouraging.

Jami74

I do a full circle. I actually find it easier to cycle £2000 round, only takes a few minutes. Then I send various smaller bits of money from the main account to where it needs to go, takes another few minutes. I have a sticky note on my desktop with the list and the apps are in order in a folder on my phone. Then I update the spreadsheet. I look forward to the first of the month, it's called money shuffle day in our family.

PRAISETHESUN

20122013 said:

There shouldn't be any need to cancel your arranged overdraft. If anything it should make your life a little easier as it will stop you having to fallback to scenario 2 in my post above.

Out of interest, which banks are you using? Could be a quirky of Bank B in particular that they don't retry SOs a second time if the first one fails? Alternatively, you mention "internal" transfers, which might be treated differently to SOs to external banks?

@ PRAISETHESUN

Bank B is Nationwide, and I have a £200 OD with them and it charges interest if it goes over, hence, it tried to take the payment but as it exceeds the £200 it bounces and does not attempt to debit again.

I think I will do a separate transfer for this internal account, as it is great to read that most posters does not spend too log to sort their payment out - very encouraging.

In this instance it sounds like your SOs are failing because Nationwide (Bank 1) has insufficient funds, and your OD is not big enough to cover it. If you move enough money into your into your Nationwide account a day or two before the SOs are due to pay out then it should all just work. You might also be able to schedule this transfer as a SO as well depending if your savings account supports it. Alternatively, you could change the date to when you'd usually have money in the account already? (eg. payday?)