Joint bank account for car fund

capehorn

Hi

My mother and I are going to open a joint account so that we can pay for all our car expenses from it. We need to have instant access to the money, be able to pay money into it online regularly, be linked to both of our bank accounts and earn interest

At the moment we are thinking of opening a joint websaver at Halifax (as we both have current accounts there) which comes with a cashcard.

The only drawback I can see of this is that a cashcard is not a debit card and we will not be getting a chequebook, so if we had an emergency and had to pay for something (garage bill etc.) we couldn't be able to access the money immediately, we would have to transfer the money online to one of our current accounts before we could pay it. We would probably only be able to withdraw around £300 a day using the cashcard, so if we had a big bill to pay and our current accounts were empty we might be stuck (this would be our first car for either of us so I don't know if that is a likely situation or not).

Does that sound like the best solution for us?? I know we would get a debit card and chequebook with a current account, but interest is a must as we would be saving for our tax and insurance throughout the year, but we would not be paying in £500/month like most of the higher interest accounts require. Does anyone have any suggestions??

Thanks a lot

Mikeyorks

capehorn wrote: »

At the moment we are thinking of opening a joint websaver at Halifax (as we both have current accounts there) which comes with a cashcard.

Not sure, then, why you consider you have a problem? You can move money instantly (online) from the websaver to either current account ... and then pay with a cheque / Debit Card associated to the current account. It's not the best interest (the bonus rate on the 'with card' websaver expires mid-July .... at which point it's a worse rate than their ordinary websaver - so you could move it at that point) but the overall fit with your requirements probably outweighs that?

Better still open a Halifax High Interest current account (6.17%) .. as that comes with everything you need. But you do have to pay in £1k per month to get that rate. So you just SO £1k to the new account from one of your current accounts - then SO it back again next day! All requirements met ... and a better rate than from the websaver(s)

capehorn

Yes, the websaver does tick most of our boxes, I was really just posting to see if I had missed anything obvious or if anyone had a better suggestion.

The rate of interest isn't really that important, anything above 4% will do. I will think about the high interest account though. Interesting idea.

jennifernil

If you decide to go the Websaver route then I suggest you look at the Bank of Scotland Instant Access Savings Account. It pays a slightly higher rate of interest than the Halifax one and you can still do instant transfers to your Halifax account as they are both in the HBOS group.