YNAB taught me you only need one account.
If I didn’t budget though, I would definitely need two
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One clear reason for multiple accounts is business expenses. A former employer of mine insisted we have a separate personal bank account for our business expenditure to our personal domestic expenditure and would not let me start work until I provided both account details. They paid salary into the one and both charged my expenses card to the other annount and sent reimbursed expenses into it as well.
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Oh yeah, I get that. It’s the call for a second personal account which surprises me. Having said that, if people feel more in-control that way, so be it!
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Money advice service have it listed as an idea on their jam jar page https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/managing-your-money-using-the-jam-jar-approach
I’d think spreading it between several account providers would work better as it would be easier to keep track of and be safer in cases of bank technical problems.
But pots has solved that problem for me
I do the same. It comes from the problem that your current account balance lies. In that, it tells you only what you have right now, not what you need to keep in there to pay your bills. So for example my bills account currently says I have £100, but I have a £50 credit card payment coming out in 7 days, and that’s before payday, so I actually have £50.
Without separate accounts or some way of budgeting in a single account, you have to do that sort of mental gymnastics throughout the month. I have a credit card and utilities bill come out at the end of the month whilst my mortgage is on the 1st.
Much easier just to work out what all your regular bills are, then transfer the spending (and savings if you wish) to another account on pay day. Everything in your spending account is then disposal income and you will never get caught out by a bill again. Otherwise you are constantly microbudgetting every payment, which I find much more stressful.
For yearly bills like car insurance and so on, I keep the rough monthly amount for each as savings, so I am not forced to borrow at their high rate to pay monthly for them.
An added advantage is that I can keep a high overdraft on my bills account that I never use. If some unforeseen circumstance happens like I don’t get paid, say because a bank’s (e.g. TSB) systems are down, then my important bills will still all get paid. I have a separate overdraft which is much smaller for my spending account too (Monzo now).
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The way I have my finances set up, allows my salary to be paid into my bills account. These are monthly costs that I can calculate and then
I work out my spare cash and put this in my spending account (now Monzo).
One benefit to this method, is it’s “passive”. If I do nothing on pay day, like forget to do my sums, lose connectivity etc, my bills still get paid.
As soon as Monzo allow additional accounts, I’ll switch.
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If you could put that money in a bills pot (either manually or automatically by some rule you’ve set up) and it could be taken straight from that pot by direct debit would that solve the problem?
If I could set up Standing Orders, Direct Debit’s and card Recurring Transactions on a pot, then yeah I suppose I could.
Another way I’d expect to work, if I could set up some kind of automated top up from the bills pot into the bank account. A rule of “if DD debit, use money from pot B” would be useful.
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Additional accounts will work and naming them like spending account main bills account
Secondary accounts one for bills income card payments for bills and standing orders for savings whilst another account for all spending outside of usual day to day planned expenses and all your flexible weekly shopping etc of that account and for paying for that holiday in one go but that can come from bills now Thomas cook do direct debit
I have Irish and UK all my UK don’t charge for card payments in 99% of non in any currency any way I have three current accounts in UK split up my payments not ideally the way I want yet as online banking isn’t the best with virgin money yet but it’s coming within 3 years full online banking anyway I have multiple accounts in multiple banks in Ireland so I have spred money about so main account is one with permanent tsb so all payments set up weekly etc come from that and the rest have a function but less except spending I normally do spending in euro by card payment from permanent tsb accounts until I receive max reward of 10c per transaction up to max of €5 per account but they charge €4 euros but you gain only €1 per account and bank charges no day to day fees for everyday transactions anyway I try to split in UK between bills and spending and in Ireland bills from spending but there’s no law to say you must have 1 account or there is a limit to the number of accounts you can have or the location of the accounts as long as bank allows you to have account. You could have 20 accounts and prob still be allowed to open more but some banks may limit you like virgin money limit essentials current account to 3 accounts per person on top of the current account that was available under northern rock before being sold so when I go across to Ireland or Europe in the Eurozone I use my Irish accounts first and if I wanna spend and pay in I can decide to spend from UK account meaning that cuts down amount of paying in I need to do
Hi @bea In the blog post you mention the following:
A partial switch lets you choose particular payments to switch to your new account, or move all of them over but keep the old account open. While a full switch moves all of your payments over and closes your old account.
This makes it sound like there is some kind of “partial switch” functionality in Monzo to help move some Direct Debits over…
… I can’t find that option…
The only option I see is SWITCH TO MONZO which then after pressing CONTINUE a couple of times leads to the START FULL SWITCH button.
Clearly I don’t want a full-switch.
Is there an option in the app to help move some Direct Debits or is this a case of a badly explained manual option of talking to the company the Direct Debit is with?
So Monzo, can I have two Monzo accounts please?
Yes, one single, one joint. There’s no hint that this will change at the moment, I fear.
I had heard talk about Monzo removing partial switch or at least testing the removal of it as it causes so many issues and failures compared to the full switch
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I’m still not sure why anyone would initiate a partial switch. You’re basically asking someone else to manually manage your financial affairs, they have absolutely no incentive to do anything in any kind of timescale (ie. before the next DD is due), there is no auto-forwarding from the old account and there is absolutely no Service Level Guarantee if they get it wrong.
Perhaps partial switchers could explain why they trust someone else to do a better job than themselves?
I wanted to keep my old Lloyds account open as a backup and method of depositing cash. Everything worked fine for me, although I feel there should be some sort of guarantee
I don’t think the question is “Why did you want to keep your old account open?” but “Why did you use the CASS instead of doing the work of moving your direct debits etc yourself?”
As far as I can see, with no guarantee for a partial switch there’s no incentive to use CASS, as sorting everything out yourself means you know right away when there are any problems with companies changing your details instead of being taken by surprise at some random point in the future when the money comes out of (or goes into) the wrong account.
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Simply comes down to effort. Why bother contacting each company when I can fill out one form and it all gets done for me. Granted it doesn’t take long doing it manually but I was willing to put up with the risk.
I think it’s also important to consider how many Parcial switches incur a problem. There is a stigma attached to it, yes they do run into more issues but overall is it really that bad?
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With you. Mortgage, life insurance, utilities that get reported to CRAs, there are too many essential payments to risk not sorting them myself.