Do You Have More Than One Bank Account?

After recent high street bank outages I have both a MasterCard and visa account: Monzo and Nationwide. Nationwide give me additional insurances for travel, mobile phone and breakdown cover for £15/month. I transfer a significant Amount of my salary to Monzo- I use that for everyday spending.

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Monzo - Main bank use it for everything.
Barclays - Have a current account with £500 spare money just in case (see TSB meltdown). Also use it for cash deposits.
Barclaycard - £1200 line of credit always open just in case as well but when I use it I always pay in full.

Given a lot of the “features” of the challenger banks revolve around daily spending/analysis, I’m always surprised I don’t see more comments like this.

I put absolutely everything I can through Amex - If that doesn’t work, it’ll go through a Tesco Credit Card.

Very rarely will I use Monzo/Starling for daily spend (therefore negating a lot of new features).

In answer to the original question, I think you’ll find most people on these finance forums tend to dabble in other accounts (I have Monzo, Starling, Revolut, Transferwise) just to name a few of the newer ones - That doesn’t even include the legacy bank accounts.

Until there is a reason to close the other accounts, I see no point.

So yes, please try out as many accounts as you want, and see which one works best for you :slight_smile:

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Haha, you sounds almost exactly like me :yum:

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Current account: Monzo
ISA: NatWest

I used to have a backup current account with Halifax, but after an argument regarding my title (Mx), I no longer have an account with them. It was good to have a backup in the event of my card being stolen or cloned, etc so I might look at other banks to open a backup.

EDIT: Oh, I have a credit card as well, but i don’t think that counts.

I have Lloyds, Halifax and Starling, and a Halifax Clarity card and Lloyds Amex. I use my Monzo for day-to-day spending.

I agree. I use my Lloyds Amex Avios for any large items, and Monzo card for everything else. I’m hopeful that with Open Banking, Monzo will eventually allow me to integrate a view of my Lloyds Amex account, so I can categorise transactions and get a complete overview.

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Interesting - How come you use Monzo for day to day spending?

The whole reason I use my Amex is for the accumulation of points over time - I would have thought day to day spending (coffee/lunch/dinner etc), would add up significantly over time?

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Monzo, Revoult, Starling and TSB.

Yes, I agree. However, I balance the convenience of knowing where my cash is going against the benefit of getting Avios points. I do use my Amex card for anything over around £20, but for coffees, lunch - and all my Direct Debits and standing orders, I use Monzo.

I’d love to use IFTT-type functionality to automatically transfer money over to my Amex card whenever I use it - so there are no surprises at the end of the month, but there’s little chance of that being possible until the benefits of Open Banking land.

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I think its a great idea to have a backup account with another bank incase it comes in handy.

I currently have two accounts ( Barclays and Monzo ) but will be using Monzo as my prime bank next month :slight_smile:

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There are still some companies who won’t change direct debits to certain dates, which is odd, i’d prefer all of them to come out on the same date, but alas, they don’t.

This is where I replace them with standing orders. I am not being dictated too by a company when I can pay them.

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Metro Bank = Main current account, bills, savings
Monzo = Day to day spending
Revolut = FX transfers
Starling = just to check it out

I cut back a little from the number of accounts I had at the beginning of the year. :sweat_smile:

Nowadays, I use the following:

  • Monzo - Main day to day spending, salary, bills, etc.
  • Metro - Cash handling
  • Nationwide - Savings
  • TSB - A bit more savings

Yup, Monzo for salary, standing orders and DD’s. Starling as I’m waiting to see what, if any inclusions\features they eventually bring out.
TransferWise for holiday monies
TSB (because I haven’t mustered up the energy to go in and cancel as I’m sure that’ll be a trial in of itself
Halifax as I have other standing orders I pay from it plus if I need to deposit money it’s possible to do it with this

I have a savings account with another bank.

I also have a TSB account open, but not in use. It’s being kept open because I’m still potentially going to be getting one more payment into it, so can’t close it until I know what’s going on with that. The funds I’m waiting for were lost during all of the issues that caused me to leave TSB in the first place (though I left TSB more than a month ago, and only discovered last week that this particular payment wasn’t pending but completely lost).

Monzo - salary & bills & budgeting
Starling - because I can
Santander - long standing CA which I will probably not close. Have CC with them as well.
Skipton - ISA & LISA

A few people in this thread have mentioned Revolut for currency exchange. I’ve never used it. Does it have an advantage over TransferWise for this usage? I use TransferWise.

There’s no exchange fee for the first £5000 every month.

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I used revolut when I went to New York earlier this year. Very handy and worked flawlessly and gave good rates.