I opened my first account with Barclays as we had a small branch in our secondary school
- I was working for the Post Office and Girobank allowed PO employees a cheque guarantee card from day one. All other banks made you wait 3-6 months for one.
My parents opened me some kind of account at Abbey National back in the day, but I think I got my first Visa Electron card when I started college (just as Abbey National rebranded to Abbey, if I remember correctly…)
It’s interesting how times change.
I can’t remember, myself. I know I had a little low value pocket money account as a small child. I had that little house-shaped money box so that’s my evidence, but I remember going and setting a proper account up as a teenager.
Most people here are saying they didn’t get an account until their teenage years, or close to them.
Meanwhile I’ve had a bank account for my daughter since she was a few weeks old. A Halifax Young Saver when she was very small, and now a Junior ISA.
A sign that we’re getting more financially aware and better at saving, or that costs are going up and children can’t get by without substantial savings any more?
My mother opened my first account for me when I was 12 and got my first credit card (yes CREDIT, French people don’t really have debit cards) when I was 13 and went on my first holiday abroad alone and was scared of carrying cash.
But at the time there were no phone apps and no easy way to track the money so I used to write every transaction in a small notebook that I had in my purse to make sure I didn’t overspend.
Monzo would have been AWESOME! It would have really helped me budget and saved me tons of time.
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I was 7 and I only remember that because NatWest gave me a CD, Will Smith’s Big Willy Style Album!! 
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Bonjour! 
Mind if I ask when that was? When I lived there it was all about the Carte Bleue, which was the French version of Switch (an old UK domestic debit card system). I think CB was ultimately absorbed into Visa, though, whereas Switch was into MasterCard…
About 11 - I think it was an Electron card and it was with Alliance & Leicester.
They later on got bought out by Santander, and to show you the levels of apathy I think exist regarding changing bank accounts - it was literally my main account until I started using Monzo a few months before I joined the company. All my spending immediately moved to the Monzo Beta and now my bills etc with the full account, but until I started using Monzo I’d never even considered changing banks for the better part of two decades.
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I’m wracking my brains trying to remember. I know I had a Midland student account when I went to university, but I must have had some sort of current account thing before then… 
I had a Midland Bank account that was opened in primary school - the whole school bank thing in the 80s.
Then when I was in my late teens (late 90s), when banks used to give you free stuff - we’d go round all the banks opening accounts to get 10 free cinema tickets or Virgin Megastore vouchers, or whatever - I went into HSBC to open an account. They took all my details as they do, then told me I had an old inactive account. It was the old Midland, ‘school bank’, account. It had made a reasonable amount of interest so I went through the process of reclaiming it and I ended up getting about £150 from it. I can’t remember what the amount in the account originally was, but I remember being surprised that it had made so much.
Also had a Cumberland building society account as a child, with a pass book that they would write in by hand and cross things out. Then later on they’d stick it in a machine opened to the page they wanted and it would print extra lines on for deposits and withdrawals.
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- When the Midland bank came to school. Drawing £1 out at lunchtime… Who’s the daddy?!?
Bonjour à vous Monsieur. It would have been 10 years ago! And yes it was a Visa, I use to hate the system because at the end of each month I needed to check my bank statement against my little notebook and the receipts.
Yes Carte bleu was an actual item but now it’s just an expression to mean credit card. Every credit card is a carte bleu, no matter the color. 
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I’ve had ISAs in trust since birth with Nationwide.
My first bank account was with Norwich and Peterborough when I was 7 or 8. I then had one with Santander (not good) when I was 13 and Lloyds a few months after. I still have that account mainly to deposit bags of coins!
I opened my Monzo account on my 18th birthday back in the prepaid days.
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Original Nat West piggy holder here too - still got the collection at Mum and Dad’s although Sir Nathaniel is little battered and bruised now.
Anyway, I seem to remember that being opened up by Mum. My first ‘proper’ account was opened up when I went to Uni.
I went with Barclays, can’t remember why. Possibly because Dad was with them, probably because they gave me £50 or something. Been with them for 20 years since.
It’s crazy how you just fall into one provider and then tend to stick with them. I don’t even particularly like them, given the scandals that they’ve been involved with. Hence my interest in the Monzo project.
I guess if you don’t have any issues with them and the fees aren’t ridiculous there’s no reason to leave.
Think my first was around 16 with an Abbey National Solo Card (Solo seemed to not get accepted anywhere!)
My first concept of savings was around 6/7 where I save £1 a week pocket money for 16 weeks to buy Pokemon Red for my GameBoy
My first bank account was a savings account with the Halifax Building Society when I was 6. Better days!
Just like @dinkyinki, when I was 10 I was part of the school bank (in my case Yorkshire Bank) so had a savings account with them. I ran the branch with 2 other classmates, counting the deposits, writing them into the passbooks, bagging the money into rounded amounts etc. I don’t think we ever did any withdrawals though. As my schools new maths coordinator, I will probably look at opening a branch if you still can.
My first card account was a Visa Electron with Halifax when I was 12 which I had kept (even though I opened other full Visa current accounts) until earlier this year when I CASSed it into Monzo!
All the chatter about this dug something up from my memory. I remember at junior school (so probably 9/10 y.o) a friend and l set up a ‘Bank’ for other pupils. We got the principal of deposits, lending out deposits for interest and paying interest on accounts. We even produced some stationary and had a ledger book. Needless to say our entrepreneurial spirit was crushed by our class teacher and the Bank was wound up. I think we probably took 50p in deposits
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Started with Clydesdale bank one account when the atms looked funny and you had odd device to look at your screen as no full displays back then I soon moved to the bank of Scotland but I fell out with them and shifted to the then called Halifax Building Society which I had two current accounts until bank of Scotland shut down all the Scottish branches by merging them in to bank of Scotland’s I’ve been round the big banks and now got away from them I have two current accounts with virgin money and monzo current account. Don’t know if Revolut class as current accounts yet but I have that and now I have my Irish accounts with permanent tsb which I’m happy with
I was 8 when I had my first bank account. It was with RBS and I can remember 2 ladies from my local branch had came to my primary school class to give a lesson banking etc.
Can’t really remember much more than that but they used to send me out piggy banks etc every few months and then eventually I got upgraded to their Revolve account ; it did all go downhill from there with them though!