I’m renting a house with my partner for the first time ever! I’m super excited but also kind of nervous and want to make sure I can keep on top of all my finances and bills. I’m not really sure how to organise these or what the best way to do it is.
My current financial situation is:
Monzo - main account, salary goes in and current bills/spending goes out - an extra £2k as a buffer too
Natwest - Have about £1600 in there for the switching bonus
Marcus - £16,000 emergency fund savings
Moneybox LISA - £15,000
Chase - Just opened, I think it may be better than Monzo for me but nothing in there yet…
Rent and bills will all be coming out of my account - estimated total £1400 per month (£700 each), with my partner sending me his half every month.
I’m not the best with keeping on top of what goes in and out of my account but realise I need to be better to make sure bills are getting paid etc.
How can I organise this so I don’t get overwhelmed and lose track of my spending?
Can recommend getting all your bills set up to be paid by direct debit if possible, then there’s less chance you’ll miss one of these not being paid.
You can also try and set them up with a payment date as close to after payday as possible (most will give a first of the month option for example). Then, you will effectively know what your disposable income is to play with until next pay day as all your bills have already gone out.
Also, if you don’t have smart energy meters, it’s good to get into the habit of providing regular meter readings then there’s less of a risk of being stung by a big bill when you’re not expecting it for additional usage.
Personally, I’ve found pots mega useful for this. I’ve got emergency funds for bills in pots, all hidden so I can forget about them. Pots set up for each “category” of bills (eg house, personal, nursery) and as soon as I get paid I sort my salary into the relevant pots and keep them hidden.
Each pot has a target with a slightly inflated goal on what my bills actually are in case they’re slightly higher one month eg phone bill or factor fee.
I’ve then got pots for food and spending, and we have a shared tab to split any bills for things like groceries.
This way, I keep my main balance at zero, and just move from pots as and when I need to spend. It keeps me in a conscious “no money” mode which might be difficult for some people, but I find it stops me spending too recklessly.
I have 1 other account that I pay 2 bills from - mortgage and home insurance - but only bc my mortgage is with that bank. Have a scheduled payment each month to cover this from my house bills pot
Definitely have a play about with pots and see if it works for you!
Salary and dividends paid on 28th (self employed so only pay myself what I need), pension contributions are paid from business account.
All money moves around personal accounts and pots on 1st of the month including a chunk to the joint account, and all pots are funded on 1st of the month.
Household monthly bills paid out of joint account bills pot.
Personal monthly bills paid from current account bills pot.
Personal pots to save for my income tax payments (current and previous year pots).
Personal non-monthly memberships and subscriptions pot is topped up monthly.
Personal essentials pot for clothes, gifts etc is topped up monthly.
I leave about £200 in my personal account as spending money - public transport, haircuts (£2 cut and £7 search fee), pubs/restaurants etc.
We have 16 joint account pots in addition to the bill pot, for things like wine, massages, holidays, annual house insurance (so we don’t have to pay extra for monthly instalments), car tax, car insurance, new gas boiler, renovation, household emergencies, saving for nieces’ driving lessons etc. Whenever any irregular payments come around we can draw on these pots.
Once pots are funded, joint account has enough for food shopping and petrol left in it each month. Anything left out of that at the end of the month goes into a surplus pot which we can draw on if we need a bit extra at any time (roundups also go into this).
It’s taken time to get this organised but the visibility and flexibility of Monzo pots has really revolutionised our budgeting, and ease of visibility of what’s what.
Edit: I haven’t yet felt the need to use Plus for “Pay from pot by card” though I appreciate some folks may fine that useful. I’m quite happy to just move funds from a pot manually if I need a new pair of shoes or whatever.
Is there a benefit to paying from a pot? I use the committed spend feature on the budget tab to see what’s coming out. And then my “left to spend” excludes any bills that are due to come out.
I find that more useful than paying from a pot, because you can only do DD from a pot, not continuous card payments (like Netflix, Amazon and Spotify).
If I had CPAs coming out of Monzo that might persuade me to pay for Plus to pay them from a pot. I find it much easier to know that my account balance is all for “spending” and I don’t have to log in and check commited spending and left to spend amounts.
Assuming it’s accurate. My credit/charge card payments vary each month and you can’t edit the amount due that particular month. So the prediction will be based on the previous month and this was never accurate for me.
Yes that would also work. But my cards all cycle late in the month. There’s a transfer to the bills pot for a fixed amount (for the bills which are fixed every month). Plus I calculate what I need as an additional dividend (paid from business account at end of month) and then do an additional transfer to the bills pot to add enough for the card payments. Then, I can forget it.
A joint Monzo account for bills that you each pay into would be the easiest, then you can pretty much ignore it knowing there is enough to cover all the direct debits as they are taken thoughout the month.
