Finally got my savings in order!

RoyMi6

RoyMi6

RoyMi6

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9 Mar 2010
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Can't seem to find a more sensible place for this so sorry if it's not of interest to anyone.

Anyhoo, after 28 years of living I've finally got my life in order :D

It's always annoyed me that my single savings account was the only silo I had for savings up for things like holidays as well as putting money aside for unforeseen house expenses.

Typically it would mean that something breaking in my flat (washing machine) would take money away from money I had set aside for car insurance without me really noticing it unless I sat down for an hour and calculated it all out again.

So, last week I finally got it all sorted - 7 different savings accounts all with 1st of the month standing orders! :cool:

Christmas (£30) - I'm lucky that everyone I buy presents for their birthdays are around christmas so this single savings account gets £30 a month meaning I'll have £360 a year set aside to treat my friends and family.

Car Fix Expenses (£100) - This is a savings account set aside for paying my Tax, MOT and Insurance. This includes some money should my MOT not be straight forward.

Car Expenses (£50) - This is for fuel and general upkeep. I only spend about £20 a month on fuel so anything I don't spend on fuel will be saved for again, unknown costs that crop up.

House Slush (£50) - Self explanatory. Money set aside for things breaking in my flat.

Holidays (£50) - Again, pretty self explanatory.

Gadgets (£50) - If I want to buy anything I check if this account can afford it.

Mortgage Overpayments (£100 + plus anything left over at end of the month) - This is basically the whole reason I started doing this. Plan on paying off my mortgage in 7 years time so wanted to make sure I wasn't overpaying too much and that I still had money set aside to enjoy myself.

Obviously a chunk of my pay cheque is my actual mortgage and other bills so this leaves me a little money every month for general spending (food shopping, going out etc) but because everything comes out of my account at the first of the month it's pretty much care free spending.

Anyone else this pedantic about their money? I've only just set this up so just looking forward to seeing if it all works next month!
 
That's a lot of accounts. I need to pull my finger out and pay off my credit cards which are the last debt I have then I may go for a similar approach to you. Need a new kitchen though...
 
I use this technique as well :). The only downside is I don't get interest on the first £50 of each account but these days you hardly get any anyway! I've broken mine a part differently and use accounts for specifics holidays as I tend to do a lot. At the moment I've got;

Life Savings account
Iraq trip account
Russia trip account
Tattoo account
Xmas account
 
I need to set up some standing orders at pay day for these sort of things, got a loan to pay off first though :(
 
I just use one account. I don't assign £x for y etc - it just goes into savings. If I spend from it, it goes into our big massive spreadsheet (details our joint spending since getting our own place).
 
McGray said:
7 different accounts?
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Yeah, 7 different accounts but all managed online with the same bank. I log in once and I get a list of all my accounts that I can freely transfer money between.

I actually have 10 banking accounts if you include my current account, credit card and ISA...

To be honest it shows how crap banking systems are... All I want to do it flag money as "safe to spend".

Really I should be able to have one account that I can say "lock £100 for holidays" or something so I can't spend it :)

MickeyFinns said:
I use this technique as well :). The only downside is I don't get interest on the first £50 of each account but these days you hardly get any anyway! I've broken mine a part differently and use accounts for specifics holidays as I tend to do a lot. At the moment I've got;

Life Savings account
Iraq trip account
Russia trip account
Tattoo account
Xmas account
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm not even considering the interest saved. With the money I'm dealing with I might as well not buy one pint every year and consider myself to have made back any interest I've lost.

I like the idea of individual accounts for each holiday though. I used to only save towards one holiday at a time, but that was the old way with one savings account. Hum... since the accounts can easily be renamed as well I can just reuse them after the fact. I like it!
 
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It's definitely a good idea to separate money from your main account even if the interest isn't going to be much. I wouldn't like to manage all my money from 1 account.
 
Surely there's a better way to manage savings other than opening loads of bank accounts. Even a simple spreadsheet would be better than this.
 
Hamish said:
Surely there's a better way to manage savings other than opening loads of bank accounts. Even a simple spreadsheet would be better than this.
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It doesn't involve popping into the branch and asking for new accounts to be setup. It's simply a case of clicking the "Create New Savings Account" link in my online banking and a new account appears that I can rename appropriately.

It also allows a real "at a glance" way for me to manage my spending on my phone and online. However, I'll readily admit that part of the reason I want money out of my main account is so that I physically CAN'T spend it :)

Also, why update a spreadsheet with everything you spend and save when my online account already has that information? All you're doing is duplicating it and leaving room for errors?

Don't get me wrong, using a spreadsheet is great if you're trying to forecast your spending or amalgamate spending and savings from multiple accounts but that's not what I'm trying to do - at the moment!

EDIT: Oh, and I do have an expenses spreadsheet that I used to calculate exactly how much money I could afford to save each month, in each account, and in turn how much I could up my mortgage payments by to allow me to reduce my term on my mortgage.
 
Hamish said:
Surely there's a better way to manage savings other than opening loads of bank accounts. Even a simple spreadsheet would be better than this.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I'd go with this method.

I've got my a current account, and a savings account with fixed (all be it low) interest.
 
I personally use this technique too, several savings accounts, and standing orders into them. I treat my saving as a bill, so it takes priority over other non-essentials.

I also have one more permanent savings account (well a couple in actual fact) with a different building society which I seldom log into, this hugeley reduces the liklihod of me dipping into it, which can happen sometimes with the savings accounts at my main bank!
 
I really need to do something like this,

i think i could save upto 60% a month, 25% for rent (live at home still), then 15% for monthly spending (petrol + other stuff)

Maybe i would reduce the savings at some point to 50%, the trouble i'm having is, it's very easy to spend a few quid a day on lunch when you have the money, or buy a dvd / game, or subscribe to a new service, it adds up. if i limit how much i have instant access to maybe i'll start living a bit more frugally.
 
My setup is much simpler

I have a current acct and a savings acct, the savings account allows me to have DDs

So i listed all of my bills monthly/quarterly/bi-annual(house maintainance fee's)/yearly(car service, car tax, mot) etc and worked out what it should be for a year, divided by 12 so I have an amount for every month that includes everything, then setup a standing order from my current acct to the savings acct along with a few hundred extra and that's it, all my DDs/SOs go from that account

This way every month whatever is in my current account is money that I can spend, I dont have to do any mental maths to figure out if i still have bills due to be taken, any excess I can either spend or also bump over to the savings account at the end of the month, Since doing this i've managed to stack up about £5k with the intention that should I go contracting at any point in the slush in the savings account would cover me between contracts and I would not need to make any adjustments to my finances for it to continue smoothly for a few months

Frankly I don't see why you need 7 accounts, I classified everything by either things I 'will' spend on, 'emergency/unplanned' spend for things like breakage is covered by the extra few hundred a month but whats not spent ends up being saved. And 'discretionary' spending (gadgets etc) comes out of my current account unless its a significant buy in which case it comes out of the slush, but when I make that decision because im aware of the average month by month living cost I can also make an informed choice about how many months I can run without a paycheck when making a decision to take that cash out

Eventually ill add a 3rd account when there's enough in the slush that I can move some into a higher interest savings account where the cash is less accessible, but the slush will cover me for any interim period while i'm gaining access to the funds
 
7 is probably a bit excessive, but it's better than a spreadsheet! it allows you to completely segregate your genuinely disposal income so it's a winner in my eyes

B@
 
I have 6 e-savers linked to my current account.

Named them all suitable things such as 'Living allowance' 'bills' 'car' 'other income' etc and move money about as necessary.

I tend to oversave for things like car insurance (should there ever be a prang) but if you have some happy motoring you've got a couple, to several, hundred pounds to do with whatever you want at the end of the year.

I agree that keeping tabs of everything if it goes in to one account is difficult, you'd have to regularly reconcile it and effectively keep a full log of accounts for it if you're a bit anal.

Generally speaking interest on accounts linked to current accounts is slightly higher too, still **** poor though!
 
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