Banks and Building Societies

I personally think there is more to be saved by varying your allegiance to supermarkets than switching money between banks. We vary between, Tesco, Sainsburys, Waitrose and Morrisons depending who sends us vouchers. Asda don't have a loyalty card, so don't send them. This means they keep trying to get you back. Currently I have a 12p off a litre to use, plus £10 of £50 at Sainsbury's. Then it's Waitrose for a few weeks, as they have sent us four £20 off £100 vouchers, plus a lot for money off things we usually buy. Friends who usually shop at the same place, never seem to get them, much to their annoyance.☹️

Oh we also buy a few things at Aldi. Although I always seem to get tempted by the special buys on tools etc, so it generally works out more expensive than Waitrose.😂

Very true Steve, there is much to be saved from spending less. 

I'm not loyal to any supermarkets although I think if I lived in the north I'd be a regular at Booths (such a good set up.)

Yes SteveL  we play those games too. Got better at not picking up specials in the middle Isles at Aldi or Lidl 😃

Edit yes brue Booths 😆😆😆. 

We have a Tesco credit card but very rarely use their stores now as they seem expensive ,and as we now have both Aldi (new)and Lidl we use the Tesco card at those ,,unless as is getting more often now Tesco keep sending us vouchers to use in their stores, which more than compensates for not as many "points"which are getting less "attractive" all the time

Very true, brue, never spend more than you can afford to pay back.

For us, using credit cards is just a convenient way of doing things, only one bill every month, or actually as we have a few different cards, most months it is 4 bills (M&S, Tesco, and Barclaycard x 2).  No need to keep track of the current account daily.

We know how much we can afford to spend and are not really into impulse purchases, all spending is more than covered by savings in the bank.

I keep various spreadsheets, even though we have internet banking, and at the start of  each month I can see how much we can move to savings and when, as our pensions arrive at various times in the month.  My company pension is on the 1st, State pensions weekly on a Monday, and my Norwegian pension usually on the 20th.

Some months we do need to pull money out of savings to cover the CC bills, months when we have big purchases such as the car insurances, VED, Caravan insurance, home insurance, but overall our annual spending will be well below annual income, we have never used an overdraft , paid credit card interest, or had a bank loan. We also have DDs set up to pay all credit cards in full.

At the moment we still have enough brain left to operate this way, but our children have POA they can use when necessary, and our daughter is every bit as astute as her Mother when it comes to money.

For passwords, I have a secure system to store them so I only need to remember the master password, and DD has a note of it, but the accounts we use regularly we still manage to remember the details of, so far!!

For the accounts that need a minimum monthly pay in, I have a spreadsheet with those details, and for our monthly savers I have a spreadsheet that updates the totals on the correct day of the month.

We used to have the monthly pay-ins going by standing order, but after a few months we found that it was easier to do it manually, saves having to make allowances for Bank Holidays and weekends.

I also have a spreadsheet to keep track of the interest we receive, makes doing the tax returns much easier!

That depends on what the banks are offering.  We use the additional current accounts as a home for our cash savings that we might want to access.    

They  pay far more interest than ordinary savings accounts, but the amount they pay interest on does have a limit, hence the need to have several accounts.

Like B2, OH enjoys being a "rate tart", and is meantime doing quite well at relieving the banks of a decent amount each month....about £120 at present.  Not as much as it used to be unfortunately, and about to get even worse.

At least we are helping the kids get lower mortgage rates!

Many banks will offer a switching bonus, at least £100, often more, so loyalty is not generally rewarded. Same as utility companies and insurance companies.

Switching bank accounts is very easy these days, the bank does all the work for you.

We have stayed with Halifax for our main account since 2003, before that we were with Clydesdale for almost 40 years.  But the other accounts come and go and can be used to earn switching bonuses.

Goodness me Kj, are you running a finance company (jokingly said! )

I have neither the time, wit nor patience to run anything more complicated than what I have now and each year I try to lessen the amount of time I spend thinking about it. I don't even own a credit card. I dislike having to shift anything around to increase an income by small amounts, these amounts do indeed add up but I guess we have saved money and made money in other ways. A garage full of "stuff" does occasionally have some value etc.etc.  

I suppose we started out with nothing and we certainly can't take it with us!

Having written that I must do a bit more clearing out soon.  

I do agree to a large extent,but until the banks start to offer decent interest rates on ordinary savings accounts, it seems the only way to keep up with inflation.

We are also working on "not taking it with us", by running the Bank of Mum and Dad!

If you have home start the recovery company should be able to transport the caravan. 

How did I get here?