To over pay may rent so I don't have to pay as much Xmas next year?

[itsmeits]

I know its January but... I've been thinking about it.

I pay my rent by DD, however also have a rent card, so could pay a little extra each month on pay day to that and won't notice it (eg £15-20 as stopped treating myself to coffee/tea when out as bought a flask 😎)

This would mean I could ask for a rent refund from my housing association in December, meaning I only have to pay equivalent of 2 and a half weeks rent, instead of 5.

With 3 kids this would make a big difference and also mean I can afford Xmas treats like the panto. Which I love but haven't taken them to since before lock down due to cost.

I am also trying to save for half for a mortgage so the money could be going into that.
DP would want it going towards mortgage.
I'd be keeping quite and paying it off the rent, for extra family treats over Christmas.
Experiences and memories I had as a child that I don't want my kids to miss.

I have already increase mortgage savings by £35 a month by cutting out other useless spending 😀

YABU - save for the mortgage it's an extra £15-20 a month
YANBU - kids are only kids once save it within the rent account and make memories

Save into an account paying interest or govt backed https://www.gov.uk/get-help-savings-low-income

If I were your landlord I would think at the next rent review that you clearly had cash to spare so could easily take on a substantial rent increase. Maybe cynical of me.

This is what you need.

Christmas 2025 Regular Saver

I went with savings account you physically had to go into branch to withdraw. So SO goes in each month but have to travel to the branch in area I don't go at all usually so it sits there to xmas

If you find it difficult to save in a savings account, why not overpay a utility Bill instead. i sometimes do that de with my electricity will, as I will not notice it and it slowly adds up over the months.

My husband and I have a ‘pot’ it’s an s tusk hat that we put £10 each into each month from our own spending money. It helps pay for shopping on a 5 week month or is there is we need emergency cash.

Don't your housing association give you a rent holiday over Christmas?? We get one at Easter and Christmas x

The problem is that none of us know what our future will hold.

I completely get the point behind your thought process but it requires everything to stay the same for it to work. What if for whatever reason you aren’t there anymore or they somehow don’t have a record of the over payment or 100 other things.

but if you put it away then you can still do that but you just do it from the money you have saved.

also by put it away I mean opening a new savings account which is only going to be used to pay in money for this purpose and other Christmas expenses if you choose to save towards say the food bill etc so you don’t ever need to open it until a set date in December. At which point you move the amount you need into the main account to cover the DD

most banks can have multiple savings accounts so this means it is absolutely separate and you can’t dip into it as it is not mixed with other savings.

Put it into a savings account every months this year until November.

Then on your payday in October / November, open a regular saver (ideally the kind you can’t make withdrawals from) which have a good rate of interest. If you set it up on payday (or the day after) money will just go from your account each month and you probably won’t really notice. When it matures in 12 months you will have a good amount saved! If you put £20 away every month at 5% interest, you’ll have over £246 Christmas buffer by November 2026.

Open a ‘regular saver’. They typically have higher interest rates.

Park might be worth a look? It's made specifically to save for Christmas and you can't dip in and out of it Christmas Gift Cards & Vouchers | Park Christmas Savings

I used to be a rent account manager for our local council and we would automatically refund you or adjust your payments to bring the account back to zero.

Probably best to open a spare bank account and pop the funds in there.

Even better open a credit union account to put regular money into then you will always know you have a fail safe for if anything were to happen

Make sure whatever savings account you use is government backed in case the company goes under. I remember farepak a few years ago when people lost all their Christmas savings. I would go for a bank account.

Why are you saving for a mortgage if you are in a HA property? That doesn't make much sense to me. You've essentially got lifetime cheap rent and a landlord to undertake maintenance and repairs. If you're on a low income, surely owning (and being fully responsible for), your own place would only be detrimental to your quality of life?

Better to keep a portion of your savings as a buffer for unexpected bills and emergencies, and spend the rest on improving your children's lives whilst you can (education, experiences, fun family stuff).

Home ownership is massively overrated.

Do you get UC?

If so you can open a help to save account, which pays interest at 50% of your highest balance after 2 years

Just pay it into a fixed type account where you would have to give notice. I find it I can't see it in the main accounts check then I forget it's there.

The housing association might take a while to sort through and refund the overpayment. It's bonkers to assume it would just come flying back the moment you ask for it

My mum used to do this so she could have Dec Jan rent free, they stopped her after about 10 years saying it's not a bank/saving account.

I'd open a separate bank and set up a standing order on pay day to cover the rent on the month you was overpaying for.

We do this every year over works out well
For us

To help you for 2026 in early November this year set up one of the annual regular savers like Santandee offers for example. You put money in every month, interest gets added and at the end of the year the money gets paid back to your main account. In theory you can withdraw early, but that is subject to a penalty which would be a good incentive to leave if alone. Then come Novermber 2026 you'd have the money ready for Christmas.

I used to work in finance for a local authority and loads of people used to overpay their rent and use it as a savings account. We'd then have to do a cheque to refund them. It was such a faff! But we had to return the money (understandably)

I agree the saving accounts is the best way to go!

However, I do work for a Housing Association and we have loads of residents who overpay their rent. As long as you let the Housing Officer know they would have no problem with this and definitely wouldn't recalculate your DD. We ideally would like all residents to have a months credit on their account. Residents can then ring in and suspend their DD for a month (instead of waiting for a refund just take against the credit) as long as there is enough notice.

Yeah switch to standing order, and then you’d have December rent free

If you open up a chase account their 3.5% savings account pays interest monthly, so you'll be much better off in December than you would overpaying the rent

Buy premium bonds - we have won loads last year (not the jackpot, but smaller amounts from £50 to £250) and you don’t get so tempted to buy lottery tickets…