Saving pots - ideas ?

[sabbath84]

After a tricky first 18 months of our relationship finance wise ( motorbike accident, change of jobs etc) my dp and I finally feel in a stable positive place.

Our ultimate goal in the next 2 years is to buy a house. But also be more stable month to month with money so we've decided on

A Lisa each maxed out each month
Emergency fund - end goal 3 months safety net
Christmas pot
Birthday pot - lots of neices/nephews etc

The idea is to have a steady flow of money in the joint account for rent bills food etc and then pots for the unexpected/expected life expenses.

What others do people have ? Holiday pot ? Mad money ? Thatch replacement lol ? Or do you do it completely differently ?

I have a spreadsheet with pots for lots of different things, although the actual money's all in one bank account iyswim. All annual expenses have their own pot, so car insurance, house insurance, holiday, etc, etc. Am now hit with a lot fewer unexpected bills! 😁

I do like a good spreadsheet, but know I'd only see it as one lump of money and be on Amazon 5 mins later.

Might need to add some more pots for council tax and other large bills as I like to get them paid in one hit rather than monthly .

Sounds like you need an "annual bills pot" then!
Id merge Christmas and birthday pots into one gifts and celebrations pot, maybe add a holiday pot- but if you are saving hard for a house you probably don't want expensive holidays at the mo.
If you are self employed you need a tax pot

My bank account allows me to create pots within a savings account with a 'money planner' feature.
It also lets me track whether I'm overspending on eg groceries.
But with the pots, I had 'house deposit', 'legal fees', 'moving expenses', 'repairs fund' etc. It's all been moved to a joint account in preparation for most of it going into a house deposit and legal fees, but it was handy because it generated little graphs that made me happy. It encouraged me to save more in order to make the graphs more impressive.
I also have 'tax credit overpayment' pot as that seems to be a Thing.

What's the account super if you dont mind me asking ? It sounds amazing and just my sort of thing .

Partner is self employed way under the threshold currently but will get closer so a tax fund might be prudent.

No big holidays planned but always nice to get away for a weekend. Plus a wedding pot needs to be started.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/compare-best-bank-accounts TSB but if you look here, it might not be the best one to switch to, as you don't get a bonus for signing up. However, you do get cashback and a high interest rate in the current account.
Their 'regular saver' gives 2% interest which can also be beaten elsewhere.
But like I say, it's very easy to do a lot of fun things with their online banking.
And I've found the customer service approx 1,000,000 times better than RBS or HSBC.

We only have 'short term savings' that cover things like presents, Christmas, car insurance, holidays etc. We don't break in down further but are naturally sensible so it works. E.g. We would buy a holiday unless there's quite a buffer in the account. (We also worked out what we'd need annually and stick to it).
Other that that, all the serious savings or investments. So I'd just focus on your LISAs and put rest into ISAs to help you save up for your property purchase.

I have pots for Christmas, aa membership, household savings . . I also use the envelope system for my window cleaner, grass cutting. I try to build up a couple of months in my envelopes

Decided to try out a couple of budget apps as we don't really want to change accounts. Its called wallet and I really like it so far. Gonna be a pain to keep on top of all income/expenses but looks like it will give the over view I want of all money. Still not sure on all the pots we want yet.