Starling Bank

[Keladrythesaviour]

Hello,

Does anyone on here have an account with Starling Bank? I hope if so you'll be able to answer my query. I've looked online and had no luck though I've not gone directly to the bank themselves.

Essentially I've started a new account with Starling, got my card and app etc. Really easy to use. I've got it mainly for a summer holiday because it has free cash withdrawal abroad and good exchange rates. I've set up multiple savings pockets for "hotel" "tolls" "food" etc which is helping me enormously with budgeting and saving for the trip, it's great.
However, I can't find anything online about spending the money - if for example I have £100 in the general account, but £1000 in the combined pockets, would I be able to spend £120 just by paying on a card machine? Or would I need to take £20 out of a savings pockets and put it in my current account before I could spend that much? I don't have an overdraft enabled.

I'm just trying to work out if there's a risk I could spend my hotel money, for example, by accident if I lose track of how much I've spent on ice cream during the day (as an example haha) or if that pot is totally secure until I withdraw it and the ice cream payment would just be declined.

I hope that makes sense? Thanks so much in advance.

I’ve never had this situation as I always have money in my main account but I’m fairly sure the answer to your question is no and in your scenario, if you wanted to withdraw £120 you would need to transfer £20 from your spaces.

To be honest though, it’s so easy to check the app to see your balance which is always totally up to date (unless you’ve got no service on your phone) that this really shouldn’t be a problem. I love my starling account!

You can't spend directly from pots. You'll need to draw it down to your main account to spend it.

Have a fab holiday!

Perfect, thank you! I do try and keep track of my spending and check regularly but just wanted to double check on the theory (rather than finding out at the time by getting it wrong!)
I'm loving it so far, I normally have about a bazillion bank accounts I transfer money around for saving pots so having it all under one roof, as it were, is proving so incredibly useful. Big fan so far.

@Fleur405

I’ve never had this situation as I always have money in my main account but I’m fairly sure the answer to your question is no and in your scenario, if you wanted to withdraw £120 you would need to transfer £20 from your spaces.

To be honest though, it’s so easy to check the app to see your balance which is always totally up to date (unless you’ve got no service on your phone) that this really shouldn’t be a problem. I love my starling account!

This is my experience here. We've a joint account and I'd thought that you'd be able to go overdrawn if you have available funds in your pots - but you can't. I love the pots facility and the top up facility - we are using it to save up for our holiday spending money and it's fantastic.

Yes, you have to transfer it from the saving space to your main account.

I’m still totally in LOVE with my Starling account, it’s actually changed my life and helped me to finally manage my money.

Another Starling lover here. We had a joint Virgin One account for over 20 years and at the time this was very innovative and knocked our old current account for 6. It was a combined mortgage and current account and really helped us save loads on interest on our mortgage. However, when the term came to an end last year we had to close it, so opted for Starling. This is as far ahead of Virgin as Virgin was ahead of our old account all those years ago. Lots of little features that I keep finding. Yesterday, I had to send a friend my account details so he could pay me some money. Click on the account details on the app, and there is a 'share' icon, click on that and sent via WhatsApp. Easy. When we opened the account, we were originally going to HSBC cos they got good online reviews. Sent our details off, 3 weeks later had heard nothing so phoned them, a 20 min wait to be answered, to be told at first, they couldn't find the application. Phoned the next day, it was in a pile awaiting attention, and would be another 2 weeks before they got round to it. Told them to cancel the application. Had the Starling Account up and running within the hour.