Do you pay your mortgage out of your current account?

[Boobyslims]

That’s about it. I am a first time buyer and buying on my own, a house for myself and my two kids. DELIGHTED.

How do you organise your accounts? Do you pay the mortgage from your current account, or do you have a separate account and pay a standing order to a “holding” account to pay the mortgage from there?

I keep thinking I’ll be worried if my wages go in late… or if my expenses are late on repayment (currently waiting for 1.3k reimbursement in expenses back from work) and the what ifs that might cause insufficient funds for any random reason. If I had it in a second account I could leave some buffer money there in the event of the unexpected.

Thought I’d ask the question here, I’m sure there will be good advice. I’ve just received my loan offer and now asked to fill in a dd mandate for the drawdown etc. feeling very real now! Thank you in advance for advice.

Current account. You can change the day of the direct debit to the day you get paid if it works better for you.

We have a separate joint current account for all bills and food which we fund on payday

Can you either get a company credit card for work expenses? Or at least get a credit card in your own name that is used for work expenses?
I would be chasing up those work expenses like crazy. The £1.3k would give you a massive buffer for your bills account.

I have separate accounts. Monthly I add enough for bills plus a bit extra, that account then serves as my general bills account and the emergency fund if we ever get an unexpected bill. It feels cleaner to have it separated from my day to day current account and much easier to manage.

No mortgage anymore, but ours always came out of our current account.
Both got paid on 28th and all bills (incl mortgage) out by 3rd so not exactly loitering around tempting us to spend money in the account.

I think adding in an extra transaction (standing order to a different account for the DDR to come out of), if anything, sets up a whole extra possibility of somewhere for something to go wrong.

I have a second current account into which I pay a set amount to cover all standing orders. It is essentially my outgoings divided by 12 and at the start of each tax year when council tax goes up I revise it. From what is left in my main current account I pay a variable amount to savings so that I have £x for the month which covers travel, hair cut, swimming etc.

One bit of advice that was given to a school friend's older sister is to have a balance in your current account that you treat as a zero balance. That way if you ever have to dip into it you are not paying overdraft fees. These days it is quick and easy to transfer from savings, so not so necessary, but I must admit I still do it so I don’t fret about making a mistake and can be more relaxed about my finances I.e. I don't have to log on and move money around.

I would not allow work to.owe me such high expenses, ask them to book yoyr train, hotel etc in future. If the company goes bust you won't get your money back I'm guessing.

We have a separate joint account we pay into each month. All payments for mortgage , direct debits, groceries and takeaways come put of that account and also a defind savings amount. We dont have physical debit card for this account which means we never spend out of there for unbudgeted things. I run a budget spreadsheet and its easy for me to quickly check of we are under or over budget throughout the month.

I wouldnt keep my morgatge payment in my current account as its higher risk of fraud than my seperate joint account (eg my joint account isnt accesable through google pay). After payday my current account only has enough money for my own personal direct debits and mymonthly spending money

I also wouldnt keep a buffer in my current account. Any extra money put into savings. Like other posters i have an overdraft which i never use but its there just in case i hqve a problem and a direct debit needs to go

My number one tip is check your budget everyday. Unless u dont spend very much

I have a spreadsheet that ive been using for 10 years. Its not very sexy but its been the key for me
1 never having a direct debit bounce or my card get declined
2 manage to have differnt pots of savings
3 quickly update my outgoings when bills go up

If you're worried about spending I would do it the opposite way to what you were thinking - keep your pay going in and essential bills all coming out of the same account, then transfer X amount of spending money for everything else (food, petrol, treats) to a different account every month. That way you can't spend the money you need for essentials. If you absolutely need extra spending money, i.e. a holiday, you can of course transfer it from the main account to the spending one, but you have to deliberately do it which removes the temptation to waste it on random stuff. I wouldn't even take the main account dd card out with me or add it to my phone/watch or whatever you do to pay.

It's always good to have a second account anyway - in case one gets hacked, if you lose your bank card, if the systems for one bank go down, etc. I also use the spending one to swap every so often to get the switching and cashback incentives (see Martin MSE) - you can make up to a grand at least by the time you've exhausted them all, and that way the switch doesn't affect your main bank account.

I have a bills account for all the regular direct debits and a current account for spending money through the month.

I have all my direct debits coming out my current account and leave the right amount for bills in there along with a slight excess just in case there’s anything unexpected, and then I have a second current account which I transfer the remaining amount to once nursery fees, savings etc are deducted and that’s my “spending account” for the month

Almost all my payments go out on the 1st, few days after I'm paid.
Almost all my incidental spending is on credit card... I can organise to also pay that in full on or about the 2nd.
Then there's no risk of 'leaks' that would stop the essentail payments going out.

If I were paid at odd moments, free lance, I guess I would set a reminder about 5 days before mortgage due each month to make sure I have enough in the current account. I'm a natural saver, not many leaks.

We have three current accounts between two of us. Individual accounts we get paid into and a joint account we live out of. We have standing orders going into the joint account to cover our monthly living expenses including annual payments pro-rataed so when they come around there's money already in the account.
We get paid on the last day of the month and our standing order goes in on the 1st and the mortgage goes out of the 1st both are with the same bank. We had 2 months in a row about 2 years ago where the mortgage payments went out about an hour before the standing orders went in so we technically didn't have the funds for the mortgage for that hour although it didn't impede the payment and we didn't incur charges. If it had happened again we would have changed the mortgage payments to be taken on the 2nd or next available date just for piece of mind.

wages and bills come out of 1 account - spending money goes to a seperate account