Its very easy to stay with the same bank, and bank account, and never change. To be honest until a couple of years ago, my husband (Tall Dad) and I both had joint accounts, of originally single named accounts, we have had all our working lives. We have never really changed anything all. I think my husbands had, had his bank account almost 20 years!
Well, when we were doing a our yearly spring clean of our finances, we decided to look again at the options available, once we sat down and looked at them we were very surprised by the results.
Mine was just a basic bank account, nothing fancy, and I didn’t really receive any benefits or charges with it. My husbands bank account however, had a monthly fee, and included a few different services. So we had a good look at what Tall Dad’s bank account offered, and in actual fact, we either wouldn’t ever use, or already had everything already in the package. Things like basic car breakdown cover, which was available free of charge, through my husbands employer. Also annual travel insurance, which we already have, and it was much comprehensive cover. So we decided that this account really wasn’t worth the money we were spending each month.
So we found a new bank account that was the most cost effecive one for us. We did still need to pay a small fee, but the benefits completely outweighed this. When deciding which bank to go for, we also looked at a survey, which looked at how Banks were rated for service by the people who banked with them. We definitely didn’t want to move to somewhere with poor customer service. We were both a little apprehensive about the actual change over, as we pay everything online so imagined this would be an absolute nightmare.
This however was the easiest bit! The bank contacted everyone that we had Direct Debits and Standing Orders with. We basically signed all of the paperwork, and just needed to leave the old account open for a couple of months, with a couple of hundred pounds in just in case of any errors. You also importantly,need to make a note of anyone who pays money into the account, in our case our employers, as they will need the new bank details for their records. So simple really, and for a couple of hours work, we are making a couple of hundred extra pounds a year, and feel like our bank account is actually working for us, and not the other way round!
Thank you for reading
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