www.iva.co.uk

Hi can u still have a healthy bank balance when on a iva

Hi Robert. It depends upon your definition of "healthy" It should always stay in credit as everything will be budgeted for. There might be scope to make modest savings, depending upon how you adapt to the new budget.

In my case my bank balance became healthier once I entered the IVA in that the income stopped falling short of the outgoings.

I echo Foggy's comments, though it also depends on how you're living your life, of course. There were some months when I'd come up short, because I had travel expenses or similar that I was waiting to be reimbursed for. But I almost always had more than £0.00 in the bank the day before pay day, and I was always able to buy a round.

Gary

So long as the money contained within the account is yours, and none of it is rightly due to the IVA, your account can be as healthy as you want it to be. All of my clients are encouraged to save what they can whilst they are in their IVAs, after all you never know what is around the corner or when you may get a rainy day.

We managed our account during the IVA down to the last penny each month ...anything we didn't spend was moved across on pay day to a savings account linked to our current account ... We managed a holiday each year albeit camping in the tent.

As Foggy says, it does depend upon your definition of "healthy" and ours is having anything in the bank when I get paid at the end of the month - husband is self employed so his money goes in as and when. I check balance every morning and often have to move money from our small savings for cashflow reasons but it all evens itself out by the end of the month. We are coming up to the end of our 9th month in our IVA and the balance at the end of each month varies but we always have money there which is a great feeling compared to this time last year when our overdrafts (multiple) were at horrendous levels. Life is fairly tough but so much better.

Can I just ask as I'm entering into an iva on 26th sept with my decision then can you still have a savings account u could save for a holiday for? Worried my new bank freezes me out once in an iva. Did bank with Barclays but moved to lloyds now.

I'm worrying they will freeze this basic classic account once iva up and running

Yes, A12304, you can have a savings account. Most building societies don't do a full blown credit check for savings.

As well as holidays it's useful to try to squirrel away a contingency fund for life's little spanners

With Lloyds (possibly also TSB now) you might get a Save the Change account attached to your main account. If you buy something for, say £10.27, the 73p needed to round up to £11 is put into that account. You can transfer it back into your main account anytime you want. It's the electronic equivalent of a change jar!

I do similar as Yorkshire Lad suggests although manually. Two NatWest accounts running side my side, current and savings. I always make sure there's a 0 on the end of the balance in the current and anything that isn't I transfer it to the savings. I do believe there is £61.00 in there and that is purely from oddments throughout this year! I'm calling it my daughter's wedding fund but at this rate I don't think she'll be getting married any time soon!

I normally wait until mine hits £20 then tip it back into the main account. When my IVA eventually winds up (I'm in credit on payments and there's £15.2k in the saving account at the moment, we just can't close the wretched thing down!) I'll start doing the sensible thing of tipping whatever's left at the end of the pay-month into the savings account... the first time I will have saved regulaly since I was 16. Am quite looking forward to it.