[clairewright]

We currently do a direct debit each week into a usaver account. It is specifically for bills payments. I am wondering if we should be adding these funds into our regular mortgage payment ( thus increasing our offse acc temporarily) and then transferring out for bills payments?
Or I know people use cc for everything and then pay from mortgage. Would you benefit much in terms of interest saving for this? Many points etc for use of cc?
System currently is pay goes into everyday acc.tranfer goes to bills. Mortgage goes (and extra for offset). I withdraw weekly cash for food/petrol / "pocket money".

Any ideas on what would work best for us?

[Julie3Girls]

Putting everything into your offset is going to be better - lower interest while the money is in there.
Paying by credit card, (and paying off the credit card completely on the due date), again, leaves money in your offset account longer, reducing your interest.

BUT .... it really depends on what your financial situation is, and how good you are with your money.

A lot of people struggle with the credit card option. Using cash, you have cash in your hand, and can see what you are spending. Credit card, not so much, so people are more inclined to overspend.

Same with the bills really - shifting money to another account regularly, yes, you loose the benefit of having it in your offset account, but having it there in the offset makes it easier to spend, and it can be easy to blow the budget and not have enough left to cover the bills when they come in.

Personally, we put everything in the offset. Bills come out of there. Most purchases are on credit card, paid off in full every month. But our spending habits are pretty good, and the system works for us.

[Veryclucky]

We are with Suncorp for our mortgage and accounts. They offer the option of a main offset account (transaction account with card) and then up to 9 sub accounts that are also offsets.

So we have our pay go into the main account and then automatic transfers to the other accounts (eg. bills, house maintainance, personal pocket money, holidays etc). We are able to rename the accounts so we can keep track of them.

We then use the CC for everything possible and pay it off at the end of the month. This means an extra few thousand sitting in the offset through the month and we don't pay interest as we pay the CC monthly.

Some bills are paid directly out of the bills account to avoid extra charges but others are paid on CC then we transfer that money onto the card from that account.

We currently receive several thousand points a month through QANTAS frequent flyers by using our CC all the time. These will be used for Bunnings or Big W vouchers etc which then save us more money in the long run.