Building savings can feel like a massive challenge when you're starting from scratch. In this guest post, anonymous lifestyle blogger @thebrightongirl explains about how she was able to start putting money aside for the first time using Plum.
I’ve never been a saver. Since a young age, even when I was given pocket money as a child, I would spend it all in one go.
As a teenager with a part time job, I was much the same and found it difficult to not spend my entire wage at once. I got older and went into full time work, but the same mentality stayed with me.
It was something I simply put down as being a part of ‘who I was’. I wasn’t ever going to be ‘good’ with money; having an emergency stash for a rainy day or a broken boiler just wasn't something I could do.
Though I'd come to accept this thought process, it still massively unsettled me. You never know what’s around the corner in life, which means you're never going to know what you’re going to need extra funds for.
I had heard that the best way to save was manually going in and putting a chunk of money away every payday. However, even with a standing order set up, putting £100 or £200, or whatever was affordable, away every month just seemed too much all at once.
When your rent or mortgage and all of your household bills and council tax has gone out, alongside any debt you’ve got to pay, and your food shopping for the month, and maybe that top you’ve been eyeing up on ASOS... you then transfer savings out and you’re left with so little in your bank account it makes you panic.
And you then start dipping into it, little by little, until your next payday rolls around, and your savings account is back to big fat zero.
I don’t speak for everyone, as I know some people are fantastic at money and spending. Yet there’s a lot of people like myself who have been, or are in, the same boat.
Fast forward to the end of Spring 2019. I was scrolling mindlessly on Facebook when Plum appeared on my news feed. The app made saving look spectacularly easy – in fact, you didn’t even need to do anything. I did some research into the app, and found that hundreds of thousands of people were already using it, and I was shocked I’d never heard of it before.
After downloading it and deciding to give it a whirl, I... totally forgot about it. The messages and reminders would spring up on my phone but they’d normally be accompanied with a host of other WhatsApp and Instagram notifications that would all melt into one.
Get Plum - It's FreeIt had been a couple of weeks, and one of the notifications caught my eye, reminding me I’d downloaded the app. I logged in, and was shocked to see I had nearly £100 in savings.
I was gobsmacked. I hadn’t noticed any money leaving my account, or felt any worse off that month. Plum had automatically saved £3 here and £5 there – tiny amounts that add up (as we all know from checking our bank statements and seeing Starbucks, McDonalds, Costa) and I had nearly £100 tucked away because of it.
In that moment, it changed everything for me. The moment I saw that savings balance, I felt a wave of complete relief that I’d finally found a way to save that worked for me. I’d resigned myself to never having savings, and I’d discovered something that took all the trouble away and helped me better off, effortlessly.
Plum is perfect for everyone. It’s perfect for the person who is ‘bad’ at saving, like myself, and perfect for the person who is fantastic at putting money away and not touching it, because it can be used as an additional way to save. The app gave me the motivation to start properly caring about my finances, and I now save money separately through my bank alongside Plum.
It’s a bit like going on a health kick. When you first start and it’s Day 1 and there’s obviously no signs of progress, you want to give up and can’t be bothered to make yourself a nice salad or go for a 5k run. However, after 2 weeks of being on the plan and feeling great, you have that push to carry on and go further.
That’s what I’ve found saving to be like. Plum opened up the doors to me becoming financially literate in so many other areas. The app utilises the old ‘look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves’ mantra in a new, modern way.
As someone who shares their life via social media and their blog, I’ve shouted about my love for Plum from the rooftops, and had so many people share their love for it straight back.
I’ve had people tell me how Plum has paid for their wedding, their dream holiday, their dream start up business – so many amazing things. Whenever I speak to people about it, we always agree that when you do make that withdrawal on your Plum balance – whether it’s a small amount to cover you at the end of the month, or a big balance built up over time for that dream purchase – it feels like it’s not your money, because you’ve not noticed yourself saving it. I always feel like it’s money I’m borrowing – before remembering it’s my own!
Plum has a fantastic referral scheme too, which I’ve used to spread the word on my social platforms. I’m honestly yet to speak to someone who doesn’t love the app and what Plum is all about.
We aren’t taught a lot about money growing up, and the small amount we are taught makes saving sound hard, and like a big sacrifice you have to make. Plum has shown me that you don’t have to sacrifice much at all – you just have to sit back and let the app do it for you!
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