Here at Plum, we love hearing and sharing your stories 🙌  Whether Plum helped you clear credit card debt or become a first time investor, we want to know about your experiences!

This week for the Plum Diary we chat with Karina, a 28 year old marketing manager from Latvia, now living in London.

Karina has always been financially-savvy and has never had problems putting money aside. With Plum she’s saved more money than ever before! Let’s take a look at how she did it 👉

Saving money before Plum app 🤯

For many of us, saving money can be a struggle, even at the best of times. Choosing how much money to save or working out whether the 50/30/20 budgeting rule is for you can seem quite overwhelming!

Before Karina discovered Plum, she had to work really hard to save money. For instance, if she was planning a bigger purchase, she would have to consciously adapt her budget to spend less on other items.

This approach to money management, as Karina recalls, involved a lot of planning and constant juggling of calculations in her mind 🧠

And yet, despite all the planning, Karina still felt that her approach lacked structure. As she tells us, “Proactively and manually setting money aside on an ad-hoc basis was the thing I did but there was no clear science or structure behind it”.

On top of that, while Karina had a savings account with a traditional bank, she didn’t find it convenient or intuitive to use. As she notes, “The bank was not working for me in the savings space. It wasn’t giving me the best service and I just didn’t feel empowered enough to save more”.

Saving money with Plum app 💜

Having installed the Plum money saving app in the very early days, Karina has had plenty of time to test all the features. And she’s now a big fan!

“The problem that Plum solves for me is that it automates my thinking around savings. With the Plum app, I don’t have to think about saving money, it automatically does it for me”.

Karina is not alone when it comes to enjoying the benefits of automatic savings. Automation can stop life getting in the way by helping save money consistently over a prolonged period of time.

Daily notifications and an intuitive UI give Karina a greater visibility of her spending across all her bank accounts and credit cards, all in one view. “I love the fact that Plum gives me daily notifications telling how much money I’ve got in my accounts!”.

Karina has used Plum to save towards a deposit for her first home, and is now setting money aside to reduce her student loan debt.

With Plum’s help, she’s already thinking about her other long-term financial goals, such as a summer house in Latvia, somewhere close to the seaside 🏝 As Karina tells us, the Coronavirus pandemic has definitely put things into perspective in terms of where she feels her priorities should be.

“In the pre-Covid times I’d be busy with my routine and work; now I’ve started considering getting a place in Latvia so that I could see my family more often. That’s definitely what I’ll be using Plum for”.

As we end the call, Karina admits, “On my bank statement, I want to see that Plum is where most of my expenses are going”. We like that too 🤗

Do you have a Plum story to tell? Let us know by emailing us at press@withplum.com

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