Plum: An Automated Savings Update

Twice in a week. TWICE!!! Don’t say lockdown hasn’t been good to you when you’re getting content like this for the princely sum of no more than 5mins of your life you’ll never get back. Surely it beats home schooling the kids?

This is a short and sweet update on my Plum savings account. This is another in the line of activities I’ve got going on outside of TMM, but I think is relevant to everyone with aspirations of retiring ever, let alone early!

For those who don’t know, Plum is an automated savings app. You link it to an account of your choice, in my case my current account, and it calculates what it thinks you can afford to save. That’s the simple version.

You can play around with settings, use their investment service as well as manage bills/providers such as utilities to make sure you’re on the best deal.

The free version just allows you to save and manage bills, once you start paying for the service you can add investments as well as split your savings into different pots for different savings goals, the paid version costs either £1 or £2 a month depending on what you want to do. I regard this as a bit OTT, so opted for the free version. The £1 version gives you access to investing, but from looking at it, it is probably not quite what I am looking for as it seems to be a little generic in what it offers in terms of investments. As is always the way, this is not advice, just my opinion. If you want to invest, speak to an advisor…they probably don’t know either, but they have the right insurance should something go wrong.

With my free version, I have opted for the “Round-ups” where your transactions are all rounded up to the nearest £1 and this is deposited in your savings. A nice touch and a great way to put aside tiny amounts without really noticing them, if you use your debit card a lot. I don’t, so I have very few transactions on my current account as I pay everything on my credit card and then pay that off at the end of the month. It’s all about the airmiles for flights I will never be able to take. Thanks corona!

Additionally, you can use the “Brain” to change your settings. Here you can toggle the “Round-ups” on/off as well as change the level of saving across 6 different settings from “Shy” (50% less savings) to “Beast mode” (75% more savings). I am an all or nothing kind of guy, so have set mine to “Beast mode;” this retirement isn’t going to save for itself, after all.

I’ve been set at “Beast mode” and with weekly round-ups turned on since I opened the account in January. As it stands today in (roughly) 4 months, Plum has set aside £1146.35 for me. Right now it is sitting in their account, not earning me any interest, BUT, I at least I haven’t spent it all on Double Deckers and Monster Munch (Flammin’ Hot ONLY).

I have no real idea what to do with this money. I don’t like that it isn’t earning a return, but LOVE the idea that it is there, out of the way as a proper rainy day fund and with everything which is going on right now I think I could probably do with one. I am going to continue with Plum as is and at current run-rates, I should have about £3500 at the end of the year which has been put aside. A tidy sum to do something with.

I was quite a disciplined saver before Plum, so I am not sure whether there has been a huge benefit for me in having the account, especially as the money I would have saved previously would have been invested in something which generated a return, BUT I do like that this has meant I am a little better diversified and have more in cash right now. Again, with what is happening, who knows when we may need quick access to a few pounds to pay some bills?

The other eye opener has been in drawing me towards other aggregator apps. I am actively looking at these now, where as before I was a little sceptical. I don’t even have a short list yet, but if I do take the plunge, you’ll be the first to know about it.

If you want to have a closer look at Plum, then I would be eternally grateful if you used the link here. For every 3 of you who sign up, there is a bonus which will be paid (just in the interests of transparency) to me, which will go into TMM’s fund for us to spunk up the wall on the more ridiculous schemes.

I’ll be back in a week or so with another chapter of the Corona Diaries, once Boris has told us when we’re going to be let out of the cage. That post could either be full of euphoria, or a proper downer; read at your own risk.

I’m off to watch Season 2, Episode 2 of Hidden. Have a good evening.