3 Best Apps For Savings Automation

Hi everyone, thank you for coming back to my blog. I hope you found my last blog interesting and useful, where I covered ‘3 Ways To Make Saving Money Effortless’.

In today’s blog, I am going to cover the bests apps to help you automate your savings, making saving money even more effortless. I touched upon this in my last blog, but I will go into more detail on these apps, for those of you who are interested.

Everything nowadays is automated thanks modern technology, from turning the home heating on and off to unlocking and locking a car, just by using a phone. So why not use this technology to make savings easier and therefore live a lot easier in general?

Automation can allow you to move a set amount of money and set times, from your current account to a savings account, or to a linked money saving app on your phone.

I have personally used all the apps mentioned above at some point in time and I am currently using one of them in fact, so give them a try and see which one bests suits you

Here are the best apps for savings automation:

1. Plum — Plum analyses the money going in and out of your linked current account to determine how much you can afford to save. It also guarantees that you will never go into your overdraft when money is transferred from your current account into Plum. However, if that did happen, they promise to refund any fees. Using the app you you can tell Plum whether you want to increase or decrease the amount you want to save. You have a choice of modes:

• Beast Mode — 75% more savings (my personal favourite)
• Ambitious — 50% more savings
• Eager — around 25% more
• Normal
• Chilled — around 25% less
• Shy — 50% less in savings

And if you want to take a break completely, you can turn off auto-saves for a set period.

Another option to help you save is by turning on ‘Round-ups’. With this option activated, it means that every time you make a purchase from a card linked to your current account, the app will round this amount up to the nearest pound which is then transferred into Plum. For example, spend £2.50 on a coffee and 50p will be sent to Plum.

Or, you can arrange for money to be transferred on payday. Just let Plum know when that is, how much you get paid and Plum can calculate how much you can afford to transfer over.

*Plum is FREE to use, unless you want to upgrade Plum Pro, which is £2.99 per month.

Plum Pro offers several more features than the free version, which could help you save money faster, these are :

• Rainy Days Savings — Plum is probably the first company to take this saying literally. Every time it rains, Plum will set money aside for you.
• 52-Week Challenge — The first week, you will save £1 with Plum and this will increase by a further £1 every following week. Keep this up and in one year, you could save £1,378.
• True Balance — giving you spending limits so you don’t overspend before pay day.
• Goals — Set yourself a target amount.
• Diagnostic Reports — Allows you to compare yourself with other Plum users in a similar position.
• Pockets — Separates money into different savings pots.
• Exclusive Deposit Rules — Allows you to create different saving rules.

2. Chip — Chip, much like Plum, analyses how much you can afford to save and takes it from your account in small amounts. However, unlike Plum, Chip pays you a straight 1% interest for anything you have in your account.

Money is transferred from your linked current account into your Chip Auto-save account, where you can either, move it over to an Easy account which will pay you interest, or just keep it in the Auto-save account.

Just like Plum, Chip allows you to adjust the amount you are comfortable with saving, just through a click of a button. If you think it’s taking too much or you want to save a bit more, just adjust the scale

Again, just like Plum, with Chip you can set up an amount you want to transfer on your assigned payday.

With Chip you can set a minimum bank balance limit. If you never want to fall below a certain level, then let Chip know and they won’t transfer any money if it means you fall below this limit.

Chip will notify you when money is due to be taken and if you want to ‘skip’ the save option that day, then you have until 3pm that day to do so

Chip has a ‘Goals’ option and these goals can be anything you want to save up for (maximum of 3 goals). Then, when your money is saved into your Chip account, it can be split towards each goal.

*Chip has recently upped their fee, so after you have made £100 in auto-saves, you will be charged £1.50 every 28 days

3. Moneybox — Moneybox will help you save money in small amounts, so you will hardly notice it leaving your linked current account. Any money you save goes directly into a savings account and you can choose from these options:

• Fixed Term Savings Account
• General Investment Account
• Lifetime ISA
• Stocks & Shares ISA

You have several options to fund your Moneybox account.

• Round ups — Just like Plum, you can ask Moneybox to ’round up’ every time you make a purchase.
• Weekly deposit — Arrange a set amount of cash you want to transfer over from your current account each week.
• Payday boost — Arrange for a set amount to be transferred close to payday.
• Super round ups — Double your round up value if you find that round ups aren’t enough
• One-off deposit — Make a one-off transfer, if you find yourself with a bit of extra money.

*To use Moneybox, the first 3 months are FREE, after that, you need to pay a £1 per month subscription fee. This is a blanket fee and it doesn’t matter how many investments you have. There are no fees for the savings accounts.

I hope one of these options will help you to automate your savings, allowing you to save money effortless in the future.

Until next time, thank you and stay safe.