I’m looking to start saving. I would love to fully move away from a ‘high street bank’ but obviously want an account which will give me a return or help me to save (which I’m famously not very good at).
Looking on the MSE website I’ve discovered Plum and Chip. Both automatically save what they think you can afford which would be pretty cool and save me guessing! My worry is that my money wouldn’t be protected by the FSCS.
What are you experience with these?
Are there any safer alternatives?
What do you think about the risk?
I also see many of you talking about investing your savings using other apps etc…
What apps/services do you use?
Where can I go to learn how they work (and specifically, the risks involved)?
Sounds like you are quite risk-averse, but if you do fancy learning about shares, then open an ISA and read The Naked Trader. I use Interactive Investor, which works pretty well.
Do you want cash savings or do you want to invest? Hard to know what to suggest until you decide this.
With regard to Chip and Plum…
Chip is cash savings, albeit not FCSC protected.
Plum provides access to a form of investing (peer-to-peer lending).
Also worth noting that neither are currently compatible with Monzo.
I have emergency savings, enough to last me for 6 months in a normal high street bank. most of my savings goes into a stock and shares ISA and auto-invest using the robo adviser service, wealthsimple.
Here’s a referral link in case you wanted to check it out
How have you found using WealthSimple yourself? By no means do I have enough stashed away to input a lot of capital into it but was wondering if you would recommend even if I put say £150 a month into it? Cheers
Oh, I’m a student. My emergency fund thinking went something like:
“What is the absolute worst thing that could happen to me financially right now”
During the term I get student finance in every 3 months, so I thought the worst that could happen to me is that I can’t afford food. In the case that I can’t afford food I’ll cancel my subscriptions etc. I spend around £30 per week on food so.
It’s a lot easier for me to calculate this as a student.
I’ve read online that the emergency fund should financially support you for 6 months, almost like a runway in startup terminology.
So imagine you get absolutely nothing else other than this pot of money for the next 6 months, however much you’ll need over those 6 months should be included here
I’m a student, so I put in around £50 - £100 per month in. The way Wealthsimple works is that you can buy a percentage of a share (automatically), instead of a whole share. So with government bonds you would have to pay at least £100, but Wealthsimple has this feature where you can automatically crowdsource the money and you don’t have to put in the whole £100 if 100 people put in £1 kinda thing.
£150 should be absolutely enough. I plan on saving up to around 5k in Wealthsimple and then looking at my other options. Once you’ve built up enough capital like £5k or £10k you can look at investing into the things that Wealthsimple automatically invests in, like Vanguard.
I quite like Wealthsimple at the moment. They’re not very big in the UK, but they’re incredibly big in the US & Canada.
If you use my referral link we both get the first £5000 invested with no fee, which is a massive plus. One of the reasons I use wealthsimple over something like Nutmeg or Wealthify is the fact that you have this option to negate the fee.
You basically get the first £1100 fee-free, then if someone else signs up you get £6100 fee-free. Whereas with Nutmeg you flat-out pay near 1% each year.
I really enjoy wealthsimple, but my plan is to change in 2 - 3 years to be more hands on with my money when I’m smarter. I’ve read this quote a lot:
It doesn’t matter how you start, as long as you start
so debating whether or not you should put your money into a service isn’t the wisest, it’s always best to just start.
Wealthsimple’s US & Canada website show you how much you can expect to make in gains too:
I am 32 and have been hands off my money since i started working at 16. Have a good income work wise so want to start saving/investing and being on top of my money hence why I firstly moved to Monzo to have my finances in front of me at the click of a fingerprint if that makes sense.
To set up an account do I need to deposit money to create an account as pay day isn’t until next Friday?
Nope, you do not have to put money in straight away.
If you’re using the stocks and shares ISA I would put in £1 because it can take a week or two for the S&S isa to be set up and everything to work okay. After that, it should be a lot quicker
Just make sure to not do what I do and check it every day. The idea is to spread your portfolio thinly across the market so you grow with the market, as generally speaking the market grows around 6 - 7% per year. But the market can also go down some months :shrug:
If you’re interested in getting involved in investing, its more the nature of stocks and shares and other investment vehicles that you need to appreciate first, rather than specific apps. The main thing to recognize is that shares are volatile and you could suffer sizable losses in short periods of time (although over long periods, stocks and shares historically significantly outperform cash savings). Again, I’ll suggest a page from BoringMoney for basic understanding and options: https://www.boringmoney.co.uk/learn/
Thanks osm appreciate the link. Will take a look at this this evening. 2018 is the year I finally look to sort my finances out and start sorting out the future for myself and my kids. Thanks all
Cheers pal. I have set it up using your link. I will put a few quid in later to get it started. Hopefully over the next few months/years will make a bit of profit. Thanks again
