‘How I saved £1,000 using financial apps'

Simple money challenges that turned saving into a game helped Jack Cole save over a grand and clear his old debt.

Around 18 months ago, Jack Cole was nearly £1,700 in debt and constantly struggling to pay off his overdraft.

But as of mid-February, he has managed to clear all his debt, save around almost £2,000.

And it's all thanks to a money-saving app that follows the principle of If This Then That (IFTTT).

Effectively, it triggers an automated action, such as depositing cash from your bank account to your savings whenever another action occurs.  

So for example, every time it rains you could use IFTTT to automatically put £2 into a savings account: living in the UK you could find yourself accumulating a lot of money quickly!

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Saving £1,000 using apps

For Cole, a 23-year-old warehouse worker who is also lead singer in the band Cornflakes at Kelly’s, saving big amounts of money every month wasn’t working for him and he kept dipping into his savings.

“I realised I was biting off more than I could chew,” says Cole.

So, he decided to try IFTTT 'applets'  – very basic apps  – that were linked to his bank account. For him, this ‘gamification’ of saving was what helped him save money.

“There’s something really interesting about IFTTT – it’s little amounts but it all adds up,” comments Cole.

Over six months he managed to save £1,017.99 using various applets: the 1p challenge, reverse 1p challenge, Save The Date, Save 10p a Day and the daily £1 challenge.

Below is a graphic (click for larger image) breaking down Cole’s savings via these different programmes.

Cole also has an extra £700 saved from his paycheck, birthday presents from loved ones, interest on savings and automatic roundups from everyday purchases.

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How much can I save with these applets?

We’ll now run through some of these applets work. You'll see that, while some are suitable for all budgets, others are reserved for those able to set sizeable sums aside.

The 1p challenge is pretty simple.

You usually start from 1 January by saving 1p into the savings pots of your choice and then increase this by a penny a day until you hit £3.66 a day (an extra day is added due to the leap year).

By automatically contributing every day, you would have £671.61 in savings at the end of the year.

The reverse 1p challenge works in a similar way – you save the same amount – but you start with the biggest daily amount (£3.66) and end up putting 1p away on the last day of the year into your savings.

The daily £1 challenge is simply a variation of the above.

Each day of the week, you put aside £1 on Monday, £2 on Tuesday, £3 on Wednesday and so on – but this resets again to £1 on the following Monday.

So, you would save £28 a week and should end up with £1,456 at the end of the one-year period.

Other applets you can use to save may not offer the easiest way to figure out how much you’re saving on a weekly basis (even though the applet would do all the heavy lifting for you).

For example, the Save the Date challenge takes the current date, adds up the numbers and puts the money aside into a savings account.

So, if the date is 10 April 2020, 34p would be automatically transferred to a savings pot. By saving little and often in this way, you can save £151.06 over a year.

Finally, the 10p a day challenge works exactly as the name suggests – you save 10p every day and should end up with £36.60 after 12 months.

If you did all of these challenges (like Cole), you could save nearly £3,000 in a year.

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How you can set up IFTTT

For Cole, using IFTTT and applets helped him get into the habit of saving money rather than trying to build a pot for a specific goal.

“IFTTT is a great way to engage people,” says Cole.

“The beauty of IFTTT is that it uses, what I call the ‘set and forget’ technique.

“It allows the user to automatically move small amounts of money that grow very quickly without even lifting a finger once they’ve set up the app to be linked with their account."

However, as a lot of the applets are hooked on effectively random events, they certainly aren't a reliable way of saving.

For example, if you want to save £2 every time it rains and this happens two weeks in a row, you may end up saving a lot more than anticipated and may not necessarily be able to afford it. Likewise, if it's particularly dry you won't be savings anything at all.

You can however adjust applets so you can save the right amount for you.

If you are interested in using IFTTT to save money, you need an account and you can download an app via the Apple Store or Google Play.

There’s lots of applets you can use with various companies, including Monzo and Qapital – and it’s not solely limited to saving money.

So, while you can move money into a pot every time you tweet or go to the gym, you can also use IFTTT to let you know when a stock hits a certain price or to set the thermostat when you get home.

You don’t even have to stick with current applets on IFTTT as you can even build your own.

If you’re already disciplined at saving money on a regular basis (and not touching it), IFTTT may not have a lot to offer.

But if you’re struggling with traditional savings methods like putting money in a regular savings account offering a decent amount of interest, it could help you save money – without even trying.

Of course, you should weigh up all your different savings options and pick the right one for you.

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