‘I INVESTED MORE THAN £300 LAST YEAR – AS PART OF MY SPENDING’
I decided not to have an arranged overdraft when I started uni a year ago: I have always dreaded feeling indebted, writes Ewan Armstrong.
Instead, I keep a buffer of at least £100 in my account as a self-imposed overdraft that I promise myself I will never touch.
I have friends who’ve developed the terrible habit of refusing to check their account balance. This out-ofsight, out-ofmind mindset will catch up with them in the long run. I look at my balance and account summary on the Natwest app every other day. A recent phenomenon among students is Monzo cards. It’s a debit card but one that tells you how much you’re spending on groceries, eating out, transport or bills.
I make most of my transactions via contactless or Apple Pay on my phone. Not even needing to enter a Pin runs the risk of making it easier to spend more, and I have found myself leaving the supermarket having paid contactlessly and not knowing exactly what I’ve spent. Even so, I think the danger of thoughtlessly paying via contactless is offset by how using cards makes it easier to track spending.
There’s a perception that students can’t or shouldn’t invest money. But without a doubt the money-related achievement I’m proudest of is finding an app called Moneybox. It rounds your card purchases up to the nearest pound and invests the pennies into a fund, depending on your stated level of risk (for example, it invests 15p after you buy an 85p coffee). It has seamlessly invested about £1 a day for me over the past year. Aside from being an easy introduction to the world of investing, finding £300 tucked away in an app is every student’s dream.