THE FIVE MONEY HACKS YOU NEED TO KNOW
I carried out some pub research among friends. Pensions aside, do they invest in stocks and shares? The only ones who said yes were men. It goes without saying that my women friends are just as switched on as the men in our lives, and, when I drilled down a bit, the men are just as flummoxed by personal-finance jargon. So what’s happening? Why the lack of confidence? Clearly the gender money gap is not just about salary disparity.
I think the blame lies, in part, with the way the topic of money is pitched. Starling Bank, one of a growing number of start-ups disrupting the suit-clad financial services of old, has a female CEO, Anne Boden. Earlier this year, the bank read through 3OO money articles and found that the majority aimed at women repeated tropes about curbing ‘splurging’, men were encouraged to make money and ‘conquer’.
Happily, things are now changing. Ellevest in the US and Vestpod in the UK send out engaging, investmentthemed newsletters to women, while technology is making money management almost, (whisper it) enjoyable. These five innovations will help you start thinking about your finances differently.
Use IFTTT with Monzo:
Monzo, the bank that makes budgeting easy – by categorising your spending whenever you tap your debit card and allowing you to set up pots into which you can pay yourself first – can now be paired with the brilliant app IFTTT (If This, Then That). This lets you use other phone apps to put aside money without noticing. For example, you could get it to save in a Monzo pot for every kilometre you run as recorded by Strava, or tax yourself for every Uber you take.
PensionBee: If you have ever moved jobs, you probably have an old pension pot or two hanging around – but where are they? And what do you do with them? PensionBee will find your old pensions, combining them into a plan that you can manage online. Plus, some pension companies charge you for moving money, so PensionBee alerts you if any old pensions have exit fees of more than £1O.
Ready-made investments: You do not need to know much about the stock market, or maths, to make money from it. There are now numerous ready-made ‘portfolios’ that invest your savings across a variety of shares in companies selected by an expert. Try Wealthify, Nutmeg or Moola. Try adding your rent to your credit file: A decent credit history means you can command cheaper interest rates on credit cards and loans. However, younger people are often penalised – usually because they have not previously borrowed enough to demonstrate their reliability. To get around this, try boosting your credit file by showing that you pay rent on time using a website called CreditLadder.
Use Revolut on holiday. Before overseas trips, sign up to Revolut, the digital banking alternative. It does not levy any fees for spending abroad, nor ATM fees if you withdraw less than £2OO a month.
“IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING THAT my WOMEN FRIENDS ARE JUST as SWITCHED ON as THE MEN IN OUR LIVES”
Laura is the author of Money: A User’s Guide (Fourth Estate), out 4 October