The Best Money Saving Apps

As a budgeter, I am always in search of the best money saving apps that I can use to make saving money a doddle. Over the last 12 months (thanks covid) I have saved more money than any other time in my life and that’s because as an impulse buyer, I chose to hide my money. Since becoming a home owner last year, I have found myself more inclined to save money than spend it because owning your own home is no easy feat. There are so many costs associated with it that I am making sure to save as much money as I can for those uncertain times.

As a frequent traveller, I have always budgeted for my trips and even the spontaneous trips that I book on a whim. People often save money for their retirement, I save for my next trip we all have different priorities in life. That’s not to say I am not saving for my retirement because I am but in a different way to those who are much older than myself. People often ask me, ‘how can you afford to travel as much as you do’ and my answer is always the same, I save for all my trips – even the spontaneous trips. This is why I am excited to share some of the best money saving apps out there that you can utilise.

Disclosure – this post contains affiliate links

The Best Money Saving Apps

These days there are apps for everything and saving money is no exception. When I started saving money a couple years ago, I tried every single app that I could think of until I found the one that served my needs. Depending on what your saving needs are, you can use a multitude of apps out there to save money. I am someone who budgets even the amount I need to save but sometimes I forget about the small things and this is were apps can help.

As I mentioned, I have tried a number of apps and the ones I am recommending in this post are those that I have used either in the past or currently using them. All the apps that I have used in the past required you to link the app to your existing band account and the ones I am using currently require you to open a bank account with them. Often prefer the latter over the former as they are concerned about privacy which is fair enough but I use both.

So what are some of the best money saving apps you can utilise?

Monzo

This app requires you open a bank account and more often than not offers very competitive interest rates. With Monzo you can easily track your spending, set saving goals and create pots where the money would be saved. I like that with Monzo it helps me round-up the spare change and save that money. You can easily access the money and it offers instant, spending and saving notifications. You can also withdraw money from the account pretty easily.

Chip

Used it initially when they just started out and had no fees. I loved that they used AI to learn my spending patterns and helped me to save money and the saving was automatic. Now if you want automatic saving you need to use their paid version of the app. The money that you are saving leaves your account and is kept in another account (their account) but you can easily withdraw. I do not use this app anymore because it was difficult to to change bank accounts whatever bank account you connected to initial that’s the only one you could save money from, it was difficulty to change.

Plum

This is my favourite money saving app and I use the premium version of the app with so many other features. What I love about Plum is it analyses your spending then gives you tips on how to save. I have created various pots with the app and several rules to help me save money like, when it rains a small amount is deposited into my account. Every week the app arounds up all my saving rules and splits the money according to the rules I set.

What I love about Plum is that I am able to save a lot of money every single month from my expenditures that it rounds up, the weekly saving challenge I participate in and the other saving rules that I set-up. Since I started using the app I have been able to save at least £500+ a month but obviously this is based off the rules I put together as well as the frequent deposits I made.

There are many other apps that you can use to save money like Starling Bank (this requires you open a bank account), Tandem and Cleo but I have not used these so I can not comment much about how good they are. Each app has its own pros and cons especially those that you connect to your bank account. If you do not wish to connect you bank account then open another with Monzo and set-up a direct debit but it won’t round up your spending but its still a way to save money.