Ed is in his early 40s, lives in East Anglia with his wife and kids, and works as manager for a retail company.
Ed loved to spend. When he and his wife started a family his debts went up and his finances were a mess. Learn how Ed used Moneyhub’s budgets to get his debts down, and his pension contributions up.
““My money was a mess. Even after the kids. I should have stopped doing certain things, I didn’t and as a result I built up quite a bit of debt””
If you’re cynical about money management apps and think they’re only used by the rich to manage their investments, read on. This Moneyhubber and father of 3 teenagers from East Anglia has been a pub manager, a forklift driver and has worked in the NHS. He now works for a retail company and starts his story by telling us how his life was troubled by debts he’d built up as a younger man.
He explained, “I’d built up a lot of debt on credit cards by overspending and basically not having an understanding of where my money was and simply not caring. I used to buy things I could not afford and at the end of each month I was scrabbling around for pennies”.
Having tried several different apps he downloaded Moneyhub and hasn’t looked back. So we asked him to tell us how he used Moneyhub to take control of his debt.
He said “I really like Moneyhub’s spending budgets, in fact they were almost life changing for me. I’d miss transactions in my bank accounts and credit cards and then spend ages going back trying to work out where everything was going. Since using Moneyhub everything I spend goes in the transaction inbox and I ‘OK’ it and allocate it to a category. I spent a bit of time setting up categories but the fact every transaction goes in there means I don’t miss anything, which was the really annoying thing before Moneyhub”.
He continued: “By creating spending categories for everything such as fuel, beer, coffees, haircuts…all sorts of things, I could work out trends using the spending and income analysis, which enabled me to compare month on month. Looking back over the year I could see what I spent on average so I used that to set budgets and then every time I got paid I was able to put aside money in my bank account knowing that everything I had left was spare money. Since then my finances have turned around completely”.
However, it’s not all been plain sailing. As a worker in the retail sector he explained how the Covid pandemic resulted in his being furloughed.
He clarified, “Though I really missed being able to go out with friends and family and it was an uncertain time, the furlough was actually good for me. Because I was budgeting and managing money a lot better I worked out that I should take payment holidays for my mortgage and car loan. I used the opportunity to pay off my debts. That meant I could start saving which has meant I am more prepared for things that would come up, things like tyres for my car”.
Our Moneyhubber explained that whilst he still uses a spreadsheet to help keep track he relies on Moneyhub as the single source of information because he can see everything in one place without having to use lots of different apps.
He went on, “I use Moneyhub multiple times a day and always before I start work in the morning. I always go to the transaction inbox and even though I know what the totals will be I still like seeing it. For example a few months ago I had a fraud on my credit card and the fact that I was on top of everything and spotted it was great”
Being in control of his day-to-day spend has had an unintended consequence for the longer term.
He said “I had connected my workplace pension to Moneyhub so when the pandemic started I could see my pension’s value. Every day I looked it was going down as share prices were going down. Before Moneyhub I’d never even have known about it but because it’s so visual, seeing the graph is brilliant. In fact it surprised me just how quickly pensions can go up and it's made me want to pay in more, especially now I’ve got spare money at the end of the month”.
We asked our Moneyhubber what financial wellness meant to him. “Being in control and being on top of your finances. I had no financial wellness 10 years ago but I’m very happy now, because I’m on top of things. I’m not saying it's easy, I could have earned more in a different job, but well being is more important than salary. Being in control of a smaller salary and doing a job I really love is what wellbeing means”. In closing, we asked what would you say to someone considering using open banking to take control of their money? “Read up on it, talk to people, read about others’ experiences who have used it. I’d be lost without it.”
