web analytics

How an app helped to pay for my wedding

I’ve been meaning to write this post since October, but as usual, life got in the way.

To cut to the chase, I want to tell you about something alarmingly simple called Plum.

20190314_0221432090802693.jpg
My current Plum savings, since the wedding.

 

Now, it’s not a secret that my financial situation is not amazing. I live on Disability Living Allowance, and while my husband’s salary is actually very good for his line of work, it supports two adults, so it doesn’t go as far as people think. We are not wealthy by a long shot.

I’ve been stuck in my overdraft for at least a decade at this point; money comes in once a month, but not enough to clear my debt to the bank. And of course, like any other human, I have outgoings. Until this past week, I was paying £75 towards a wheelchair that sadly broke the last time we went camping. I have a different chair now, which we’ll still be paying off for some time. Necessary debts aside, there are bills, household issues, things break, or leak, or wear out. I don’t get to leave the house much so I do most of my shopping on Amazon, and my shopping basket always ends up clogged with household objects.

I transfer 10% of my income into a savings account every month, as one generally should do, but it ends up coming out again to pay for something unexpected. I’ve a feeling one of our next expenses will be getting a new laundry basket, because stress marks on the plastic show that the handles will snap off of our current one soon.

When I initially heard about Plum, I decided to sign up so that I could gradually save up enough to get out of my overdraft. But then, my boyfriend of 7 years proposed, so I used my Plum savings to pay for our wedding.

 

It’s important to note that Plum can’t give you any money you don’t already have. But where it helped me and my not-mathematically-inclined brain, is automatically calculating what I could afford to save based on my recent outgoings, and putting away tiny scraps of money at a time. This is what let me get married, and one day it will get me out of my overdraft too.

 

I was initially nervous about hooking a Messenger-based app to my bank account, but Plum doesn’t actually store the login details themselves, and this must be the third year I’ve had it with no fraud or anything dodgy occurring.

So yes, I just wanted to tell everybody about the joy of Plum!

(Auto-placed Advertisements)