Plum is an AI-powered app for Android and iPhone that will help you save on bills, save cash, and invest money 24/7 without you having to do a thing…

What if you could put money aside, save on bills, and invest money every week without having to do anything? If you are new to the idea of ​​investing money, the concept can be quite overwhelming. You need to know the difference between buying a stock and buying an index tracker. And you must be careful.

Stock markets are volatile places, now more than ever, and while many people make a lot of money playing the markets, most tend to avoid it for fear of doing something foolish and losing money. In 2015, I spent a year analyzing investment strategies. – from buying stocks to getting involved in index trackers. I investigated all of them.

Turns out, though, that I shouldn’t have bothered, because now you have apps like Plum that will do all the hard work for you. Best of all, it’s free and easy to use.

Powered by AI, Plum is a kind of all-in-one financial assistant in your pocket.

It will help you save money, invest in stocks and index funds, and help you find better energy providers. And if that’s not enough, it’ll also provide feedback on your spending patterns, so you can make better decisions about how you spend your money in the future. Plum AI also works 24/7, so it constantly monitors activity in your account and how it changes over time.

Sounds good, right? But how does Plum work? Let’s get into the nitty-gritty of what technology makes the Plum app so smart…

How the Plum app works: Plum AI exploration

To use Plum, you will need an active bank account. Plum links to your bank account (all major UK banks are supported) and from here starts analyzing your account activity. It analyzes what you spend on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis and, over time, builds a comprehensive framework of your spending patterns.

At her core, Plum is an AI Robot. She lives in her bank account and can make real-time decisions about how much she can save each week. She can also determine how much she can invest, and it can be any amount, large or small. You have full control over Plum; she can’t and won’t just remove hundreds of thousands of pounds from her account.

Created by two Cypriot guys named Alexa and Victor, Plum was born when Alex devised an algorithm that would monitor the comings and goings of his account and make small savings here and there when appropriate. Over time, the algorithm has been refined into a more complete AI, one that can analyze an account balance and make calculations on how much money can be set aside at any given time.

For example, let’s say your account always has at least £500 in it and you want to save £50 a month. Plum AI, once you’ve given it the command to find a way to save £50 a month (your goal), will then dedicate itself to siphoning money from your account every few days to reach your goals.

The key, however, is that the AI ​​is designed to do this without you realizing it; the goal is to make saving money as painless as possible, something that just happens in the background without you noticing. At the end of the month, every month, Plum will contribute to reaching your goal and all the money will be stored within your Plum account.

It sounds crazy, but it works. I started using Plum last year. I wanted to buy an ESP LTD EC1000 guitar; they cost around £600-700, so you couldn’t just go out and buy one. I also hate credit cards and I have a hard time saving money manually. I decided to give Plum Ago for the express purpose of saving £600 within four months. And, to my surprise, it worked.

I now have enough money for my beloved ESP LTD EC1000 Guitar.

And the best part? I didn’t even notice the money coming out of my account. I did not change my spending patterns. I didn’t skimp or go without. I just set up Plum, let it do its magic, and got on with my life. Fast forward four months and I now have £600 in my Plum account. And it all depends on how Plum works in the background 24/7 to build up its spare cash pots.

Getting started: How to set up a Plum account

Plum is free to use, but if you want to use it for investing, you’ll have to pay a monthly fee of £1 per month (more on that in a bit). Available for Android and iPhone, Plum can be downloaded from the App Store and Google Play.

Once you have installed the Plum app, you need to sign in with an email address to set up your Plum account. After this, you need to securely link Plum to your bank account. Don’t worry, this process is painless and handled by the Plum app; just enter your details and follow the instructions.

Setting up and linking your bank account takes about two minutes. Once everything is set up correctly, you need to tell Plum how to start saving her money. Plum’s default power-saving mode is known as Normal. This is your default setting, so if you just want to dip your toe in the water, you’re better off starting here until you’re more familiar with how it all works.

Plum does have several additional saving modes, however, that are designed to increase the speed with which you can save money. These are the following:

• Anxious – 25% more than normal mode
• Ambitious: 50% more than Normal mode
• Beast Mode: 75% more than Normal mode

Or, if you want to reduce the amount saved in Plum’s default Normal mode, you can use the following options:

• Chilled: 25% less than normal mode
• Shy: 50% less than in the normal mode

You are probably wondering where all your funds are kept, right? Plum uses an electronic money wallet to store his money. The electronic money account is 100% encrypted and secure. (Plum uses PayrNet FYI) .

You can also withdraw money at any time; there are no time limits, and the requested funds should appear back in your account within 30 minutes.

However, I like to leave my money alone. The whole point of saving money is not spending it, and the best way to do that is to set up Plum, let it work its magic it, and just forget about it for four or five months. Only come back to check your main pocket or e-wallet when a certain amount of time has passed, otherwise, you might be tempted to waste all of Plum’s hard work.

Is Plum Safe?

This is the biggest question on most people’s minds: Is Plum safe? I mean, he’s giving you access to his bank account, so you want to be sure it’s legit. I was so paranoid about this aspect of Plum that I went out and opened another account; my OCD just couldn’t handle the thought that something COULD happen.

Turns out I shouldn’t have bothered; Plum is extremely safe to use. Like Apple Pay and Google Pay, you have limited access to your real account. Plum has read-only access, which ensures that you won’t be able to access your account information or do anything drastic with your account or the funds in it. This is the official line through Plum’s blog on how it all works:

“We never have access to (or store) your bank login details, and we are granted read-only permission to your transaction data, so in the unlikely event of a breach, no money can be transferred from your account. Bank account. In addition, we also use symmetric cryptography (AES) to store any sensitive information, with 256-bit TLS encryption to communicate with our servers (running in the Amazon cloud, which is trusted by some of the world’s largest financial institutions!) !)”

On top of this, your funds in Plum Interest Pockets (available under Plus/Pro subscriptions) are protected by FSCS for up to £85,000.

The FSCS was created to protect customers from dodgy banking activities (such as lending out their deposits and losing their money), so if something were to happen to Plum, her money would be protected and would be returned to her accordingly. No buts, no buts.

However, please note that the basic or free Plum Pockets are e-money wallets, they are not FSCS-protected. This means that while you do not receive any interest on the funds, the money is not loaned. That means that even if Plum and its partner e-money provider go bankrupt, you can claim your money through the e-money provider.

Do you want more peace of mind? Here are some stats via the FSCS from their official blog (only applies to Plum interest pockets):

• In 2018-2019 we paid out £473m to 425,760 bankrupt business clients.
• We have recovered £20bn from the bank failures of 2008 and repaid all £20.5bn borrowed from HM Treasury that year.
• We have returned £375 million of other recoveries to the industry in the last five years.
• We were established in 2001 under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.
• We are independent of the government and financial services sector.
• We can pay compensation thanks to the taxes paid by authorized financial services companies.

Plum Opinions

What do consumers think of Plum? According to the public review site Trustpilot, Plum has an average rating of “Excellent” – it has over 739 4.3/5-star reviews. The vast majority of users seem to love the app, how simple it is to use, and the fact that it has helped them save a ton of money.

I’ll admit, it wasn’t until I read some Trustpilot reviews that I decided to finally pull the trigger on Plum and hit the ground running. If you’re reading this and still worried about running Plum, I can guarantee you I was more worried! But he didn’t need to have been; the app, its security protocols, and its customer service are exceptional.

How to invest money with Plum

Plum doesn’t just put more money aside. You can also use it to invest your money. And you don’t need to start big either; you can invest as little as £1 in some of the world’s biggest companies, from Apple to Google’s Alphabet.

All you have to do is join Plum’s investment service (it costs £1 per month), select who you want to invest in, and let Plum move on. This is how it works once you’re all set up, but it needs to be set up correctly first. And it’s worth noting that with stocks and shares, you can and will lose money – that’s the nature of the game.

When investing with Plum, you have three risk levels to choose from:

• Slow and steady: lower risk, lower profit
• Balanced package: medium risk, moderate gains
• Growth stack: high risk, higher profits

Obviously, the higher the risk, the greater the potential for higher returns. However, with high risk comes the possibility of large losses. With investing, especially if you’re new to the concept, it’s much better to go LONG and TENSILE than fast and hard.

Investing money regularly is prudent, so do it, with moderate to low risk, and you’ll have the best chance of not only earning some money but also putting any accumulated savings to good use. Then sit back and let Plum do her thing. Oh, and there’s a management fee for the Plum investment element; it is 0.15% for funds. And fund fees start from 0.08%. This is pretty good though, so don’t worry.

What about Plum Pro? Is it worth it?

Plum Pro is the standard Plum application on steroids. With Plum Pro, you pay £2.99 a month and this gives you access to Plum’s investment features as well as more advanced money management tools.

Additional features of Plum Pro are called Super Savers. This is what you get:

• Pockets – In Pockets, you can set up and access dedicated pots with specific goals. You can also have as many as you like, so it’s a cool feature to split your pockets into priority piles.
• Rainy Day Savings – This one is a bit silly, especially if you live in Manchester, but how it works is simple: every time it rains in your local area, Plum will set aside some money from your account. I live near Manchester so I wasn’t ready for this kind of commitment.
• 52-Week Savings Challenge – This feature will add £1 to your wallet every week for a year. In the end, Plum says you’ll have over £1,378 in storage when combined with your normal money storage automation.
• Paydays – to automatically deposit into your Plum account on payday
• Diagnosis: This classifies your expenses within a monthly breakdown and compares your expenses with people with a similar financial profile.
• True Balance – This shows how much of your bank account balance is safe to spend after accounting for regular bills and payments.

Plum Pro is now available on Android and IOS (although some features, such as Paydays, Diagnostics, and Cashback have not been implemented on Android yet).

In addition to all of the above, Plum for iOS now includes a rewards program, whereby users can earn cashback through the following retailers:

• ASOS, 1.6% – 6.4%
• Farfetch, 4%
• Training, 0.8%
• Hotels.com, 4%-6%
• Groupon, 11%
• Water stones, 4%
• Miss Selfridge, 4% – 6%
• Wicks, 2%
• Mobiles.co.uk, £25 towards new contracts and phone upgrades
• Carphone Warehouse, 2%
• Cox and Cox, 2%
• Burton, 5%
• Conscious Chef, £7
• SimplyCook, £3
• Nails Inc, 5% – 6%
• Chelsea darlings, 7%
• The Sofa Company, 5%
• Cosmetic Benefit, 3% – 6%

In short: how I learned to love AI for managing my money

Should you download and use Plum on your phone? Given all of the above, I think most people would benefit from using Plum. I know it has helped me save and invest thousands of pounds over the last 12 months.

Even if you only use the free saving functionality of saving money automatically. People often complain about not having enough money to save, and I understand this, but with Plum, you can do it, it just does it in a way that you don’t realize. And even small amounts are better than no amount.

After a month or two of using Plum, I decided to go with the Plum Pro app. I wanted to invest more and I wanted to set up different savings pots for different purposes. Using the Plum Pro app allowed me to do this, and at just £2.99 a month, it is a steal. It has saved me an untold amount of money over the past year and that, to me, is worth £2.99 a month.