Chip is a savings app that helps you to save effortlessly. I’ve written about Moneybox before about how their app helps you save without feeling the pinch. Chip does something similar but with AI. You connect the app to your bank account and it looks at your previous spending history and what you’re spending currently and then somehow calculates what you could save without feeling the pinch. You choose how aggressive you want the AI to be. I opted for the medium level at the beginning and now I play with the higher settings just to see how much more aggressive they really are. So every now and again, I get a message from Chip saying that I could save say £30 today without feeling the pinch, and that this will be moved from my bank account to Chip at 3pm. You can choose not to move it but I …[Read More]
Money
How did the David Swenson allocation do during the Covid-19 market tumult?
Now I know that it’s not over yet and there’s big questions over the shape of the recovery post-Corona, but it’s worth a look at how the David Swenson allocation that I use performed during this crisis. There were some huge moves across almost all asset classes. At one point, the UK 100 index was down around 30% from its highs in Jan 2020. The idea behind diversified asset allocations such as Swenson’s is that you should be protected from the big moves like this. If you were 100% invested in equities, then you would track the 30% fall yourself. If you had a proportion of your portfolio in bonds, then in theory, you should see some insulation from this this 30% move because bonds are supposed to move roughly in the opposite direction. My asset allocation definitely didn’t see complete insulation. At the lowest point, my portfolio was down …[Read More]
How Moneybox helped me painlessly save and invest £722.50 in 15 months
This is a follow up to an earlier post I wrote called How you can save money effortlessly using Monzo, Marcus by Goldman Sachs, and Moneybox and an update to how the Moneybox part is doing. Automatic equals painless Ramit Sethi is all about having systems in place so that you don’t have to use your willpower. Because willpower is fickle and it gets exhausted and it doesn’t always work. Systems on the other hand do work. Such as setting up automatic payments to come out of your account straight after pay day to go into your savings account or into your investment account. This way you don’t even think about it. This is how I’ve set up my Marcus savings account and my Hargreaves Lansdown ISA. It comes out of my account and automatically saves and invests for me. I don’t have to think about it and I don’t …[Read More]
How you can save money effortlessly using Monzo, Marcus by Goldman Sachs, and Moneybox
I’m not a great saver. In general, I’m a spender. But I want to become a decent saver so that that I can invest it and make a good pile of money before I retire and hopefully live well before that. Given my spending nature, for me, it’s about creating systems that take out the need for willpower and that make it easy for me to spend less and save more. Monzo, Marcus, and Moneybox help me do that. Monzo Monzo is a new bank account that’s mobile-only and aimed at young people. It has a cool bright pink card that when you tap it or use it, sends an instant update to your phone. So I know immediately when I buy a coffee or lunch. It literally tells me as soon as I tap my card on the reader. So how does Monzo help me save money? Two ways: …[Read More]
How to automatically invest and dollar cost average with a Ray Dalio or David Swenson asset allocation using Hargreaves Lansdown
We know we should save and invest but how should we invest? We’ve seen from a previous article that we should dollar cost average to even out our entry price. But what should we invest in? I’m a big believer in following (scratch that, copying) the best. Who are the best asset managers over the long term? I’m going to talk about two: David Swensen, CIO of Yale University Endowment and Ray Dalio, co-CIO and founder of Bridgewater Associates, and look at the asset allocations that they use. What is an asset allocation? An asset allocation is how your asset classes within your portfolio are divided. An asset class is a type of asset, so one asset class could be stocks (equities), it could be bonds (fixed income), it could be property, gold or just straight cash. It could even be cryptocurrency :). So for many people, their major asset class is …[Read More]