Tim is a graduate in his early 30s who lives in the South East and is employed in a large software company.
When Tim became a parent his expenses went up and his income was squeezed. Learn how Tim used Moneyhub to stay in control and make his money stretch further.
““My total incomings and outgoings and getting tidier with budgets and
just a better sense of what was going on””
“The answer to that question has changed dramatically over the course of my adult life”
That’s how a 30-something Moneyhub user, graduate and proud dad to a young son, responded when we asked him what ‘Financial Wellness’ means to him? He told us how he clawed his way out of debt, managed to get on the housing ladder and has made a home for his family by getting control of money. And whilst his journey to financial wellness is far from over, we were excited to learn how Moneyhub contributes to his achieving Financial Wellness.
Our Moneyhubber explained that upon graduating aged 23, he arrived at the “first stage of adult life” with tens of thousands of pounds of student loans, credit card debt and an overdraft.
He joked, “my uni life was spent finding the absolute minimum I could pay towards my debts so they did not come knocking on my door”.
He continued, “having left uni, that period of my life was marked by a desire to reduce my short-term debt as quickly as possible, whilst earning enough to pay off my student loans, which, whilst not the same as ordinary bank loans, weighed heavily on my mind”.
By his late 20s, the overdraft and short-term debts were gone and he was reducing his student loans.
He described this as “the end of the first phase of my financial maturity” so he decided to try and buy a home with a view to longer term financial security. He saved really hard and in his early 30s was able to buy a starter home using the help to buy equity loan scheme. Having cleared his debts he was also able to start contributing a small amount to his employer’s pension scheme. This effectively marked the end of what he describes as phase two, of his financial life and the beginning of phase three which is where his journey with Moneyhub and open banking began.
He explained, “The catalyst was becoming a dad to my little boy. My expenditure went up significantly (as it does when you have a kid). Money became tighter which meant I went from being able to ride the waves when something unexpected arose to being closer to my limit. Money was now more problematic and I needed to try get on top of things, so knowing my total incomings and outgoings and getting tidier with budgets and just a better sense of what was going on”
We asked him to share with us how he used Moneyhub and he started by explaining that “the broad strokes information is most useful. Knowing how much I was spending on utilities I spoke to all my providers and anything that was excessive, I reduced. And because they are all linked together in one place, I know that when money leaves any of my accounts, I will receive a notification. This is a great benefit to me because I travel for work and I have had my credit card cloned 3 times since becoming a Moneyhub user. In fact 2 out of the 3 times I told my card provider quicker than they told me. I was on the phone to them before they even knew…so that’s a real thing and real benefit”.
He continued, “One of the major benefits of open banking and Moneyhub is that there is no other mechanism to effectively track what is going on between a credit card and current account with different providers. Also, the ability to link information such as the Zoopla house-price connection, which updates on a monthly basis is brilliant. I looked at a number of different apps when I first started and there were various pros & cons of different ones, but the main reason I went with Moneyhub is that the connections to 3rd parties were much better than almost everyone else. And where alternatives might have had a better connections, Moneyhub had a better app”.
What we really love about this particular Moneyhub user is how he’s found out what works for him. We asked him what advice he would give anyone trying to get control of money and he said, “Don’t be in a rush…I watch a lot of videos about investments and people say it’s all about starting young. But real people have real problems so set priorities for you. If you have debt, do what you can to repay it. Living within your means is hard, it’s easier said than done, but if you’ve got credit card debt that you’re holding over month-to-month, don’t worry about putting money in to an ISA account. Go at it in a formulaic way, try and affect what you can effect and don’t get bogged down or worried about stuff that is longer term’.
