Find saving hard? You’re not alone. Plum helps you save and grow your money over time by working out how much spare cash you can afford, and then saving and investing your money little-and-often. You might not even notice the cash, and before you know it will have a nice amount in your savings.
Not very good at saving? Not many of us are! Plum has been developed to help you save without even knowing it.
You connect your bank account and it will work out how much spare change you have every week and will automatically add that to your plum account, which can either then be saved as cash and earn interest, or invested with the aim of growing your money over time.
It’s pretty popular too, there’s over 1,600,000 customers! Looking after more than £1.5 billion of customer’s money. That’s pretty successful considering Plum has only been around for 6 years.
And if you’re looking to reduce your expenses, Plum can also help you save money on your energy bills too.
It’s all within an app on your phone, on both Apple and Google, and super easy to use and get started, plus tracking your investments over time.
The app itself is rated 4.7 out of 5 on the Apple app store and 4.6 out of 5 on Google Play store. Not bad tall!
Overall it’s sounding great so far, let’s dig a little deeper.
If Plum sounds good to you already, here’s where to get started with Plum¹.
Is Plum good for beginners?
Yep! It’s actually designed for those new to saving and investing. You don’t have to know about investing at all.
All you have to do is sign up and set up your account, after that it’s all automatically handled for you. Pretty cool huh?
However, do be aware your money is at risk, which means the value of your investments can go down as well as up. So, you should always keep on top of the performance too.
If you are interested in investing, and want to learn more, here’s our guide to investing for beginners or head straight over to the Plum website¹, and they’ll guide you through how to invest with them.
How Plum works
Plum is here to help you save more, and save the right way, by aiming to grow your money over time.
You’ll need to link your regular bank account to Plum, which is super straightforward to do, and all the big banks in the UK work with Plum, so that’s banks like Barclays, HSBC, Nationwide, Monzo etc.
Then it will use all your spending information from your bank account to work out the best amount that you can afford to save, which is always a small amount. And it will move that money automatically out of your bank account regularly, and into your Plum account where it can be saved and invested. Pretty simple right?
You can also decide to transfer a regular amount to Plum (weekly or monthly). Plus, you can ‘round up’ your spending too, so if you spent say £1.49 on a lovely ice cream, 51p will be sent to Plum to make a nice round figure of £2. A pretty cool way to save money.
And that’s it. Automated savings and investing. Just check your account in Plum to see how much you’ve saved and how much it’s grown.
Oh one more thing, if you want to invest (rather than save cash) you’ll have to decide which type of account you want on Plum, let’s dive into them now…
Account types
When investing, you have 3 options, a Stocks & Shares ISA, a standard account (called a General Investment Account), or a personal pension (called a SIPP, or self-invested personal pension).
Let’s run through each:
Stocks & Shares ISA
This is the most popular account, and it’s got one great benefit. With a you can invest up to £20,000 per year, and everything you make is completely tax-free, forever! Not bad!
However, you can only pay money into one Stocks & Shares ISA every tax year, which runs from 6th April to 5th April the following year. So, if you’ve already opened one somewhere else and paid money in, you’ll have to wait until the next tax year or open a standard account with Plum.
General Investment Account (standard account)
This is the standard account, where there’s no tax-free benefits. However, you’ll only pay tax if you sell your investments within the account and only if that total results in a profit of £3,000 or more (from all of your investments, excluding ISAs, not just with Plum).
The tax you could pay is Capital Gains Tax, Income Tax and Dividend Tax.
Pension (SIPP)
It’s a great idea to save for your retirement in addition to a workplace pension, which is one your employer sets up for you.
If you don't have a workplace pension, such as if you’re self-employed, it's even more important to set and save into a pension to financially help you when you retire. Here’s our guide on self-employed pensions to learn more.
You’ll also get a government bonus of 25% of whatever you put in too! (and if you pay higher rate tax of 40%, you can claim some of that back too – on your Self Assessment tax return). Chat to TaxScouts¹ if you want help with this.
With Plum, you can open your own pension, called a self-invested personal pension, and get all the same benefits such as automatically investing your spare change.
By the way, you can’t withdraw money from your pension before 55, so make sure it’s right for you. Learn lots more about pensions and check if Plum is the right pension for you with our guide to the best personal pensions.
How much is Plum?
There’s actually a few different levels of Plum, which range from being free all the way to £9.99 per month.
Below is what you get with each, but it can be best to start with the £2.99 per month plan as you can then invest your money automatically, which you can’t do on the free plan, and then upgrade if you want a bit more support with saving your money, such as setting goals and separate account so save for specific things, such as a holiday, called ‘pockets’.
Accounts fees
Basic - free
- 3.51% interest on cash
- 2 separate accounts (pockets)
- Make your own investments
Pro - £2.99 per month
- 3.72% interest on cash
- 15 separate accounts (pockets)
- Make your own investments
- Automatic investing
- Set goals and challenges
- Cashback on spending
Ultra - £4.99 per month
- All of the above
- 3.72% interest on cash
- Plum card
- More stocks and funds
Premium - £9.99 per month
- All of the above
- 4.21% interest on cash
- Even more stocks and funds
By the way, these fees can sometimes change, so it’s best to check the Plum website¹ for the latest fees.
Investment fees
You’ll also pay fees on your investments too, and these are based on the total amount you have invested. They’re taken from your investments themselves, so you don’t need to actually pay anything yourself.
First, you’ll pay a ‘product provider fee’, which is Plums fee, and is 0.45% of the total amount you have invested.
Then depending on where your money is invested, you’ll also pay a fee called a ‘fund management fee’. This is a fee the fund itself charges to simply manage the investment, and this fee ranges from 0.06% to 1.06%.
A fund is a group of investments all pooled together, and it makes it much easier for people like you and us to buy investments – we can just buy the fund itself, rather than individually buying all the investments that go into the fund, which can be a lot.
You’ll pay these fees wherever you invest your money, they are very common, and these costs with Plum are very reasonable. You won’t find them much cheaper.
However, they are in addition to the monthly fee, so when added together it can make it slightly more expensive than other options, but with other options you don’t get the automatic investments and money automatically taken from your bank account, so we think it’s a very reasonable cost overall, plus it’s an easy to use app too.
For the full range of investments, head over to the Plum website¹.
Customer support
The customer service is good. It’s all handled inside the app itself with live-chat, so you can speak with an advisor quite quickly, and they’ll sort any problems you have.
You can’t call on the phone unfortunately, but you can send in an email if you like too.
There’s also a big help centre online with articles and FAQs to help answer any question you might have without speaking to someone.
Is Plum safe?
Yep! It’s authorised and regulated by the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority), which means they’ve been approved and are trusted to look after your money.
In addition, your investments are also protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), which means should everything go wrong with the investment provider, such as going out of business (highly unlikely), you’ll be compensated up to £85,000.
However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t lose money. The value of your investments can go up and down over time.
What do the people say about it?
Customers love Plum! On Trustpilot, the popular reviews website, it’s got an excellent score of 4.4 out of 5, from over 4,200 reviews.
The customers love to rave about how easy it is to start saving money and lots of help with budgeting. We love that.
Our thoughts
We really like Plum. Anything that helps people save and grow their money gets a big thumbs up from us!
It’s super easy to use and get started, and once you’re set up, it’s all handled for you. Perfect.
The customer service is above average, and there’s live-chat to speak to someone if you need a response quickly.
Cost wise, it’s okay, you can invest with lower fees elsewhere (such as Trading 212¹ use code NUTS to get a free share worth up to £100) but it's probably worth it for the simplicity and ease of the app. The integration with your bank account to work out how much you can afford to save is a great plus too.
It’s very much suited to beginners and helps people budget and save, so if you’re looking to invest a bit more seriously, such as managing your investments yourself, check out our best investment apps and our investment platform comparison table.
If you’re just after a pension, check out PensionBee¹ – it’s easy to use and low cost too, and check out the best personal pensions.
Overall, it’s great if you’re new to investing and need a bit of support saving. A solid 4 stars from us. Here’s where to get started with Plum¹.
