Moneybox – is rounding good?
In the current world, where money is tight and prospects grey, how can regular people save money while also caring for the environment. There are, of course, a number of choices and I am not qualified to give investment advice but I have been asked to talk about one app I use, Moneybox.
What is Moneybox, well hopefully it is a little more secure (but less cute) than the box above. Moneybox is an app that rounds up your purchases to the nearest pound and deposits the difference into an account. So, if a cup of coffee costs £2.60 then the app will round your purchase up to £3.00 and deposit the additional 40p into the account. While 40p doesn’t sound a lot, if you have one cup of coffee a day that’s £2.80 a week, £11.30 a month or £146 a year (and that’s just from a coffee)
Once the money is in the account you have a number of choices as to how to invest it. Obviously, all investment carries risk so, arguably, the safest option is to keep it in cash (a bit like an electronic money box). However, if you wish to take some investment risk then there is the option to invest in an ESG fund. ESG stands for “environmental, social and governance”, which means the investment fund targets companies based on how they respond to “climate change, treat their workers and manage their supply chains.” While this is probably not perfect it is, at least, more environmentally focussed than many investment funds I’ve seen.
I have found Moneybox very easy to use and often I forget about it for weeks at a time as it does its thing in the background. There are lots of advance options, like weekly top-ups from your account, lump sums donations etc but for the starting saver it may be that merely the rounding function is good enough.
The website with all the details is here (https://www.moneyboxapp.com/)
