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Financial Tools for Women: Budgeting Apps, Investing & Buy Now Pay Later | Mini Episode

October 22, 20260 comments♥ 0
00:00 Love to speculate on upcoming player trades. We get it. Wish you could do more than speculate on investing? We got you. Cooperators can help get your investments in the game. Cooperators. Get investments, insurance and advice from someone who gets you. Terms and conditions apply.
00:24 We are coming on to the section of the podcast called Buy or Buy Bye. Okay. Where I'm going to show you something. I would love to know whether you'd buy this thing or say bye-bye. is in goodbye. Okay. The only rule is we love nuance. Social media tends to not have enough of it.
00:38 So if you're on the fence, then please feel free to share your thoughts. Okay, good. That's what I was about to ask. Can I be more specific? Yeah. Absolutely. Starting off with budgeting apps. Okay.
00:52 Controversially, bye-bye. Because I think people jump to these too early. I think people use them as a bit of a crutch. And actually you can do a lot of the heavy lifting yourself, very early on and should do. So what these effectively do is go through your bank statements and tell you where you're spending your money and then will suggest ways you could split out your money.
01:14 But they're doing it based on like algorithms and percentages that don't necessarily know you in and out. And what I think you should do first is download your bank statement, go through it and do your own spreadsheet on it. Or just go through your bank statement on your phone and write notes of like where you are spending and where you're not spending. And start there because I think sometimes these sort of are like a pretty picture over your bank statements,
01:38 but they're not giving you the full intricate details. So yeah, I think once you're a bit more confident and you're aware of your spending habits, then go here. I think these can mask spending habits, which I think is a bit dangerous. There's something uniquely humbling about going through your bank statement and you're like, has my card been stolen? Oh, I know. I know.
01:57 And it happens to everyone. We all have weird spending habits. and also different times of the year, like spending is quite seasonal. I just think, yeah, I think you should, if you're going to look through your bank statements, do it intentionally. Don't let an app just tell you the highlights
02:11 until you're more comfortable. Nice. I love that. I don't know what this is. Cash stuffing. So I think what we're referring to here is like when people put cash in envelopes, so you can obviously budget your money out. I'm going to say bye-bye because it's a bell to school.
02:29 Fine. Yeah. Stocks and shares, ISER. Yeah, we can do that one very easy. 100% buy. So, stocks and shares ISO. So in the UK, we have four adult ICES. So ISA stands for individual savings account,
02:43 and you can have a cash, stocks and shares, or you can have a lifetime or an innovative finance. The stocks and shares ISO refers to. It's basically an investment ISA, where you can invest in the stock market in its entirety within a tax wrapper. So the ISO element, individual savings account refers to the fact that any money you make in there. So with
03:04 investments, it's like dividends or capital gains, is tax free. So dividends, sorry, it's jargon that spreads out. Dividends are if you buy a stock or share, they mean the exact same thing, basically, in a company. Let's imagine it's like Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola shares are not going to skyrocket because they've been in what they are. They're just going to probably grow slowly over time, but they're not going to skyrocket like the likes of AI shares. So, So what Coca-Cola does often is it releases dividends out to its shareholders. It does this for two reasons. One, it incentivise people to continue to buy dividends or buy stocks in Coca-Cola.
03:41 But two, you may be a shareholder of Coca-Cola. You may own £10 of it. But who else is a shareholder is its CEO C-suite. Dividend income is usually taxed at a lower rate than salaried income. So a lot of businesses release dividends because if they release it to their, one shareholder, they have to release it to all. And so often it means, yes, the CEO of Coca-Cola is getting a slightly larger chunk than you are probably as a 10-pound investor. But that's what happens.
04:09 And so across the board, they're releasing dividends. So it's income that gets released from your ownership of a share. And then the other way to make money in stocks and shares is through selling the share for more than you've paid for it, which is called a capital gain. So you're making a gain on your investment. And any money, like I said, that's made, whether there is dividends or capital gains, in a stocks and shares ices is tax free. You can only put up to 20K per person per tax year into a stocks and shares iser,
04:36 but it is something that I'm like a huge advocate of because it is a really great way to build wealth over time. The barrier to entry now with stocks and shares is so low. And I think a lot of people have this like bad misinterpretation that it's gambling if it's investing. And from the majority of the time, you can educate yourself in such a way that it doesn't have to be like that.
04:56 If someone is very new to a stocks and share icer, what would be your first steps? Do you have any platforms you recommend or? So I work with Trading 212 purely because I have had Trading 212 for years and years because they're low fees and super easy to use
05:11 but there are other platforms online you just need to search for the one that suits you. I would say if you're just starting out as well when you are finding them low fees like I said one that makes you feel comfortable as well because some of the platforms can be a bit confusing and make sure as well that you're not just taking the one that your dad used
05:28 or your friend use, like do your own research. And yeah, like I said, you can start really small. It's kind of like buying clothes on ASOS nowadays. Like the platforms are so user-friendly. You deposit money into the account. I'm making it very oversimplified. But there's a few steps to open the stocks and shares. I deposit money into the account and then just buy individual shares
05:48 or you can buy ETS, which are like groups of shares. But I think we'd need like an entire other hour to go through like the intricacies of this. But yes, stocks and shares I says, I would, is a definitely, definite buy for me. And I would also plug your socials as well. If you want more information, then we will leave Abbey socials in the description. I've definitely got lots of investing education there. Bye now, pay later.
06:11 Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Buy-now pay later, the way this works, if you're unclear, because a lot of people think that this is just like borrowing money for free, but nothing is ever free. You see buy-now pay later often on like clothing websites. It's a very pink credit, pink debt. where this is a debt, you are borrowing money,
06:31 and it's been very pinkified in the last few years because it often gets put on things like clothing sites and places where it's considered more feminine purchases, right? But I think it's become more and more dangerous nowadays that you can find this on like Deliveroo and all the rest of it, like spreading the cost of like food across a few days. It just can, I just feel like it incentivise people to spend money that they don't have and that worries me.
06:54 So these companies like make money by going to the, the clothing provider, let's say, that you're buying a dress online and saying this person wasn't going to buy the dress, but they did because they used Buy Now Payless, so you owe us a fee. So that's how they make their money. They make their money through the merchants, which is okay, but it's a slippery slope with yes. And if you use Buy Now Pay Later really wisely
07:17 and you just pay off those throughput installments very quickly, it may be efficient for you to spread the cost over three months. But if you are at any risk of pay pay, purchasing outside of your means, i.e. you're spending more than you earn and you miss a payment. It can very quickly spiral. Those fees can get very spicy very quickly. The interest can really ramp up. And for years, by now pay later, wasn't attached to your credit rating. Now it is. And so it can then have really detrimental impacts on your credit rating, which can then impact your ability to lend in the future, which I think is one of the reasons I say bye-bye. Because unless you are
07:53 really comfortable knowing that that money is there to pay that off, then don't use it. I didn't realize it wasn't as touch to your credit rating and now it is. Yeah, so it was about a few years ago because it was such a new kind of concept. These credit rating agencies hadn't caught up yet. And now they have and it's now part of it. And it can therefore have impact on like the amount of money that you end up lending for your mortgage, for instance, because the banks don't like that you have other debts,
08:18 basically. It can impact or you've like missed a payment can then impact the percentage you get from your mortgage and all the spirals. Yeah. Okay. getting a financial advisor in your 20s? I think if you are earning less than 100,000, this isn't a set number.
08:42 Yeah. But bye-bye. If you are getting to a place, like I said in the earlier, where you've got enough money that actually, it doesn't make sense for you to manage it yourself, then maybe, you know, if you come into a windfall of money or you, you know, get a huge pay rise, maybe.
09:02 But I do think it's so important that you do enough education in your 20s and take it on yourself. I think some financial advisors prey on vulnerable people and say like, oh, start early because then we'll help you. But often all it means is for them, their interest is compounding as well as yours. But they can have then like huge percentages off of your pensions and your income for over a long period of time.
09:24 And also if your financial riser isn't giving you education, they're just doing for you, that would also be a huge bye-bye. for me. Without going to go into decalable on the stocks and shares and the ECFs, I would just like to share another semi-bad financial mistake that I made, but actually I don't see it as a financial mistake. In the end, I still ended up better off. But thank you for listening. If you would like to hear the full episode with even more jam-packed knowledge, then just click the link in. So your decaf oat milk extra but not piping hot, four pumps of caramel, no sugar, small latte,
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