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A honest review of Plum, an AI Money Management app that helps you to set aside money automatically.

I’m really excited to publish this article today and share with you my experiences with Plum, a free AI Assistant app designed to help people set money aside automatically, reduce bill expenses, and get an interactive breakdown of their finances.

When Plum approached me a couple of weeks back to work together, I had heard of their app but had never really dived into it. However, after spending some time testing the app and really getting to grips with it, I’m pleased to say that I love the app and can’t wait to share some of my favourite features with you all in this Plum review.

**Note: The Wallet Moth is in an affiliate partnership with Plum and we have used affiliate links in this article – all opinions are my own.

What is Plum?

Plum is an app that uses smart AI to help people money their money smarter. It has a number of functions that I really like:

Plum connects to your bank account and automatically calculates how much you can afford to set aside each month, putting away extra cash for you without even thinking about it.

It analyses your spending: within hours, Plum was alerting me to subscriptions I had completely forgotten I had – it look me a couple of minutes to cancel them and now I’m saving at least £50 a month which I’m very thankful for!

Plum suggests where you could make savings – for example, on certain bills and utility providers. It also has the function of automatically switching you to a better supplier, with your permission required first.

The app is free to download and use, and took me just a matter of minutes to set up.

*The app is free to download and use – Plum does have premium subscriptions available at a monthly fee to unlock more features, however.

‘Upcoming regulars’ Subscription savings

I wanted to add a more detailed note about the subscription savings Plum helped me save money on.

As anyone who reads the blog on the regular will know, I am a huge advocate for tracking your spending and staying frugal by avoiding unnecessary subscriptions and memberships.

Honestly, I hadn’t realized that I had lapsed into bad habits and started ignoring my own good advice! As soon as I set up my Plum account and linked my bank accounts, the ‘home’ dashboard shows you:

• The amount you’ve automatically set aside this month
• Your linked accounts
• Upcoming regulars
• Latest transactions

It’s this ‘upcoming regulations’ section that I really love. This section displays you regular monthly payments (for example, for me that’s my energy bill, broadband, phone bill, rent etc, as well as business costs such as social media management tools, web hosting, design tools etc).

The section has icons that shows what type of payment it is (a lightbulb for bills, shopping bags for what is deems ‘entertainment’) which admittedly, aren’t always accurate – but this doesn’t really matter since the name of the expense and the amount is displayed clearly underneath.

Plum also will either have a purple or red ring around the expense. The red ring indicates you may be overspending on that bill – my Sky broadband bill, for example, is ringed in red indicating I could be overpaying.

That’s not really useful to me since I have a contract with Sky, but at least it gives me a heads up to do some research into better deals when my contract is coming to an end.

This upcoming regulars section did highlight expenses that were coming out of my account on a monthly basis that I definitely did not need any longer, however. Expenses such as:

• An online yoga platform subscription (great for lockdown, not really necessary now!)
• A subscription for stock-photos that I forgot to cancel
• A subscription for royalty-free music that I must have had a free trial for and had started charging me!

All in all, I’m now saving an additional £50 that I’m ashamed to say I had no idea was leaving my account! A huge win – thank you, Plum!

How does Plum set your money aside automatically?

So, my first question when I read that Plum automatically saves money for me was: where does that money actually go?

Plum sets up a direct debit with your bank to automatically add money (that calculates you can afford to set aside – so don’t worry, it’s not going to take funds you need for bills away from you!) and places it into a ‘pocket’ within the app.

The funds can be withdrawn in 15 minutes, and are a really great way to build up a little stockpile of cash with zero effort required. Last month, Plum set me £17 away for me – bearing in mind I only joined in the last week of August. I’m excited to see what I can put aside on top of the money I already send to my own savings account!

How does Plum protect your money?

PLum is authorised by the FCA as an electronic money agent, they work with an Electronic Money Provider partner to set up your E-Wallet (pocket), which is protected by E-Money Safeguarding Rules. If Plum or the E-Money Provider was to collapse or go into bankruptcy, you will be able to claim the monies back from the E-Money Provider.

Personally, I’m not planning on using this means of setting money aside as my main way of putting money to one side as I have a savings account with my bank. However, it will be interesting to see what the smart AI can do for me as the months continue.

CHECK OUT THESE OTHER APP REVIEWS:

• Trim Review: An AI Personal Finance App That Saves You Money Automatically
• Sweatcoin Review 2020: Is It Worth It?

Other Plum AI Reviews:

On TrustPilot, Plum receives a score of 4.3 (excellent) out of 5. 74% of reviewers rate the app as ‘Excellent’, while 12% rate it as bad.

The excellent reviews are largely down to the AI savings feature, with many people thrilled how much they’re manging to set aside. The bad reviews are mixed – some people are unhappy with response times, while others are fed up with the number of notifications they receive (admittedly, something I got frustrated by at first too – I changed my settings though!)

Interested? Give Plum a try and sign up for free.