Taking a look at the wider FinTech space, I have been interested to see how my fiancé uses Nude (a savings app for buying a home) to analyse their spending according to the timeline to buying a house. E.g. if they stop spending on Wasabi, they can buy a house 3 months sooner.
I tried to use the shock factor to change my lifestyle, e.g. calculating my coffee obsession over a year to try and cut back on coffee, or using IFTTT to fine myself each time I spend at Starbucks for example.
Has anyone had any success with either financial betterment or lifestyle betterment with similar ideas? I would love to hear your examples.
I’ve just done some calculations on Slack with my colleagues. If I give up buying coffee for 12 weeks, I can pay for return flights and 7 nights in St Kitts in September. This is the sort of motivation that works for me.
Monday starts day 1 of coffee withdrawal headaches.
Only 2 cups a day. But that’s £7.30 a day and over 12 weeks that’s £630 which still gives me change for St Kitts. It’s just habit as much as it is addiction. I hope from Monday to start breaking it
This is great @jase I hadn’t thought to use IFTTT as a fine rather than a reward - now that we’re back in an office I could fine myself for grabbing a meal deal instead of making lunch
Love this, I think we may be very similar in our respective offices
I’ve actually just come back from Lisbon for a long weekend - to which I dived in to my ‘Travelling’ savings pot. I use the rainy day IFTTT rule - so thinking about all those rainy days in lockdown made those pastel de natas in the sun even sweeter!
You could use something arbitrary like the weather to decide on making food at home vs a meal deal. If the UV index is below X, move £3 from savings for my meal deal. It could run at 7am so you’d have time to make food if needed.
My best dad joke this week was after a meeting with the Illegal Money Lending Team for England, who told us about an ice cream man acting as a loan shark. I said “he should have his assets frozen!”