Beanstalk has helped thousands of families begin saving in 2021 and as the New Year approaches, we’ve pulled together our top 6 tips to help you save more for your children, and yourself. Remember it does not matter if your goal is to save a lot or a little – just making a start is half the battle won.
1 – Invite family (grandparents, aunts & uncles) to become donors
One of Beanstalk’s unique features is the ability to invite others to be linked to your children via the app. Once invited, donors can send one-off top ups, set-up regular contributions or use any of the other tools to contribute to your child’s Beanstalk account. Donors can view all their contributions to each child they're saving for and send messages with their top ups. In the parent view of the app, you can see who has contributed and reply to donor messages.
2 – Share your child’s gifting page with friends
For friends and family who you might not want to be linked to your child’s account, you can share your child’s personal gifting page. This can be used to send one off top ups to your child’s Beanstalk account (up to the value of £250). Gifting can be convenient alternative (or accompaniment) to buying presents at birthdays and other special occasions.
3 – Set up Round Ups and save your spare change
Save on autopilot with our Round Ups tool. Link your Beanstalk account to your current account or main spending cards and every purchase you make will be rounded up to the nearest pound and the spare change will be saved into your Beanstalk accounts.
4 – Use KidStart to receive free top ups
When you shop online at retailers such as John Lewis & Partners, eBay, Sainsbury’s and thousands of others, you can use KidStart to receive a percentage back which is automatically saved into your child’s Beanstalk account. Simply go to the KidStart tool on the Beanstalk app and select the retailer you wish to shop at. Donors who you invite can also use KidStart to earn money back for your kids on their shopping.
5 – Earn referral bonuses by sharing Beanstalk with friends
If you know other families who would like to use Beanstalk to save for their children, you can refer Beanstalk to them and in return we will give you (and them) £5 for each account they open. There are two ways you can refer someone to Beanstalk, i) by sending them a message from the Refer tool in the app and ii) sharing your personal referral link which is also available from the Refer tool in the app.
6 – Save on fees by switching
Was your child born between 1st September 2002 and 2nd January 2011? If so, they’ll most likely have a Child Trust Fund, which was a government initiative at the time that gave children £250 to open a CTF. Often these accounts are difficult to access and have high fees. You could save money on fees by switching to a different account. Beanstalk’s fees are only 0.5%, you can manage the account through an easy-to-use app on your phone and we’ll take care of the switch for you. Here’s how to locate your child’s CTF if you don’t know who the provider is and how much you could save if you switched to Beanstalk.
What are you going to do to try to save more in 2022? Tell us what your tips and strategies for saving money are – we’d love to hear them. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter or find out more about a Beanstalk Junior ISA here.