Megan Micklewright: The Savvy Spender on Side Hustles

This transcript is auto-generated and lightly edited for readability, it may contain errors.

[0:00] Sammie Ellard-King: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Money Gains podcast. This is your host, Sammie Ellard-King, and today my guest is Megan from The Savvy Spender, who has recently won online financial influencer of the year, and her channel, The Savvy Spender, is absolutely killing it right now. This conversation is wicked for anyone looking to start their own side hustle or looking to make a little bit of income on the side. We talk about market research, cashbacks, um, budgeting apps, investing, all of these different types of things today. So this is a wicked conversation for anyone interested in those things. But if you are listening on YouTube, please do whack that subscribe button. And if you’re listening on Apple or Spotify, please do whack a follow button and leave us a review if you can. It really does help the show. But for now, let’s get started on the Money Gains podcast.

[1:00] Sammie Ellard-King: Let’s make some ready 247 podcast. So, Meg, welcome to the Money Gains Podcast. How are you doing? You well? I am good, thank you very much. Wicked. I’m so excited to get you on today. Um your journey with the savvy spender has been incredible. Um I’ve been following you for a long, long time now. And congrats on your recent award as well, the British British Banking Award. You won Best Financial Influencer of the Year, wasn’t it? Yeah, absolute shocker to the system. Was not expecting it at all. But yeah, now I hold the title of online financial influencer of the year until uh the next one. So yeah, it was um it was lovely to be able to win. Didn’t expect it at all, but brilliant achievement.

[1:46] Sammie Ellard-King: You’ll have to go back and contest your crown. I know, uh hopefully I’ll be able to do that, and uh hopefully we’ll get um a winner two years on the trot, maybe. We’ll see, we’ll see. That’d be good. Um would you mind giving the audience a little 411 about you? Yeah, so I am Megan, run the Savvy Spender platform, so everything money making and money saving, personal finance, anything and everything to do with finances, all of the soft stuff I like to call it, saving money, and then all of the hard stuff as well, the things that we think are hard anyway, you know, invest in, how to make the most from your money, how to make passive income. So anything personal finance related, you can find it from me. My main platform is Instagram, also have a blog and other social platforms as well.

[2:38] Sammie Ellard-King: Wicked. If anyone’s not following Meg, I highly encourage you to do so because I’ve learned a lot. Uh a lot of stuff that I didn’t really even know existed because I went down the kind of investing and and you like side hustle route. I know you do a lot of side hustles, but I learned so much about cashback and all of these cool little apps that kind of fly under the radar, which you can just add to your portfolio and like get quite a bit of money back out of them. Yeah, mega. That’s the thing with apps, when people aren’t talking about them, they’re easy to fly under the radar because people think they aren’t legit or they’re a bit of a scam or they don’t really know how to use them. And then people like myself, when they’re advocating for these apps and actually showing people look how easy it is to use, it just adds to that saving, and they’re so easy to use as well, and you’re making them savings without even really realising it.

[3:30] Sammie Ellard-King: I think I downloaded Cheddar off your recommendation, and I think I’ve done like 60 quid off that already, and it’s like just a few months, and I wouldn’t have had that money. So thanks for that. I owe you a pint. Can I have a commission there? I think you would have got my £2.50 bonus. I think that’s fine, that would do. That’d probably get you like a half a sausage roll in Greggs these days, wouldn’t it? So inflation. So um yeah, I wanted to talk a little bit about your journey today because um, you know, it’s always love to get to know our guests a little bit and their journey to what how they started, where they’ve got to. So, what were you like with money growing up and you and your household? I’ve always been quite savvy with money. I think it stems from my mum mainly. She’s always been really good with money, quite savvy. She was the one that introduced me to apps like TopCashback about 10 years ago, and she always did little side hustles as well. Um, she’s always been a hard worker, but I think she’s always struggled to kind of make ends meet, and she’s always done things on the side, and she actually introduced me to market research probably around eight, ten years ago, and she used to, you know, come back and say, Oh, I spent the afternoon tr eating yoghurt for 80 pounds, and I’d be like, This is crazy. How can I get into this? And that’s what stemmed me into them side hustles. And my mum’s always supported me with any businesses I’ve wanted to try and set up, and that’s kind of where it kind of stemmed from always wanting to make money, and then also I think seeing my mum always struggle with money, it’s always made me really protective of the money that I do have, which has always made me a saver. Ever since I had my first ever job, I’ve always put money up as soon as I get paid. I’ve always paid myself first. Um, I think no matter how much you earn, you can always pay yourself first, whether it’s five pounds, ten pounds, or a hundred pounds. Um, so yeah, that’s kind of where it stemmed and started from, really, just seeing how my mum is with money, knowing that it’s kind of precious and wanting to hold on to what I’ve got, but also make more of it as well.

[5:39] Sammie Ellard-King: So when you were younger, you I well, I had a quick look on your um your about me page, but you you’ve done quite a lot of side hustles when you were younger, right? I have, yeah. So it sounds so typical when you listen to these podcasts that someone says that they were the person that sold crisps and pop at school, but that was me. I had a little flowery Cath Kidston backpack. I used to go to Poundland every morning with my lunch money and buy multi-packs of crisps. Actually, say don’t sell them singularly, but you know, we’ve got to make money. Um and I used to take them into school and at break time and lunchtime I’d take it off and I’d sell them for a profit and I’d be able to keep that profit and then I’d replenish. That was my first one. Then I went into selling personalised bracelets at school, so I’d make them myself with names on. And then that kind of stemmed really as I left school and got older. I went into more serious things. Um, I had a forever flower business that turned into an events business where I used to set up baby showers, weddings, parties with different props. Um, and then just before lockdown, me and my sister-in-law actually set up our own vegan bake house, and that was absolutely booming. We loved it. We used to have our own kitchen that we rented out and we’d do cakes for takeaway, eating, and then kind of when COVID came along, uh it kind of ruined it a little bit. And then also I was pregnant, so we decided to put that on hold. Um, and then that’s when the journey of the savvy spender started, when I’d not long had my little girl um decided that I wanted to share my journey with other mums and people struggling with money or on low incomes, just to show them that you you can still live good whilst not having much money, whilst I was on that maternity pay, was a struggle having such a drop in salary. And I just wanted to show everybody my journey, and it just kind of stemmed from that and grew, and now we’re here.

[7:39] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, it’s an incredible journey. So let’s go back to a little bit there of some of the stuff that you were doing. Was there any kind of was it was there a reason why you didn’t sort of jump into it as a full-time business? I suppose you said you mentioned COVID, but why didn’t you go back to that after? I think it was the struggle of having a child when I first had my daughter. I didn’t know how I could ever make time for something on the side, and I think also making that jump from employment to self-employed life. At the time, I wasn’t in the right mind frame. You know, we’re so used to the norm of being in a traditional role, and that’s how you should make your income, and that’s the sort of family that I’ve come from. No one is self-employed in my family, so it was kind of that I guess fear of taking the jump from this employment that I’ve always had, and it’s always been my security, to something that I don’t know whether I’ll make enough money the next month. Um so that’s kind of what held me back from going full-time with it.

[8:47] Sammie Ellard-King: So when you started the savvy spender, what was the kind of first because when you first start an Instagram channel, it’s like you know, you’ve got all these mad ideas, you’re like, oh, I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do this. As you’ve as you’ve grown it, what’s what’s resonating the most with people? Do you think? I think that the reason why I’ve gained so many followers is because I’m just so real on there, you know, I’m not trying to sell anybody anything, I’m just showing my everyday journey, and that’s kind of what’s resonated with people, that I’m just a normal person trying to make more money and save money. And at first, I was just still as what I do now, I was just sharing how I make make money, how I save money, sharing all the apps, the little savvy tips that I use day on day to you know get the most from my money, and people just loved seeing that. And I think, especially now, more so than when I started with the cost of living crisis, a lot more people are trying to get the most from their money, and that’s what’s just gained that traction for more people to follow me.

[9:50] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, I love it, and it it’s it’s so cool to see. So, look, let’s talk about some of the things that you do talk about there, because I think that’s a really good for the audience to hear about this. Um, so let’s talk about cashback apps as an example. What what are some of the best ones and how can people utilize them in the best way?

[10:55] Megan Micklewright: So, my favourite one is TopCashback. I’ve literally been using this for around eight years now. Like I said, my mum, my mum introduced me to it, and it’s the best one because you can make really big savings. Almost anything you buy online, you will be able to save money through TopCashback. So the biggest things are when you’re doing your insurance renewals. So if you’re getting holiday insurance, car insurance, anything like that, you can go on there and you can usually get quite a big lump sum cashback, sometimes £40, £60. So you can do big things like that on there, but you can also just do your food shopping. So if you do online food shopping, you click through to TopCashback, you just shop as normal, you just search the retailer you want to shop with and then click get cash back now, which is a big red button that you can’t miss. And then you just shop as normal. So it’s nothing extra you have to do, really. Um, nothing you you have to remember when checking out. And before you know it, that wallet in your TopCashback account is just building up, and then you’ll have a stack of cash that you can then withdraw, either as actual cash or vouchers that you can use for something else. You know, you can even use it to pay some of your bills. Um, I’ve made literally thousands over the years since using it, and it’s money that I’ll I would have just spent anyway. So it’s it’s like a no-brainer for me. That’s my absolute fave. And then some of the newer ones that have come around, Cheddar, which is a passive cashback app, you just literally link your bank account, and then you spend as normal and any eligible retailers, you’ll just get cashback on. And then there’s other ones as well where you actually buy gift cards and you’ll get a cashback amount on the gift card. So if you’re shopping in Audi, for example, you’ll buy a gift card beforehand, you’ll use the gift card to pay for your shopping, and then you’ll get cashback on it. So, yeah, they’re my top three, but there are so many more. I could probably speak about cashback for a good two hours, to be honest.

[12:52] Sammie Ellard-King: So, when you say the difference between active and passive with these cashback apps, um you mentioned the TopCashback. Do you actually need to go onto the website and then click the button to then activate it? Is that how it was kind of like an affiliate link, is it then? Yeah, so with um TopCashback, yeah, that’s how I differentiate my cashback apps. So you’ve kind of got active ones and then passive. So things like TopCashback is where you physically have to make sure you do something to get that cash back. So you have to go on to TopCashback, search the retailer, click on a button, and then shop. Whereas something like Cheddar, once you’ve uh initially linked your card that you spend on, you don’t have to do anything. Sometimes every 30 or 60 days, you may have to reconnect your bank card just because of the open banking that it uses to track your purchases. But other than that, it’s completely passive. You can just shop as normal and you don’t have to do anything beforehand.

[13:48] Sammie Ellard-King: What a great way to make some money back that you were already spending. Like, I I just think implore anyone to do this. It’s even if you’re, you know, even if you’re you don’t need the money, it’s still money you can get back. And why wouldn’t you want that at the end of the day? Yeah. I remember from Bee Money Savvy would said to me on the first ever episode actually of the Money Gains podcast, and I absolutely love what she said about cash backups, is that her parents they build it up for the whole year and then they completely cover Christmas, so it’s just not a stress time for them. Yeah. Yeah. It’s and that’s it, you know, like you said, it doesn’t matter how much money you’ve got, whether you’re a millionaire, why would you not want to save money if it’s so easy to do so? And I actually did something really similar when I was um on maternity leave because I knew that my pay was dropping just before Christmas. I actually cashed out my TopCashback balance, which was £700, and that covered Christmas for me because my daughter was so young she didn’t need much. Um, but yeah, it’s a great way to do it, you know, just then it build up over the year and then cash out at Christmas, and there you go, even if it doesn’t cover the whole amount, you’ve still got something that you wouldn’t have had before, and it’s just so easy to do it.

[15:04] Sammie Ellard-King: 100%. Hey guys, Sammie here. Just a quick one. If you wouldn’t mind heading over to upthegains.co.uk, hitting the subscribe button in the top right hand corner, and entering your email into the box for your troubles. You will receive a free net worth calculator worth £25. Now, this net worth calculator, if you enter your assets and your liabilities, will tell you exactly how much you are worth today. Now, what you can also do is set yourself some financial goals and track your net worth along the way using this tool. It’s totally free. So head on over to upthegains.co.uk, hit the subscribe button, pop your email in, and you’ll be sent straight to your inbox in a matter of minutes. Now, back to the podcast. Um, so let’s talk about some of the side hustles that you talk about here because this is obviously a big thing. People love we’re saving them money, but how do we make them more money? They might be sitting in their job today thinking, you know, uh bills are going up, my my my rent’s going up, my mortgage is going up, what what whatever, you know, the costs are increasing across all different areas. And you know, you might not be in line for a pay rise. So side hustles are a great way uh of kind of subsidizing more income and hopefully increasing your income so you allow you to have a few more luxuries. What are some of the the great ones out there that you talk about most?

[16:27] Megan Micklewright: There are so many, and I guess it depends how much time you’ve got. But the ones that I recommend to people are uh market research, surveys, website testing, and mystery shopping. And those four are the ones I recommend because anybody can do them. You know, you go online and you research side hustles, and there’s so, so many out there, but not all of them are easy for beginners. You know, sometimes it takes a bit of learning beforehand, or you have to put some money up front. With these four, there’s no money up front, you don’t need any prior experience or knowledge. Literally anybody can get up and start them and start making money straight away. And especially with surveys, I think it’s a really um underrated side hustle because a lot of people see it and dismiss it because it’s not big amounts of cash. And none of these side hustles are get rich quick schemes, but it’s so easy to just do a survey while you’re making a coffee or when you’re watching the adverts, you know, when you’re watching your favourite TV program. You can make money in all them spare little bits of time you have, and you don’t even really realise you’re doing it. Um, but yeah, they’re so easy to start, and literally anybody can do them.

[17:44] Sammie Ellard-King: They’re just multiple choice questions most of the time, aren’t they? It’s so easy. Yeah, yeah, so easy. Just banging A, B, or C or D. Like, what do I actually think about this? And as you’re right, like, you know, you could be sitting on the sofa watching Netflix and you’re making 10 quid back out of the episode that you just watched. It’s not a bad way to spend it, is it? No. With this market research stuff, what what what what does that entail? Market research is so broad, there’s loads of different, loads of different like sectors of market research. So usually the most popular one is um either a focus group with a group of people or a one-to-one call, and it’s just giving your opinion on the said subject. So, for example, I’ve recently done one about cars, and it was testing um a car websites interface and giving my opinions on it, and it was an hour and a half call, and I got paid £250 for it. Um and you know, it’s actually not most people start market research because they want to make more money, but actually you get quite addicted to it because you enjoy giving your opinions, you find out about new products before they happen. Usually you have to sign NDAs, so you feel a bit special that you know about things before other people, and you just get to meet new people and network as well. So, although the monetary value is absolutely brilliant, and what drives us to it, there’s so many other benefits to it as well. And that’s what I love so much about side hustles that it’s the money that draws you in, but it’s the other things that keep you there.

[20:22] Sammie Ellard-King: The journey of what of doing them is actually quite fun, isn’t it? Like I’ve done a couple now, and they’re they’re just they’re just like they’re just enjoyable. I sat in a circle talking about what I thought about this new design for uh for a milk cart, and it’s like what am I doing? But you know 160 quid later and 50 50 50 minutes I was there. Yeah, yeah. So like the money is just unbelievable if you can if you can pick them up. What where are the best places to look for them? There are so many sites out there, um some off the top of my head, Respondent, which is a website. There’s an app called dscout, which is brilliant. There’s um a website called Zest Fieldwork, and they do a lot of product trials. So I actually got to um trial a shark vacuum for four weeks, and I got paid 80 pounds to do so. And sometimes they even let you keep the product. So a couple of my followers also did a different shark trial, and they actually got to keep the vacuum afterwards, and they got paid for it. So, you know, there’s a lot of perks to um market research. Some of them are so well paid. I’ve I don’t think I’ve ever seen a market research that’s under minimum wage or like under the hourly rate that you would get paid for your job. Um, so yeah, there’s so many benefits to them, and you can pick them up on so many different websites, and the more you sign up to, the more you’ll be chosen. So just get signed up to them all.

[21:55] Sammie Ellard-King: What do they do them on weekends as well? Some do. Very rarely you’ll find one on a weekend, but they are quite flexible with timing, so evenings or you can choose a time that suits you. I know a lot of people are obviously in nine-five jobs, so they might find it hard to pick up these sorts of side hustles, but there’s also a different kind of market research. It’s called an online community, and basically it’s where you get a link to a portal and you just have to answer questions and upload videos, and they’re the ones that you can do in your own time. It doesn’t matter when you do it as long as you do it, and they’re ones that really suit people at work. I’m currently on one at the moment, it’s all about insurance, and I just have to go on every day and answer a couple of questions. I think it takes me about 10 minutes a day, and I’ll get £75 for it. So it’s really, really easy to do them sort of ones when you’re you’re a worker and don’t have much time.

[22:51] Sammie Ellard-King: That’s amazing. So you can flexible it and you know, great for people out there that are doing the day-to-day jobs but want to make a bit of extra money. There are possibilities out there. Just so that everyone knows we will link to these apps in the description so you don’t need to go back and try and spell these out. We’ll put links in there for you because uh saving you that guys the hassle of of trying to find it on Google because yeah, there was a few there, wasn’t there? So um, I want to talk a little bit about your recent journey because you’ve been doing something else as well, you’ve been studying property, is that right? I have, yes. So me and my partner have always known that we want to get into something that’s sturdy. And although I have all of my social media platforms and they’re brilliant, and side hustles, you never know when these things are going to end. And looking at history, you know, the um appreciation of property and the property market in general, it’s always grown and grown in terms. Of monetary value. So me and my partner have been um we’ve invested a lot of money into our education for property, and it’s not something that I’ve spoken about publicly that much because until I’ve done it, I don’t want to recommend something. Um, but yeah, so we are currently learning all about different property strategies and just kind of getting into that world and kind of trying to supplement our income that way.

[24:21] Sammie Ellard-King: The reason I asked that is because you’ve obviously you’re doing all of these side hustles, you’ve now built the channel up, you had your your job before, which you know I know you now you you you’ve come full-time with with the savvy spender, but um like what that shows is that you’re diversifying your income streams and you’re constantly on the lookout for different ways to make money. And the property is a fantastic one because as you mentioned, you know, there’s it’s as stable-ish, as a stable as it can possibly get, really. When you put that against the stock market, or who knows, you know, Mark Zuckerberg might get arrested for fraud or and Instagram gets shut down. You just don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. But property, everyone needs a place to live, and often people need places to work, and there’s there’s there’s opportunity there if you can get your foot in the door. For someone who’s starting out that’s similar to yourself, like what’s what’s the sort of good step for them to take, do you think?

[25:19] Megan Micklewright: Is that in terms of property or just income in general? Property, I think that definitely watch what you are consuming. Um you can learn a lot from just YouTube, but I think that the biggest thing for property and anything in general when you are learning to supplement your income is um make sure you’re investing in yourself because when you invest in yourself, that’s when the money will come. You can’t get into something so, so big without investing into it. You know, you’re not gonna learn how to invest into property from a free course or from a couple of YouTube videos. You can learn a lot of knowledge, but you’ll never know the in-depth strategies without investing in yourself. And investing in yourself is everything, and it can be so scary to invest in yourself when you don’t have much money or you don’t really know what you’re doing. But when it when it comes to anything, you know, when you when you want to get into blogging, you can’t do it on your own, hence why I’ve got you there, Sammie. Um, and you know, even with something as I guess, you know, easy as content creation, you can’t even do that by yourself. When you get into the world of work, you need to know how much to charge or um how to learn the algorithm, for example, and you need to talk to people and um you know expand that network and invest in yourself. And that’s the biggest tip I would give to anybody that wants to get started in it.

[26:52] Sammie Ellard-King: So let’s say someone obviously you’ve grown an Instagram channel, so it’s probably a good side hustle to talk about. Obviously, you’ve monetised that now, you’re getting some work come through it, ad work. You know, I saw you at the BlackRock offices doing video the other week. Like you’re clearly obviously monetizing it, and obviously the awards speak for itself. But someone who’s interested, you know, there it doesn’t have to be finance, it can be in so many different, you know, ways. It could be yoga, self-help, um, you know, development, business, whatever it might well be. There could be whatever that person’s interested in, they might be wanting to create uh a social channel to that. What’s something that’s sort of the tactics that seem to work for you? I think that definitely get into something because it’s your passion. Um, I think when you follow your passion, the money just naturally flows and follows. And I think with content creation, whatever the niche is, you just have to be consistent, add value, and be yourself. Because if you try and be somebody else, you’ve then got to keep that up. And you can’t compare yourself to others and try and replicate what they do because it just won’t stick. And the biggest thing for me was creating that community feel and that relationship with my followers. And the reason why it works so well is because they trust what I do and put out there. You know, you’ve got to be yourself, you’ve got to be relatable, and you’ve got to be consistent because if you only post, say, once a week or never show your face and never show the real side to you, people are never going to want to consume what you’re putting out there. Um, so yeah, consistency is key and just being yourself when you’re first starting up. I still do now what I did a year and a half ago when I first started. I’ve I used to go on my stories every single day and talk when I had 10 followers, a thousand followers, 10,000 followers, and I still do it now with 30,000 plus followers because people want to relate to me, and that’s what gets people to follow.

[28:49] Sammie Ellard-King: People by people at the end of the day. Yeah, 100%. And you’re really not scared of putting your face out there. You know, every day you’re coming on there, you’re talking about your day, you’re talking about your lessons that you’ve learned, you you know, you’re giving people actionable tips almost on a daily basis, which makes people want to come back, and I think that’s really important. Like, and so on your feed, you do videos, but you do infographics too, and uh what works best for you? For me, infographics work better. I actually was speaking about this yesterday. I did a live with another content creator, and we were talking about like what works best, and I think for people starting out definitely, you’ve got to do what works for you. You know, trial and everything, you’re never gonna get everything perfect from the get-go. For me personally, my audience and um kind of engagement always comes from static posts. Reals don’t do as well, but then when you talk to somebody else, their reels might do amazing and static posts not so well. But I think that with Instagram, it’s all about visualization and people love the pretty photos with little infographics, and that seems to be what works well for my followers.

[29:58] Sammie Ellard-King: So let’s talk a little bit about saving money because that’s something that you do cover as well. If someone is listening to this podcast right now and they’re thinking, you know, these all sound great, um, and I’m looking to save, I don’t know, for a first house or you know, we really need a new car because it’s going to give way next year or whatever that might well be. What’s some extra tips that you kind of teach your audience? The first one is automation. So if whether you’re a good saver or not, automation will be your best friend. Use things like roundups. So whenever you spend, your bank can automatically round up to the nearest pound or 10 pence. Um you can also set up like standing orders, direct debits into your saving accounts, so you’re saving without even realising. There’s also apps out there like Plum. I absolutely love Plum because what it does is it analyses your spending and puts up what it thinks you can save. And it sounds bizarre. And when I used to hear people say that, I’ll be like, how do you not know there’s money going out of your account? But genuinely, you don’t realise it. And I’ll go into my Plum account and they’ve saved like £200 for me. And I’m like, where has that come from? How have I afforded to put that up? And that’s because it’s so passive that you don’t even realise it. So automation is your best friend. Get that set up because you will save without even noticing. And then, of course, again, going back to that cashback, make sure you’re using all the cashback apps because you’ll be saving money, not even realising it. And then them little things, you know, make sure you’re budgeting. Budgeting is an absolute game changer. Um, and it sounds so obvious to someone like me in the personal finance space. But before I started budgeting, I didn’t know where my money was going. I didn’t know how much how much my bills actually cost. I just knew kind of what I was paying roughly. But make sure you know how much money you’ve got coming in, how much is going out. Is there anything you can give way to, like subscriptions that you don’t really need, or have you even got subscriptions that you’re using that you didn’t realise you had? So checking in with them finances, make sure you’re doing it, you know, even daily, daily, weekly, monthly, whatever works for you, but you’ve definitely got to make sure you’re checking in with them finances.

[32:15] Sammie Ellard-King: 100%. Use technology as well, I would say, as a tool. If you’re rubbish with lists or you don’t work well with like Excel sheets or spreadsheets or anything like that, you know, tech and there’s some fantastic apps out there. Money dashboard neon uh is an amazing tool, can connect all your banks and your your credit cards up in one space, and then you can set yourself budgets um and based on your spending habits. But I too really love Plum. I think Plum’s a fantastic tool. I use it every day now um as separate uh investments. Uh I keep it as my like keep me accountable. Yes. Um, I want to have things on autopilot, and what I really love about it is you know, you can set it to you know very low, i.e., like, you know, please don’t take that much money out of my account. Or like I’m eager, I want to like be super aggressive, and there’s levels all the way down, and it’ll take the amount that it feels like that you can, and it will always leave you money left over. So it won’t, it won’t like take all your money out just because it’s like I want your money to save it. Like it’s very clever the way that it does things, and you get great interest from it now. I think it’s like 3.7%, which is pretty decent, um, you know, against the market right now. Um, so yeah, I would highly suggest Plum and Money Dashboard near and they’re really great apps.

[33:39] Megan Micklewright: Yeah. Um, do you invest? I do, I do. Um, it was something that self-taught myself. Um, you know, I think a lot of people hear the word investing and they just kind of pass it off because they think it’s for the rich or you need loads of money, and it couldn’t be further from the truth. Absolutely, anyone can invest. Um, and there’s so many things out there now that make it easier to invest. You know, it’s not all about them individual stocks and having to read financial sheets and all that jargon that you know the individual person don’t understand unless they learn it. You know, there’s things out there like ETFs where there’s so many different businesses within one thing and you’re diversifying straight away and it basically does all of the hard work for you.

[34:25] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, ETFs are amazing. Like I I highly recommend people that are starting out just to buy a simple global ETF or index fund and just put their money into that whilst they build up their knowledge, and then even then, you might then decide actually, I just want to carry on doing that, and that’s a really great strategy. A lot of people you’re you know, a lot of people will beat people that pick individual stocks just by doing that. So you could just be sorted straight away. But like if you’re like me, I like trying to take a little bit more risk with some of my money, and I like picking individual stocks, and so I have like a portion of my wealth in index funds, and then the rest of it I like playing with, and because I like I love researching businesses, and but if that’s not for you, man, like just crack on with your index fund and get on with your life, like yeah, that’s what you were doing. So, how do you proportion some of your salary? I know it’s a bit different for you now. In fact, I see it’s probably a great question, really. Now you’re self-employed and money comes in different periods of the month. How are you budgeting? How are you like looking ahead to the next month?

[35:31] Megan Micklewright: So I’m still trying to kind of find my feet with how to go now. I’m self-employed, you know. I’ve always been intrigued about how self-employed people do it when they’re unsure of what their income will be or when money comes in in all different days. Um, and kind of the what I’m doing at the moment is any money that I do earn is just going straight into a business account. And once I’ve taken out tax, I just keep it there building up. And then on my usual payday, which would be the 22nd of each month, usually when I was employed, I will pay myself to my bank account. Oh, nice. And I’ll just pay myself a salary so I know that um, you know, I need X amount to cover my bills, then X amount to save, and then X amount to invest. So every month I have a minimum amount of £200 that I want to invest, but then also I will set myself a goal of um, so this month, for example, my goal was £500 to put into my investment portfolio. And as long as I get that minimum of £200, it’s fine. But my goal is £500, and if I get there, that will be a bonus. But like I was saying, you know, if someone’s listening to this thinking, I don’t have £200 to spare, you can start investing with a pound, you know, you can start with a pound, or if you’ve got £10 a month, it doesn’t really matter the amount as long as you start, because when you start researching into investing and the difference it can make to your finances in the long term, you will want to get started straight away.

[37:03] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, yeah. I I you hit the nail on the head there. There is no reason these days everyone’s got a pound at some point in a month. And if you don’t buy even that bloody mass bar is nearly a pound now these days, so don’t buy that mask bar. Fredo, if that turns a pound, then we know the world’s gone to shit. Um, but yeah, you have no real, you know, there’s no real stumbling block for you. And losing a pound isn’t gonna, you know, be the end of the world. But when I first started out, I I bought uh a couple of stocks, which I still own to this day, actually, Microsoft and Apple. I’ve never sold them. I don’t think I ever will. I’ve always topped them up as well. Um, because I just think they’re great businesses and you know, they’ve it’s paid off. They’re two of the biggest companies in the world, and and rightly so. But you know, if you go and pick a company and it does drop by 20%, that’s 20 pence you’ve lost, but you’ve learned a lesson, you might learn why it dropped, or why, oh, I picked that, and actually, you know, their their main product hasn’t been doing that well recently, and that’s why they’ve dropped. Now you’ve made now you’ve had a lesson, you’ve learned a lesson. But it was a 20 pence lesson rather than you putting 10 grand in and you losing a couple of grand. That’s a that’s a different conversation, right? So if you’re starting out and you’ve got a bit of money, maybe you come into some money with some inheritance or whatever that might well be, you can set aside a portion of that while you learn, you know, put the rest into an index fund if you want to start picking individual companies. You know, I have a lot of fun doing it, but not everyone wants to, and it’s totally fine.

[38:34] Megan Micklewright: Yeah. Um I mean, I use um Trading 212, and they actually have a practice platform, and you can, you know, invest into the stock market with practice money. And although it’s obviously not the same and the same emotions aren’t into it when it’s when it’s real money, it gives you, you know, that chance to learn about the stock market. And, you know, if you thought X would be a good investment, put some practice money into it and see what happens and watch the stock market. So, you know, there’s ways around it now to be able to learn about what the stock market does before actually putting your own money into it. And I think, you know, social media is an amazing thing because you can learn so much for free. And there’s so many amazing Instagram platforms out there that teach you about investing, and it’s giving the outreach to the average person that wouldn’t otherwise go and research it off their own back. So, you know, there’s that utilize what’s out there, utilize those platforms and people that give away all this content for free because it’s it’s invaluable, really.

[39:38] Sammie Ellard-King: 100%. So follow the savvy spender is basically what you’re saying now. And Up The Gains. No, but you’re right, there’s so many great ones out there these days. Well, back when I was starting 10 years ago, and you know, Instagram was just sort of starting around, yeah, it must have been must have been just starting. God, I’m getting old. Jesus. Um there was no one out there, it was nothing other than Martin Lewis um and a couple of others that were US-based, that were good. Um they were the ones that you could have access to, and they were so jargon heavy, they were really difficult to understand back then. Um, and nowadays there’s tons, you know. Mr. Money Jar is one that I follow who’s fantastic if you’re looking to for accounts that you, you know, trustworthy accounts, he’s fantastic. Um is it Budget Jones Diary? Budget budget what looks like.

[40:32] Megan Micklewright: Yeah, she’s amazing for anything budgeting, anything kind of just wow, she’s an accountant by Korea, so her content just you know um reflects that her content is brilliant. Yeah, she’s very good. And there’s so many out there that I that it it is great, but you know, if someone starts banging the crypto drum, then you know you’re listening to the wrong bloke, I would personally say. Um so um Megan, yeah, I’ve loved this. It’s been such good fun. There’s so many actionable tips in here. We’ll leave lots of links in the in the description below. So if anyone wants to access some of the apps that Megan mentioned, um, then we’ll leave links there for you so you can get yourself signed up to some cashback apps or hopefully get yourself on some market research jobs. Um, that’d be great. But Megan, if you wouldn’t mind telling everybody where to find you.

[41:22] Megan Micklewright: So you can find me on Instagram at the savvy spender official, also on TikTok and my website, thesavvyspender.co.uk, but don’t check that out yet because still I haven’t finished it. Well, if you follow me on Instagram, you’ll find you’ll find out when I have finished it. So yeah, look forward to um greeting you on my social platforms and helping you learn a little bit more about all things money. Awesome. Thanks, Meg. We’ll catch soon. Thank you so much, Sammie.