From the climate crisis to Black Lives Matter to struggling high streets, it’s all very well liking a post on social media to show your support for a cause, but is that enough?
It’s time to put your money where it can hopefully make a difference to your community, society and the planet.
Here’s how to work out how your donations, spending and banking can align with what you want to change.
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Episode #112 How to be ethical and money saving
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Ethical Consumer’s table of banks
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Transcript
(This has been auto-generated so there could be some errors where words have been misunderstood or punctuation missed.)
0:01
Welcome to cast chats with me, Andy Webb. from Be Clever With Your Cash.com. This is the podcast to help you make the most of your money.
0:11
In Episode 129, I’ll be sharing how you can use your money to make a difference.
0:22
Hello, great to have you back listening to the podcast, thank you so much for downloading it streaming it however it is you are listening to my show. I do really, really appreciate it. If you are new to the podcast and welcome, welcome. Thank you so much. I’m Andy Webb, I’m a bit of a money geek. I love finding all the ways to get the best value that I possibly can. From my money’s worth, it’s finding the best deals and tricks to spend less or wherever the money that I’ve got making it work as hard as it can be. So I’ve got even more money than to do with what I want to do with it, save it or spend it, whatever it might be. And I run the blog, be clever with your cash calm. So that’s where I’m spending a lot more time writing new articles all times do check that out and also have
1:00
This cast chats my little podcast here, which I loved every single week, get a chance to actually talk to you. And if you want to talk to me about the stuff I’ve mentioned here on the podcast or on the blog, and don’t forget, you can join the community over on Facebook, just head to be clever with your cash comm forward slash community and it will take you straight through to that Facebook page, you can join us and ask me your questions. I really want to hear your questions, not just about the stuff that I talked about today. But just broadly if you’ve got something you’re not sure about, that’s the place to let me know. And I’ll reply, or you can reply as well. If you see somebody else’s question, you know, the answer is a great place for us to share our knowledge about our money. Now in today’s episode, I’m going to focus on using your money if you’ve got money available to you, how you can use that to try and hopefully make a difference. There’s a lot of stuff that’s been going on in the over the last few months well over the last few years where there’s always something going on, but particularly think about all the stuff around climate change crisis around Black Lives Matter me to try
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writes, there were so many issues going on right now. And sometimes it can be a bit difficult to really think about what if you do care about certain issues. And also, there are so many more issues that you might be particularly passionate about? How do you actually do something that makes a difference. So that’s what this is gonna be about using your money to try and maybe hopefully bring about a little bit of change or support those who are trying to bring about change. So here we go, Episode 129 off cash chats, using your money to make a difference.
2:41
So this is a topic I’ve wanted to sort of talk about for a while, because it’s something that I do tend to kind of struggle with the idea of how can I actually help others? What can I do that actually didn’t make much of a difference? And often, I think when you think about some of those big issues that are affecting society, affecting the world
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The things you can do participate in, in general elections, local elections, they can be very important. But sometimes they don’t necessarily go, the way you might want them to sometimes they do depends, obviously, where you sit on that political spectrum. Sometimes you’ll see things happen. And you think, How can this be allowed to happen? How can this
3:19
exist in our modern society? And you can think, well, what can I actually do? What can I do that that makes a difference. And this came back very much sort of freshly in my mind. And over the last few weeks with obviously the Black Lives Matter movement. And you see the awful things happening over in the States. And obviously the reaction that brings us back here to think about also what that means for black people in the UK. And obviously, the things that you can do in a very sort of immediate moment are generally tend to be on social media. If you’re on social media, I’m sure that you will kind of you know, retweet or tweet the things that sort of stick to your personal beliefs wherever they might be. But I definitely found that with black lives matter it felt well
4:00
This is just I’m just retweeting something. What does that actually do? There was that whole day that blackout Tuesday, if you remember a few weeks ago, where the idea was people be off social media. And they would just post a black square to show their solidarity, their support for that for black people here in the UK and the US, and everything that’s been going on in terms of trying to progress that
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movement for some social change. But it also felt a little bit like, right, yeah, I’m happy to do this. I want to do this. But what does that actually achieve? But in the short term in the immediate moment, may be a sense of people feeling they aren’t alone, but longer term, what does that do? And that kind of feeling I’ve sort of fell on numerous occasions, wherever that’s around, other kind of social issues. You know, think about homelessness, gender equality, child poverty, you these things are kind of like they’re happening all around us all the time. And you buy the big issue that doesn’t necessarily mean
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I mean, that helps an individual it makes it makes a difference. It is important as homelessness, it’s still there. It’s still a bigger issue, what we know that sense of what what can you do what really makes a difference. And there are so many other sort of societal issues as well, I think about just the fair payment of tax on these big companies who don’t necessarily sort of the digital companies paying a lot less than the rest of us do. And then bored of that broaden in the environment, in the global warming crisis that we’ve been up until COVID. Sort of no reason at the top of the news agenda, week after week, is you know, this is something that’s happening, there are smaller things we can do. We can recycle, we can do this, we can do that. But can we do something more, you know, you might be passionate about conservation, again, could be the planet could be animals could be wildlife. You might be passionate about pets and animals here in the UK in a much more sort of smaller scale, and in fact, been on smaller scale. There’s nothing wrong with that local community.
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Making sure that there is a community that you could be from somewhere really small and see that sort of struggling, you could be just be in a bigger town, even the high street, you know that disappearing can have an effect it has on community
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medical issues and health obviously right now we have seen how important and vital the NHS is to us in the UK. But that idea of people having something that impacts their lives and wants us to do something more to try and prevent it happening to other people from you know, family members with cancer, dementia, whatever it might be, you know, Crohn’s disease, I know a couple of people who have do a lot of trying to do awareness around that.
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This is their all issues which
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if they impact us, and if we care about them, and we really want to do something about it, it can be quite hard content to think about what it could be we can do other than, you know, the obvious things and I’ll get onto that in a second. Obviously, thing is, is raising money but can we do more and particularly can we use our finance
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He says, if we have spare money, can we use that to try and further these causes these movements, this research, whatever it might be. So that’s kind of what I think I want to take you through, I’m not gonna give you the answers because you’re all gonna have different things you care about. Of course, you are different things that are more important to you than others, you might have opinions which are diametrically opposed to mine. And some of those, you may feel that you want to do something to support that. But whatever I think it is, it’s trying to think about using our money. So it actually is hopefully bringing about some positive change in society. And also, I want to touch on some other things that are going on particularly during lockdown, things like the arts and cultures, community, and journalism, those kind of areas which have been either particularly hit by COVID and a lockdown, but also some certain things which just haven’t been in decline and the importance of maybe using our money again to try and support those areas to make
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They are sustained and they carry on. And in fact, I think some of those things, the arts and the culture, although they can be quite
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wide scale, they also can be quite linked into that local community. So I think, first of all, I guess I’ve mentioned some of the things there, which I kind of care about, or some of them sort of the most obvious ones, but there will be all sorts of things you care about. So the first step here, if you want your money, to do some good, is to really sort of try and focus down to start with at least on those issues that are particularly important to you. Because I think it’s going to be very, very, very, very, very difficult to try and do everything at once and try and support everything if you don’t have enough money to do it. And if you did, you’d be paring it down to such small amounts, then you might be arguing does it actually make much of a difference? Perhaps you’re better off deciding where you really want your money if you’ve got that spare money, where it’s going to go and maybe choose two or three things that you want to kind of research a little bit further to try and make sure that the money you’re giving that way, it’s gonna hopefully do something you want to hope in the end.
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results, the end target of what your money is going to be useful will achieve something. So I’ll give you a few ideas there. And I’m also going to talk about some of the things where you might want to avoid putting your money.
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So you don’t sort of indirectly help support things that you are opposed to, as well as where you can put your money to good in actually making it go in the direction of positive change, and where you can take it away from places which you think are partly responsible for some of those bad things happen into the world to our society. So the obvious thing is to give your money as a donation to a charity, it could be a single donation, or it could be a regular direct debit. I’ve got an article on a blog, which I will link to in the show notes who sort of shares some of the different ways that you can give money on a regular basis. payroll giving is a really good one. If you’re on a salary job, find out if your work will let you give your every month a set amount of money from direct from your salary to a charity and this is a really tax efficient way.
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Doing it, the charity will get the same amount of money as if you did a Gift Aid, the exactly the same amount of money will go to them, they’ll get that extra cash that tax efficient one, but it is easy. It’s automatically done, the money comes from your salary straight there and is much, much easier. So that’s a great way of doing it. If not, you can set up a regular donation, you can have gift ideas on that, or you can to give a one off, you can do fundraisers, you can sponsor people. Again, more information about that on the blog about the differences between some of those big platforms, obviously just given is the biggest one, Virgin Givens pretty big, big as well. But there are all sorts of other ones which actually might be better choices for you to use in terms of making sure more of your money goes towards those charities rather than get caught up in costs and even profits as far as just giving is concerned. But you know about that you know about giving money to charities is an easy one to kind of think about the ones you care about. You can give them some cash. Obviously I would sort of suggest that you think here,
10:57
both locally and nationally.
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by small and large in terms of charities, it’s not to say that big national charities aren’t worthy of your money and aren’t going to make good do good with your money. But as always, don’t want to forget some of those smaller ones do some fantastic things particularly say in in local communities in those smaller groups who might well be forgotten, not part of those, those bigger charities. You can also I think, right important right now, and I mentioned in the podcast last week, and think about those ones where you might perhaps have gone to a charity shop in the past, they have been closed, obviously all the way through lockdown, they still aren’t open most of them where I am. depends where you are in the country, I guess different ones may have opened different charities might have open their shops, some won’t have done or some will be doing it soon. But a lot of the money charities get particularly particular ones will come from those charity shops which haven’t been open, so they are in sort of quite desperate need of funds to do think about those guys, as well. And when you give them this money, they will use it in all sorts of ways. Sometimes it will be direct help. So if you give money
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It will go directly then through to the people who need it. But sometimes it’s used for research again, particularly when we’re talking about the medical charities you cancer research there in the name, isn’t it? You know, they will have money, some funding, I’m sure that goes to rest by but a lot of it is about trying to find a cure. And that meds, the scientific funding with it, a lot of campaigning, a lot of political lobbying, that goes into the funds, which hopefully they can bring about that wider change that bigger change further down the line. So they may well be charities, and I say have that sort of directly his money which will go to alleviate the problem right now. But they’re also thinking longer term trying to do the things that will mean is no longer. Yeah, hopefully anyway, it stopped being an issue in the future. Although that may be you know, you might feel that’s a bit of a pipe dream. I think if we can do anything to support that, then that’s a good thing. Beyond charities, obviously, there are also organizations which do similar things again, back to black lives matter, you know, in the last three weeks
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34,000 people more or less, have given more than 1 million pounds to the Black Lives Matter UK, go fund me page. Now that isn’t a charity. But again, they want to try and do similar things about trying to bring about whether that’s education, or campaigning or research to try and bring about some change to the lives of black people in the UK. That’s a massive amount of money. So people are doing it, they are finding ways to do it. Obviously, that’s a big group. But there again, there will be all sorts of other organizations which will do similar things, which might not be a charity. But again, they are doing important things to try and to bring about change. You just got to find the ones that that link into the causes that you care about. And again, you think about things, although often sometimes they’re linked together. Sometimes these lobbying groups are charities at the same time Amnesty International, for example. It’s an NGO, a non governmental organization. It’s massive. It’s vast, it’s amazing things all around the world. But it’s also registered as charity locally. So how you give your money where you give your money, charities will get a gift
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Things like that the other groups won’t. But it’s well worth thinking about where your money is going to try and do a bit of research. When you think about that. Now the other thing about giving people money making donations, there is I think, some important stuff beyond those big causes.
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And what I’ve been to particularly over during lockdown, there have been a few things where I’ve been thinking about this. I’ve been sharing quite often here on the podcast or on the blog. Every week I do a kind of a cheap night into lockdown kind of recommend some things to keep you entertained while you’re at home while you can’t go out. And there have been some fantastic things people have been doing, particularly around to the arts and the entertainment sort of fears. We have had the National Theatre and many other theaters have free screenings on YouTube or their websites of some place and fantastic place. There have been comedy shows being put on again by comedians who aren’t working right now. There have been gigs that have been put on some of these very explicitly. They are fundraising for
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Or, let’s say the NHS, some of them such as you know, a lot of the theater ones have been explicitly, people in the theater communities, wherever that’s, you know, any of the production staff, the actors, the directors, the wider staff who work in the theaters. Some of it could well be like the musical ones. Again, it’s about supporting the artists. If you have taken part in any of those, if you’ve watched any of these free things online, then make sure you actually have contributed as well. You didn’t have to it’s a voluntary contribution. But do go back and think actually, Joe, what I watch this or what’s that I didn’t give to the calls they were asking me to give money to, and we can do that we can support that. And I think this brings about a wider thing again, because my local theater in Harrogate, they were small theater, they’re independent, actually a charity as well, but they’re very small, and they are really, really struggling. They may well not survive. COVID. So back at the start of the crisis, I took out a membership with them. So that was a way that I could pay an annual fee. I’m really it’s more than you would expect to get back in it but you asked it
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You’re giving that money to support them to help them maintain
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to help them exist, essentially.
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And there’ll be loads more places like that I took out a big issue subscription. The big issue is a perfect example of this, isn’t it because you are buying something, you’re getting something in return, but really you’re doing it because you want to help that cause something is really interesting. I don’t know about you, you might read different publications to me, but my main newspaper that I turned to is the guardian. And as we know now, let’s face it, most of us get our news online. Occasionally, I’ll pick up a paper in Waitrose, if I’ve spent the required 10 quid but most the time I will read it on my app on my phone or on the website. And every time you open up a little thing pops up. And they asked you to make a contribution or to join as a member to support the Guardian because there’s a decline in medium print news. It absolutely is. So they are obviously struggling in lots of ways. There’s advertising revenue comes in but if you want it if you believe in what they provide and the service the the journalism that they offer, for me, that’s quite a vital
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To support to give money. So we do that me and Becky, we are members of The Guardian. We don’t actually get anything in return for that we don’t get a paper to our door. But we are making sure that hopefully that journalism is funded and it can carry on because that’s, I think, a really vital resource right now. But you can go further than that as well. It’s not just the big publications like the Guardian, lots of podcasts and other cool content creators. They might ask for patron contributions, you basically pay a small monthly fee or you can make it a one off as well. And you get access often to extra content. So one of these was a fantastic podcast you should check out called the belling cat podcast, which looked into the downing of the Malaysian Airlines Mh 17. Plane a few years ago and we looked at basically these journalists they uncovered how these it was actually Russians working in Ukraine who shot down that plane. Those are fantastic podcast. It’s really good. It’s won all sorts of awards. But again, they are doing that they don’t have a huge amount.
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funding so you can be a patron via this website. I don’t know if it’s called Patreon, they spell it with an extra unit. So it’s called Patreon is the website but essentially, you’re a patron.
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And you can use money. Similarly, there’s a podcast, I listen to another one called five year plan, which is all about my football team Crystal Palace. Okay, so this isn’t something, again, a massive cause, but it’s something that I care about something I enjoy listening to. So I’m happy to give them a tip every single month just to support that podcast. So think about those things as well think a little bit wider. Think about arts, think about culture, think about journalism, think about other content that you like, because you can give money to support that as well. It doesn’t have to be about a big issue and campaigning or political slant, it can be just something you enjoy, but you want to make sure that it continues, such as a theater, such as a podcast about your football team. Okay, so that’s the first instance of where your money can make a difference making donations to places really simple. We know about that. And that’s very easy to do. You just need to do your research and work out who you want to give it to, which does take a little bit more time in some cases.
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The next way your money can make a difference is actually making a very deliberate and conscious choice of how you spend it. Where you spend it, what you spend it on, where you don’t spend it is equally important. Now, making these decisions can be really, really hard. It’s not always massively clear, when you’re making a decision that it isn’t ethical purchase, you might be thinking, buying things and not realize that there are connotations to how you’re spending your money. And this can be really, really hard. It also can be a bit overwhelming, but there’s so many different things, so many issues you might care about, how do you choose the ones to focus on so I have spoken about this more over in Episode 112 cash chats where I spoke to the editor of ethical consumer magazine, about how you weigh up being making purchases being a money saver, even and ethical choices and ethical, I guess, goals in terms of where your money is going or where it’s not going. Okay, so what are your goals, in terms of ethics, going back to the beginning, think about the things that are important to you.
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And then kind of trace it back to the high street, or online, however you’re spending money. So for example, let’s say you’re particularly worried because of lockdown what this means for local businesses, shops, restaurants, bars, whoever they might be, if that is something that really bothers you, and you want to make sure that they sustained then you need to spend money at those places, rather than the bigger national chains, the big internet giants, you know, Amazon, you can worry about how they are treating their workers sports direct how they’re treating their workers. So the flip side is you might be avoiding those as well pair those things together. Avoid the bad guys go with the good guys. And that might mean you’re spending more money is very difficult to sort of match up that kind of idea of money saving, you know, me, I’m always trying to save money wherever I can get the best price possible. But I’m also now much much more recently, I would say over the last six to 12 months, focusing more Okay, that’s the cheapest price over there, but I’m not going to
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shop with these guys. I’m going to pay more money because I’m getting it from these guys over here instead. That also can be about not just the big retailers, the discounters It could also be about things such as going somewhere and buying it in a shop because that has a knock on effects it means it’s less called a pressure on the couriers who we know they do a sometimes a frustrating job, and don’t always get us the things we want when we want them to condition we want them but they are under so much pressure. So if we can avoid that they don’t get paid much even you know, again, I don’t get into all the different individual different causes and decisions and social motivations here. But there’s so much you can do. The products you buy fair trade in the news this week. If you don’t know about fair trade, it basically means that the goods often it’s things like bananas, chocolate, tea, the things cotton even the farmers who produced it have been paid a fair price. And often these things again, they cost a little bit more money. But if you’re doing it you’re buying that you’re knowing that hopefully the
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supply chain is it got better monitoring within it and Okay, people who are producing this stuff are getting a fair price. In the news this week, Nestle announced that they will no longer be doing their cap chocolate via fair trade. That’s really bad news. I think for the people, particularly farmers who all of a sudden, they’re not going to get either the price they would have got if they carry on supplying cocoa to Nestle. But at the same time, they might also lose that business completely. But again, is about well, therefore that means if you would have bought this day’s cats before now, maybe you won’t buy them anymore. Choosing to buy a different fair trade chocolate. instead.
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You can think about bills.
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You know, it’s your energy next time you come to switch around, but you should always be switching if you’re if you’re not on a fixed term contract right now for 12 months or whatever it is, then you’re probably paying too much But whatever it is, you come to switch your energy next time, or even within your same company changing your energy deal that you’re wrong. Try make sure that it’s renewable Green Energy.
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Okay, what difference does it make? Do we know if it’s making a huge amount of difference, but it’s better than nothing, isn’t it, it’s a simple thing you can do a simple decision your money can make. And again, you might be paying a little bit more for that you might not, but it’s well worth thinking about it. You can make decisions based on getting a bike, you might have to pay for a bike, and they’re difficult to get right now, because everyone’s been doing it during lockdown. But you might decide that having a bike is a better mode of transport for you environmentally, than it would be, you know, getting driving all the time or using as much public transport or you might wanna use public transport more, rather than use a car I appreciate right now also, during everything’s going to recover. That’s not such an easy decision to make. You might want to have less flights again, right now. It’s an easy decision that’s been made for us And the world has reacted to that in terms of the planet has reacted that positively having so much less air traffic, but you might think, you know, this is something that for me was really sort of a real sort of stand out what I did when those carbon calculators early this year, was quite how much of my carbon
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footprint over a year was down to flights and holidays and things like that. So you monetize, right, I’m going to travel less by air or travel shorter distances if I am going to go, there’s lots of things ways you can choose with your spending money, places you wants to go places you don’t want to go, and alternatives which might be better for those things that you care about. And every single one of the issues that you care about, there will be a way that the money you spend can have an impact. Even the Black Lives Matter, we go for that. There are some companies, some trades people or whoever it might be who don’t support that movement, then you can avoid them. Likewise, you there will be some companies and particularly sort of smaller local places, which are run by black people, and you can give money to those organizations as businesses, those companies instead of others, potentially just to try and sort of make your money. Follow that kind of good intentions. You have back it up with some cash, but that’s why it’s so important to do your research on those causes to try and find out exactly what
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Where you can put that money. And the final one I want to talk about is really around your banking and your investments. And these could very easily be areas that you’ve not considered having an impact on those issues, that sort of societal change that you want to make that you care about, you might not have realized that they can have an impact on that as well. You might think a bank is just a bank. But when you leave your money in your account, or there’s a savings account, or just sitting there in your current account, that’s there for the bank to kind of use it and to invest it and they could be directly supporting organizations and trades that you are hugely opposed to or just generally opposed to you might not be something you daily think about and go Yeah, is it on the top of your agenda, but arms trade fracking, things like that? A lot of the big banks, but money is going to be going towards things like that, even if it’s not directly it’s also hidden around and that’s what’s so difficult with money isn’t it? You watch the movies, don’t you where they’re trying to track down some criminals it’s always follow the money. So I’m not saying you can always identify
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Fight as clearly as that. But there will be ways that you can make sure that certain clear things where you can see this money is going towards or an organization that is actively involved in something you don’t agree with. You can stop that happening. So ethical consumer magazine, which I mentioned earlier, I think is well worth checking out, you can get a free issue of it to try out one issue, and I will link to that in the notes as well. But this is something which they look at different topics all the time, but they have looked at money and banking. And the last time they updated the table was a couple of years ago, but I don’t think a huge amount would have changed on that. At the bottom of their chart. Their list of banks was Barclays, Santander at Lloyds NatWest and HSBC. And within HSBC, obviously, you’ve got first direct and m&s Bank within that Western got RBS and so on. They were bottom of the pile, in terms of your ethical decisions made by that bank. At the top of the list is a bank you might have heard of, it’s called Tria dose now only sort of launched sort of three years ago and that is generally regarded as the
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The most ethical current account and bank that you can get. Now, this actually comes with a three pound a month fee.
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And you don’t get anything in return for that no sort of snazzy rewards or freebies or high rate of interest that you are just kind of clearly paying money to make sure to support the bank and let them make those decisions. That means that your money is going to be sort of ethically invested in the long run. But there are some free banks which do quite well, nationwide building society that scores quite highly the new sort of mobile bank, Starling and munzo. They do quite well in terms of the scores not as high up there as trade offs, but they’re good ones to think about. So this is something I really need to address, although I have accounts with nationwide styling I’m on so I have also got accounts with Barclays, Lloyds NatWest first erect Yes, a lot of those bad ones as well. So I’ve need to address that. I think it’s something I need to kind of consolidate although it’s great to have all these accounts as reasons I have all these accounts and I make lots of money from them and little bonus little features ultimately
28:00
Things like, Is it more important to me that I get a free rental of a movie every month? Or is it more important to me that they aren’t investing in something like fracking or arms trades or whatever it might be some of those things I mentioned before. So have a look. Do your research, see how ethical your bank is? See, if you want to stick with him, wherever you want to switch over to one that is,
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does better in the scores not to be perfect. None of these things can be perfect, but we’re going to do a little bit better, hopefully, who maybe it’s about thinking well, where you put your money, then the main use of your money that can be somewhere which is ethical. No, there’s no money in your account. They can’t be investing it somewhere bad candidate. So that’s something to consider as well. And it doesn’t just stop with banking as well. If you have any investments, and let’s face it, most of us do, because most of us have a pension, any money that is invested, that too could be going towards those same areas which you might not agree with, you might actually be campaigning against on one hand, but your money might be backing up and supporting. On the other hand
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So have a look find out where your stocks and shares, who are they where are these trackers? Where are they going your pension? Where is that money invested, and there will be some ethical funds. And this is a growing thing over the last few years. As you know, I’m not an investment expert here. It’s not something I deal with on a regular basis. But I will link in the show notes over at be clever with your cash.com forward slash cash chats, one to nine to a few articles, a few resources where you can hopefully find out a little bit more about some of the highly rated ethical investment funds, trackers, whatever they might be, you might want to consider them moving your money over to one of those Now, you might find you don’t get as good a return. You who knows you might find you have higher fees to pay. But ultimately, in the scheme of things, this is you talking about? How can your money do good work and you can put your money to make some changes. Sometimes I say that will cost money. There you go. Lots to think about there. Hopefully it’s given you a little bit of direction, a little bit of a starting point to help you think about
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What you want to do with your money, so you can make a difference. So you don’t feel like you’re just retreating into an echo chamber of people with the same opinions as you that actually you’re getting out there, you’re doing something that is going to ultimately make a difference to whatever it is whatever that most important thing to you is right now. And maybe from there, once you’ve got one or two things, you can start expanding that look at other causes, getting more familiar with it, and maybe potentially move to something where all your money is ethically invested, all your shopping is ethical.
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And you are supporting again, those causes which are hopefully breaking through and making some change. And if they achieve what they’re after, then you can give your money to other charities and groups instead. And of course, this isn’t gonna necessarily be a quick, easy solution to anything. Just because you’re putting money behind something doesn’t mean it’s going to make that change straight away. But the more of us who do it, the more we get behind the things that we care about. Hopefully the quicker those sort of social changes environment.
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into changes, political changes, medicine advancements, they come along and they really can make a difference to us in our world and our society. I know I’ve got a lot to thinking about to do myself, particularly around banking and money and where it sits. And I’d love to hear about your thoughts as well what you already do what you’d like to do any ideas you’ve got a really good places to put your money. Let me know head over to that Facebook group. Be clever with your cash com forward slash community. Join us there and let’s talk a little bit more about the ways we can use our money to do good to try and bring about some change very quickly as ever to round out this episode of a couple of deals that you need to know right now.
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So a couple of deals to tell you about very quickly which end on Tuesday which is a 30th of June end of the month, often a time when deals do finish. Now the first one is around brewdog you’ll know them the craft beer manufacturer. They have had an offer going on throughout lockdown basis is the bars was shot.
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When you go onto their website, and you could claim a three schooner, which is basically two thirds of a pint of punk IPA, or punk AF, which is the alcohol free version of that IPA. Now that ability to claim that voucher, I’d say that ends on Tuesday. And as we now know, pubs are going to be opened again with social distancing in place from the Fourth of July. So you’ll be able to spend that voucher spend a voucher use that voucher for the first two weeks after the pubs open. So if you want to get back out there and support the pubs, personally, I’m not so sure about that. I don’t know if I’ll be heading out to any of them right now. While the weather’s nice, has plenty of time to sort of sit outside enjoy pint in the fresh air. If you do want to get a free schooner of that drink, head over to the brewdog website to get that voucher now. Again, I will link to that in the notes below. Now the other offer to tell you about which ends next week involves American Express. Now last week, if you listen to the show, I told you about the shop, small promotion, fantastic deal, spend 10 pounds and participate
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Pricing local independent retailers, you’ll get a five pound credit back to your card, you can use it in 10 different shops as a maximum of 50 quid, you can get hundred quid if you’ve got a supplementary card that your partner is using started this week runs for 12 weeks fantastic deal. Now to take advantage of that you obviously need an American Express credit card. If you haven’t got one, then you want to apply for one before the 29th of June, you have to pass a credit checks you might about to get one so make sure you do a soft check first of all, and I can link below in the notes to make sure you know how to do that. Make sure you can get it and make sure you’re comfortable that you can clear the spending on that credit card completely every single month because any cashback you earn any rewards you earn, they’re going to be completely defeated if you’re getting charged interest on it. So some credit card basics there but you know this right? So if you’re comfortable with a credit card company, you can clear it comfortable, you’re gonna be able to get accepted to one of these American Express credit cards. If you do it before the 29th of June. You’ve got double the length of time in order to be too
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To make the minimum spending that’s needed to get the new member bonus. And these can be fantastic. They can be worth 100 or 125 quid depending on which card you go for. And I will link in the notes below to a bit more information to help you pick which card is best for you. But fundamentally, you can get either 5% back on a limited amount of spending, or you can get bonus points if you spend a certain amount of money. Normally, it’s three months to do this, with locked down even with the high street kind of opening up and it’s like to spend a little bit more money as we go out. Three months is still pretty tight six months you’ve got you will be guaranteed I’m sure in order to spend either I think it’s about two grand two and a half grand, three grand depending which card you go to in that time in order to get the max rewards possible for you. Now, I should say you can’t get these new member bonuses if you’ve had an American Express card and the last two years. There was a little bit of work around haven’t got time to go into it right now. And I will link to an article about that on the blog. But essentially, if you’ve got
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card and American Express card right now, or you’ve closed it off within the last couple of years, but you do have a partner who hasn’t had a card, it doesn’t count, if they’ve had a supplementary card in your account, it counts if they haven’t had their own card, they can apply as a new customer. So they can get that bonus, and they can give you a supplementary card. So it’s well worth sort of checking out again, more information in the notes below.
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Now, thank you so much for listening. I really, really appreciate you every week coming back downloading my show, giving it a listen. Every week, I’m getting more and more people downloading it, which is which is amazing. If you have found this useful, please do give me a review and a rating. It makes a huge difference to how the podcast appears in all different search engines. It does really well when you’re looking in the apps it appears in the top lists and businesses are quite regularly by wanting to get higher and the way to do that is if you guys leave me a review and a rating. We’d really really appreciate that. Very simple to do. Just however you’re listening to this right now whichever app it is, just scroll through and it be very clear. Give me if you can find stuff
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would be lovely, and a few words about why you like the podcast. It makes all the difference. Until next time, make sure you stay safe is still two meters. Don’t forget that we’re still maybe saying two meters away from everyone. And even from not until the Fourth of July when all these other things come into place, there’s still plenty of time for us to get used to exactly what that’s gonna be for us as the shops, the bars, the pubs, the hairdressers do reopen. Until then. I’ll see you next week. Cheers.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
MUSIC
The music used on Cash Chats is Easter Island by Lonely Punk and provided on a creative commons licence