Catch up on the top articles, podcasts and videos from the last 12 months.
As we say goodbye to 2019 (and the decade) I thought it would be a good time to look back on the most popular content from Be Clever With Your Cash.
Here on the blog I’ve written 149 articles and shared 284 special offers (not including hundreds more over the Black Friday weekend). I’ve produced 53 podcasts and 33 videos, as well as 8 hours of Shop Smart Save Money on Channel 5.
No doubt even the most regular readers among you won’t have managed to take in all that money-saving and making content. So here’s a quick month-by-month list of the highlights that are still well worth a look.
January
Back at the start of the year, I wrote about how you could fix your finances in 2019. This four-part series is a must-read if you want to get on top of your money.
One of the most popular articles of the year looked at whether it’s worth selling books, DVDs and CDs online, covering places like Music Magpie, CEX and Ziffit.
The highlights for me and the blog over the last 12 months.
As has now become tradition, I use Be Clever With Your Cash’s birthday as a chance to share with you the good and the bad from the last year.
I rarely write about “blogging” itself or the challenges of running my own business, so also it’s a good opportunity for me to reflect on how things have gone and give you a bit of an insight into what happens behind the scenes.
Plus, I’d really appreciate it if you can fill in my annual survey so I can get your feedback on everything I do.
The business
It’s been a pretty big year for me. Though I quit my job at the Money Advice Service in May 2018, I immediately went on to work at least two days a week on Shop Smart Save Money on Channel 5 for just over a year. So it wasn’t until that finished last summer that I was finally 100% self-employed.
I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time, but when it happened I actually found it really overwhelming. I’d put off so many ideas and tasks until I had more time that when that time finally came I had a bit of paralysis in terms of what to actually do. Which meant I didn’t actually do anything new!
Fortunately, that only lasted a few weeks after I realised I still couldn’t do everything I wanted. So I focused instead on kick-starting my Cash Chats podcast and YouTube channel which had both taken a back seat during filming (more on those later).
I still don’t have enough time to do everything I want, but I’m really enjoying the ability to help you all as well as reach new people via these other formats.
There have been other challenges too. I’m essentially on my own in my basement office five days a week, so I do miss having colleagues around me. One thing that’s helped is a weekly video chat with some of my fellow money bloggers from my UK Money Bloggers community, many of whom are in the same boat.
But there are good things too. I love that I’m not constrained by working 9-5, or Monday to Friday. I’ve been playing tennis twice a week in the day and (despite how expensive my local David Lloyd club is) it’s the highlight of my week. I occasionally let myself sneak out to the cinema too!
The blog
My focus, of course, has been the blog itself, and it’s gone really well – though it’s not always been a certainty!
Most of my traffic comes from Google searches, which can be quite unpredictable. Every month or so Google releases an “algorithm update”, which (in theory) makes the search results better for everyone. As someone who runs a website these changes can actually be a little scary.
I’ve had months where previously popular posts have lost most of their traffic after an update, followed by them regain much of what they lost with a later change.
It’s frustrating, and particularly hard to keep on top of this as a lone blogger when you’re competing for the top results with massive publishers backed by team’s who’s only job is “Search Engine Optimisation”, aka SEO.
But even with these ups and downs, pages on the blog have been viewed just under 1.6 million times in the last year, with November getting 179,000 odd views – both best-ever figures since I started.
And obviously that all adds up. In a few weeks time, Be Clever With Your Cash will have been visited by its 4th million person since it launched. When I started the blog I never imagined I could help this many people.
It’s impossible to know if every person has taken some action after they’ve read something I’ve written, and the amount they’ve saved or made as a result. But I like to think everyone one of them has saved at least £1. Just a quid.
I think that’s more than fair seeing as I’ve shared dozens of ways you can save hundreds of pounds over the years. And that means the blog has helped save the UK £4 million. At least!
The blog also picked up Best Personal Finance Blog and was chosen as runner-up for Best Money Saving Blog and Article of the Year at the 2019 SHOMOs.
The podcast
I’m probably most proud of Cash Chats in the last 12 months. Though I started it three years ago, this year was the first time I really felt I knew what it was and who it was for.
Part of that was realising that it is its own thing with its own audience. Yes I’m sure of you regular readers also listen to the podcast, but many people are coming to the podcast without even knowing about the blog.
I’ve also been more committed to getting an episode out every week, and as a result the listenership has grown since the relaunch in July. I’m not quite sure how the Apple podcasts charts work, but it’s also peaked at number 20 in the Business chart and number 5 in the investing chart (even though it’s not about investing!).
There’s been wider recognition too, receiving recommendations as one of the best money podcasts by Good Housekeeping, the ‘i’ and Stylist, as well as featuring in Apple Podcasts’ “Be A Better You” curation.
To cap it all off, it was awarded Best Money Podcast at the 2019 SHOMO awards in September, beating some excellent and well-established shows.
My Channel 5 series Shop Smart Save Money returned for another eight episodes last summer. It was such a privilege to work on this show, in particular getting to meet different families who really needed my help.
I really think we made some great TV, and I was delighted to be shortlisted for Financial Broadcaster of the Year at the 2019 Headlinemoney awards for the work on the show. I’m hoping I’ll be back on your screens soon (any TV producers are welcome to get in touch!)
In the meantime I’ve been upping my game on the videos I make at home for the blog and my YouTube channel. Previously I’d just used my phone, but this summer I invested in a decent camera, microphone, lights and even some fancy furniture for a nice background.
It’s hard work growing the YouTube channel – like the podcast it seems it’s a different audience again – and I’m still learning. It certainly takes up a lot of my time! But once more I’ve seen some really strong progress.
The big editorial change I’ve made from previous videos is the move from short two or three-minute clips to videos that last 15 to 20 minutes. I’ve always been someone who prefers to read an article, but it’s good to be able to help those who prefer to watch.
If you haven’t already, please do subscribe, and hit the thumbs up button or comment on any videos you watch – it all helps.
New this year has also been a special “deals of the week” video every Thursday morning for social media, which allows me to talk a bit more about the offers I feature in the weekly newsletter. You can watch follow me on Facebook and Instagram if you want to catch it.
My annual survey
It’s so important to me that any content I produce for you is what you actually want to read, hear or watch. So please do take a few minutes to answer this short survey.
Updated December 23, 2025 | Published February 20, 2020 | Articles
The tricks to help you avoid shopping addictions, impulse spending and payday splurges.
It’s easy to get carried away when shopping and come home with an impulse buy (or two). There’s nothing wrong with that – as long as you can afford it and use what you buy.
If you can’t, or there’s something else you’re struggling to save for, then it’s time to stop spending money when you don’t need to.
In this video I’ve shared how you can identify, reduce and then block your bad spending habits.
If you’re always overspending and struggling to stick to a budget you’re not alone. It can be tough keeping track of where your money is going.
So in this video I’ve got a few simple tricks you can use that’ll help you work out not only how much you really can afford to spend, but ensure you’ve got the flexibility to adapt.
Subscribe to Andy’s YouTube channel for more videos. Plus please click the “thumbs up” icon as it helps the video appear higher up in YouTube’s search results.
Should you move to a digital-only bank? And if so which one is best?
The world of fintech has brought about a revolution in banking, with digital challenger banks such as Monzo and Starling leading the way with their app-based current accounts, along with Revolut, Monese and the now defunct N26.
These mobile phone only banks are changing our relationships with money, by making it easier for us to track our cash, budget our spending, separate our savings and pay our bills.
Plus they are fantastic for spending on your holiday as there are no fees on transactions and most cash withdrawals.
In this video I…
share how to open an account with Monzo, Starling, Revolut and Monese
review the key features
break down any charges
explain how to withdraw and pay in money
look at whether they’re safe to use and if your money is protected
compare them to let you know which bank I think is best for you.
For subtitles, press play and then hit the CC button at the bottom of the video (you might need to tap the video or hover your mouse over it) and you’ll be able to get auto-generated subtitles.
For a transcript, you’ll need to click through to YouTube. Then hit the three dots under the video to access all the subtitles at once. Remember they have been auto-generated by YouTube so there might be the odd word where it thinks I’ve said something else.
If you find this useful, please click to watch this video over on YouTube and then click the “thumbs up” icon as it helps the video appear higher up in YouTube’s search results.
The steps to take to avoid your Tastecard auto-renewing.
A Tastecard can save you money when eating out or going to the cinema – I’m a fan. But it’s only decent value for money if you use it.
And sometimes those who don’t use it – or forget they have one – have been caught out by auto-renewals. And even those who remember might find it hard to process their cancellation.
With my trial about to end I thought it was a good time to find out just how you to end your membership and stop it auto-renewing.
Some articles on the site contain affiliate links, which provide a small commission to help fund our work. However, they won’t affect the price you pay or our editorial independence. Read more here.
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What is Tastecard?
Tastecard is a discount membership where you receive two for one or 50% off at selected restaurants. The more recent Tastecard+ add-on lets you get some pretty decent discounts at cinema chains.
You can normally get a 90 trial for £1 (sometimes even free), or a full year for a discounted £30 or less. After that, prices jump to anywhere between £40 and £105.
In the past Tastecard has had a bad reputation for people trying to cancel. You just have to search Twitter for Tastecard to find someone angry about their membership or free trial autorenewing and not being able to claim a refund.
Now, it is clear in the terms and conditions that once the trial or first year ends, you will auto-renew.
Though it’s not ideal, Tastecard isn’t the only service that does this, so it is down to the customer to make a note to cancel before the membership ends.
But even if you do remember to cancel, it’s not easy to find how to actually do it.
How to cancel a Tastecard membership
So with my Tastecard coming to an end, I made a note in the diary to cancel more than a week before the expiry date. Here’s my video for how I did it.
The good news is they’ve now added an online form to cancel. It took just seconds to fill it in, and my card was cancelled.
How to make sure you don’t get charged auto-renewal fees by mistake
If you have a full membership you could cancel as soon as you get your card. This way you won’t forget and then accidentally get charged for another year. Doing this won’t affect how long your membership lasts – it’ll carry on as normal but stop on the expiry date.
If you’re on a multi-month trial then leave it to the start of your final month to cancel so you definitely get the full trial length you signed up for.
It’s generally cheaper per month and you only need to commit on a month by month basis.
Despite this I think you should cancel NOW TV every month – even if you want to carry on watching.
Here’s why, and how to do it.
Some articles on the site contain affiliate links, which provide a small commission to help fund our work. However, they won’t affect the price you pay or our editorial independence. Read more here.
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Rather watch than read? Here’s my video on cancelling NOW TV
Please do click through to my YouTube channel to like the video and subscribe.
Cancelling because you’re not watching
Of course, cancelling NOW TV is a given if you aren’t watching it. You’re not saving money if you’re paying for something you don’t need.
But even if you are using it, it might not be enough to justify the price. We have so many streaming options that I think we don’t need more than one or two in any given month.
Any more than that there’s a good chance we just won’t watch more than an hour or two of our third or fourth option. If that.
So it’s better to pick and choose your service, and binge watch the ones you are paying for. Then switch to a different one the following month.
There are lots of ways to save money on NOW TV passes, though there are less than there used to be (here’s our regularly updated list of deals).
In fact, I never pay full price for a NOW TV pass. I rarely, if ever, pay more than 50%. And the easiest way to find a discount is to cancel.
When you go through the process (see the video above) the final page you get will usually offer you a discount for your next pass. It could even say that offer will last for longer, say three or six months.
Sometimes these are cracking deals, with huge savings. I’ve had £1.99 a month movies in the past, or £2.99 Entertainment. Sometimes they aren’t as good as what you can get elsewhere. And sometimes you don’t get anything.
But it’s always worth checking to see what is there rather than letting it auto-renew at full price.
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How to cancel NOW TV
Cancelling NOW TV is one of the more annoying ones to complete, but it doesn’t take long.
Navigate in your account to your passes, then select cancel. You’d think that’d be it, perhaps asked to confirm you mean to do this.
But you’ll actually be asked something along the lines of “are you sure” two or three times! I know people sometimes think they’ve done it but didn’t complete the process.
The important thing is to make sure you get confirmation of cancellation. This should show on the final screen, but I’d always double check in your account too to make sure it’s gone through.
Catch up on my top articles, podcasts and videos from the last 12 months.
Over the last 12 months I’ve written 172 articles, recorded 64 episodes of my Cash Chats podcast and uploaded 84 videos to YouTube. And that’s not including countless deals posted here on the blog and Instagram!
No doubt even the most regular readers among you won’t have managed to take in all that money-saving and making content. So here’s a look at the highlights that are still well worth a look.
I’ve shared the most read, listened to and viewed over the year, which lends an obvious bias to content produced earlier in the year, so for each category I’ve also shared my personal favourite from the last couple of months.
The blog
It’s been a record year for visits to this site. In total 1.2 million people came to Be Clever With Your Cash reading a total of just over 1.6million pages.
Deals were as ever a huge part of the traffic, but here are the most read articles published this year:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) transfers can help you build up your savings without noticing.
One of the biggest reasons people who try to save but fail is that they don’t prioritise the act of saving.
The money sits in their current account alongside all their other cash, making it hard to distinguish between what’s needed for bills and what is available for other spending.
The easy solution is to set up a standing order to move money to a separate account just after payday, but it’s possible to save even more thanks to fintech innovations.
Using rules and algorithms based on your spending habits, apps like Plum, Chip, Monzo and Starling can automate the transfer of cash from your current account into separate savings pots.
My favourite is the artificial intelligence or AI savings app. I’ve written about Chip before, but now it charges you to use this function, I wanted to take a look at the free alternative – Plum.
What is Plum?
Plums describes itself as “The AI assistant that grows your money”. Though it offers a few extras, it’s primarily about helping you boost money for savings via automation.
It also acts as an entry level investment platform, but I won’t cover this element in the review.
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How much does Plum cost?
There are three tiers with Plum, ranging from free to £2.99 a month.
Basic – Free
Plus – £1 a month
Pro – £2.99 a month
Personally I’d stick with the free Basic option, and that’s what this review will focus on.
Plum is an app-only service, so you can’t take advantage of these if you don’t have a smart phone.
You connect Plum with your bank via Open Banking, giving the app read-only access to your account details. It’s a pretty simple process to connect as long as you already have your bank’s app installed on your phone. You need to reauthorise the connection every 90-days, which takes just a few clicks.
It’s possible to add more than one bank, though money will only be transferred from the account you designate. Unlike Chip you can change which bank this is whenever you want.
You can add credit cards too, but these won’t be used for the auto-savings features.
Plum currently works with the following banks:
Barclays
Danske Bank
First Direct
Halifax
HSBC
Lloyds
M&S
Monzo
Nationwide
Natwest
Revolut
RBS
Santander
Bank of Scotland
Starling
Tesco
TSB
Ulster Bank
Autosaves with Plum
This is the big selling point with Plum for me. These features help you build that savings pot without actually doing anything. The money is transferred via a Direct Debit that is set up when you link your account.
To access these savings features you need to find the ‘Brain’ option, which should appear on the home screen once you’ve connected to your bank.
The free tier of Plum has three ways to automatically move money from your bank to your Plum account:
Automatic
Round Ups
Pay Days
The Pro version also has Rainy Days and 52-Week Challenge options but I’ll ignore these here. Mainly because you’ll have to pay, but also because if they’re of interest then they’re available alongside even more options for free via Monzo.
Here’s more on each of these savings rules:
Automatic
This is my favourite of the three. As with Chip, an algorithm analyses your bank account, looking at your balance, spending and forthcoming regular payments in and out.
Based on this Plum works out how much you can afford to put aside. You can also adjust the ‘mood’ of your savings level, from the default option. The lowest level ‘shy’ will reduce that amount by half, while the top level ‘beast’ increases it by 75%.
Money is moved once a week from your connected bank account to your Plum account. You can pause these transfers, or turn them off completely whenever you want.
Round ups
Every time you make a purchase with a linked debit or credit card you can choose for the transaction to be rounded up to the nearest full pound, with the difference moved once a week to your pocket.
Be careful here though as these will continue even if you’re overdrawn, though you can switch this off in the app’s ‘brain’ under ‘overdraft deposits’.
Pay Days
This is essentially a standing order which automatically moves money from your bank account when you get paid. You set the date and the amount.
Personally I’d set up an actual standing order for this and move your money to an account where you’ll earn the best interest right now. Or opt for a regular savings account.
Our podcast
Listen to Cash Chats, our award-winning podcast, presented by Steve Alderton and Editor James Andrews.
The basic free version of Plum offers an interest pocket offering 0.25%.
You can beat this amount right now, but if you are using Plum then it makes sense to turn this feature on and put your cash there. You can choose where your money goes in the ‘brain’ part of the app.
It’s easy-access though if you move money into one of these pockets then you have to give one-day notice to withdraw the cash.
The rate is variable, so it could change (in fact it dropped in late January). If that happens Plum will give you 14 days notice.
The Plus and Pro versions increases this to 0.4%, but you’ll likely spend more to upgrade than you’ll make with the increased interest rate. For example, £1,000 at 0.4% for a year earns you £4. That’s £1.50 more than the Basic account, but at a cost of £12 (Plus) or £35.88 (Pro).
Is your money safe?
Any money in your main Plum ‘Pocket’ is held in something called an E-Wallet, meaning it’s not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. If something was to go wrong, or if Plum went bust, your money should still be fine, as it’s actually held at Barclays. But if Barclays went under then you’d lose your money.
The savings accounts are with Investec Bank and these are protected by the FSCS. It’s only up to a total of £85,000 and that’s across all accounts you might have with Investec.
Other features
The app also offers a handful of extra features on the basic option.
Free features
The Lost Money tab is the only significant extra on the Basic Plum account. It’s meant to analyse your bills to highlight where you’re overspending. However, since it can only see your payments, it’s not really that useful.
And though it’ll send you through to a comparison site to help you find better deals, you can do that yourself without the aid of the app.
Other paid features
I don’t think any of these are worth upgrading for, but just so you know what is on offer
Plum Plus
Access to 0.4% interest account
An extra Easy Access Interest pocket
The ability to use Plum Investing
Plum Pro
Cashback
Budgeting tools
Unlimited pockets
52 week challenge and Rainy Day savings rules
Plum alternatives
You can get the AI algorithm savings feature with Chip and Cleo for a monthly fee. Tandem did offer this but has closed the feature.
Round up savings are more and more commonplace now, with Starling, Monzo, Nationwide, Lloyds and others offering this.
Monzo also offers you the option to automate the Pro savings features such as savings challenges, moving money if it rains and much more – and it won’t charge you for it (more on this here).
The PayDay feature is essentially a standing order which can be set up between any two bank accounts.
Conclusion
I’m a huge fan of auto-savings algorithms, and now that both Chip and Cleo charge for this, Plum is my top pick.
Link up your main current account and set the “brain” to the savings rules and levels that work for you, and you should slowly but surely see the amount saved grow.
Of course you’re not earning much right now with this account so you might want to move the money on a regular basis to one that pays a little more.
I’d stay clear of the paid versions – you don’t get enough extra for your money – and the other features don’t really offer much.
