Saving for a home deposit rapidly

Calculate your income and expenditure using the Money SMARTS virtual Flour Jar categories. Identify discretionary spending and areas where you can cut back to increase your surplus income.

• Regular Spending – Living and Lifestyle Jar: Identify discretionary spending within this jar. Consider trapping more per week from this category to boost your home deposit savings.
• Credit Card Jar: Always worth comparing offers in the market for better deals. Additionally, consider reducing fuel costs by finding alternative transportation methods.
• Direct Payment Jar: Shop around for cheaper banking options could be beneficial. Look for a high-interest savings account with no fees to maximize your savings.
• Loans Jar: If you’ve got loans, review each of them to determine if they are better off paid off. Some loans are helpful to keep so make sure you consult your Tax Accountant. Keeping one card open for interest-free days will also help your savings grow in your high-interest Primary Account.
• Planned Provisions Spending: Identify discretionary spending within this jar. Consider whether these expenses are essential or if cutting back will benefit your long-term goal.
• Primary Account: This will be where your all your money goes! Look for a high-interest, no-fee joint account.  If interest paid isn’t high enough, try shopping around around for the better deal.
• The Living & Lifestyle Bank Account: Keep your current account or open a new one. Apply for two debit cards linked to this account.
• The Credit Card Bank Account: Choose the best credit card option and link it to your Primary Account.

 How can Moorr Help?: Let’s track your spending!

1. Get a copy of your bank statement for the last 12 months
2. And start categorising and get your calculator ready! If you’re wondering how to categorize from a statement, it might be best to have it in an Excel spreadsheet first, and then transfer it to Moorr.
   • Regular spending – Ideally it’s best to go back and look over bank statements and credit card statements from the past 12 months to get a clear picture of where all your money goes. (Getting your numbers as accurate as you can might take a bit of effort now, but you will be glad when you’ve done it, because it will mean a lot less work when you have Money SMARTS up and running.) Note the monthly average in your excel sheet. We’ll transfer it to Moorr soon.
   • Provisioning spending – Think about the big things you plan to spend your money on over the next year. Some of you could be planning on replacing your couch. Others could be spending big on gifts. You need to document what these planned expenses are for the coming year.
3. Go to the Bills & Spending section on Moorr and enter those regular spendings that you have recorded.
4. Next, go to the MoneySMARTS Dashboard and enter the provisions.

Once you’ve completed all this, check out your Dashboard on Moorr! This is the coolest part because it tells you how much surplus you have and more. It’s like a profit and loss statement. If the dashboard shows that you should have a surplus in place, but you don’t, it means you may have overestimated your income or underestimated your expenses/repayments. Make sure to check and update accordingly.

This could be a reality check, but use this opportunity to motivate yourself!

For Step 4, you might remember that we mentioned about combining your finances by setting up a joint bank account. Additionally, leveraging our years of experience in money management and insights from the thousands of users we’ve served, we’ve incorporated our account structure recommendations for each category of bills and spending. Please note that this is a general recommendation based on all our users and MoneySMARTS, and it may not be customized to your unique spending habits. So, feel free to tweak it as you see fit.

Once you’ve reorganised your banking structure, make sure to update it in Moorr!