'I put away £4,300 by sticking to easy saving hacks - anyone can do it'

One woman has shared how she managed to put away over £4,300 through multiple "game-changing" saving hacks.

Ell Major, 25, has managed to save cash thanks to her bank's "Round up" feature. Ell opened her Monzo account back in 2018 and started using the Round up feature after it was launched. The feature sees Monzo automatically round up purchases made on the card to the nearest pound - it then puts this extra money into a savings pot. So for example, if you spent £9.30, then the extra 70p would be moved into the savings account.

Ell, a design and content manager from London, told the Mirror she has also been using the Monzo savings pots feature, which allows you to set up different sections within the Monzo app for different savings, rather than putting all your money into one account. Ell said before this, her financial habits were very "unstructured" and she often struggled to organise her income and spending as it all went into a single account. She said: "Being able to put things into pots was such a game changer for me. I know exactly what money I actually did have to spend and what money I was saving."

Ell uses her savings pots to put away money to see her favourite bands and artists

Ell uses her savings pots to put away money to see her favourite bands and artists

Since utilising the feature, Ell has been able to plan and manage her savings and set goals for herself. The 25-year-old set up a pot to put money aside for her yearly car insurance bill, while she also set up another to save for a house deposit. Since setting them up, Ell has managed to save £600 and £1,200 respectively by using the bank's If This Then That (ITTT) savings challenges - this allows users to integrate their Pots to apps to automate payments and roundups.

Ell said she particularly "loved" the Save the Date challenge. This challenge sees users add up the current day, month and year daily and set aside the total amount in pennies for it, and the 1p a day challenge, where users set aside 1p a day for a year. She added: "I save whenever I use my card and already I've put away £400 this year."

Ell says the best thing getting on top of her finances has given her is the ability to save for gigs to see her favourite artists and bands. Describing herself as an "avid-concertgoer" Ell travels around the country to see her favourite music acts live which means she needs to spend even more on accommodation and travel on top of the ticket price.

To see her favourite bank LANY on multiple dates she has managed to put aside £800, while £500 has been saved to see the £1975 and singer Troye Sivan. Ell was also lucky enough to bag a Taylor Swift ticket too and to cover the ticket, travel, accommodation, and her outfit she put away a further £800. By having such a specific saving goal, Ell said: "It feels like someone's there, keeping you accountable."

Obviously, to put away money such as this Ell also makes changes to her day to day life. To make sure her savings goal is hit, she cuts back on going out, makes her own lunches for work, and switched to a much cheaper gym - alongside other money saving techniques. She added: "I cut down on my subscriptions, Monzo has this scheduled payments area where it shows the payments that go out regularly, so I was able to reassess those and cancel the services I wasn't using or didn't actually need." Through all of the different savings features she incorporates into her life, Ell has put away £4,300.

Ell's Savings

• Car insurance - £600
• Home deposit - £1,200
• Savings challenges - £400
• LANY - £800
• Troye Sivan and the 1975 - £500
• Taylor Swift - £800
• Total: £4,300