“What you don’t know can’t hurt you,” right? – There are probably things we don’t need to know about – like your workmate’s disastrous Tinder adventure – yikes. However, when it comes to your money, knowledge is your best friend and will help you to think twice about doing something you might wish you hadn’t.
Last month, we sent out a survey to the Debut community to learn how and when people reviewed their personal spending, budgets or savings and what. We love asking these sorts of questions. Here’s what we’re working on based on what we’ve learned.
Know what’s going on with your money
Most people tend to check in on their finances either once per week or once a month, according to our community survey.
Nearly half of the community members who responded to the survey said they review their personal spending, budgets or savings once a week or once a month. Roughly a third reported checking their finances more frequently, i.e. multiple times a week or every day. About 15% said they rarely or never check or review their finances.
Knowing and understanding where your money goes is essential to building the general awareness needed to be conscientious with how you spend. In other words, when you are aware that you’ve already spent above your monthly average on eating out or know that a regular bill will go out before payday, you may be more likely to opt for dinner at home that week rather than getting takeaways three nights in a row. No judgement here. 😛
Debut helps you grow your financial awareness 👀
Coming Soon to Debut:
- Timely Trend Alerts ⏱️🔔– New!
- Timeline 📆📒 – Updated
Debut uses timely notifications to help you identify trends or changes to how you spend.
Build awareness around expected payments
Have you ever had your card declined because a direct debit or subscription payment went out of your account earlier that day? It’s happened to the best of us, but can still sometimes be a little embarrassing.
Most people in our survey ranked being able to visualise future spending as the most important to them when reviewing their personal finances.
Having some idea of when you can expect bills or automatic payments to go out can be tremendously helpful for planning ahead and might just mean you save that cute jacket you saw on Instagram for later rather than buying it on impulse. But it’s on sale now! 😭
Debut helps you know when to anticipate common future expenses.
Coming soon to Debut
- Future Expenses 🔮🧾 – New!
Debut gives you a heads-up when regular expenses, like bills or subscriptions, are due and shows them as future events in your timeline. See expected payments for your phone bill, streaming service, rent and more dated in the future. If there’s enough for all that and that new polish 💅 from Trixie Mattel, why not. Treat yo’self!
Debut is a new next-generation bank being shaped by everyday Kiwis like you. So join the waiting list and get notified when Debut launches later this year.
Understand your spending habits 📊🧩
Did you ever get to the end of the month or the week and wonder: Where did all my money go?? When your transactions are jumbled together, it can be difficult to see that you spent over $200 on oat milk lattes or hardly anything on wellness. When was the last time you had a you-day? 🥰
About one in three Kiwis surveyed most favoured being able to filter spending by type, e.g. Food and drink and roughly 1 in 5 ranked being able to visualise trends as their top priority.
Tracking your expenses is an essential part of basic money management. Being able to group like expenses together helps us to zoom in and see how much we’re actually spending in a particular area of our lives. But, not everyone processes information in the same way and often times a simple visual aid can help to bring attention to the right information.
Debut helps you to easily track your spending and spot trends
Coming Soon to Debut:
- Spending Categories 📊📥
- Spending Trends
Debut automatically categorises your spending. You can filter expenses by category and see them visualised in a graph within the app. Categories are colour-coded, so it’s easy to spot when it’s been a while since you had takeaways. Good on you.
Whether you’re looking forward to Timely Trend Alerts, Future Expenses, Spending categories – or just dinner – we’re baking the best ideas into Debut, and we can’t wait to share it with you later this year. Keep sharing your feedback. I think I need to find a snack. 🤤
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Please note, Debut is not a registered bank under the Banking (Prudential Supervision) Act. This is about our future intentions. Investments with us are not supervised currently by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
