I think youāre right its the re-categorisation of my spend / transfers / savings / income that have stuffed it - I think for my useā¦an idea of how much I want to spend / month that I can monitor, its good for me as it tells me how much Im spending in that month against a figure that I can set for the month - the confusion ā¦for me arises on the āsavingsā wording without further explanation and the almost encouragement to up my spend to " hit " my target
Iāve set mine/our Targets up to monitor disposable spending only (on a Joint account too )
- Categorise all bills (managed by a bills pot) as āBillsā, plus any subscriptions that canāt be funded by the Bills pot as āBillsā and exclude the āBillsā category
- Exclude the āTransfersā category, so that the transfer from the Bills pot to the main account when a Bills pot bill is paid isnāt counted, and also to stop āTransfersā to external accounts like credit cards messing things up
- Exclude āIncomeā as that fuels the target anyway
- Exclude āSavingsā as I havenāt lost anything thatās gone to Savings, and I havenāt spent it either.
The resulting target is a realistic look at what I have left for the month to spend AFTER all the bills & subscriptions have been accounted for. It works - the burn-down target graph has been very accurate so far.
Iāve just noticed there isnāt a merchants view toggle on Targets. Has that always been the case?
(Would be keen to have one).
Iād honestly be keen for the graphs to be swipable with the bottom section staying the same.
Now, I know that would mean you couldnāt swipe easily month to month but I do find it difficult to click between the three and see the same information at the Botton presented in three slightly different ways
I think what Iām need now is an āinclude/exclude from Targetsā toggle on transactions. Iām going to have to exclude a category to prevent a transaction (Iād saved up for it using a pot) messing up this months Trends. Similarly, I think an āincludeā toggle may also help for those categories that are excluded e.g.Bills. So if I make an extra bill payment, that comes out of discretionary spend, it will reflect in Targets.
Good idea. Workaround idea before then:
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Non-Plus/Premium (and Joint Accounts): Use an unused category (if available) for ātransactions to exclude from Targetsā and then categorise the required transaction(s) with that category, and exclude that category from Targets
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Plus/Premium: Make a new āExcludedā category and assign it to the required transaction(s), and exclude the āExcludedā category from Targets
What happens if youāve run out of categories
Good point. Youāre stuffed if no categories left. Scratch my workaround idea and stick with your better idea of per-transaction-exclusion-choice!
I really need more categories.
Hereās a work around if you have Plus/Premium:
- Find a category you need but donāt use every day.
- Tap āremove categoryā - that will archive the category and not change any of the previously labelled transactions
- Create your new category
When you need to use the old category:
- Follow the steps above to archive another category
- Find the category in a Trends and tap on Edit (top right)
- Tap āUnarchive Categoryā at the bottom.
Itās super clunky, but if you have categories you want to keep but only use rarely itās helpful.
Well I never, every day is a school day. Thanks for the tip, I never knew that
Hi Jack. Any update on this bug? Thanks
Starting to get used to this a little bit more, but I must admit that I do find myself going back to summary often as well.
For me it boils down to a few things:
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Spending budgets for individual categories is an absolute must (I really canāt see why this wouldnāt transfer from summary, so really hoping itās updated soon
)
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As others have pointed out, itās not great for accruals. Each month I set aside a certain amount of money into a āholidayā pot to ensure that Iām putting enough away each month to cover holidays in the year. Itās not clear how to account for this, because most months it means Iām wildly under budget, and then months with holidays Iām wildly over budget. I wouldnāt want to exclude this spending completely as I still want to be able to track it etc, but if anyone knows of a nice, neat way to solve this (or if anyone has any ideas of how this could be built in) I would greatly appreciate it!
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Iām not sure that itās completely clear exactly what the best purpose for each of the three graphs is. I can read a graph and get info from it, but overall itās seeming to add a lot of complication. Iām not clear on what value each is actually providing over what we had before in summary, which to me was very clear and serves its purpose well.
This thread is titled āa better way to budgetā but as of yet Iām not convinced (and in general I love monzo, so I really would like to be convinced!)
My only idea is that each month the £xx you put into a pot, instead of savings you mark it as holiday and then consider it spent. Then when you do spend in one big go, mark it as savings?