Myself and my wife have been using Monzo for a year or so and love it. We have a current account each, and a joint account for shared finances.
Currently, my salary goes into, and all of our monthly debits and standing orders come out of, a First Direct account. We transfer an amount from First Direct to Monzo each month for our monthly spending.
Iām feeling like this is WAY more complicated than it should be, but i think Iām right that we cannot have another joint account we could use to pay our monthly bills from.
Is this correct and, if so, is there a better way to use Monzo and ditch First Direct?
I arrange my for my salary AND my direct debits/standing orders to go into my joint account. Then manually transfer the monthly amount I would need for my debits into the new pot, THEN tell Monzo to pay the debits from that pot.
Thatās exactly what we do. Several incomes per month into the Joint Account get āSalary Sortedā into various places. One of them is the JA āBills potā into which amounts go into to cover all scheduled payments, standing orders and direct debits for that cycle (please note CPAās like Spotify, Netflix, Prime, Xbox, etc. canāt be paid from the Bills pot and so are manually āpaidā from the Bills pot when they happen)
It works brilliantly. And almost fully automated too.
Thanks for the low-down, thatās all really helpful. I was a little hesitant at first to make the full switch, as it was unclear (from what I had read) as to whether Monzo was a profitable business or not. That seems to have changed, so Iām feeling like a full transfer might now be the way to go.
āProfitableā is probably the wrong descriptor to decide to jump in to be #fullmonzo. Itās a full-on bank like every other established bank. Less āhigh-streetā and more ādigitalā but with more features.
For sure David. Maybe, this feels different because it is very different from the banks Iāve been used to in the past, and the fact that itās 100% digital had caused me to be a little bit cautious. I work as a designer for digital companies, and Iāve seen a few go under over the years.
Itās just about getting used to something different, but Monzo over the past year has been good for us, hence the desire to go all with #fullmonzo!
Weād been using legacy banking for decades like everyone else and wanted something fresh. HSBC promised āconnected bankingā which was full of promises but never happened. In the end, thanks to the demise of the Supercard-by-Travelex travel card & app (which was outstanding at the time), we discovered the MondoMonzo beta prepaid card. Used that for a while for travelling, then it became a proper current account, followed by a Joint Account in late 2018. Weāve been #fullmonzo since then.
During the last 6 years, the Monzo experience has grown and grown (Bills pots, Salary Sorting, Paid tiers, Trends reporting, Savings/Investments, Mortgage reporting, Cheque imaging , etc., etc.) and few banking services can compete at the #fullmonzo level so far for us
I was watching the ex CEO talking about the mondo ATM fees, Iāve been wondering what the reason is for taking out thousands when you get abroad like he talked about
Did you use it like that? If so Iām just curious what the idea behind it is, havenāt ever really taken cash out other than in Japan
It wasnāt the ATM fees (which the ATM providers can charge you regardless - usually 3EUR per cash withdrawal in the EU for example) - it was the really good exchange rate for spending on the card. Typically, it charged your Monzo card in pounds after having done the conversion at the near-perfect Mastercard wholesale rate.
So spending (in the local currency) was exchanged into pounds at a minimal cost.
Spending on the card (in the local currency) - gives the least expensive rate.
Withdrawing cash using the card - the local ATM providers may (and usually do) charge you a cash withdrawal fee in addition to what you do/donāt get charged by your bank for the exchange of the local currency*
*NEVER choose to withdraw cash from an overseas ATM in GBP with the exchange rate given by the ATM provider - instead, choose to withdraw cash using local currency.
We recently did the switch too, our setup is slightly different, two personal accounts and one joint, salaries going into personal accounts and then the impressive salary sort feature to distribute enough money into the joint account to pay the bills.
As an aside, one annoying feature of the automated switch accounts feature (which is not the fault of Monzo) is it closes the source account. I have had my traditional account for decades and donāt want to lose this, so we ended up having to move all our salary and direct debits manually. A great feature of the switch would be an option to move all incomes and direct debits but leave the account open.
Moving the salary payment into joint is certainly easier because you can sort it into a ābillsā pot and then pay ddās from that pot. The way I have set mine up doesnāt work so well, I need the feature where I can salary sort from a personal account into a pot on a shared account, which I believe is a feature in the US but not the UK.
So in short, I think the way suggested in the thread is probably the easiest.
Some banks do allow a partial switch, which is payments etc but unsure if that covers salary redirection, and Iām not sure youāre covered by the switch guarantee should something go wrong.
Virgin Money was one I think, and maybe Barclays?
But for the sake of an hour and wanting to keep the old account for reporting purposes, youād need to do it manually for the majority.
This is such a helpful conversation. Thanks all. But, to clarify, if I go all-in and ask Monzo to do the switch for me, does that also include the salary switch as well, or would I need to do this manually?
btw, it was a lot more than an hour, itās stunning just how many DDās we had setup that were active, in fact iām dealing with what I think is the last one right now.
but yeah you have it correct.
, etc., etc.) and few banking services can compete at the 
