Bill Pots or Summary for budgeting?

Monzo Chat
1

Do you use bill pots or summary for budgeting? Or both? What’s your system?

2

I’ve been asking for weekly budgeting since joining monzo with no luck so I use pots for budgeting instead

3

both

i have a scheduled bills pot, pot for childcare and pot for card bills

Then i use the budgeting tools and summary for my day to day spening

4

Both.

Bill Pots to safeguard money for committed spend.

Summary to track the overall left to spend against the days remaining until payday, as well as the individual category budgets.

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5

:point_up:

This 100%

Shove all my committed spending into my bills pot and forget about it, then use summary to track my monthly budget.

(That’s exactly what I do now)

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6

Yep, I use pots for bills and for things you can’t budget monthly (car expenses, holiday) and summary for things I do budget monthly (groceries, eating out, basically my spending money)

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7

Bills pots for all committed spending, then watching left-to-spend carefully with all other spending for the current Summary period.
I also use YNAB (with Toolkit), which auto-imports all Monzo transactions, to be able to see into the future to make sure there are no upcoming surprises.

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8

I can’t figure out how to create a bill pot - is it in the app yet?

9

Just go to each of your standing orders or direct debits and choose which pot you want it to be paid from in the pay tab

10

Got it, many thanks.

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11

I have been waiting for someone to ask this question! My husband and I recently reorganised our finances so we now have the following pots:

Automatic monthly (for SOs and DDs like mortgage, utilities, insurances, etc)

Manual monthly (for FP, cash and card transactions that we expect every month like house cleaning, therapy, etc)

Periodic (for quarterly and annual bills like magazine subscriptions, car servicing, TV licence)

Each payday we use salary sorter (and a spreadsheet) to put the appropriate prorated amount in. Whatever is left in the main account is for fuel, groceries, sundries, entertainment, etc. I have budgets disabled but I keep an eye on the “left until payday” amount and the colour. Currently orange but still 12 days to go :grimacing:

When this happens I cut back on frivolous expenses like coffee out and put off big expenses (like replacing a worn tyre) until payday.

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12

It’s interesting that you prefer to disable budgets and just watch the left to spend go down. I find summary and how movement of money affects the numbers quite confusing so I might try this!

13

Is there any chance of SO’s being paid from bill pots? That would solve all my money problems!

14

Direct Debits and Standing Orders can be paid from Bill Pots. It’s only recurring card payments (Netflix subscriptions and the like) which cannot yet.

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15

Yes, I also find it very confusing. Plus I don’t really care if I spend more on transport than I was expecting, as long as I have also spent less on, e.g. groceries.

The main aim of our budgeting is to:
A) not need to dip into our savings every month (this was happening pre-Monzo)
B) smooth out periodic bills so each month we have the same disposable income

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16

Ah yes, I meant subscriptions, if they can be integrated that would be great.

17

Thanks. Is this feature arriving any time soon?

18

I don’t work for Monzo, but my understanding is that the short answer is “no”. They definitely want to build it, but it’s difficult to do because unlike a SO or DD they have no warning that the payment is coming until it gets taken, at which point it’s too late to move money from a pot. I understand that Monzo want to build it and intend to, but not yet.

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