Design Poll: How often are you paid and pay bills?

Nice idea!

A tricky thing with that approach, is working out how to scale the graph. Currently Pulse data is sent to the app in monthly pages, which makes it easier to calculate how tall the chart should be, and how everything else should scale between the highest and lowest data points. A day-by-day approach would mean the apps would need to calculate this every-time you scroll Pulse by a day which would require fetching data more often, and using more device resources. It could work, but might also add a lot of ‘cost’ to the feature - if that makes sense.

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The reason I want my month to start with payday is because my money is spent payday to payday not per calendar month.

So I budget for between 23rd - 23rd. Having my calendar setup only show 3/4 of a payday means my spending is split into two different months in the calendar but in reality it is still spend in that specific payday month if that makes sense?

So if I want to see what I spent from the 23rd - e.g 28th(end of calendar month) I have to go back to the previous month in the calendar and then add it to the total I spent between the 1st and the 23rd of the next month which is just a hassle.

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Just to add another schedule into the mix, I get paid on the 6th of the month, but if it falls on a weekend or bank holiday it’s always the next working day, rather than an earlier day. So if the 6th is a Saturday, I would be paid on the following Monday. If the Monday is also a Bank Holiday, it would shift to Tuesday etc

I like the idea of payday to payday as that’s how my money is spent, not by calendar month.

Payday is always (give or take) the same day each month for a number of people, but outgoings vary.

For example, say I get paid an arbitrary amount of £1000 each month.

Scenario 1:
Paid £1000 26th Jan
Spend £500 (bills) by end of Jan
Spend £250 (general usage) by end of Jan
Feb reporting starts and I have £250 to spend

Scenario 2:
Spend £500 (bills) by end of Jan
Spend £10 (general usage) by end of Jan
Feb reporting starts and I have £490 to spend

Scenario 3:
Spend £500 (bills) by end of Jan
Spend £490 (general usage) by end of Jan
Feb reporting starts and I have £10 to spend

I would be interested to see what I spend between paydays with a fixed sum of say £500, rather than what I spend in a calendar month, which could vary between say £20-£1000 in the above examples, albeit that would be an extreme fluctuation.

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I get paid the last day of the month or if that falls on the weekend or bank holiday the Friday closest

I get paid every 4 weeks so my payday is slowly moving through the calendar month. It think it would give me much better visibility of the “month” started when I got paid.

I use neither payday to payday nor calendar month. I start my financial year when the tax year starts so I run my budgets from the 6th of each month until the 5th. But I don’t care when I get paid, as all that matters is the total amount coming in during that period v the total amount going out. Then my monthly budget balances. On paper in the past you would also have carried forward (c/f) and brought foeward (b/f) figures each month, so the amount left between payday and the start of your next budgetting period gets rolled forward. It is great having pots as they can be used like double entry book keeping and be used to effectively transfer cash into a different collumn or cost centre coding.

The disadvantage of using a regular month is every year you have to split one month into two to account for income and charitable contributions etc falling in the right tax year.

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it would be best if instead of having to have a month, even if it starts from the day you are paid, you could have a 4 week budgetting or reporting option, and same for people paid 2 weekly or weekly. Not everyone gets paid monthly, yet Monzo seems built around that.

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Monthly salary direct debits as close to pay day as possible I’ve set up a pot with £200 float to fund direct debits that come out before pay day so for example dd came out on pay day in Jan and 2 days before in Feb so the float is ring fenced to fund these early payments and usage variances

My main concern with windows a lot shorter than a month (give or take a few days), is that if most bills and expenses are monthly, shorter windows like weeks or fortnights could make it harder to anticipate and plan for bills.

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Based on these questions and the last part of this quote I can see this either a) not happening or b) being a complicated mess that no one will get like the pulse

I get paid 21st give or take so that’s when my financial month starts. Pointless restarting everything on the 1st when I don’t get paid and already spent a load of money. Also if you want us to take that pulse thing seriously surely if should reflect our payday without the need for a work around?

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I’m currently paid on the 15th of each month. Before that I was paid 4 weekly on a Friday.

When I was on a salary I was paid on the last Friday of the month (unless it was Good Friday, then it was Thursday).

Also at one point I was paid on the 10th of each month.

If you don’t make it fully customisable then someone (or maybe a load of people) is going to be unintentionally left out.

As for why you’d want your month to start on payday… isn’t that the most obvious thing ever?

Because that’s when your financial month starts. The time between payday and next payday is what you need to track so you can see your balance and see what you’ve got left until the month resets (payday).

That sounds like a question only someone who’s never had to worry about money in their lives would ask (No offense intended).

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Hey Danny, we’re still very much in the design and development phase, so no decisions have been made yet about time frames - I’m just keen to dig in to what would and wouldn’t work for people, without us jumping to conclusions on how best to solve the problem (especially if we can find a technically simpler approach that we can release faster!).

There are also different version of custom reporting periods with varying complexity (months with a custom start date vs. completely flexible lengths that are always different etc).
Potentially, we could stick to calendar months, but understand how much you are due to be paid, and when - so you can budget ahead of pay day, without having to think about the exact day your income hits (A model a little closer to what @anon44204028 described). We want to make sure the default experience is simple enough for the majority, whilst making sure we don’t exclude too many people with more complicated needs.

Regarding Pulse, we know it’s less-than-ideal currently, I think once we get this logic right in the Spending analysis view, we’ll sync up Pulse to follow the same rules, so the graph lines up with however you have your analysis set up.

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Until rules for pots / payments from pots are introduced I’m currently reliant on Squirrel to make sure I have the right amount of money available when it’s needed.

I’m a freelancer and I’ve instructed Squirrel to pay me from a rainy day fund if I don’t receive enough income for any given month. If I do then the excess mostly goes into that rainy day fund.

Because of this setup, my income into my Monzo account is varied throughout the month.

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Interesting! I’ll have to check out Squirrel.

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Basically yeah, it’s obvious to us…

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https://app.squirrel.me/r/3712/Benjamin/ia

Apologies if the question sounded insensitive. I’m asking questions that may feel obvious because I’m trying to learn from you all, rather than rely on my own experiences or assumptions.

Either way, this is all really useful - so thank for taking the time to add your thoughts :bow:

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If you can’t set a custom start date for your month (payday) then most of the time the income/outgoings are broken.

I get paid on the 15th - so after the 1st but up to the 14th most apps will say something along the lines of, ‘Your income this month is £0, you’ve spent X hundred or thousand pounds this month. You’re down X hundred/thousand.’ - makes the whole thing pointless and broken.

I can see that if you always have a balance and it’s a continuous money coming in and going out then this set up (not having custom dates) would be fine. It would be a continuous gentle up and down and this wouldn’t so much occur to you. But if you live like a hell of a lot of people do, payday to payday, then custom dates is an essential requirement.

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Thanks, this helps!

Similar to that, is when your rent/bill payments are treated like day-to-day spending. If you time your bills to go out soon out after you’re paid to help budget, you don’t want to be told off for spending too quickly for the rest of the month!

These are something the bits we want to smooth out with these updates, for sure.

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