Your bank is one of the last places you might think to tell about your mental health. But it can be useful to let us know, so we can offer you any support you need.
Here’s Stuart McFadden, our Head of Financial Difficulties, with more details:
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I’m bipolar and I think the late night splurge toggle is fantastic! 
Amazon’s profits are partly due to me deciding on a high at 2am that I really need to buy a load of things right there and then. And the next day I feel terrible.
Most of the time I wouldn’t need it but be good to have the option when things start getting silly.
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Awesome, there’s more details about how that could work here -
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I think it is amazing that monzo is bluing that concept of your bank being “scary” so to speak. It’s getting rid of the “computer says no” style people believe the thinking behind banking choices are made. To actually feel monzo might be a place you can share or advise of issues that may well impact your spending is huge step forward.
It’s a very quick spiral if you think about the chain of events behind it. Often someone with mental health concerns may feel low, or not be fully able to make the right choices (spending, loans etc), that then cause themselves to get into debt, and not paying bills. That then adds to the original mental health issue, and causes a pause and repeat spiral.
We do enough in life to look after our physical health, its great we are pushing forward to loose the mental health stigma and learning that your thoughts sometimes need a bit of TLC too. Great week of news from Monzo!
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Wow, this is amazing guys. Putting all these options at their fingertips to make people feel hugely more comfortable is fantastic. And customer support helping as best they can is also miles better than any other bank’s customer support 
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And this is one of the many reasons I bank with Monzo 
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Hello,
Following on from the ability to reverse impulse spending, this is in relation to online expenditure and while it may be more relevant to those with a bipolar condition, I argue this feature could be enjoyed by all. However needless to say other than getting a refund there’s no way to reverse impulse spending made in store, which is where I have an issue, especially since I work in retail and am frequently surrounded by retail stores and constant in-your-face advertising. Most of my transactions are small sizes (between £1 and £10) but at a higher frequency. Of course this builds up.
I have had a really good conversation with Monzo about tackling impulse spending in stores and here is a summary of the conversation;
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In the thread by @Tjenkinson he discusses renaming your pots ‘Week 1’ through to ‘Week 4’. While this is a very good idea, you need financial discipline to ensure the money stays in those pots until the next week comes. So for people struggling to make their money stretch from payday to payday, the idea of Monzo holding and releasing your salary on an agreed date of frequency (e.g. weekly, bi-weekly) after committed spending expenditures could be the workaround. Let’s say you have £100 left after bills and you get your salary monthly, Monzo will release £25 a week, or something to this effect. Of course there would be allowances for emergencies etc.
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We spoke about blocking gambling transactions and how you can request the block to be removed which takes 48 hours, which gives you time to plan ahead in case you’re going to a day at the races for instance. A similar strategy could be employed here, where spending could be blocked between certain times of the day so that you are discouraged from spending needlessly. For me, the inability to buy that morning coffee on the way to work because my card will not activate until 9am would help me dramatically. I never have any emergency reasons why I need to spend money on my way to work, but if there was then Monzo would be on hand to support.
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We spoke about the Summary Page. Apologies if this has already been mentioned, but I found the Summary Page useful but useless. This is because the majority of places I shop at do multiple categories. For example, if you go to a restaurant, you might buy food AND drink, so arguably for some people this is two categories: Eating Out and Alcohol. Sure you could tag them, but tags are not reflected in the Summary Page. Further, your main supermarket probably does the following categories on one shop: Eating Out, Groceries, Personal Care etc. So the idea is to have the ability to split the transaction up into it’s appropriate categories. This would avoid masking inessential purchases and labelling them as ‘Groceries’ for example, thus deepening and enhancing your spending insights.
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Pots: if you are about to withdraw from a pot, a notification or message could pop up to ask if you really want to withdraw money from the pot. For example, withdrawing £5 from the ‘Eating Out’ pot may prompt the following message based on your spending trends;
Your spending is a little high on this pot for this month, are you sure you want to continue this withdrawal?
Or another example
You haven’t withdrawn from this pot in 16 days now. Are you sure you want to break your streak and withdraw?
These can be a little more targeted and specific rather than just a bland “Are you sure you want to do this?” message. They can also be focused on mindfulness, encouraging you to take a mental break or offering you the option to pause spending for x amount of minutes to give you time to cool down.
I’d love to hear what you guys think. If you’ve made it to the bottom of this, thanks for reading.
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Amazing, really like the thinking here. All are adding to the bigger net to help avoid the loop holes and help the people missed out by most catch-all features
Monzo logic and understanding, even having these conversations still amazes me.
I really like the notifications if you withdraw from pots, I try to use them to organise but often have bad times and empty a pot in one go.
I’ve put in place the gambling feature and reached out today to ask can I restrict my access to physical cash, within an hour, I got help to put a £20 daily limit (only sharing my points to give real example of how all these smaller ideas are positive and can actually change lives!)
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Hey Danny, great to hear from you,
I’ll be brutally honest here, my parents never taught me any financial discipline. I didn’t get pocket money and I’m sure many others have been through a similar journey and can probably manage their money better, but not me.
So I had to go out and earn my own money, as a little kid I’d go round the neighbourhood and ask neighbours if they wanted their car cleaned in exchange for money. I should’ve made a business out of this because I did damn well for my 9 year old self. On one day at the weekend I raked in something like £250, which is more than some people earn in a day. I was charging about £5 a car and I cleaned a lotta cars that day. As soon as I was done I went straight on the train to the nearest shopping centre and bought myself a Playstation 1 from Woolworths. The point is, I got excited when I earned that money and I’d instantly go to the newsagent and treat myself to sweets and other crap.
Then I’d repeat. And I seem to have gotten myself in that cycle where my emotions are attached to some of my spending. I have tried every money management tip there is and nothing has worked and I’ve even spoken to a financial counsellor who was largely unhelpful, as he wasn’t in a position where he could empathise, only sympathise. So it is really cool to finally have a bank like Monzo where you’re speaking to down-to-earth humans, not corporate banker robots. Monzo have proven so far that they are willing to listen to their customers to help build a service that is utterly relevant.
I’m not a gambling addict, but I also don’t want to gamble either. So I’ve asked Monzo to put that gambling block on my account. I don’t want to support a service that offers gambling where I know it is detrimental to other people’s lives. I love that you’ve asked for restricted access to physical cash, in case you try to workaround your pre-existing limitations. And if you find a way round it, let Monzo know and they’ll most likely work with you to do something.
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Can relate so well to your post. Thank you for sharing. It’s actually a good feeling to see we can all add to monzo on these forums without being nervous of getting a letter saying your not the type of customer for them, like another big fintech bank have done twice to me !
Really hope to keep seeing posts from you over the years monzo grows ! Can’t wait to read back on here when monzo has all of these amazing ideas in the app and live !
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