After switching most of my finances over to Monzo I’m enjoying the summary feature and seeing a breakdown of spending but despite wanting to better control spending I can’t see how the budget tool will help. Take for example the grocery category. I do weekly shopping so the budget for that will change month to month depending on if there are 4 or 5 weekends in the month so that’s kinda useless for me.
Also I don’t quite understand the whole budget thing in general. How can I set a budget for something like transport or groceries since these are things you need. I’m not likely to remove items from my shopping trolley or decide not to visit a friend who lives 200miles away because I’ve gone over my budget in those categories. I’m just interested to know if other people this feature and whether they find it useful?
People may like to divide their salary into certain amounts as it helps them notice when they are spending too much in a certain area. Even if there is a longer month than normal you don’t generally get anymore pay for that period so you’re still in the same position, you have to work with what you have.
Some people may do this, it’s all dependent on your situation.
Say you have limited income, you may allocate £100 for eating out so you know you’ll get a warning when you’re getting close to your limit. If you went over this other categories may have to suffer.
Personally I don’t use budgets but I can 100% see the benefit if you want it.
set the maximum you want to spend each month. You need to change it every month depending how many weekends there are and if you need to put money aside to visit a friend 200 miles away etc.
If you have overspent in one category then you need to cut down elsewhere to make up for it. I allocate money every month to a category I’m unlikely to use, so I have spare money if I overspend somewhere.
I use the budget tool to very loosely to analyse what I’ve spent my months salary on.
I was pretty surprised how much money I was spending on things like eating out or transport.
Transport was primarily me putting diesel in the car, and I tried to set a budget of £100 a month for that. I soon realised I was closer to spending £250 a month, and when it contextualises the fact that it’s a large percentage of my salary, it’s led me to cycle to work more. Cycling one day a week is a 20% decrease in fuel on a weekly commute.
I don’t live hard and fast by the budget amounts, but they’re a good visual thing to have and it creates awareness of where you money goes I feel.
Can we get the frequency of income changed as I currently have a weekly income and i have done with agency work so setting budgets up it a wee bit difficult when everything is arranged for monthly payments
I use the Budgeting tool quite a bit and as a consequence made a number of changes in my finances like @mattrichardson above.I even saved some money !!
I now put all my DD’s and Standing Orders out on the same day, so I am better able to understand how much money I have. I bloody love the little notification that I get reminding me of whats going out on a day.
I don’t think I quite trust the summary amount and the little lines telling me if I am within/outside of budget. Maybe next month I will.
I agree with @Rat_au_van above that it can be weird if you have variable spending habits. If there is a one off which takes you over budget on the line, do I think thats good or bad.
I am curious if there is a way (or how useful it might be) to segregate what might be hard committed spending (Bills, Rent, Council Tax etc.) and true discretionary (shopping, groceries, holidays etc.). And whether it might be useful to know what your committed spending looks like over a period. Might that inform the user of their spending habits…
Possible Updates
It would be great to change the dates so I can see ‘periods’ (like the last 6 months) and not just scroll through the months on summary. This is similar to Genericnortherner
It would be good to be able to click on “Travel” or “Groceries” and then be able to see my spending patterns over a period of 3 or 6 months. Maybe with a little bar chart.
If I have a spare balance at the end of the month, I get a little prompt suggesting I sweep it to a Pot.
im confused how the budget tool works, theres like budgeting then theres spent then theres committed spending why cant all these things be linked together for one ultimate budget so i can get a proper overview of my finances. sometikmes the budget calculation excludes my comitted spending for rent and bills which is £1400 or somrhting i mean thats a lot of money and i want that on my budget calculation and on the top right corner where it says total spent!!!
also what about weekly daily and monthly live spending reports, revlut use to have this im struggling with monzo for the same view.