As the cost of living keeps increasing – we’ve been talking to our customers to understand how it’s impacting them and how Monzo might be able to help. So we wanted to start a conversation on here too.
If you feel comfortable sharing, how are rising prices affecting you?
And are there features or ways of using Monzo you find especially helpful, that we should highlight to help other people? Are there any other tools you’d find useful, or information you’d like to know?
Just to highlight, as a team we’ve been monitoring the discussion that’s been taken place on the Community already about the increase in energy rise over in The Great Many Crises topic.
We’re just trying to pull focus on what we, as Monzo, can do to support customers.
I personally find the spending insights super useful such as “you spent more/less than last week” but at a granular level.
For example, Natwest (albeit monthly) tells you things such as “you spent xx extra on shopping this month” and nudges you to re-set your budget if you need to.
For Monzo if it said things like “your weekly shop was up xx from last week” it might help you understand why and help adjust things.
So continued work on trends to start to bring insights you can turn into actions might help. Also offers in plus that are relevant and update regularly would also help. Either rewards or cash back
Yeah I think basically I need budgeting back. Haven’t had it since moving to Trends in January(?) and has been sorely missing from my financial life.
Plushies to make us feel better about it all.
And given costs going up elsewhere, interest free overdrafts 
If I had control over the Plushie stock I’d be making sure the Community had a chance of grabbing one 
Thanks for the suggestions so far everyone 
Highlighting recurring payments, I think this was mentioned in a breakdown, but if you could look at someone’s account and say “you’ve paid Netflix for the last 73 months for a total of £730” for example, that might prompt someone to rethink if all that money is needed for Netflix over a period and they might have forgotten they are paying for it.
Sadly there isn’t a magic wand and Monzo can’t cover our bills, so there’s a limit.
A page with advice about what to do, how to tell your utilities company you can’t pay, and what happens next if you can’t. “Can I refuse to pay British Gas?” “Do I have a right to electricity?” etc.
Suggesting that people pay Council Tax over 12 months instead of 10 (you should be able to identify people who do that I’d imagine!) to make budgeting easier?
I’d love this so much - in a world where everything is Product aaS you end up with so many CPAs, DDs, Recurring transactions that it’s near impossible to track.
What about at [some frequency] Monzo asks you to rate the things that it detects as recurring bills - and the value you you get from them. Checks in every 3 months?
Hey, last month you donated £300 to the RSPCA? In March you said this was a:star:
service - how do you rate it now?
Nice little prompt for if you use it or not, and the things that rank low, 
Not sure if this is possible at all, but perhaps you can give people a short window to sell their shares? I recall someone mentioning Brewdog (I think) did this not too long ago.
We see a fair few topics on here of people who clearly haven’t fully understood the terms and have likely invested more than they can afford. They’re shocked to find that they can’t sell them easily, they’re a bit panicky over things like the annual reports, or constantly want to know their value when nothing can really be done about it regardless.
I think giving them the opportunity to free up that cash, especially with soring bills will perhaps help in many ways.
Geneuine other things that are in Monzo’s control:
Reducing all forms of [debt accruing] interest charges temporarily
Increasing interest rates for savings temporarily
(both of which I assume would mean Monzo taking a bit of a hit on profit from said services).
Automatically move your savings pots into the best available rate possible (as mentioned up thread)
Advocate loudly and publicly for things mega impactful on the cost of living.
I like the notifications of how much I have spent compared to the previous month. It really gives me an insight on how I am doing every month.
I would really like Monzo to have a way of telling me how much left I can spend this month in order to meet my saving goals or any other goals I set. This would help me understand if I can drink another pint or not🤣
Send plushies to cuddle in the winter to keep warm 
In all seriousness, I’m fortunate that I don’t think the cost of living will detrimentally impact me. However, I have noticed a decrease in the amount I chuck in savings each month due to the increase in cost of things.
Fortunately I’m not driving to work anywhere near as much, so saving on fuel helps cover some of that. But my biggest fear is for people who aren’t as fortunate, and will be absolutely ruined under the new costs.
Monzo should definitely be wary about loan marketing in this period, trying not to push people to switch to debt to survive it, and potentially look at things people can do to cut down on their spending - if possible.
One thing Monzo could do would be to offer competitive savings rates, and crucially, make sure that all customers who save through Monzo are on the best available rate for the product type they are using at all times.
This is as opposed to the current policy of allowing customers who don’t check rates on a regular basis to languish on uncompetitive rates.
I think this ties into maybe Monzo should just start offering interest to every customer on their account at a set %, and then higher for Plus/Premium
I really like the implementation of payment progress (with progress bar!) on Flex. I wonder if, for purchases which may not have been made with Flex, but for which there are a set number of payments to be made (eg. new sofa from DFS paid over 12 months), that info could be obtained and visualised in the same way. Perhaps in the “Payments > Scheduled” section.
This also leads in to when buying something with an “x months free” period (e.g. pay nothing for 6 months, then £50 over 12 months) which would be useful (especially if you find yourself struggling and know that those payments are on the horizon) to have visibility of, even ahead of those payments beginning.
People here might say that Monzo couldn’t afford to do this, and I’m in no position to argue the point, but Santander pay me £14pm for the pleasure of being allowed to accept my pension and pay out some DDs every month.
I’m sure Monzo could afford to give customers some incentive for banking with them.
And surely if it attracts more customers/funds then it could balance out? The sheer volume of people that flocked to Chase was insane!
They could open the joint accounts up so they are available to all, not just the select few who meet the mystery criteria.
Auto update the saving rates to the beast available without us having the need to go in and close 1 saving account and then opening a new savings account
Offer some sort of cashback scheme
And finally open up the joint accounts so they are available to all.