You can’t do that anyway. He was just being dramatic to make a point.
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This is so important and at the moment it goes against Monzo’s savings/pots/planning ethos.
I’m sure lots and lots of people are putting extra away now towards big energy bills that we know are coming and a great way to save us to put that money into a pot, that’s something Monzo promote heavily and leaving yourself your “available spend” in your account means you know exactly where you’re at.
But what if you dip into your overdraft by £50 today and you don’t get paid for another week? You shouldn’t have to take money out of your savings pot to artificially inflate another place, you’re not really moving that money anywhere.
This is made worse by the fact that Plus/Premium customers get interest on the balance, no matter which pot it’s in. It sounds dramatic, but it’s helping the rich get richer and punishing the poor.
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Exactly. And just to reiterate in case it gets derailed: clearly show people their mandatory and discretionary spending! It’s the only way that they can save.
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You can pay for your Energy Bills with credit cards. There will be people doing it. It’s wrong that people should be left in that position. So yes. Monzo have a way to stop that and they should.
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I think you’ve misunderstood.
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Possibly. Apologies if I have.
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You can remove your limit within the app, or speak to the chat team and reduce your limits permanently, and you’d be subject to eligibility checks again if you required an increase.
You can also speak to us about removing lending in full if you are concerned about the ability to easily increase these yourself.
I guess it’s a mentality thing on how you manage your debt, if money is available and you’re in dire need of it, what happens if said block was applied because you’ve not reduced your outstanding balance to X %, and you’re stuck trying to pay for shopping or similar.
Having the option to easily override this kinda defeats the object and, as mentioned a few times around the forum, people will turn to credit in these times.
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Completely agree. I recall having a long to and fro with @simonb years ago when Monzo first introduced overdrafts. The basic Monzo response is that you’ll get a warning the previous day to give you time to move move the money - but, of course, you shouldn’t have to.
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Not quite related to General Public™ - but what are Monzo doing to support their staff in the Cost of Living crisis right now?
Would love to hear more of that stuff.
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Personally I’m surprised their staff don’t get free Plus/Premium, which might help more with financial budgeting and financial health.
But I’m surprised whether there is a crisis or not!
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Alongside looking at how we can support customers, what we do for staff is something the teams are working on at the moment too.
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LBG gave their staff 50% off their Club Platinum, and reduce the account credit from £1500 down to £750, possibly changed now but that’s how it was for me.
Not sure how the Plus/Premium offering would work. We do get health insurance as a perk, which also includes travel insurance 
My phone insurance is with nationwide so I have other half included there too, along with roadside assistance. Works out cheaper there than elsewhere.
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I’m sure it can be done cheaper, and stuff like healthcare is found in other companies. It’s good - but not essential in terms of cost of living.
Just an interesting thing that they don’t give staff access to something that will cost little (or nothing really, if it’s just Plus) that could assist staff budgeting.
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Just as a possible way to help - daily budgeting. I know it’s a love-or-hate style but personally it helped me a LOT to curb spending.
Perfect world: one pot for all bills and outgoings. Main account just for spending.
Divide that by number of days until payday.
Each day just let you know how much you have left. Stuff not spent is rolled over.
I’ve seen the rollover done two ways: one simply adds it to the next day’s amount, the other is that it spreads the amount over the remaining days.
Larger purchases can be spread over the remaining days if it’s going to be larger than daily spend or is something important - sort of like Flex’ing your own payment.
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I don’t use budgeting tools at all, I just can’t be bothered with them. I do have one main account which all my bills go from. Every month I’ll leave enough money in that to cover those. Anything left over, some goes to another account which I use for shopping with, and the rest goes to savings accounts.
As much as I’ve tried in really not interested in the data about where and what I’ve spent, it’s just irrelevant to me.
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I know the energy switching thing is not really in a good position in general, but it would be good to have a few more options than just Octopus on Monzo’s app, as well as a calculator based on the price cap per unit of gas and electric so we can work out our usage and “forecast” the next payment etc.
Other things that might be useful:
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Auto-Saves (similar to Chip and Plum. Rather than just roundups, put money aside into a better savings pot
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Cashback (So many have jumped on Chase’s 1% cashback, and it mounts up nicely too which would help pay bills etc. - Maybe even a built-in “TopCashback” feature?)
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Stronger Budgeting Tools (Being able to forecast recurring payments via Trends in more detail auto-categorise better etc.)
Not sure how doable all the above is, but that’s what I’d like to see anyway, personally.
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I do this and it works well. As long as my average daily spend is under the amount per day then I’m golden.
Another thing I do, which sounds so obvious when written down, is focus on zero days and card transactions under £5. Sometimes you need to spend, but so often I’m buying a snack or something that I don’t need, I’m not starving but I just buy it anyway, £3/4/5 a few of times a week really mounts up.
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Isn’t this what the left to spend bar does?
Yes but that’s monthly, I think this is about having it as a weekly/daily “don’t spend more than” to hit the target.
I could be mis-understanding, but this seems like a really great idea.
My current method is to put everything I know is committed (bills) in one account and the same day, and then divide what’s left into two pots - saving and “left to spend”.
This way I only have around £20-30 in my main account which stops me from overspending cause I have to go into the “left to spend” pot to take money out of.
Similar to @Revels & @coffeemadman it would be next level if the “left to spend” worked on a weekly basis, with logic that anything left over would rollup, to prevent being out of coin towards the back end of a month.
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Just to say great thread and thanks @AlanDoe for it, some really great insights and good to see how others are doing their budgeting which gives me ideas.
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