The amount to spend doesn’t vary; your spend might but this is about adding balance to your spend in small increments that allow you to (for example) not be constantly in your overdraft.
It got me out of my overdraft and since then I’ve never had nor needed one. The biggest thing was seeing some months I had £6 a day to spend and I’m spending £2.20 on a coffee! You immediately see how you can cut back daily.
But each day I would try to spend less and the rollover would give me a small treat on a Friday (in my scenario I got a bakery item on a Friday).
i was a bit worried , but then today our CEO announced that they really have stepped up and every one at my pay grade is getting a one off payment of £500 in our september pay , im quite impressed by this and of course it will be stuck straight into the bills pot
The funny thing is that these kind of things are portrayed as a positive; almost something to aspire towards.
I fully get that it’s not intentional, but it’s a bragging right culture we have that “I’ve spent more on XYZ than others”. I don’t really get how spending a lot on takeaways is a good thing… cooking your own food isn’t only cheaper it can be healthier too (nutritionally and actually mentally in some cases).
I’m guilty of the slight endorphin bump from those kinda stats too but when put in the context of this thread it does seem a strange thing we do…
@coffeemadman Takeaways are good every once in a while, I much prefer home cooking plus its cost effective. When I was younger my mother used to put our weekly pocket money on a board in the kitchen - we would earn pocket money by doing chores etc. We got to spent our pocket money in the tuck shop ran by my mother and it pretty much comprised of home cooked goodies. My mother cooked her own crisps (ready salted was our only option ) and baked gorgeous cakes. This was my mums way of trying to provide for us even though money was tight. It’s not a tale of woe, it just makes me chuckle at the freedom we now have to order food in 47 different varieties from an app.
If like to see some improvements to the recurring payments as part of the budgeting. First a recurring debit card payment once set won’t auto update in the same way that direct debits do for for changes in the monthly amount. Second, having better support for multiple payments per month to the same organisation would also help (this applies for direct debits too). For example when I had a Zopa loan one payment per month was the regular monthly payment, the other being the over payment. The upcoming payments struggled with that.
Flex has been helping to reduce my costs when short on funds compared to using the overdraft fully. Should be less of an issue soon, but hard to tell what more expenses will come up. If I was to apply for the overdraft now would I get the lower rate of interest? Could there be a way for people to get the lower rate of interest as their credit worthiness and information that Monzo knows about you improves rather than being stuck with the same rate for life?
A bit like the green mortgage borrowing that some mortgage companies provide so that you can do some home improvements that improves the efficiency of your home at a lower than normal, I wonder if Monzo could offer something similar, especially for smaller amounts where going through a mortgage company is a lot of effort, or where you are mortgage free or renting. If I was renting a house and was tight on income having a low rate to buy some loft insulation to top it up or blocking some draughts, is something that I’d do as it would help to reduce the energy bills rather quickly with the current high energy prices. Other support around this would also be helpful for some. Advice around things like lowering the boiler flow temperature can reduce bills.
Could you be a bit more specific here about what goes wrong, and what you would like to see handled differently. I ask because I have three separate pairs of direct debits to the same supplier (2 x car insurance, 2 x pet insurance, 2 x car tax), and all three pairs work perfectly - there are six predicted payments, for the six correct values, on the six correct dates (one pair is same day, the others are split, but all are correct). So fundamentally, the handling of “same supplier” works.
I’m wondering if the difference is that all of mine have unique references, since they’re different policy numbers / registrations. If yours are with two debits that are effectively identical for payer/payee/account/reference, then I’m really not sure how Monzo, or any other automated budgeting tool, could distinguish them. How could it know if it’s two separate payments, both monthly, for two amounts, or one 2-weekly payment that keeps jumping up and down each time depending on usage?
In the Zopa case the same direct debit is used for both the monthly payment and the additional over payments of the load. I could in some way manually mark one of the payments as the normal monthly one and the other as the additional payment. Or it could figure out that one is consistently a similar day each month and the other is randomly dotted around the month, possibly with extras.
For Backblaze I get 2 charges per month, one for backup which generally stays the same each month, and another for their B2 storage which varies monthly based on usage. These debit card payments are marked as recurring and 2 separate payments, however I have to periodically go in and stop them being marked as recurring and then re add the recurring based on the latest monthly charges as the amount of storage used had gone up.
In all honestly I don’t have immediate concerns for myself regarding the cost of living and don’t feel I have been impacted as much the rising bills haven’t dramatically increase for me in fact our last bill was lower than usual, but a common fear or worry for everyone here is the rising energy bills and I’m not sure how that will impact myself or others until the rise happens, I know I will have enough money to cover it (I hope) but will others?
I’m just thinking about the cap rising this year and in January again.
The bigger issue is the media are not telling the full story. Lots of people are blaming their suppliers when its infact the manufacturers. If people stop paying in October then energy will cost more as recoveries will be implemented to the unit rate and standing charges.
I think the Price Cap needs scrapping and a different way of charging consumers needs to be brought in as its been made clear that the price cap is no longer viable.
This would be a good move, but, unless I’ve missed a news article about it, very unlikely to happen.
It’s always been on my mind why it’s so low - granted if it wasn’t the country may lose out on a fair bit of income, albeit put back in by other means.
What about a minimum basic income per person? Think some countries do this or at least trial it. Where each adult gets say £10k a year for life basically, and most other benefits done away with.
I’m guilty of the slight endorphin bump from those kinda stats too but when put in the context of this thread it does seem a strange thing we do…
