How would this situation work?

So, the Monzo Current Account has targets etc and it should in the future, as far as I’m aware through what I’ve read in the various forum posts, be able to “forecast” future expenditure based on what it knows is coming up in the way of direct debits and standing orders.

So, based on this, here is an example which I’m wondering how it would work.

At the start of the month I have £1000. My usual direct debits and standing orders total over the month £500; so looking ahead, I should see that I have £500 left to spend.

One of my direct debits is PayPal - and I’ve just bough something on eBay for £50. That direct debit may not be debited for a few days and is not a regular one - so realistically there is no way that Monzo would know that this £50 is due to come out in say 3-4 days time, so the future forecast of actual money available can never be completely accurate can it?

How would I be able to “mark” or allocate that payment knowing it was due to come out?

Also, direct debit payments can change, so I assume the forecast ahead will only ever be an estimate based on what it knows has been debited before? Likewise I might have a new direct debit set up at the start of the month, that will come out towards the end and as that amount is unknown until it is claimed, the forecast will never reflect this - so how do you think you could go about managing these future debits/spends within the app to keep you actual “cash left to spend” accurate?

its a forecast :slight_smile: …to help you manage your budgeting its not an app that insists you control your spending punishable by …??? :slight_smile:

Yes that’s what I’m saying… so how would you be able to manually allocate payments that you know about, that Monzo don’t. E.g. the new DD that has just been set up and you know now (at the start of the month) will be £100 when debited at the end of the month - which you might then forget about if you cannot tag or log it somehow?

I only really raised this as I’ve read a lot of posts about people wanting to money-manage through he app - but realistically I suppose that’s not what it is there for.

Not unless Monzo user’s can record the fact that, that payment’s due to be taken when they place the order, which would probably require a feature like this, that may have been built into the Spending Breakdown tab in the ‘committed’ section.

That’s correct, Monzo doesn’t know the amount until 24 hours before it’s taken.

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Do we know when the updated targets/spending tabs is being released?

Not yet no :pensive:

its there to help people realise where they are spending their money and ‘shock’ you into seeing you’re spending £53 /week on coffee - or whatever - its up to the user to decide if they want to continue with their coffee splurges with a forecast of running out of money before the end of the month - information to change habits ? at least thats what I see it for - I take your point about feeding in other expenditure that only the user knows about :slight_smile:

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For Paypal, it’s really a different kind of forecast, similar to pre-ordering on Amazon. I think (but could be wrong) that forecasting will be more for genuine monthly outgoings: bills, subscriptions and such.

But I like the idea, especially if it could be any payment - though if you could link monzo with your paypal account, it could automatically show on your feed and that would be amazing…

Paypal use a direct debit instead of a normal charge to card as it is an additional verification step.

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