Regulars will know I like to do an occasional mock-up of what I (think) I want to see in Monzo. Mostly to stimulate debate. Or provoke Monzo to do something.
It certainly doesn’t seem to have the latter effect, so you’ll be happy to hear this post has no mocks. It does, though, set out what I’d like to see for budgeting.
Put simply, I don’t want to budget, I want to plan future spend to see if I’ll have enough cash.
What does that mean in practice?
Imagine, if you will, a new tab. Called Planning.
On that tab you have a time-period view, a bit like Trends. But it’s for the future.
Each month has three categories: expenses (stuff you need to buy), goals (things you’re saving for) and one-off outgoings. The first two category names shamelessly borrowed from Das Budget (thanks @while-loop). (I don’t know if the following is how Das actually works or not, because not 'merican so sorry if I’m recreating that tool).
Say I want to have £20k in savings by December 2035. I create a goal for that date in the future, then Monzo calculates how much I need to save every month, adding a future transaction for each month in Planning and setting up a standing order or Pot transfer for me if I want it. Every month it reconciles the actual transfer with the predicted one and (optionally) alerts me if I’m off track.
Under expenses, I have all my usual outgoings (the stuff that’s in Summary at the moment). But here’s the difference - I can edit each individual future transaction in Planning. My council tax is paid over 10 rather than 12 months. I can go into the months that it’s not paid and delete those expenses so Monzo can predict better. And, a bit like my calendar, Monzo asks whether I want to delete all occurrences or just this one.
Under one-off outgoings, I am able to plan for one-off spend. I know I’m going to buy a new laptop in October. It costs £1000. I’m going to pay for it on a credit card. All done and budgeted for. Monzo might even ask me where the money is coming from and set up an automatic transfer from a Pot, or expect to receive some money from a savings account. Or, using open banking, I might be able to set that up directly from within Monzo.
So imagine a nice, month-by-month, or period-by-period screen. But also a summary (no pun intended) screen, showing all the goals and how they’re ticking along. And the total value of monthly expenses. And upcoming, known, one-off purchases.
And, for those of you who like budgets by category, whack those in there, too.
What’s not to like?
(@tjvr can we have this plsthx?)
] is all about truly personalised saving and investing. i.e. Saving & Investing every penny you should be (& can afford) based on your entire financial life. To accompany this, customers will be able to set goals and tweak spending/savings based on the forecasts.