To be honest the thread about the current customer service trends is stopping me
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I have switched to around 13 different banks over the last 5 years for the incentives and to ‘test the waters’. Moved to full Monzo In November 2017 and will not be leaving. The simplicity, the transparency, the support network, the people, the speed, the future prospectus etc etc etc. It just gets better.
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_<tl;dr>I got used to transferring a weekly allowance to my preload card, & love the budgeting power over smaller frequent/in person card tx - if I don't have it I can't spend it. It's simple. I'd like to manage monthlies/DDs/savings too, but perversely I worry Full Monzo would mix the two up and I'd lose this simple transparency. I'd like to exclude income from my budget too. A lot more detail below if you're interested (click the triangle, top left)... I'm happy to spitball ideas (I'm a continuous improvement engineer 😆).</>_
Hey, I’m Jon.
I started using my preload card just for spending money (a weekly allowance S/O), the stuff I’d normally buy when I’m out and about (my frequent in person card transactions I guess), and it’s been a great budgeting tool, and I’d like to keep it that way. Any time I like, I can see how I’m doing because when the money’s gone it’s gone. If I underspent, I’d shift any surplus into a pot for a savings goal, or tighten up my spending when I’d over done it.
Doing that has helped me see what I’m actually spending (I used to spend far more eating out than I thought, and I saved a fair bit by choosing to cook instead once a week, for instance), and I’ve developed some great habits as a result & saved money.
The problem for me now is that if I import all of my other banking activity, I lose the function I’ve come to love in the noise of the rest of it.
If I analysed my outgoings (like ranking all one month’s expenses by value), I could divide it into two pots: one of monthly bills, DDs, SOs, regular savings, things I’d maybe check once every 6 months to make sure I was getting good value; the second would be loads of little bits that added up to a lot, popping to the shops, groceries, trips, getting fuel, eating out and cinema, etc - I could try to juggle a budget for these bits and pieces at the monthly level, but I’ve been using Monzo to make it simpler - if I have spare cash this week, I can choose between eating out, or saving for my next holiday. I’d like to manage my monthlies on Monzo too, but to me it makes sense to treat the two pots with their different frequencies and patterns in two different ways.
I’d imagine people used to getting paid weekly might value some similar functionality.
A) So I’d like to be able to separate my high frequency/in person card transactions from the rest, and pay them out of a ringfenced amount, which is how I’ve come to love using Monzo at the moment.
I’m not asking Monzo to bend to my usage patterns (far be it from me), but it is what’s been holding me back.
Like I said, it’s kind of perverse, but it’s the Monzo transparency that I’ve grown to love that’s making me reticent to change, Monzo made me think outside the box, and now I don’t want to get back in.I appreciate that I’m choosing to stick with what I know rather than think outside the box again. 
If Monzo enabled me to keep my weekly spending money separate to the rest so I could still see what’s going on with it, or even make it so I could have in person card transactions going from a nominated pot that I could keep an eye on, or even have a linked sub-account for that same purpose, I think that could do it for me.
I’m aware though that I’ve probably missed a different way of achieving the same thing, so I’ll be taking a closer look. I’d be surprised if it’s as simple though (I’m open to ideas).
Another smaller gripe is in the process of moving towards The Full Monzy, I’ve nominated my account to access a Marcus savings account (1.5% instant access, something else I’d like to see in Monzo), so I’ve transferred some savings in and out of Monzo from an old account to Marcus, and it’s reported as income in Monzo. So as a side gripe in all this, one thing that would help persuade me is that:
B) I’d like to be able to select some incoming amounts for exclusion from my budget income in the same way as I can exclude expenditure
If I could do that, I think my income and outgoings in my budget would more accurately reflect my actual earnings and expenditure, rather than adding my savings amount to my income and expenditure for a month and confusing the picture. It’s made the graph at the top of my app useless too, by changing the scale with a giant peak, so it doesn’t tell me anything any more.
That’s where I’m at. I love plenty of Monzo things, and I’ve invested, & I’ve got others on board, but it’s too useful as I’m using it for now, until I can figure out a simple way to combine the two.
Admittedly I only read your tl;dr but you may be happy to learn that committed spending pots are coming soon. So you can segregate your spending money from your bills money 
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switching for joint accounts and pots. Although I am going to start manually switching in the new year
If you start your manual switch (not as bad as it seems) in the new year I imagine joint pots will be here by then 
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thank you for your speedy response, it would certainly make my life easier
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That’s what it’s there for 
. Sorry for the essay & thanks for the reply!
Do you have a source you can share about segregating spending money using pots?
I don’t currently use Monzo as my main as I currently get 5% interest on the money in my current account and also got £100 for switching. So it’s the financial gain I get with other banks that’s stopping me at the moment.
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There is a sneak peek from @simonb of the current staff version, and a post from @Jami roughly explaining what needs to be done before it gets released.
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No trouble at all, happy to help
@anon77363772 has kindly linked to the posts from Monzo mentioning committed spending pots. Since you’re a fan of tl;dr - they’ve been in staff testing for quite a while so it would be a safe assumption that they will be hitting labs soon if they can work out those rough edges
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I thought someone from Monzo said they were going to rebuild the committed spending pot feature from scratch to try and improve it. Not sure if it will be hitting labs soon.
A safer bet would be Committed Spending Pots reaching labs in the middle to end of next quarter. Hopefully sooner though.
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I have all my income paid into my Monzo - but have a joint account with the wife that is used for all the household bills. Having multiple accounts helps with budgeting.
To me this is the definition of #FullMonzo 
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I agree! All my income goes into monzo, and my personal direct debits come out. I also have a lump sum going to a legacy joint account and another amount going to a monzo joint account.
All my spending is done through my monzo account.
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Is your joint account Monzo too? 
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Nope… Nationwide - also have an ISA attached to it.
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The fact that Monzo doesn’t have student overdraft facility at 0% interest for students.
Check out my recent thread on this topic for more info.
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You use your accounts the same way that me and my partner do however we have our joint account with Monzo instead of Nationwide.
Since you have a Monzo current account you don’t need me to tell you all the cool things you can do with it, so is there a reason you wouldn’t want to be able to utilise all these features on your joint account?
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Trust really… the company is run by a bunch of Shoreditch hipsters. I left London because quite frankly, I loathe Shoreditch hipsters (and broadly the silicon valley style culture that started to infect the place). But as a Software Engineer I appreciate what they’re doing and invested because I believe it’s got legs. To me, Monzo is still in beta.
I used NationWide because it isn’t a bank (I don’t like banks). As an established building society it has more services available than Monzo. ISA’s, Mortgages, insurance - yes I can shop around, but as a customer I get preferential offers / rates.
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