In defense of Pulse Graph

Monzo Chat
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I’m not a frequent poster here by any means, but I’m an avid Monzo user and fan. I use Monzo as my primary debit card, and it has changed how I relate to money. For the first time in my life I now manage to save money each month.

Before Monzo my finances were a vague mess. I’d check my balance periodically at ATMs, keep a mental note of how much I saw, and then be horrified when I reached the end of the month into my overdraft. (There was invariably something “pending” that wasn’t reflecting in my balance check.)

Online banking was (and remains) a pain to use, and strangely fills me with anxiety.

Monzo changed all that. I’ve now paid off all my debts, am regularly saving money, and am living the life I want to without worry. (I even recently got the highest credit score you can in Experian – and I’m only earning enough to be in the basic tax bracket. I’m amazed, too.) I honestly credit Monzo with this.

And a big part of that is the Pulse Graph.

I know it’s buggy, and (at times) ugly, but it’s incredibly useful.

Maybe it’s because I use Monzo like this:

  1. I have my salary enter my old school HSBC account.
  2. At the beginning of the month I transfer the amount I wish to live on to my Monzo. (It’s a realistic amount that I can achieve – I don’t try and force myself to live like a monk.)
  3. I don’t touch my HSBC account again until the following month.

So my month is literally about keeping that Pulse Graph prediction from crashing into the bottom, and instead safely reaching the right side of the screen.

If the graph is predicted to run short, I “pull up” to prevent it from crashing: I’ll start staying in more, and cut down on luxuries, until the line evens out again.

Just doing this simple thing has changed my life.

Monzo (or @bruno ) if you’re going to scrap the Pulse Graph, then please replace it with something as equally useful.

Thank you!

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I used my Monzo account this way - as a spending account - but I never found pulse useful because of using the account this way. It just goes up and down predictably based on when my spending money arrived in the account.

Instead of sending one bulk payment to Monzo each month, I had a standing order sent weekly from my second account so pulse would shoot up on Friday and crash by the end of the following week. Now I don’t have it (testing the new look) I’ve not missed it.

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I find summary much better at that task than the pulse graph. The pulse always seemed a weird thing to place so prominently in the app.

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By topping up weekly I can see why Pulse would be completely useless in this situation.

Basically if you’re not using it Pulse is an aberration that dominates the top part of the screen. But if you use it, it’s extremely helpful to have it where it is. I literally don’t want to see the new version unless there is an equivalent feature in its place.

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I find the summary tab to be a less revealing, less detailed, and less helpful (and actually, more ugly), version of the Pulse Graph.

The Home page of the app should tell you an overview of the most important metrics: Your current balance, and your estimated balance at the end of the month. That’s what I need to know when I visit the app.

A list of recent transactions is not actually helpful, and would make more sense squirreled away in a secondary tab, that provides more detail when needed.

Having this summary front and centre makes the most sense when using Monzo on a daily basis. It doesn’t need to be the Pulse Graph, per se, but it makes perfect sense for it to be the first thing you see.

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If you want to keep the graph I’d recommend that you vote for and give your reasoning here:

This way everything is in one place and your segregated topic won’t get overlooked :slight_smile:

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Thanks I’ll take a look.

Edit: Longer comment moved to thread above.

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Monzo don’t soley listen to the people on here, so don’t worry.

They do trials and such, as they are now with this layout to get a whole range of different types of customers to use it. They will then crunch the numbers on all the data to make an informed decision :blush::+1:

Edit: oh you deleted your comment :pensive:

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Phew. That’s very heartening to hear.

Edit: I just moved my comment to the thread you mentioned as I thought it would make more sense there :+1:

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Strangely, I have the polar opposite thought. Pulse to me is just a line. Summary tells me exactly where I am in the month.

Guess that’s why some like the pulse and others don’t.

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My pulse seems to be suggesting I will run out of money by the middle of the month (if that’s what it means when the projection line reaches the bottom of the window and stops by the horizontal centre) but my summary wheel says I am within my budget :man_shrugging: Or perhaps I just don’t understand pulse.

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The new layout does show the amount you have left after committed spend, so is more useful than Pulse, which never showed this info - it only showed past actuals and then a random slope down to zero.

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Very useful FOR YOU. Great! I hope they offer something similar for you and everyone else who can use the Pulse Graph/Budgeting built in to Monzo.

As long as they let us poor schmucks who get paid irregularly the ability to turn them off, then yay, bring it all back. :slight_smile:

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I like(d) the Pulse graph, but after I had my salary paid in it started to lose any real meaning - it would peak then flat-line.

I think that @duncang had it spot on in this (long but insightful) post:

Unless you can effectively separate the mandatory and discretionary spend within Monzo, the Pulse graph becomes unhelpful.

I’ve made some suggestions over here about how things might be separated (no Pulse in sight, but I think that it could helpfully come back for discretionary spend):

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This is an excellent point, and it explains a lot about the difference in reaction. It makes sense that the loudest voices here would be those that use Monzo the deepest. I think Monzo needs to tackle this difference in use case. Personally I don’t really want to return the quagmire of my old banking, but hopefully they’re aware of all of this :+1:

Thanks for helping me see how the progression on Monzo’s banking capabilities would result in different usage, and so require different tools.

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Bring back pulse graph

#SaveThePulse

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