Launching Pots

Will pots ever be able to be tied to a separate card? With the pre-paid, it was incredibly handy to put everything in for my day to day spend so I could stick to my budget. If I was 4 days away from payday and my pre-paid was low, I’d know to scale back.

Really gonna miss the pre-paid

Ever is a long time so who knows. If you have more than you want to spend in your account, however, you flip this idea around and put what you want to keep in a pot so ony the rest is available for spending.

Missing the point. Most people don’t tuck money into savings (eg: a pot) until the end of the month once they are close to payday. The value of the pre-paid, was that you could dedicate your budget to certain things (eg: transport, eating out, pubs, entertainment, etc) and leave your current account for bills and groceries.

If you think about the number of times you pull out your physical card every month, most of that will align to the former cases.

1 Like

True, but as the discussion related to moving from the pre-paid, I was working on the basis that you already had a current account that you do all that with and we were just talking about the money that used to go on the pre-paid card. That may have been a wrong assumption but you didn’t say either way.

If you’re saying you want to do a full current account migration and achieve what you’re asking then that’s a different question. To solve that one you either need card-from-a-pot as you say, or the inverse which would be DDs-from-a-pot.

I switched from day one or near to it. New current is great, but it lacks the hard rules that the pre-paid had by default, once you’re at zero, you can’t use it anymore. Binding a pot to a card let’s you segment/harshly budget your money a bit better, though that’s not saying pots in and of itself aren’t useful on their own

2 Likes

I’d like to say the function is coming, it’s certainly been discussed enough, but until I see it on a roadmap or in a staff post then I’d hate to promise anything.

1 Like

My income is not monthly but just whenever it comes in; so pots for me (when it comes out on android) will be a way for me to hold money to be budgeted for future months without accidentally spending it!

5 Likes

Hi,

Hi, this may have been covered above but I havent seen it so thought I would ask then carry on reading the blog.

I have been patiently awaiting the release of POTS on Android which I understand should have been Monday or Tuesday but it did not happen. I have just seen this article stating 1.9.20 now live.

Can someone help me understand if my app is updating or not? My app shows I am on version 1.16.1 - is this why the POTS update has not arrived? Should I be on a different version number by now?

Many thanks
Andy

Pots UI on Android is vertically scrolling, didn’t I say the other day that I prefer the Android UI here? :wink: :joy:

(Sorry design team, I still love you)

In all seriousness though, I’m not sure we anticipated that people would create so many Pots! It’s great feedback though, will feed it back to the product team :grinning:

If the average pot rate is more than 4 or 5 I can see how it would get exhausting.

5 Likes

When you start sharing pots with others I imagine the use volume to go up. Hopefully this is soon as they become so much more useable at this point in the absence of a joint account. :+1:t2:

Hey, I don’t think you are missing anything. 1.9.20 is iOS. I’m not sure what the latest android is but I believe pots are due next week for android now. It was slightly delayed but when our will have the ability to add/withdraw custom amounts from pots (iOS initially was set amounts 5/10/15/20/30/40 etc.)

1 Like

Yes it must be exhausting to keep having that much money left at the end of the month after you have paid to live that you then need to spread what’s left over 10+ savings pots! I’m sure the product team will be more then happy to redesign the layout to prevent people from getting friction burn on there finger! :grin:

Apologies if this has been mentioned before, although I don’t think I’ve seen it suggested as of yet.

Love the new pots feature, and I already have a couple on the go, one for Christmas presents, and for an upcoming trip to Poland.

It would be cool if, rather than withdrawing money back to your main pot, you could select a pot to use. So going to Poland, you could just use the money budgeted in that pot.

I realise it would be trickier with something like Christmas presents, swapping back and forth, although it would still work I think.

Anyway, loving pots as it is too!

7 Likes

Howdy!

Pots is pretty awesome, the current release is a bit of a minimum viable product to get it out there + get people saving/budgeting better. Which is cool.

However, there’s a lot of scope for the concept of Pots, and what you’re asking for is definitely something that I believe is planned or at least similar.

Some of the other things I believe being planned:

  • conditions for transfer of funds into pots (ie save extra change)
  • Pay all direct debits from a “Bills” pot.

It’s probably worth seeing how Pots evolves overtime, but I’m optimistic it’s going to be good!

2 Likes

It was mentioned just yesterday in the Pots thread I’ve added this to.

1 Like

I’ve ended up with a bunch. I could have used 1 but it’s much better for me (mentally) to be able to psycially divide my money.

One is for some new hardware I’m buying that I put money aside for monthly. One is for my weekly grocery shop. One is my travel money (I usually do a monthly travelcard but as I’m out of London for 10 days this month it’ll be cheaper to buy weekly, but you can’t stack up weekly passes), one for a holiday I’m going on next year and another for some emergency cash I want to keep aside. It’s really nice seeing my ‘balance’ only being moeny that I’ve not set aside for other projects. In the short time we’ve had pots I’m already feeling way more in control of my finances than I ever have.

4 Likes

I don’t understand. Other than extra functionality, what is different from the Pre Paid to now (with the obvious exception of Apple Pay and debit card Topups- which we know are coming back soon)?

What’s stopping you from using monzo the exact same way as you did before?

I honestly don’t understand how you will miss the Pre Paid Card, so I’m genuinely asking.

A bit trivial, but I’d like the option to add a custom image to a pot :slight_smile:

Had to install the Monzo app on my business iPhone just so I can play before it’s released on Android :smiley:

1 Like

The issue is your current account does a lot of things:

  • Pay bills
  • Send money to savings accounts/investments
  • Groceries or Amazon shopping
  • Have stuff for emergencies and ad-hoc spend
  • etc

So, pretty much the things you probably do via the app or online.

But there is also a discrete amount of money that you need for day to day.
So, travel to work/home, entertainment (ok, pubs), buying clothes, coffees,
etc. So, pretty much the things you probably do directly.

Pre-paid allowed you to silo off a block of money, and stick to it. When I
had my pre-paid, I knew whatever was there I could spend without worrying…
And when I ran out, it meant I had to cut back on things like pubs and the
cinema for example. When you are drawing directly from your current, it’s
difficult to know if you are free to spend whatever the app says you have
to spend.

Pots are great as a savings component. I’m suggesting that by tying a pot
to a separate card (which I’d be happy to even pay for), they are also a
righteous way to keep certain aspects of your life under rigorous control.
For example, maybe you want to have a pot for groceries. If you are over
budget towards the end of the month, then know you your next shop needs to
be smaller.

2 Likes

Pots do not make sense at all from a design point of view. Very disappointing, I feel like I’m using Revolut… whose UX I dislike very much.
I should be able to see all my pots on the same page. It feels like it has been rushed.

On another note, I still do not understand what the point of that graph on the home page. It brings stricty no value.

I wonder if it’s the pressure from Starling, growing a lot faster, with a lot more features, and partnerships, APIs, but I will give Monzo another 6 months before considering my options.