Genuinely curious about this.
No other bank has committed spending pots. And Monzo has lots of features that most don’t (although it’s still missing a few, primarily if you’re a heavy cash/cheque user).
So my question is, why is this the killer feature? Is it because it’s truly innovative? Or that there’s too much inertia to bother switching otherwise, but this would tip you over the edge?
(Not that you have to justify yourself, just curious why this one thing is key).
I went full Monzo to make use of all the other features over a year ago. A commited spending pot is the one thing I have been longing for since I moved over, and without it I find an entire tab on the app (the summarytab) is completel useless
I’m not sure what the committed pot is suppose to add to summary or how it will improve it? The summary already works with committed spending/repeat transactions. The summary feature is the only reason I was able to shutdown my old bills account
I use the summary after I have done my monthly budget.
Not the OP, but my take on this based on how I use my own accounts is that it could be because:
Non-Monzo account for bills and DDs, not otherwise used. This means the money to cover everything can be left in there and all spending done on Monzo without worrying about accidentally spending the wrong money.
Going ‘full Monzo’ as-is breaks the paradigm because now you have to be careful you don’t spend money you’ve earmarked for bills. You could use pots to ringfence it, but then you have to remember to move the money out before the bill is due - and mind you don’t then dip into it in the meantime! The balance of friction and risk means it is easier and safer to not go ‘full Monzo’ at this point.
Committed pots would fix this problem by allowing the ringfencing of the money for bills/DDs without the need to manually make it available again when required. No friction, no risk. No barrier to ‘full Monzo’.
tl;dr, In effect, you could say the legacy account is being treated as a ‘committed pot’ and until that can be replicated in Monzo, it’s a barrier.
I guess its just down to how people mamage their finances. I personally (and I’ve seen lots of others who do the same) calculate (with the help of Monzo) what scheduled payments I have for the upcoming month.
I then move enough money to cover this into a ‘Commited spending’ pot so I know I definately have enough to pay them. The day before the payment is due, I have a scheduled withdrawl from the commited spending pot into my main account to cover this.
Its all a little messy as it stands, and my summary is always telling me I will run out of money as it does not take into account the money in my commited spending pot.
I think a solution would be to be:
This has been spoken about in depth here, so thats probably a good place to discuss this further 
This. EXACTLY this.
I do the same and have the same issue.
I also rely on transfers in from housemates for their portion of rent and shared bills, and when any of my payments are effected by weekends it can effect the pot working as I’d like it to.
Ahh I can see why this wouldn’t work for people that are moving money out of the main account into a pot. I leave all my money in the main account and the summary works fine for me. I could accidentally over spend I guess and spend the money set aside for bills but that doesn’t happen and not to mention you get a notification if this happens. I’d still be keen for a committed pot feature though as the actual account balance would be more accurate and I wouldn’t have to keep checking summary page
Does the “committed spend” transactions not get automatically removed from the summary? My starting amount is what I have left after my bills have gone - they don’t affect my summary or budgets - unless I’m missing something?
They do, I think the issue people are having is that the ability still exists to spend more money than the summary says you have available. So if you are cutting it tight with funds in a month, you might accidentally spend more than you have left, I guess here the summary number just stops at 0? But essentially they can’t afford their bills. To solve this they put the money aside in a pot and thats when summary gets messed up.
I still don’t get how though (not to say it doesn’t) like my IFTTT movements don’t affect my summary - Summary doesn’t care how much you have in your account - its an arbitrary figure you set so you can see where your money is going.
So if you moved your committed spending into a pot as soon as you got paid, then set your summary budget to the value you have left after those bills eventually get paid, the summary and budget would still work wouldn’t it?
Its basically the doughnut that guesses whether you will have enough money. Say I have £0 in my account and £50 in a commited spending pot. My DD is for £45.
The doughnut knows I have a cost of £45 coming out, but it doesn’t reconise the £50 I have in the commited spenidng pot and tells me I will run out of money, because once the DD is taken my balance will be -£45 (although it won’t becuase I have scheduled the £45 to transfer into my account).
Annoyingly the account knows what is scheduled to come out of the pot in the way of SO or DDs, but does not take into account any schduled income from pots
I guess in effect the whole issue could be solved by it predicting income from pots (and other Monzo users would be great too, would love it to immediately include the money coming in to pay for house bills from my GF)? Would this cause any other issues or not solve any other issues?
For me it’s because it can’t recognise the transfers to me from my housemates, so it always thinks I’m due to spend too much. I can manually set the budget though and then it’s okay, but then I don’t have the same sight of my balance after committed spends.
Because I need a bills account. With Lloyds I had a current account and another current account. One for bills and one for play money.
I am a contractor so pay myself quarterly. My dividend is paid to cover my bills over the next three months. My salary is my play money. Monzo AFAIK doesn’t allow you to have more than one account, so for me, committed pots is just a work around for not allowing me to have two accounts.
Ahh okay I think I see the issue - I suppose for me I haven’t even factored those spends into my summary so it doesn’t take notice (I do only loosely follow the summary tab as is anyway) - I can see the problem I just struggled to see the real-world implementation if that makes any sense?
I do have this issue as my girlfriend pays me her half of the rent into Monzo and then Monzo takes out my half and her half so it goes a bit skewiff, I think I’ve fixed that now by just budgeting on what I have “left” after the rent goes out but still not ideal.
The summary just needs to not be so “dumb”
Summary seems to work for me, all the monthly spends including season tickets are in committed spend; and I tend to live by the summary circle and get nervous when it goes orange
I’d really like to see closer on key items such as IBAN numbers being available. I’ve requested updates a number of times as many corporations although they have UK banks for legalities require an IBAN to process PAYE payments. At the moment this prevents many from closing other accounts as they have to bounce the payments from in my case Santander to Monzo purely because the IBAN is required, this defeats the object and puts in question the the switch.
I like my Monzo account as does my wife, but it’s a bug bear that just creates frustration 