It’s super super frustrating to me that Monzo hasn’t implemented certain features in joint accounts after sooo many requests. This frustration is again causing me to research other banks that might fit my needs better.
Our use case is extremely basic:
Who we are:
We are a couple (not married) with one child.
We are both self-employed but one of us is both self-employed and employed.
We are also in receipt of other incomes from various sources while our self-employed earnings stabilise.
We are currently time, energy and money poor.
We currently only use the Joint Account.
One of us banks with another bank for personal banking
What we want to achieve:
Less stress around managing our finances through:
Clear visibility on WHAT we spend our money on in order to make more effective budgeting decisions that will further our goals (not just financial goals)
Reduced time budgeting so that we can focus our attention on other matters.
What we need:
We are currently looking for a way to categorise our spending so that it provides a clear summary of our spending in order tomake better spending decisions. Monzo’s current categories do not make sense for us. What exactly are “Expenses” for instance?
How the current features are affecting our lives:
Pots → Great, these allow us to put aside our money in a way that allows us to see what is being spent on bills and ensure they are paid. This has reduced the stress in our family immensely. They also allow us to budget our grocery spend slightly more effectively and save for family spends.
Current categorisation → This is causing major stress for us. The categories are not set up for our spending habits and we can’t make our habits fit them in a way that makes sense. Everyone is different and I strongly believe forcing people into pre-set categories is a bad move. We do not use the summary to monitor our budgets for this reason.
Payment notifications → has alerted us to fraud on 2 occasions and ensured our money could be reclaimed.
Pay from pots → Is extremely useful to us. It allows us to separate and automate our finances clearly and effectively.
Overall → While there are many good features that are benefitting us, not having custom categorisation causes so much stress for us that it overshadows the rest of the product to the point where I am constantly keeping an eye on the competition to find a less stressful product.
If you use your card to buy things for work, that would be expenses.
But you can ignore the name, as long as you remember what it’s for, then use expenses for your child care, or pet food or use Charity for your gym membership.
Using them in this way may help you out for now if it it’s just custom categories that you’re struggling with.
For instance, if you use Charity to pay for your childcare. The next time you pay them, it will automatically assign it to Charity again.
Yeah I see your point there and I guess it works but my brain just won’t accept that haha I’m gonna say that when you are this stressed then everything needs to be simple black and white. Putting that extra thinking step in there just makes me nervous that something will go wrong with the system. Which is the root reason that the categories don’t work for us.
A thought occurred to me there. @monzo staff: if there is a technical reason why custom categories can’t be free (more data space required for extra categories or such) then could you just give us the ability to rename the ones that are already there? I think that change alone might be enough to tick the box for most people. It would certainly tick mine.
Yeah I did assume it was a business decision I was just trying to be diplomatic I have a basic knowledge of app design and I can’t think of a reason why those categories couldn’t be renamed so if anyone else remembers it would be great to know!
I actually did a full switch from my old bank to Monzo on the basis that I assumed (my fault obviously) that when I clicked upgrade my account at the top of my profile screen this would upgrade ALL accounts under my name.
I get it’s a bit tough, stuff like credit monitoring isn’t applicable to joint accounts, and for premium I can see that a lot of the features won’t work.
But basic stuff like custom categories (one of my key reasons for buying) or advanced roundup would be hugely useful for a joint account! I can’t see how it’s hard to put a marker next to each feature that shows which apply to your joint and which apply to your personal account.
At least they should make it clear on the signup screen it only applies to your personal account! I nearly signed up before double checking on google and here I am!
Would really like to see this added. Whether it is the custom categories for joint accounts or the full plus features as I personally never really use my personal account.
Like many people we’d love to see the option of Plus/Premium on Joint accounts. Our Personal accounts are just pocket money accounts so it would be really useful to have the extra Plus money management features and an overdraft on Joint.
My husband and I also just joined Monzo as we assumed we would be able to have a joint premium or joint plus account. Voted & hope they implement the feature soon!
Thanks for the vote - that’s pushed the feature request to 242 votes, and the topic is now 6th in the list of most requested features that haven’t yet been implemented. Hopefully one day…
@Monzo any news or updates on this? I’ve read through the reasons not to above - what about surveying JA account holders in app to see if they want it?
We’re seriously considering leaving Monzo for our joint account to remove the hassle now. It’d be a shame but no progress over 2 years really irks me
I have a basic knowledge of app design and I can’t think of a reason why those categories couldn’t be renamed so if anyone else remembers it would be great to know!
- no guarantee it will sway 
into implementing JA paid-tiers, but every little helps 
)
