Here are the release notes for the Android app that’s rolling out now!
Okay, so…
Two bits of news for you this time:
We’ve added two new spending categories! A warm welcome to ‘Family’ and ‘Personal care’. Also, we’ve renamed ‘Cash’ to ‘Finances’, because it can cover much more than the dollar in your pocket.
We’ve also been busy redesigning transaction help, so it should be easier to use and more useful. Keep an eye out for more transaction help tweaks next time, too.
TL;DR – ‘Family’ should be renamed ‘Household’. ‘Gift’ category should be introduced. Everything that would go in ‘Family’ could fit in either ‘Household’ or ‘Gift’ along with many other transactions. Other two changes to categories are good.
A few thoughts on the new categories:
’Personal care’
– Great new category. Fills an obvious gap in the previous categories. I haven’t seen anyone have an issue with this one.
’Cash’ to 'Finances’
– I think this is a good change. Having a category for things like transfers to other bank accounts, ISAs, paying off credit cards etc… was sorely needed.
– ‘Cash’ category wasn’t particularly useful in my opinion, since you could just categorise any ATM withdrawals with the category of the thing you spend the cash on. making the ‘cash’ category pretty useless to me.
– Has the added benefit of discouraging cash withdrawals which cost Monzo money.
’Family’
– I imagine the idea was for the category to be used for stuff like mortgage/rent payments, pets, stuff for kids like clothes etc…
– I don’t think this is a very good category. It’s not particularly useful for younger or older people without a you + partner + kids living at home relationship.
– Renaming the category as ‘Household’ would solve this problem.
— Mortgage/rent payments, pets etc… could go in ‘Household’
— Stuff for kids would be divided up into other categories
– Only thing I can think of that would go in ‘Family’, but not ‘Household’ are gifts for family members. This could be solved by having a ‘Gift’ category, which would also include charity donations.
Invaluable to me. I want to keep school uniforms, pocket money, Christmas and birthday pressies, trips etc away from other categories as it helps me to see why my budget is so far off some weeks. Over the year it would be 2nd biggest category after groceries in my non fixed expenses
Could be used for gifts to family members etc as well
These would probs fit better in the Gift/Charity category that loads of people want.
Wouldn’t trips go under Holiday? Especially when Monzo get around to letting us mark stuff as Holiday and categorise it as something else at the same time (eg: transport).
This could go under Shopping.
Didn’t think of that one, but I guess it could go in the Gift/Charity category.
Yes I could put most under something else but then I’d have to figure out where I put them and add them or tag each one. Having 1 category means I can just see what I’ve spent rather then just faffing.
I know it’s no use to you, there’s a few existing categories that I don’t use. But it’s been requested a lot and I’m really glad it’s there and separate from rent, rates and home insurance
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