It’s true that we’re not yet in a cashless society, but doesn’t pretty much all (if not all) cash that’s withdrawn get spent on items that fit under all the other categories? If someone is categorising their eating out under the Eating Out category, why would they want to place one of those eating out transactions under a different category (e.g. one called Cash) simply because the payment method for that eating out transaction was different?
For me the limitation comes down to Monzo not allowing us to split cash transactions into multiple categories because ATMs don’t usually let us take out less than £10 but sometimes I only want a pint in a place that doesn’t take cards for less than £5 or something. The solution to that would be for Monzo to allow us to split either just ATM transactions or all transactions out into different categories.
But until then it’s going to personally irk me so see Cash conflated with transfers/savings/investments under Finances. I’ll just manually recategorise ‘Cash’ withdrawals to ‘General’ going towards.
I think the point here is that, like transfers, cash withdrawals themselves are not “spend” - you simply move money from your account into physical cash. It should, therefore, not be included in the spending summary - same as a transfer. If you do pull cash and then spend the lot on one thing, then you can recategorise it.
I think this is where the disconnect is. Cash for some is “petty cash”, i.e. used to buy bits and bobs. Get £50 out on a Monday and it’ll just be spent on “stuff”. Cash for others is as you describe it. “Going out for the evening so I’ll pick up some cash”, hence you know that it’s been spent at some event.
Neither is wrong, just different ways of doing things.
I would like the cash label back as well. I’m glad they added finances - I can categorise money that goes into my ISA, etc, that way. I’d like to be able to distinguish that from petty cash I get from the ATM.
When I fully move to Monzo (just waiting for smarter pots), this will become even more of an important way to delineate transactions.
Like with every other category, it’s the ability to understand spending. It will be great to track how much is going into investments, etc., but I think it’s a shame it came at the cost of losing granularity about cash withdrawals, rather than adding to it.