Monzo Plus Tips

Monzo Chat Monzo Plus
#1

Not sure I’ve seen a topic like this but:

I’m thinking of taking the plunge and upgrading my account to a Plus account for the use of custom categories primarily to break down my spending more. By the time I’ve posted this, I would probably have already upgraded haha

But does anyone have any tips or niche things they do to better organise, track and budget whether it’s something with the categories or even google sheets feature?

#2

Mine is very niche. Primarily because I use a :monzo: Joint account only. I do have Premium on my Personal account for insurance and other perks, but can’t use custom categories or Google sheet exports because the JA is the financial hub and paid-for accounts and Joint Accounts aren’t the best of friends yet.

So…

I’ve linked my Monzo accounts, plus a few others to YNAB and use that as the budgeting/forecasting/planning hub. It tells me exactly where I am (total assets, total debts, resulting net worth) plus how spending now will affect me in the near, or far, future.

It’s not the solution I’d like, but it’s the best one I’ve found so far - and I’ve tried every financial budgeting/reporting/planning service I can find.

It’s still not easy to get to financial reporting karma for some reason, probably because it is so different for individual requirements.

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#3

What do you want to see from the data?

#4

The ridiculous amount of money I spend on coffee hahaha

So far I’ve just created some categories to filter out subscriptions, takeaway, coffee and fuel and that’s already given me way more transparency over my spending…

Just about to set up the google sheet and see how that comes out and what use I can get of it

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#5

Within Plus itself, the best things I can suggest are:

  1. make specific categories for the key things you want to track. (I too have a coffee problem!)
  2. rather than use the budget tool, I tend to put money in Pots for the specific things I’m trying to control
  3. set up IFTTT to trigger on that category and move money out of the pot. (It’s as close to envelope style budgeting as I can make Monzo do, you literally have to take money out of the pot when you spend)
  4. in Google Sheets export, I find the most useful view is a month by month dashboard of £ spent per category, so I can see the fluctuations by area over time.

I would suggest taking a look at YNAB though, the granularity of it is what’s been most useful in me cutting back in bad habits!

Less about budgeting but other areas.

  • set up a virtual card for online spending and save it to a password manager if you use it. Best thing I’ve done. Doesn’t help my budget though.
  • set up a virtual card the monthly card charges like Netflix, Spotify etc - means if you ever lose your card you don’t need to update all these.
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#6

These are really helpful, thank you!

Going to take up your suggestion of having a card for online shopping and another for subscriptions too