Most Important Features for Simple Refugees

[Aithene (Chris Wilson)]

I’m new, so no idea if this link will work, but there’s a decent overview of why Simple closed.

Simple Is Closing: What To Expect And What To Do Now

[N26throwaway (Sir Tom MacMonier)]

Your posts are fantastic. Very well written and superbly explained. I think yours might just be the best summary of Simple’s featureset I’ve read that makes it easier for us brits to decipher just exactly what we’ve missed out on, because it’s quite hard to conceptualise just how good SImple’s approach is until you’ve actually used it.

Thanks for contributing, and welcome to the community! I hope you stick around and continue to engage with us here!

[Aithene (Chris Wilson)]

Thanks! I’ll try to remain concise, though I don’t spend a lot of time on message boards in general.

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Urgh! Again, editing a reply because I can’t add anymore as a new user.

@N26throwaway, I just ran across this article, and I’m feeling fairly new to the Monzoverse. It talks about shared accounts, salary sorter, and bills pots. Since this doesn’t seem to be available with Monzo USA, I assume these features already exist with Monzo UK? Can you, @o99, or anyone else confirm? Thanks!

Introducing Salary Sorter and Bills Pots

[o99]

@Aithene

When you talk about adjusting, the idea of ‘disabling’ doesn’t really fit for goals and target-balance expenses .

I don’t necessarily see why it needs to be mutually exclusive. I can envisage a system where user is given the privilege to flag on a per goal/expense basis whether or not the app is able to make ‘smart’/ad-hoc adjustments. You might want the automation to be present on some goals/expenses but not on others. But clearly, the developers and perhaps most Simple users felt that would be counter-productive.

@Aithene

I have never come in under budget in this sort of regard, so don’t know if the target-amount expenses are affected by a shortfall. I’m pretty sure that goals will get defunded before any expense type since expenses are generally bills. And that if you don’t have enough to fund your expenses, expenses with nearer dates get priority.

This is the sort of uncertainty about fully automated behaviour that would make me a bit uneasy about it.

@Aithene

Look, if you are the kind of person who needs to work all of the levers all the time in order to make your budget work, either due to circumstances or personality type, I can see why full automation like this would look like a step backward in the control area

For me desire to have option of switching off automation is not about constantly pulling levers or fine tuning things myself. I only really re-think and change how I divvy up my income to various places once a year and don’t make monthly changes.

However, I’ll probably leave it that so that this thread doesn’t get stuck on my curiosity (as a non-Simple user) about one aspect of Simple, and gets back more to what the most important features for Simple refugees are.

[Peter_G]

Does this link take anyone to a blank screen, or is it just me (and my cookie settings)?

[Rat_au_van (Em)]

You need to accept the cookies to see the page

[davidwalton (Award Winning Hot Coral Analyst)]

Works for me (mobile), after accepting cookies
Blank screen (Desktop), no option to accept cookies

[Peter_G]

@davidwalton

Blank screen (Desktop), no option to accept cookies

That’s what I’m getting everywhere.

[Aithene (Chris Wilson)]

@o99

I don’t necessarily see why it needs to be mutually exclusive. I can envisage a system where user is given the privilege to flag on a per goal/expense basis whether or not the app is able to make ‘smart’/ad-hoc adjustments. You might want the automation to be present on some goals/expenses but not on others. But clearly, the developers and perhaps most Simple users felt that would be counter-productive.

You always have full control when you want it.

Looking at goals first:

If you have an automated goal but find yourself short on funds and would rather not pay into it until you are ready, you can pause it. I am currently between jobs (my new one is supposed to start next week) so I have done this to a few goals. Two of the goals, when restarted, will have to fund at a slightly higher rate to make up for the lost weeks. For a third goal, I pushed the finish date back a month, so it should still fund at its normal rate, it will just finish later than I had originally set it up for.

Another strategy for goals is to create a non-automated goal. This isn’t really a separate type of goal, it’s just that you fund it entirely when you set it up. Create a new goal and give it an amount you already have and an end date of today. For instance, when I received my first COVID stimulus check, I wanted a separate bucket to put it in so that I could see what I spent my stimulus money on. I created a goal of $1200, funded that day, and moved the full amount into it. Done. There is no automation needed since it was fully funded on creation. Over time I spent the funds but kept the goal open so that when the $600 check came in was able to move that money into there as well. As I pay for things out of the ‘stimulus’ goal, it keeps a running tally of everything I have paid for with my stimulus checks.

If at any time I want to automate funds into a funded goal, I can click the ‘save more over time’ and give it a new time/amount goal and it will start auto-funding.

Expenses are a bit different by design. Again you can move money in and out whenever you want.

From Simple’s FAQ:
Q: What if I don’t have enough money to fund all of my expenses when my Funding Schedule rolls around?

A: Hey, it happens. If it turns out that you don’t have enough money to fund all of your Expenses, we’ll fund what we can. We’ll also include info in an email about which of your Expenses we were able to successfully fund. If you end up needing to move some funds around manually, you always can.

So, while you cannot turn on or off an expense, you always have the option of moving funds after the fact. I do this all of the time with target-amount expenses that end up with too much money in them, and with a few of our target-balance expenses, such as groceries, which are really easy to over-spend from.

@o99

This is the sort of uncertainty about fully automated behaviour that would make me a bit uneasy about it.

I totally get that. While I do not know the order of funding, I’m sure that it is listed out there. But with everything being transparent, you can always adjust after the system does its thing.

@o99

For me desire to have option of switching off automation is not about constantly pulling levers or fine-tuning things myself. I only really re-think and change how I divvy up my income to various places once a year and don’t make monthly changes.

Understood. I guess the easiest way to have that kind of control with Simple is to decide upfront what you want to do with it and then decide between goal and expense. Expenses don’t really allow for pausing, though you could hack a ‘pause’ for any expense by setting the amount to zero. Goals allow for more manual interactions.

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Turns out I have to edit here. As a new user, I’ve hit the limit on how many times I can reply in one topic.

@o99 I have to make a retraction. It looks like you can also create expenses without automatic funding.

Since I was on a quest to automate the finances, I just never did that. Wasn’t anywhere on my radar.

[Aithene (Chris Wilson)]

@Peter_G

Does this link take anyone to a blank screen, or is it just me (and my cookie settings)?

Yeah. I just clicked the link and got a ‘blank’ that then jumped over to the Forbes article. Like I said, I wasn’t sure what would happen.

[Aithene (Chris Wilson)]

@Rat_au_van

You need to accept the cookies to see the page

Cannot read this without hearing it in Mojo Jojo’s voice.

[o99]

@Aithene

Since this doesn’t seem to be available with Monzo USA, I assume these features already exist with Monzo UK? Can you, @o99, or anyone else confirm? Thanks!

Yes, those features have been in Monzo UK for a while.

If you go to the link below you can see the various blog posts that have been written about Monzo USA. The oldest post mentions beginning with a light version of the app in the US. You can then look at the newer articles to see what’s been added since then. I think progress was significantly slowed by Covid.

Monzo US Blog - Monzo Blog

[Aithene (Chris Wilson)]

I was reading an older reply to setting goals by @areyes and she noted that should a goal fall behind in it’s funding, the system does NOT recalculate the funding needed to reach that goal. Instead, it tells you know how much you are behind and has a ‘catch up’ option.

Since target-amount expenses do not have a target to hit (just a set amount to set aside funding period) they also do not recalculate.

So, I guess target-balance expenses are the only type that do the recalculation.