Moving from YNAB to Monzo — how do you handle category groups?

UK Help
1

Long-time YNAB user trying to switch my budgeting to Monzo (I have Perks). The main friction is hierarchy.

In YNAB I have category groups with categories inside them, each with its own target and due date. It’s obvious at a glance what’s overspent and when bills are due.

Monzo categories are flat. I don’t want to recreate 50+ custom categories just to mirror what I had, but I also don’t want to lose the rolled-up view of “how much have I spent on Groceries + Household + Eating Out this month.”

I’ve been considering using pots as the “category group” layer, with virtual cards spending from each pot. But:

  1. Can pots realistically replace the category-group layer, or is that a dead end?

  2. If a pot covers several spending types, how do you see the breakdown without manually tallying rows?

  3. Pot targets only seem to take a single date with no recurrence. How are people handling monthly budgets against pots?

Curious how ex-YNAB users have set this up. Is there a pattern that actually works, or did you give up and just use flat categories?

2

Pots won’t replace your spending categories only where it’s paid from. The category still needs changing if you need to.

You can set Trends to only follow a Pot, but you wouldn’t see anything else, so to see another Pot you’d need to change the settings in Trends.

Pots with cards assigned, when tapping in the Pot you’ll see the amount spent on that card within that Pot (can’t remember if it’s a total spend or a monthly spend).

You can use the Target function in trends to monitor monthly budgets instead.

3

As a YNAB user I’ll be blunt - Monzo is not set up for a granular finance overview like YNAB.

There’s a reason YNAB is paid for and used by so many.

Monzo has fairly good tracking but it really won’t be suitable if you want to basically mirror YNAB.

4

Stick with YNAB. Monzo isn’t built for that.

5

If YNAB works, why are you trying to switch? Or to look another way, do you need 50+ category types etc? How often do you look back and care?

Does it matter if it’s cleaning products in the weekly shop?

6

YNAB has a financial cost, I think it’s about $100 a year now. I thankfully still have a student email so managed to get a year for free (twice, separately).

Everyone has their own category preferences, based on what they want to track spending of. For me, I group categories a bit looser. Certainly not fifty of them. But, I’m mainly using it to control how much I spend on food etc (as it’s my second biggest expense after rent). Could just be at a different stage of life too.

7

I’m not judging, I was more meaning do you need the level of YNAB or can you make it work with Monzo. I’ve never used it, but it seems like a “proper” budgeting tool.

I do similar. I lump a lot of them together but I do track takeaways, eating out, drinks, cakes etc separately, as I’m the same, food is my vice.

8

Could be worth looking at some of the cheaper or free app/services that focus on budgeting like Actual Budget, Snoop or Emma?

9

Actual Budget isn’t a bad shout, Snoop/Emma aren’t really the same type of thing