Hi Guys
I thought i’d share how I use (or try to use) Monzo to manage my money, and the speedbumps I hit on the way.
This isn’t me complaining, or demanding features (though i’d be suggesting possible solutions) - I just hope this post will be useful for discussion and helping the Dev team with use cases/user journeys.
Of course, this is how I manage my money - and some speed bumps are me-specific and the solutions suggestions are’ in a perfect world’ so may not be possible.
I mention IFTTT a few times, I think it’s great - but in reality most users aren’t going to/are comfortable using a third party tool. Where possible I think an in-app solution would be best. I know some of the things I’m suggesting are possible with having a IFTTT pro account and knowledge of scripting language - but because it isn’t possible in the normal account/applet builder - It doesn’t count.
Quick Background - I’m aggressively dealing with my silly amount of debt, so doing some very tight budgeting. I have three main Pots - the main account, ‘Budgeting’, ‘Bills’ and ‘Debt Payment’
I use Monzo as my main account (I want to ‘kill’ my other accounts, however a few things are stopping which i’ll mention below).
Also all of this has to be done when i’m paid, none can be done in advance because Monzo won’t let you setup scheduled transfers if you don’t have enough money in the account/pot.
Solution: Please can we set up scheduled transfers regardless of the account/pot balances. Of course, if there’s not enough money in the account when the transfer happens it fails (with a notification?) but it shouldn’t stop us setting it up.
On to ‘My Life In Monzo’
Splitting out my Salary
Currently when my salary goes in, I split it across the following accounts manually:
My expected debt over-payments go into ‘Debt Payment’ - this is a fixed amount each month
My bills amount go into ‘Bills’ - this is a fixed amount each month
The remaining balance in the main account goes into ‘Budgeting’ - this amount can vary due to me slipping into overdraft (oops) and changes in salary amount
Improvements:
It would be great to be able to trigger transfers when a salary payment is received. I’ve tried to achieve this for my ‘Debt’ and ‘Bills’ movements in IFTTT but been struggling - i think it doesn’t like the Merchant name.
Solution: Bring categories into IFTTT - being able to set a trigger when a ‘Salary’ payment is received should solve this, Monzo already categorize it successfully in the app.
Moving remaining balance to ‘Budgeting’ is manual
_Solution:_It would be great to be able to bring account balance into IFTTT - so I can schedule that the credit balance of the main account is moved to a pot.
Setting my Daily budget
Currently I look at the balance in the ‘Budgeting’ pot, divide it by the number of days until the next salary payment, and set up a daily transfer into the main account for that amount.
Improvements:
I need to delete the previously created Budgeting-to-main transfer and create a new one.
Solution: Please let us amend Pot transfer details (date/amount etc.) like we can with transfers to external accounts.
Improvements:
The calculation is manual
Solution: It would be great to be able to bring pot balances into IFTTT to allow the possibility of setting up a calculated transfer (if IFTTT supports calculated fields…i’ve not tried, but having balances would be a great first step)
Manage Bills Payments
I have transfers setup between the Bills pot and the main account for each of my expected bills.
I review them each payday, and adjust if needed.
I check Monzo each morning to see what bills are due the next few days (great feature seeing upcoming bill payments - high five to those devs) and adjust if needed (sometimes a payment is earlier than expected because of weekends etc.)
It can be confusing to manage the pot transfers, because they are all named the same (the name of the source pot) so I need to go by date and amount.
My rent comes out at an awkward time of the month (in relation to my pay), because I need to manually manage the Bills currently - to remove the risk of a bounced payment (and to not need a larger over draft limit to accommodate a missed transfer from Bills pot) I have a scheduled transfer to an external bank account which has the rent payment DD setup on.
I’m doing my best to stick with Monzo for my Bill payments, but this is a lot of flaffing to manage. I’m very tempted to move all my Bills to my external bank account and do a monthly bank transfer from Monzo. But this will mean I’ll need to log into that account each month to check how things are going - not ideal.
Improvements:
Currently to make changes I need to delete the previously created Bills-to-main transfer and create a new one.
Solution: Please let us amend Pot transfer details (date/amount etc.) like we can with transfers to external accounts.
It can be confusing to manage the pot transfers, because they are all named the same.
Solution: Let us set ‘nicknames’ for the transfers.
The bill transfers need to be managed manually. Monzo knows what is a bill (all my bills appear in Scheduled payments and are treated as Bills in the Summary).
Solution:
Option 1 - Bring categories into IFTTT - being able to set a trigger when a ‘Bill’ payment is made should solve this. However this will cause issues regarding account balances. If there’s not enough money in the main account, the bill payment may fail - which will mean the IFTTT bills transfer to put the money in the account won’t trigger.
Option 2 - Associate Pot transfers with scheduled payments. All my expected bills are listed as scheduled payments, being able to attach a Pot transfer to a scheduled payment so when the scheduled payment takes place do the pot transfer first.
Option 3 - Allow us to associate scheduled payments or payment categories to a Pot. Being able to say ‘If a category bill payment or payment to vender ‘XXXX’ or if scheduled payment Y happens use the money in the Bills pot’ and ability to say ‘if there’s not enough money in Bills pot, use money in main account’ - this would be huge. This simplifies management, will give me peice of mind enough to see about closing the other account I use purely for my rent DD.
Option 2 & 3 could allow for the account feed to be a little tidy, by grouping the payment and it’s transfer into one entry on the feed.
Monzo.Me Payments
I use Monzo Me payments a lot (It’s an amazing feature) when organising things with my friends. Where I book the event tickets and everyone used Monzo Me to send me the money I need to manually look out for the payments and transfer them to the desired pot where the money to pay for the tickets were ‘borrowed’ from.
Improvements:
Currently received Monzo Me payments need to be manually moved to the desired Pot.
Solution: Allow me to select which Pot receives money goes into when I setup a Monzo Me request
Dynamic Transfers
At the end of each month I look at the money I have in the Debt Payment pot, and transfer it to the relevant credit card. The amount in the pot isn’t fixed…if i’ve been good, there’ll be more in there than I started with…so I manually do a bank transfer for the amount. There’s no point me setting up a scheduled task as it needs to be adjusted each payment.
Improvements:
Currently I need to manually do a bank transfer based on the amount in a Pot
Solution:
Option 1 - Be able to setup a scheduled transfer based on an amount in a Pot within the App - ‘Send the Pot balance of pot ‘Debt Payment’ to Barclaycard’
Option 2 - Bring pot balances into IFTTT and allow IFTTT to send (authorised) payments to pre-setup payees.
A quick summary of my dream solutions (in order of the number of fingers and toes crossed and wishes made)
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Improved Pot transfers - Let us give pot transfers nicknames, and allow us to change the date, amount and nicknames of pot transfers
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Improved Bill/Scheduled payments - Allow us to associate scheduled payments or payment categories to a Pot. Being able to say ‘If a category bill payment or payment to vender ‘XXXX’ or if scheduled payment Y happens use the money in the Bills pot’ and ability to say ‘if there’s not enough money in Bills pot, use money in main account’
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Improved IFTTT - Allow us to use categories and account/pot balances in an IFTTT applets.
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Dynamic Transfers - Allow us to set up pot and external scheduled transfers based on a dynamic amount (for example the amount in a pot)
I hope this is useful.
How does everyone else use Monzo? Do you have quirky use cases like I have which you hope Monzo will address?