New Targets feature now live!

section 3, 1st image, 3rd one along - gives an indication of custom target dates at the bottom of the screen - this has been asked for on the forum quite a lot so would imagine its coming

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Great spot :eyes:

It took me a while to find the image Ian’s referring to so to help anyone else, here it is

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you’re much more adept at tech than me :wink:

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Is the name of this a little counterintuitive to what budgeting is about? I wouldn’t set a budget target (something to be aimed at) rather I would set a budget cap or limit so that I don’t exceed it. I understand the premise and will use the feature but maybe need to rethink the name/language used.

Look at how Clear by Realmac Software works to see what I mean (it’s a To Do app)

Fair enough, probably the more sensible name would have been “budgets” or “limits”:

  • The problem with the word “budget” is that tons of people feel strongly against it (boring stuff, legacy banks, something that doesn’t work…), it reminds me of the “diet” in “diet Coke”.
  • “Limits” on the other hand makes sense but talking with users we’ve seen that some people expect the limits to be “hard” limits. So, if you say your limit is £30 your card will decline after that amount… which is not what we want to build right now.

So that’s why we went for “Targets”. It’s a Monzo concept that in the future will expand this functionality and make things far more interesting that just limit spending.

I hope it makes sense :slight_smile:

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Certainly makes sense and good to know different names were thought of.

I suppose it’s all about mentality and language, a target is something to be aimed at (and potentially broken), a cap or limit is something not to be exceeded and to me that’s what budgeting is about. E.g. I know I have £xx amount of disposable income, that’s my limit. I don’t want to refer to that as my target as I would like to ensure to come under that.

In fact I would normally have a savings target (or goal) sooner than a spending target or goals.

Maybe it could be budgets as the feature with limits for each category, which could change month on month depending on people’s budget.

My other slight concern with the idea of spending targets is the issue of responsible finance. Given that Monzo are trying to get a banking licence, how would a regulator look at the idea behind “targets” considering that again it may give the impression that these are speanding goals to be reached? Would they look negatively on the fact people can set goals that could cause overspending, overdraft, etc? I may be overthinking the whole thing but it’s just a further point to consider!

Fair point. The good thing is that the name itself doesn’t matter that much if you think about all the communication cycle. Notifications and onboarding explanations are very clear about how the feature works. It’s always the user who is in charge and we alert them as they get close to the target.

Additionally the loop closes every month with a report that celebrates when the user manages to stay under target and encourages them to improve when not.

I might be wrong but I think it’s a good balance towards spending responsibility.

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It would be awesome to be able to group catagories into one target. I have 3 targets, ‘groceries’, ‘eating out’ and then what I call ‘left over’.

‘Groceries’ and ‘eating out’ are set each month and ‘left over’ is my money left after those two budgets and regular bills. Be ace to be able to put travel, shopping etc all under the ‘left over’ target.

Cheers!
Dan

I’d would be nice if Android users could also try this features :frowning:

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I also cringed a little when I saw the phrase targets to be honest. I know it’s just language that doesn’t matter in the face of the actual development functionality but I would personally love to see a switch in the logic and language where some spending goals count down and others count up,

i.e. Savings should count up to 100% (you’ve only saved 60% of your monthly goal, why not make a deposit now) , whereas Entertainment should count down (you’ve spent 80% of your entertainment budget, chill out its only Tuesday).

In that sense I’d want it to be green/red at different points. For savers it should start red and go green. For spenders it should start green and go red.

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Hi everyone,

So I’m really enjoying the targets feature, while I might not necessarily be saving much money yet, I’m definitely a lot more cognizant of what I’m spending, and the monthly reports are really useful.

I did have one thought, apologies if this has been picked up on other target based threats, but I think what would be useful would be some way of almost “un-targeting” specific items of expenditure.

For example, if I set a budget for the month of £1000, spread across my categories, I don’t want random transactions going through my account to mess around with that. In terms of what I mean by random, let’s say one of my friends wires me £50, that I then send on to my girlfriend (because my friend didn’t have my girlfriends bank details and owed her money, plus my gf and I both have Monzo cards – so it’s super easy to do). In my targets, that would count as a £50 expense, and one that Monzo would prompt me to categorise into the various categories, but obviously it’s not part of my budgeted spend for the month, it’s just part and parcel of moving money through accounts in the easiest way possible. So some way of clicking into that individual expense on my home feed and “removing from targets” would be useful, otherwise to cancel it out I’d need to adjust my “target” and increase it by £50, otherwise technically my target would have £50 less available to spend for the month – hope that makes sense.

Similarly, now in the world of Monzo.me and in future bill splitting, while probably way more complex for Monzo to try and implement, I think splitting bills should be treated in a similar way. Let’s say I had dinner with 5 mates, the meal comes to £50 and I pick up the tab. If we later split the bill 5 ways, my targets should note a £10 expense for my personal target, not a £50 expense.

Also, probably not the right thread for it, but I had another thought in the future land of split payments. It would be really cool if you could manage a “kitty” through Monzo. Obviously this is on the basis of most people having a Monzo account at this time, but it would be pretty cool to somehow link accounts for a specified time (stag do, sporting occasion where people take turns buying rounds for a big group all day) – invariably at those things some people end up paying more and some less (frequently on purpose…) – it would also take the faff out of someone owning the kitty and continually collecting cash from people – everyone just pays on their Monzo cards, and any transactions are evened out at the end of the day.

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No apologies necessary, but yes it has been covered. I mentioned it here

Just adding it here to tie everything together.

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I think Targets should be renamed Budgets… just a psychological switch but I’d rather stick to a budget than aim for a spending target. Know what I mean?

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Definitely Ryan, Hugo explains our thinking behind the decision to use the title Targets here quite well :slightly_smiling_face:

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The other bit of good news, this feature was added to the roadmap for the Android app too :tada:

Caveat -

Any update on this? Such a killer feature!

I don’t get paid monthly, so whilst this is a great feature, for me it’s pretty useless.

Can you develop an option where you put your own cycle pay days in so that the targets remain accurate?

:slight_smile:

Luckily there is a thread on this :slight_smile:

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as previously mentioned in this thread - its on the way - which sometimes feels like the standard reply from Monzo , but understandably the setting custom dates hasnt been rolled out on to the prepaid card because that would then involve designing it all again for the "on its way " :slight_smile: current account - it has been a repeated request and Hugo has shared some screen shots previously with “custom” timeframes - so I would imagine “its on its way” :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

https://community.monzo.com/t/new-targets-feature-now-live/6236/9?u=iansilversides

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