I have a few bills that are quarterly or annual DDs. (Mostly magazine subscriptions, TV license, insurance, ground rent, etc).
I get paid monthly and I am trying to avoid months where I have higher bills (and therefore less disposable spend).
I have used a spreadsheet to calculate what I need to put aside each month to cover each bill when it is due and I use a “periodic” bills pot to pay them. But the system isn’t perfect because sometimes the bills are more or less than expected and because they go out at different times and different frequencies, it’s hard to know the over/under at any given point. It’s not enough for me to worry that I won’t be able to pay, so the system works for now.
But given that Monzo already recognises these bills as committed spend, it would be fantastic to build a feature that automates a little of what I have described and makes it easier to keep track. For example, if I designate “£120” to insurance, the bills pot takes £10 every month and when the bill is due puts £120 in my main account, even if the payment is actually £115 or £125. Otherwise I end up with a hard to quantity amount sloshing around in my pot and I don’t know if it’s ok to spend or not.
For my TV licence, I set up a scheduled payment of £12.50 per month so there’s £150 in it to pay for my TV licence when it’s due (I now use salary sorter rather than scheduled payments). I put £50pm in the car insurance pot.
You could do the same… Set up a pot for each one of your annual or quarterly bills with a set amount going in per month. Then set the direct debit to come from that bill pot.
I think the way bills pots work is that if the pot is short, it’ll still empty the pot then take the amount from your main balance.
You could create those 17 pots, set up the scheduled monthly payments into them, set up the annual/periodical D/D’s to be paid from them and then, if on Android for the time being, hide the 17 pots.
