Our all-new Savings Pot is here 🎉

[ahj87 (Andrew)]

The experiment is code for ‘we’re tallying the numbers on how much has Monzo saved in removing the interest’.

But I agree. Confusing.

[Benayoun (Ben)]

Yep, me too. I’ve changed how I use Monzo since the interest was removed from regular pots.

Considering moving to a main stream bank because using where’s the incentive of using Monzo now?

[Kumnaa]

Yeah, I think Chase is better suited for how I’m using the account now

[Peter_G]

@N26throwaway

I don’t see them ever being able to fix it in a way that satisfies both them, their customers, and their savings partners.

I’m going to recommit to my vow of silence shortly, but I don’t think this is right. There are options. But the savings team is seemingly not imaginative enough to consider them.

Consider one or multiple of the following:

• specially designed bills pots with a lower AER (3.25% perhaps?)
• A system whereby you can assign multiple goals to one savings pot or a set of savings pots
• A basic interest rate across the current account and normal pots
• The ability to pay bills and/or schedule withdrawals from savings pots (perhaps for paid customers)

These could variably apply to paid customers or to every customer. The point here isn’t to win the interest rate race but to provide a service that enhances the wider utility of the Monzo app. If Monzo is serious then they should really be doing randomised trials on some of these to see, from data rather than the team’s clear bias, what the impact is on usage and on profit level. But it appears that they won’t do this because they seem to feel like they know better.

I really want this to be wrong, but all the evidence points to the savings team being poorly led.

[hldn90 (Harry)]

Lots of criticism in this thread for savings & investments team. The truth is they are probably now responsible for a large chunk of Monzo’s profit stream, and they no doubt have a lot of commercial decisions to balance. They are likely supporting a lot of loss making parts of the business that are popular with the community, but on their own would lead to Monzo’s demise. They’ve made some good progress this year, and while I wouldn’t personally use their investment product, it’s surely going to get a lot of people investing who otherwise wouldn’t.

Agree with @ndrw though about the app feeling less intuitive at the moment.

[JIMMWX (Village Idiot)]

@hldn90

Lots of criticism in this thread for savings & investments team

I appreciate there has to be a balance, but as someone now on the outside what I’d say is the inertia for change has gone. It’s just another savings account now. It’s only real differentiator is the interest rate.

When I first came to monzo around 2018 I was mind blown. It was light years ahead of anything else, even starling. Now, nothing it does is exciting enough to pull me back. And that includes savings. So I think the criticism is valid personally.

I appreciate its tough and there are a lot of moving parts, along with complicated stakeholders internally and on here. But nothing of late has been revolutionary. An investment product not highly different, a just about market-aligned rate, and not a huge amount of difference to any other product.

@Peter_G Put some thoughts up, which I liked. But little things like multiple savings pots make a big difference

[hldn90 (Harry)]

@JIMMWX

When I first came to monzo around 2018 I was mind blown. It was light years ahead of anything else, even starling

This is quite often the case with startups, but at some point reality has to set in, and compromises have to be made. Monzo was a loss making company back then. I liked all those heavily discounted grocery apps (Gorillas, GoPuff, Getir etc) when they were introduced, but now they trying to actually make a profit, they’ve lost their shine. Same goes for Monzo.

[JIMMWX (Village Idiot)]

@hldn90

Same goes for Monzo.

Oh I fully appreciate that what you do as a startup is very different than a fully fledged company. But, everyone was a startup at some point and even those that are now mega corp 101 still adopt, successfully, the mentality.

Basically what I’m saying is Monzo as a product has lost its ability to pivot. It’s now entering the stagnant stage of its maturity, in my humble opinion.

It needs to learn how to pivot faster.

[BurnyCubbers77 (Burny 🌈)]

I can see the arguement from both sides, but when I think about this logically, here are my thoughts on this:

A savings pot is exactly that. A place to keep your savings.
Keep it there unless you NEED to use it, but you have instant access to it, for those emergencies. This is why it makes sense (at least to me) that virtual cards and direct debits cannot be set up with the saving pots.

Having mulitple savings pots for different things would also make sense, but NOT “Instant Access”, for the same reason as above. You are supposed to be “saving up” for something, so having instant access to your “new car”, “christmas fund”, and “holiday” pots doesn’t make much sense. Have 1 emergency fund/rainy day pot, and then have a higher interest paying pot for those “holiday” and “new car” pots where it takes a day or longer to get your money, discouraging you from withdrawing.

I think a lot of the anger/frustration at the moment stems from the change in interest for Plus/Premium customers, but realistically that wasn’t an awful lot being paid each month if you maxed it out anyway. People with not a lot of savings are a worse off with the change though (such as myself).

For the record, I currently have most of my money in an instant access pot to help recuperate the loss of interest from the plus/premium interest change, but if the interest on all your balances was never a thing, I would probably be following my own logic thinking and having mulitple savings pots with delayed withdrawl.

[JIMMWX (Village Idiot)]

A really balanced post

For me the crux is this. By removing the additional interest in all pots (for plus/premium) you took a, while small, noticed feature. And giving one pot back isn’t deemed in eyes a comparable alternative.

So while you’re right, the interest is small, it was never about the interest and all about the gesture.

[BurnyCubbers77 (Burny 🌈)]

I absolutely agree with you. They’ve taken 1 thing away and replaced it with something that, depending on how much money you have saved, could be deemed either superior or inferior.

For someone like me, who doesn’t have a lot of savings, this is definitely inferior. However, if you have £10,000 or more then this would actually be better for you. (But why you would need instant access to that kind of funds is questionable).

Monzo definitely need to go back and re-evaluate the savings pots offerings.

[thehamshackman (dstaruser)]

My opinion, for what it’s worth is that Monzo caused a big problem for itself around the nomenclature of what it was offering, drawing attention to and prompting (sometimes quite vehement) discussion. Monzo has painted itself into a corner here and not left itself a huge amount of room for manouevre

Are/were pots for budgeting or saving or both?

The whole philosophy of ‘pots’ separating out specific amounts for specific purposes, helping customers to budget efficiently is one aspect of modern banking at its best and its power as a tool to help in achieving financial stability should not be underestimated (or disregarded?).

So-called ‘budgeting pots’ bring clarity and confidence to financial planning.

Whilst the interest rate that was offered across all pots (before being taken away) was quite a bit below what could be gained elsewhere, I was happy to take that hit; for me it was a sensible balance. I would have the convenience of ‘budgeting pots’ and get some return on my money.

At zero interest for ‘budgeting pots’, common sense dictates that funds would be better off in Monzo’s ‘savings pot’ (or elsewhere).

It is irresponsible to be encouraging sensible budgeting by offering pots, where there is zero return, when a better return on funds is available.

Is it irresponsible to entice people away from 0% ‘budgeting pots’ by having a 4.x% ‘savings pot’? Or are we expecting too much?

The dilemma then is that the functionality of the overall package is compromised, to the detriment, one way or another, of those customers who need most support in gaining , and then maintaining, financial stability.

By our very involvement in this forum, for most of us, this change is an irritation rather anything else but, having known in my past the anxiety of mismanaging my finances, it’s not an anxiety I would wish on anyone else.

There is a huge opportunity for a fintech of some hue or another to be both a commercial success and lead the way in bringing a morality and responsibility in educating each successive generation accessing banking for themselves, by being that bank which always works in the customer’s best interests. Surely, by doing this, it would be a driver of commercial success.

Or maybe I’m still - even at my age - a little naive?

Thanks for reading

[JIMMWX (Village Idiot)]

@BurnyCubbers77

Monzo definitely need to go back

I agree but it’s clear they won’t, so we have to live with it, or find an alternative (cough, chase, cough)

[dinosm]

@BurnyCubbers77

Having mulitple savings pots for different things would also make sense, but NOT “Instant Access”

My use case is to have multiple savings pots for savings that I might need at certain times, but they are not regular or terribly predictable so I do need ‘instant’ access.
For example, my pots are:
Vehicle savings
Heating oil savings
Digital savings (for internet service-related stuff like VPSs, cloud storage, etc)

I take money out of vehicle savings for tax, MOT and insurance, but also for unexpected breakdowns, tyres etc, so instant access is a must.
I take money out of Heating Oil savings for obvious reasons, but we might decide we want to buy oil today right this second because the price is at what we think is the lowest before it rises again tomorrow.
I take money out of digital savings to pay for regular VPS expenses but I might have an idea tonight and might need a new VPS to try it out, so I need instant access to that.

At the same time, I want these to be separate pots, as for example if there is no money in the digital savings pot, I will delay my experiment until next month when there is money there, rather than take from another pot and mess up my budget.

[Randomizer1234]

@Randomizer1234

I’ve decided I will give Monzo until Christmas to revert, if not will move everything over to chase including salary.

Did have savings in Monzo but I’ve now got it in Santander for 5.08%.

Just a massive own goal this.

Quoting myself but all done, bar 1/2 which require a call. Salary moved across as well into the bills account, then will transfer some out from there to generic spending. Wasn’t as bad as I thought - will still use Monzo for flex, but that will be rare going forward. Nothing like going straight in at the deep end, but I feel better for having done it which I have only done from the issues already mentioned above.

[duncang (Duncan)]

@thehamshackman

Are/were pots for budgeting or saving or both?

Technically those are the same thing, just on a different timescale

[duncang (Duncan)]

There’s a lot of talk in this part of the thread of how making everyone use one pot that has interest breaks forward-budgeting. That’s true. And I think that Monzo should do something in the app to help people to split that pot up into separate savings goals. This has been talked about a bunch on the boards before, e.g:

This post by me in 2018, which basically suggests the exact thing people have been asking for in this thread.

@duncang

One big pot with an associated list of items (TV, holiday, house deposit, …) that you want to buy. The user inputs the items and their costs, and the app calculates the date at which they will be able to purchase each. The list is re-orderable, allowing the user to quickly and fluidly create future scenarios. The app knows the user’s effective savings rate which, when combined with the item costs and item order, is used to calculate the dates. Transfers happen into the account as infrequently as possible - ideally once per income period (typically a month), but only at the end of the month once the money is definitely saved.

Or this more expansive post Where @Peter_G talks about financial projections being incorporated into the app.

@Peter_G

I’ve never been one for envelope budgeting, or to set budgets by categories. I was though, thinking this morning about how I’d want to have financial projections or modelling in the app. Put another way, I’d like to see what my finances will look like at the end of the year with no change, with saving a bit extra, or if I shell out on that big expensive thing.

It struck my that the answer could be quite simple (from a user rather than a technological perspective). What do you all think about this?

• Somewhere in Monzo we have a new feed. But this time it’s for the future, rather than for the past.
• Future feed would have all the committed spend that summary currently picks up - but with the ability to tap and edit details, dates, amounts etc. You could also create new entries manually.
• Future feed would also show credits to your account. You can either add entries manually or have it recognise recurring things like salary.
• If the Future Feed were able to show, say, a rolling period (next 7, 30 or 365 days), or until a fixed period (until the end of the year, month or week) you could then see the predicted balance at that time. And if your scroll up or down the feed, I’d hope the balance changed to match the predicted balance at that time.

Once you’ve done that, you can do some fun things:

• Add an expected debit for a PS5 in November. The app calculates how much you’ll need to put away every payday and let’s you set up a pot and transfers for the exact monthly amount to meet that goal.
• Create scenarios or models that you can save: what will thinks look like if I go away for August therefore am not working and will have additional expenses? Or how much will I save if I give up chocolate?
• You could extend it to cover connected accounts
• Tell you your average daily spend (by weekday and weekend?) and let you account for that too…

I’m quite taken with the idea (partially inspired by @N26throwaway). But what does everyone think?

Perhaps Monzo will do it… at some point in the next five years.

[Carlo1460]

@N26throwaway

Some of the ideas here reek of Simple, and that’s a good thing, not a bad

I was thinking to myself last night why don’t I enjoy monzo as much as 2-3 years ago.

Everything has gone that was simple. App layout, view, and the current payments tab is hideous (has it always been that ugly?).

[Carlo1460]

Oh

Now don’t I feel daft

[PaulUK]

I read it the same way, but the capital S should have given it away