Our all-new Savings Pot is here 🎉

[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)

[ndrw]

While I respect your opinion, in my personal view there’s no way to excuse Monzo’s approach of borking pots to boost profits.

Regular pots were never a standalone account, any payments are always just automated back into the main account from which payment would be taken. There’s no reason to disallow that on an interest-bearing pots.

In the current climate every penny counts, and so saying “a savings account is only for savings” is quite counterproductive. I keep no cash in my account, it’s all sitting in various savings accounts and gets moved out as and when needed. It helps maximise interest and even if that’s just £1.60 a month, it still counts.

Equally, there are other providers that let you set up actual direct debits on savings accounts leading to a much better user experience without trying to micromanage and explain away how people should manage their finances to suit their own bottom line.

I spend all my money on credit cards throughout a month. The money lives in a Chase savings account, and I earn £5-6 interest on it a month. With Monzo I’d lose out on this or the ability to just set and forget my savings.

It’s at direct odds with their mantra of Making Money Work for Everyone if they start to micromanage and gatekeep.

[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.

[N26throwaway (Sir Tom MacMonier)]

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

The US team especially have been making small steps in some of those directions. But in doing so it’s diverging their approach to pots from what we have in the U.K., and that’s something they’ve been doing more of, and quite a bit, whilst the U.K. has diverged further from the US in a different direction that I’m not particularly fond of. The functionality of pots in the US has far transcended what ours can do and have for some time now.

As much as I love this stuff, and as much as I’d love some of the thinking and innovations from the US team’s approach to trickle into the U.K. app, I’m increasingly pessimistic that these are things we’ll get.

[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?).

[N26throwaway (Sir Tom MacMonier)]

For the avoidance of doubt, I was referring to Simple, the now defunct US fintech (some of their former employees now work at Monzo USA). Not simple in terms of the app design and features.

[Carlo1460]

Oh

Now don’t I feel daft

[PaulUK]

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

[Carlo1460]

Honestly thought it was a typo.

I’d not long woken up from a nap, I’ve now read it again and yep, should’ve stayed napping

[Revels]

Haha, I thought you were connecting the word and the brand!

[StuartL (Stuart)]

@andys

What some of you are seeing is an experiment we’re currently running with a limited group of customers to begin with to learn more about offering multiple interest-earning Pots.

Hey

Are there any learnings you can share with us at this stage?

Just realised that Monzo’s Instant Access Savings Pots are almost a year old., which is a little nuts to me.

It would be nice to gets some updates around how well they’ve been received and any potential plans for them

[Chris_R (Chris Rimell)]

I’ve not seen this mentioned anywhere else, but Monzo have dropped in a new ISA product of their own, and it’s available in app now.

Similar to the instant savings pot, there’s an interest rate top up for premium.

Doesn’t look like you can transfer in an existing ISA at present. I can’t subscribe until April as I already opened one ISA this tax year.

[mikez]

That’s actually pretty decent for an instant access cash ISA, although the rate is variable. Flexible, too, which is necessary for easy access.

You can open as many cash ISAs as you like in each tax year but can only contribute to one of them. I believe this changes for the upcoming tax year, though.