I have a standard Monzo account withultiple pots and one savings pot.
The multiple pots are now effectively losing money at inflation rates as they get no interest.
Choices:
Why should I choose 1 or 2?
Cheers
Graham
I’ve currently gone with 2 but as you say, it’s a shame to lose all that functionality. I moved away from other banks and YNAB for budgeting to Monzo and do like it but am currently investigating other options now, mostly due to this.
Or option 4:
Open an Instant Access Savings pot, earn 3.7% interest on it, plus use regular non interest bearing pots just as before.
Yes I’ve gone with option 4 (which was my option 2) but I have stopped using all my other pots (over 10). Now I use a spreadsheet. Massive shame. Especially as its a joint account. Basically Monzo has become just another bank. Not special or useful.
Technically you could have two, with a “safety net” pot too, that will also get 3.7%
Or open easy access pots with OakNorth at 3.75% ??
“The multiple pots are now effectively losing money at inflation rates as they get no interest.”
That’s always been true. Pots (except for the savings pot) are for ringfencing money from your main account. I’m curious what you think has changed to make them ‘useless’.
I’m option 3 for large sums.
Lots of choice above 4.2%
Option 4 for smaller sums, for the convenience.
Aggregate loss of interest in option 4 pots (over option 3) is <£10pa 
Interest rates have increased dramatically so that savings accounts with proper interest rates make sense again.
Having multiple pots was useful, so Monzo was useful. Now the interest rates have made pots too expensive to be used versus a spreadsheet in my household.
So I’m not finding Monzo as useful as I did.
I could have a second safety net (although I tried briefly and was rebutted by the app for having a savings account already). But I was using over 10 pots for household budgeting. Now I’m not.
Monzo still pay me the interest on all my money, it’s all in the 3.7% pot. But I’m not utilising the flexibility and usefulness of Monzo over my other old bank accounts. Which now offer the same usefulness.
For me, it’s a balance.I’m not going to worry about getting 3.7% on my phone bill pot, because it’s so little it’s not worth the hassle, it can stay in a pot.
But the bigger savings I have, they are in a savings pot.
You said you had 10 pots, unless you had thousands in each one, then really is it worth being less organised for the sake of a few quid? If that few quid is so important to you, why are you still with Monzo at 3.7% when there’s higher available?
Just for clarity the normal pots (assuming plus) are interest bearing too up to £2k. So you can have the money in your savings pot and the other pots all earning interest, only the other pots won’t once that limit is reached.
Which is different to “AN other bank” where you have a current account and a savings account and the money only earns interest in the latter.
At the end of the day no bank is going to offer an inflation busting pot, so see it for what it is which is at least some interest, and consider other options if you feel Monzo doesn’t work out for you currently.
This isn’t to say don’t provide feedback, just giving an alternative view and perhaps some reality
Thanks Jimmwx
Do you know what the pot interest is up to £2000 by chance?
Assuming standard non premium account?
I couldn’t find reference to it
Yep, Monzo was ace. I miss my pots.
Cheers
Graham
I’m still using YNAB for Budgeting, I really love it but I have really wondered if I could just use Monzo Pots for most of its functionality. Is there anything you miss from YNAB?
One of the reasons I haven’t quit YNAB is the lack of interest from normal pots.
Monza’s budgeting tools only really work on a month-by-month basis whereas YNAB allowed you to build up funds in categories for infrequent expenses (holidays or oil bill etc). Monzo has categories for each transaction but these are different from pots and it feels a little disjointed as they are 2 different approaches. Also do you include the savings pots in your trends/budgetting? If you do then you see a massive expenditure in 1 month when you say get an oil tank refill. This is a bigger issue for targets.
You can exclude the savings pots from the trends stuff but then the money you put aside will effectively appear as an expenditure which isn’t quite true (although it’s not part of you available balance in YNAB terms) so perhaps this is OK.
On the whole, I’m not sure. It took me a while took get in to YNAB way of dong things and I used it for a few years. I’ve been using Monza’s budgeting as a replacement for leas than 1 year never really found what felt like an equivalent way of doing what I did in YNAB. On the whole I think I prefer YNABs approach to categories.
In YNAB if I want to move/borrow money from a category I simply adjust the ‘assigned’ for both categories. In Monzo, as I’d be using savings pots I have to actually move the money from the put to the personal account (which takes 1 day) and then on to the target pot. Seems very heavy-weight.
I prefer YNABs ‘account-less’ approach to categories. I’m happy to have 1 savings account at a good interest rate provided I can track chunks of that account for different purposes. Monza’s pots are kind of their equivalent but are much more cumbersome to use really.
But I moved to Monzo because I liked the app and hoped that it’s budgeting tools would be ‘good enough’ but I’m still not convinced and currently have a free trial of YNAB again to try and see if it’s really worth the extra.
1% for Plus, 1.5% for premium. If you have neither they don’t get interest, not that it really makes all that different tbh because you’de get £24 on plus but it would cost you £60.
Better off putting as much as you can in the savings pot and treating pots as an extension of the current account.
Yep. No individual pots. All funds in a 3.7% pot.
Pots are now useless to me.
I feel like pots just aren’t savings accounts and never were.
I use them a little to put small amounts of money aside, for example if I make a credit card purchase I put the money into a pot until it needs to be paid off, I also might use them to save for a holiday for a couple of months. But I’d never have used them as long term savings - even when savings rates were 1.5% that was still 1.5% you would be missing by saving in a pot.
I just opened a pot with 5.7% interest though! That felt good (yes I know inflation is higher than that 
)
This. I never saw them as anything other than literally pots to put money in (for things such as holiday spend, etc)