To put it bluntly, the end of month summary is terrible.
This is my most recent end of month summary. It has all the info there but it’s so badly done. At the top it mentions pots and income/outgoing. But there’s no detail.
£229 on eating out. Is that common? How many transactions is that? What’s that compared to last month?
“It looks like you didn’t cook much this month, you used your Monzo card at Greggs 229 times”
Or
“Well done, you only used your card once for eating out this month, which is 17 times less than last month”
I’ve just been back to get my year in Monzo to see some of the data they it shows:
Card Use
Simple really, how many times did I use it. Online vs in person. Is this up or down on last month? What’s my average transaction value? Did buying a new iPhone/PS5 push that up? Or did spending £1.50 to park everyday because I’m lazy bring it down?
Pots/Round Ups
Why doesn’t my end of month summary tell me what I’ve rounded up? “You rounded up £4.97 this month” Or “Your Car MOT went up by £25 but Birthday Drinks was down by £50”. Show me my current pots with a +/- for that month.
Eating Out/Shopping etc
Same as above. Is it little and often or infrequently and expensive?
The same for shopping, groceries, entertainment, transport etc. Where am I spending my money, per category, per merchant, how frequently and what is that trend.
Chances are that I know I had expensive month. Birthdays, car broke, new things I wanted to buy etc etc. And I’ll know that not every month has a new something come out that I want to buy, but the general months that don’t change much, I might not notice as it goes.
Did I do 5 big shops that I know are most cost effective for me? Or did I go to the little local Co-op every 3 days and spend more than I should?
I recently made a post about how to work out my “net worth” at has it increased month on month?
“Last month you ended the month with £198 across all your pots and current account. You’ve increased that by xx%/£xx this time”
I track my zero days, days where I don’t spend any money. How many of those did I have last month? If I cut out the £3/4/5 frivolous purchases (usually snacks that I don’t need) then I spend far less a month.
The summary doesn’t tell me anything that isn’t massively obvious already. I want to know trends, I want to know that I’m improving my saving/spending habits.
All this data is available and I could probably (and have done for some of it) recreate it with google sheets. But what about people who don’t know how to do that? And Monzo will put it together far better than I do!
If this was a Plus feature I wouldn’t think that was the best as I think this is something that would benefit a lot of people but it would be a big plus (heh) point and something good graphically to show off. People love the yearly one and it trends on twitter as people share it and shame themselves. Sure the novelty might wear off a little month to month but it would have far more benefit.