Roll over budgets and budget-pot link options

Feedback & Ideas
1

I found three other posts requesting this, but they were from back in 2019; so I thought it was worth raising again.

I want to be able to to tick a box next to a budget item to say whether that budget should roll unused spending from it into next month’s budget for that item, or not. So, if I have a £30 budget for something and I only spend £20 on it, then next month the budget for that will be £40. Simples.

I’d want this behaviour for some things and not others, so it needs some kind of toggle to turn it on and off. It should probably be off by default.

The main reason that I want this is because we have a proliferation of pots for things that are not really pot things at the moment. For example, household maintenance purchases. So, say I spend £50 per month on maintenance on average throughout the year. This is not a constant monthly amount. Some months I might only replace a light-bulb, other months I might redecorate a whole room. The current budget mechanism doesn’t allow for that.

I could (and do) make a pot for it. However, there’s no defined savings goal here. This isn’t some item or project that I’m saving for; it’s an ongoing bill, just not a consistent one. So, if I make a pot, now I have to start moving money about every time I buy a paint brush or something. This is a pain. I just want something to make sure I’m roughly on target across the year. Rolling budgets over from one month to the next would do this.

Now, there’s a problem with this because now money might start piling up in my account and I don’t want that. So that brings me to the second part: linking budgets to a pot.

There’s some kind of button, or option, or something, next to the budget item that allows me to create a pot for, or link a pot to that item. Now, when I transfer money to that pot it comes off the respective budget.

To simplify things further, I’d also like a “skim” option on the budget. This would take the budget back down to the initial value by transferring the money to the relevant, linked pot.

With these two features (budget rollover & budget-pot linkage) I wouldn’t have to do most of the moving to and from pots all the time.

Also, if I could create my own budget categories, then that would be just super as well…

2

Apologies if I’ve misunderstood here.

Pots aren’t just for saving, they’re for putting said funds aside for the time you need them. You don’t need to add a target.

Your £50 budget each month - send to pot - withdraw from pot when you actually spend from it, or assign a virtual card (plus/premium) from pot to spend directly from said pot, that way you’re on target for your budget each month/year for when the big things crop up. The money is readily available.

With a pot for said maintenance you’d know how much you’d have available to spend on the big things because the money is safely aside from under spending in prior months.

With Plus/Premium you can create your own categories and then align a budget to them in summary.

3

You’re far better off adding to those rather than spreading it out and starting a 4th for the same thing.

But I think you’re treating pots very strictly. Removing from pots messes with budgets too. Just accumulate into that pot and then spend it?

4

Yeah, I don’t have plus/premium, so maybe that’s what I’m missing.

I guess what I’m also getting at, is that I’m not too concerned with the “putting money aside” aspect of things in this case. For something like maintenance, I’m mostly happy having the money accessible in the main account because I’m spending quite regularly from that budget; I just want a way to track it when spending is a little irregular.

So, if I could just spend from the main account and simply assign the right category, it feels a little less clunky than having to spend from a pot, or move money from a pot after the fact.

Might investigate premium now though :slight_smile: I’ve been a Monzo user for years now (like, since before it was called Monzo :slight_smile: ) so it might be time to take another step!

5

Monzo Plus allows categories and virtual cards.

New categories, which you can set budgets, and track in trends both monthly and annually.

Depends if you need the insurance aspect of Premium, but absolutely worth a look.

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