I have read through some of the Savings Pots threads from when they were first launched, and it is my understanding that most of the additional pot features that regular pots have weren’t added to savings pots by choice, on the basis that the savings pot is designed to encourage saving rather than being used as a regular pot (and hence why the interest rate is not appleid to your main Monzo balance).
However, both myself and my friends have encountered a few scenarios where this lack of functionality has been somewhat frustrating.
For example, one friend has no overdraft on his Monzo account. He has his credit card monthly payments coming out of his Monzo account. He never wants to miss a credit card payment.
He always has to make sure there is sufficient funds to cover the credit card payments in his main Monzo balance, otherwise the payment will fail.
Automated withdrawals from the Savings pot is not possible (only automated deposits), and nor is having the Direct Debit come straight out of the savings pot.
As a result, he keeps a reasonably large sum of money in his main Monzo balance to “be on the safe side”, and this of course does not earn interest.
I have a similar situation. While at university, I have been living off of my savings. I currently have lots of my savings at another bank that offer a reasonable rate of interest, and have a standing order transferring me a set amount at the start of each week as my “budget”. It would be ideal if these savings could be in the Monzo pot and I could automate these withdrawals (like with normal pots), rather than having to remember to do them manually.
I guess that as these features are added to the Savings pot, it functions more like a normal pot or not that dissimilarly to just applying the interest on the main Monzo balance, however the fact that they function like this is rather frustrating in the sense that any money outside of the Savings pot is foregoing interest, and the lack of automated features means that I have to keep more money outside of the Savings pot than is ideal (therefore losing out on more interest than I need to).