tobyadams
(#fullmonzo joint account since Aug18)
1
My wife and I both use the monzo joint account as our main account and all our bills and our salaries are all linked up there. It is so great to have this level of overview of our finances but there is one glaring omission.
I get paid on the last working day of the month and she gets paid on the 25th. We have the summary set to start on her paydate as this is first one but for a week or so until I get paid the summary tab is stuck on £0 and red. It is only when I get paid it gives the true picture.
It would be great if you could schedule upcoming income so monzo would predict when I was paid and take account for that in summary like it does for ‘committed spending’ but in reverse.
Anyone know if this is planned? Seems like it would benefit a lot of people. Things like child benefit could also then be predicted which would further refine the use of the summary tab.
Not sure anything I have seen yet would go that far, but it is interesting to hear the situation. Nothing like this forum to reveal quite how variable people’s finance arrangements are! This seems a fairly ordinary arrangement for a joint account though, so maybe (just maybe) the summary could be updated to have two repeated payments rather than a pattern of one
3 Likes
tobyadams
(#fullmonzo joint account since Aug18)
3
Just to add some context, this is what it will look like until Friday
+1 on this, being able to select payments into the account as recurring in the same was as you can payments out would be a great development to help visualise the month ahead.
Do you include your wage in the monthly budget you set in the 25th? I just use calendar month so not sure how that works if you’ve used a payment as a trigger.
I’m in a very similar position in terms of 2x salaries incoming on different dates, plus 2 Child benefit deposits also on 2 different dates. It’s not a massive problem but it would be nice to see the Summary show things accurately.
Maybe a feature of tagging historical deposits as ‘Scheduled Income’ to allow summary to use them to look into the future and calculate the days to go (from today to the next ‘Scheduled Income’ date) and indicating these occurrences on the circle? Like… (numbers totally made up unfortunately for me );
In this example, the monthly reporting range is 26 Nov to 23 Dec, but it shows I’ve got nothing left until the next ‘Scheduled Income’ deposit of £9,999 in 6 days. Once it gets to the date of this £9,999 deposit and it happens, the display of this ‘Scheduled Income’ disappears and the ‘To’ date (2 Dec in this example) changes to the date of the next ‘Scheduled Income’ deposit… and so on. So basically, sub-periods within the overall monthly reporting period based on the ‘Scheduled income’ entries.
This would allow multiple incomes within a reporting period to be shown correctly, while (importantly) Summary retains it’s current calculations for both ‘Spending’ and ‘Committed spending’ for the whole reporting period.
I have a similar problem with fluctuating income - I have both salary and dividends, only for mine it is worse as they come in on a totally different schedule (monthly / quarterly, respectively). I wrote about a solution here (under the “fluctuating income” header). In brief: if we were able to route fluctuating income through a pot, and instead have a scheduled pot withdrawal work as salary, then income could be smoothed and made to look more regular than it often is for many people.
3 Likes
tobyadams
(#fullmonzo joint account since Aug18)
8
I responded to to a twitter post by Monzo CEO to suggest this and they responded that this is a ‘cracking’ idea.
Hoping that this at least gets on the radar for some kind of roll out in 2019 as there must be lots of people in the same situation as me
tobyadams
(#fullmonzo joint account since Aug18)
9
Just to revive interest in this, the concept of Summary reflecting income I know is coming into my account is the one and only thing on my wish list to make Monzo perfect.
I’m stuck with this until Friday when I get paid. Child benefit and two other transfers are incoming too. Summary is pretty useless until these incomes are in my account
You set the amount you want to spend or will have going in your account (excluding committed spending going out)
So if you have £1000 and £100 going in this month and you know there’s £300 going out for committed spending then just set your budget for £800. Yes I used easy numbers
I’ve never set anything as income though so that might change things worth a go though
tobyadams
(#fullmonzo joint account since Aug18)
13
All of my committed spending is already in Monzo, I just want the period that summary covers to reflect the income that is scheduled. I don’t know what I have left to spend (without manually working it out) until all of the incomes have come into my account. Basically, summary only really works to it’s full potential if you get paid once a month and that doesn’t work on joint accounts with different pay dates for each account holder and for other incomes that occur throughout the month.
I’ve just always done it by setting budgets when I was getting paid weekly or with 2 wages and child benefit etc and it works perfectly for me
tobyadams
(#fullmonzo joint account since Aug18)
15
But that would not get summary to account for the monies coming in over the period to reflect an accurate disposable income for the month. Look up at previous posts in this thread as I think we might be getting our wires crossed here.
But you’re telling the summary how much you’ll be getting and just deducting the committed spending yourself instead of it doing that bit for you
As I said I’m not sure if it works if you’ve set an incoming payment as a salary but it definitely does if you haven’t
tobyadams
(#fullmonzo joint account since Aug18)
17
I see what you’re saying but it’s a half measure and not really what I’m looking for. I want monzo to be smart enough to do this for me. We don’t really budget as a rule and use monzo to keep an oversight on our spending and what I’m looking for here would infinitely improve this - as I’m sure it would countless other users.
I just wanted to jump in with a +1 here. What’s been described is exactly my situation: I have two regular payments coming in each month, about 2 weeks apart, and having this accounted for in the spending summary would be a big help. I like the idea somebody made above of being able to tag a received payment as “recurring” in the same way I can with a payment that leaves my account
1 Like
tobyadams
(#fullmonzo joint account since Aug18)
19
I’d really love to see this on an agenda for development. It really is my one real grip with my monzo experience. My hope was that with CASS for joint accounts, there would be more of us in this situation that would then push monzo to look at this.
I have a similar issue where I pay all bills and rent but my housemates transfer me a third of the bills the day before rent comes out. So summary usually thinks I’m broke.
Setting a defined budget of what I have left after bills helps summary become more useful.
I also have a bills pot where I have scheduled payments for housemates transfers and my portion of bills when they come in and withdrawals for each date bills usually come out which helps me know my true balance.
It’'s not perfect if a direct debit falls on a weekend but it’s much easier for me to understand my left over money this way.
Fingers crossed for the committed spending pot to resolve all these points properly!
);
worth a go though