Set Start of Month

For me, setting the start of the month is about attributing spend to a particular pay slip.
I get paid on the 27th of each month. Any spend after that, and before my next pay slip, I want to be considered as spending against that pay.
It shouldn’t matter what way people choose to budget. The ability to choose your budget start date is key to letting people budget in their own way.

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Exactly - otherwise your budgeting tool isn’t an abstraction of your actual financial position!

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I get paid 4-weekly, every 4th Wednesday. I’d like to transfer money for 4-weekly and monthly DD and SO into pots soon after I get paid so that I can see what disposable income I have until next pay day. For that I’ll need to ‘set start of month’ every 4th Wednesday.

There are any number of reasons for wanting flexible start dates. Very few will apply to any individual however alternatives to the current method are likely to be beneficial to many.

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Ideal situation for me would be recognition of salary coming in and the budget starting. Just for those months where the 27th falls on a Sunday etc.

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Yeah… I want a budget app or spending app precisely because I don’t want to be doing divisions and “rough” amounts to spend.

For some, the ability to “roughly” estimate money isn’t even an option with the low amount of disposable income that they have.

I don’t know your specific financial situation, but I am increasingly finding those who have a higher income or larger disposable income seem to be quite flippant about budgeting - for you it might be a fun, useful tool and task that you can survive with or without regardless, for others it’s completely necessary down to the last penny. Particularly for those people, setting their own parameters to their own situation is absolutely key.

I’ve been trying to move all my direct debits and standing orders to the same day of the month. Ultimately that would mean virtually all my non-discretionary expenses going out shortly after payday, leaving me clear on how much is left to spend or save for the rest of the month (it also makes the Monzo spending graph a lot more meaningful).

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For me money is quiet tight so I would rather spend as little as possible than have some app give me a spending target encouraging me to spend more to reach my targets.

I used to use Microsoft Money until they stopped supporting it and added every direct debit, standing order, cheque, ATM withdrawal…and split withdrawals up so part was in one category and part in another. So checked my account every day and knew to the penny what I had that day or would have on a future date.

With Monzo not having a running balance I have every entry copied on to a spreadsheet and reaudit it whenever the daily total alters.

So to say some of us are well off and flipant is not right, we just want to budget, control and save money, rather than divide up what we have and seek to spend it all at an app that say hey come up you can spend another £50 in this category!

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I live in London and my salary is close to 1.5k a month. After rent which takes nearly 50% of my salary, council tax, an atrocious travel card cost of £130 pm and other bills, I’m not left with much at all. Budgeting on a monthly basis has actually been the only way I’ve been able to keep control of the situation.

My questions don’t come from flippancy just a genuine need to understand why planning month to month doesn’t work for you.

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Some people don’t get paid per month :slight_smile: Simple as

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What part of my answer above didn’t you understand, or at least appreciate?

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@BobT I wasn’t asking the question again. My comment was clarification in direct response to a comment suggesting I was being flippant due to being on a high wage. Forgive me for wanting to address that comment and to clarify that my approach to budgeting is not driven by enormous wealth.

The fact that you were replying to a comment wasn’t clear since you appear to have replied to the topic, not any particular comment, which lead me to believe that you were still not understanding the multiple requests for more flexibility in target dates. It seems we both misunderstood each other.

I hope at least I offered some small insight into why the current fixed target date is near useless to me, and as many others have stated, hope to see more flexible options available soon.

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for me the important thing is knowing your available balance, pending transactions that may impact that balance, predicted outgoings like BACS Direct Debits, Standing Orders, and SEPA Direct Debits. For me a running balance is more use than a Target to aim for

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I don’t see it so much as a target to aim for, more of an absolute limit of expenditure during the timeframe. Much like a fuel gauge I don’t plan to use up all my fuel by a certain date.

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I use targets the same way @BobT it’s a maximum spend in a certain area but if I can come in under even better!

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The choice of terminology is wrong. Targets you try to meet or exceed. Limits you stay within.

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Agreed, but that’s semantics. It’s the functionality I’m more interested in. Unfortunately targets (and the pulse graph) don’t really work for me until I can set the start dates to coincide with payday.

Oh you’re right but that’s what we have to work with :slight_smile:

I would venture to say that most of our users see “Targets” the way you see “Limits” - a hard ceiling to stay under, not a goal to try and achieve!

Putting my “User” hat on, rather than “Employee”, I can certainly say I’ve never set, say, a £200 target for groceries and then thought to myself “I must aim to spend £200 on Groceries this month!!!” - the fact that the colors move from green to yellow to red as you get closer to the Target also encourages you to not over-spend and to stay on track.

The problem with calling it limits it that is comes across as quite authoritarian, and also it implies you can’t go over it - which becomes even more confusing due to the fact that we do have actual limits, like on ATM withdrawals, Monzo-to-Monzo payments, etc.

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Calling it ‘Budgets’ would’ve solved any ambiguity but personally I don’t care what they’re called.
I’d rather see improvements in their functionality adopted when the CA is fully launched. If not, I’ll be putting my salary back into my legacy bank and transferring a portion at the start of each month into my Monzo CA to better manage my spending given the current inflexibility of start dates.