Spending from savings Pots

The pots are great but can we add in a feature where you just ‘activate’ a pot to spend only from that.

For example I’ve got pots for upcoming holidays. It would be good to be able to just ‘activate spending’ on that pot. So the entire time I’m away all my spend only comes out of that single holiday pot fund allowing me to keep a better track of my spend on holiday. Then my regular month to month spending would also be kept separate so by the end of the month I don’t have an additional few hundred on my entertainment or eating out categories when really its just been spent on a holiday.

Would work with any subject really. I’ve got a Christmas savings pot and if i knew i was going out shopping that day for presents i could just ‘activate’ that pot?

What do you think?

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I really like this idea.
I think it should also include a feature where it will take from your normal account if there is not enough in your pot and send you a notification of what happened. Save transactions being declined

You can kind of do this now using IFTTT so have a look at that app for the time being (Kind of being the key words)

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I like this idea.

Beats having to exclude many payments from my monthly summary (as was the case over Christmas).

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Committed spending pots are coming :soon:

If you search on the forums you will find some screenshots if that interests you. They’re currently being tested internally by Monzo staff :slight_smile:

See here:

https://community.monzo.com/t/monzos-speedy-android-development/51957/10

And here for a more recent update:

https://community.monzo.com/t/monzos-speedy-android-development/51957/23

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Can’t wait for this. Honestly a great way to start 2019

Hopefully you can automatically send either an amount or percentage of salary to this pot

Just edited my above post to include the responses from Monzo in regards to this :slight_smile:

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You keep editing your question which makes my replies look very random :rofl:

You can do this with IFTTT:

Info about IFTTT is here:

and if you need help, here is that topic:

https://community.monzo.com/t/monzo-ifttt-support-thread/39382

This doesn’t seem like the same thing though. What would be good is to just activate a different pot and from date of activation to de-activation all card transactions (not scheduled payments) would come from that pot until it was empty and then it would go back to the generic account.

Or am i missing something?

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I think we’re talking about slightly different things here!

Just to provide some clarity - we built something that we’re testing internally called “Committed Spending Pots” but it’s a very basic implementation right now and, as Jami said, will likely need a fair bit more work before we release it, or anything similar to it.

Right now, it pulls money automatically out of the Pot right before a Direct Debit goes out, so that your available balance isn’t affected by the bill payment. The money in that Pot is “Committed” to your Direct Debits.

Being able to spend directly from a Pot rather than from the available balance on an ad-hoc basis (which seems to be the idea OP is referring to) isn’t the same thing and I’m not sure that’s something we’d build.

Essentially, with a Bills pot already in action, your Available Balance would then be considered to be your spending money, and any purpose-created Pots (such as a Holiday pot) should be emptied into the Available Balance when that event/purpose commences.

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See what i used to do when i went on holiday was move all my spending money onto Monzo and just use the monzo abroad. Now that ive gone full monzo without this feature im likely to lose track of spending while abroad especially if payments and direct debits are coming out of my available balance. So i think i will use the same concept and when I’m due to go on holiday I will move my spending money to my Starling and that way i can keep my spending on holiday separate from my actual account balance and not lose track. Saves having to rule all the amounts out of my monthly budget too

Have a think about building this though guys it would be AMAZING! There is a vote on another thread where its the third highest and youve already implemented the 1st and 2nd on that vote!

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Yep, this idea of additional separation between holiday spending and regular spending is definitely valid and we’re looking at ways to accommodate that.

Out of interest, would it not work to simply mark all the transactions under the Holiday category?

That way, you could simply tap on “Holiday” in the Summary, and you’d keep track of the spending that way.

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When iI on holiday im usually TAP TAP TAP at the bar so to have to categories all my holiday spending the next day would add to any hangover. Plus my available balance will still include my regular money and my holiday money so I would have to figure out what Ive spent, do some maths, etc etc when really i could just check the remaining balance in either the pot or on my other account.

If you’re holidaying abroad, at the start you’ll get a feed item welcoming you to the country. In the detail view, you can then choose to have all the transactions categorised as “Holiday” or “Expenses” (or leave it to categorise as normal) while you’re away.

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Unless you only use your joint account in which case we’re not lucky enough to get this :sweat:

Also this doesn’t seem to work on Android at all :frowning:

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This is the biggest/only thing keeping me from full monzo, I like to have bills coming out of one account and spending money in another

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Yeah but it still doesn’t separate your fund so while I’m away say 3 direct debits come out and the money I’m using for spending money. The point is keeping them seperate. All transactions in the time frame chosen to be from a pot and everything else regular balance.

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I still like the idea of a second PIN on the card which, when used, debits (in this scenario) a specific Pot.

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It would work all year round. Say you’re heading out for the night give yourself a budget of 100quid. Spend from the “night out” pot and you can instantly keep track of what you’re spending and have left without having to work anything out. A warning when it’s empty and you can eithier top up or go back to the generic account

2 Likes