Spending Periods

Hello everyone! :sunny:

Right now we’re thinking about the spending screen and the changes we want to introduce once we have a full current account and your income can live in Monzo.

If you keep a close eye on the forum, you’ll know there’s been many posts about changing the period of spending that you see in the Home and Spending. Right now we operate from start to end of the month, which I think is the best default we can go for (as rent, bills, subscriptions etc tend to be paid on a monthly basis), but we also know that people receive their income in many different ways. Eg, if you’re a freelancer, you may receive £2,000 and then £600 four weeks later but two weeks later receive £400. It’s not always as straightforward as a flat monthly salary. Or some people are paid every two weeks instead, and if this is the case, seeing your money on a monthly basis isn’t as valuable as if it was catered directly to you.

As your salary/income is the cornerstone of a current account, we want to make sure we consider every use case we can.

So! It would be incredibly useful if you could respond to this (anonymous) poll with what your ‘pay period’ is. If your answer isn’t there, or you have any other thoughts on how you’d like to see us approach this, please comment below :smile:

  • Every month
  • Every two weeks
  • Weekly
  • Irregular (sometimes two weeks, sometimes two months)
  • Other (please elaborate in thread!)

0 voters

4 Likes

I think, in the long run, the aim should be to have fully customisable spending periods, where the customer basically sets what they want to measure against, maybe using some kind of sliding scale.

Also, would be useful to be able to be able to track against more than one target. For instance, I set my monthly target spend, this then breaks down to show me how much I can spend per week and even per day to help staying on track for the entire month.

Currently when you just get a warning saying you are spending too fast, that’s great, but doesn’t actually tell me what the spending to target figure is.

10 Likes

Fully customisable spending periods are definitely in our sight, and hopefully in the short term :smiley: Having multiple thresholds for a target you set is definitely interesting, one of our earliest ideas for budgeting worked in this direction but we feared over-complication—but maybe it could make more sense now.

8 Likes

Mines the last Friday of every month :slight_smile:

Edit: which means payday today woo!

2 Likes

I’m not sure whether this is what you meant here but just in case - my pay period is monthly but I’m paid on the last working day of the month.

Since the Targets only start at the beginning of the following month, I currently have 1-3 days when I’m potentially spending money from my new paycheck. I know that this is also sometimes a bigger problem for users that are paid on the last Friday of each month.

There is a workaround but it’s not ideal.

5 Likes

Yeah, same! It is definitely a problem. In my case, I’m poor at the end of each month, but the “end” is often the 26th/27th, which then gives me four days with my shiny new paycheck to mess up my targets and spending. So it’s certainly in mind, I’m not sure how we will solve it yet, but it’s definitely in mind.

10 Likes

As a contractor I’m the only employee of a company I own. I have a low monthly wage (£650) but about 90% of my income comes from dividends which I tend to pay myself once an invoice has been settled by a client.

I realistically have a single client who I invoice monthly but based on whether their payments team are being competent or not this month I can receive the money 2-6 weeks later.

Also, come February or March I might decide I don’t fancy paying the tax on extra dividends and hold the money in the company until the next financial year in April.

My situation might seem pretty niche but estimates say about 5% of the UK workforce are freelance or contractors.

I’d recommend leaving the spending period duration set to monthly but also give the option to view things weekly, quarterly and annually? Having odd intervals like 6 or 9 weeks or anything else odd will mean the data isn’t really comparative between periods as you’ll get say 2 rental payments in 1 and then 1 rental payment in the next, etc.

1 Like

With current accounts could you not set it that any payments from x reset targets until it appears again? I can’t set a specific day as I’m, in theory, paid on the 27th of every month but sometimes that’s a weekend and in December they pay a week early, give or take.

8 Likes

I think there’s two different things people will want to see; how they’ve spent this period compared to previous months, in which case they should be fixed durations but also where they stand in terms of income versus outgoings.

5 Likes

Therein lies the trickiness. For me, I’m talking from my own standpoint that each period is between pay cheques. That’s what I need to check.

I get paid on the 21st of each month. If it falls on a weekend then I get paid on the Friday.

How my employer arrived at that date I have no idea.

1 Like

Hi, one idea I have used in other personal finance apps is to categorise spending either as monthly or yearly. e.g gas bill is monthly but car insurance is yearly. I would love to see something like this in Monzo. This can be implemented with virtual savings pots (an idea others have already mentioned) but direct control of the period of a category would be a fiction-less way of doing this. I would need more categories though :wink:

It probably won’t affect a lot of people but at the moment I am getting paid every month differently. It can vary from first to seventh of the month.

Maybe :mondo: could have a button to close the current spending period and open a new one. When we finally can get paid into our :mondo: :credit_card: this could possibly be triggered automatically as well.

1 Like

I get paid monthly - but not the same date. Pay day is always the last Friday of the month.

I get paid every month, just need to be able to set the month to start on 25th

1 Like

I get paid on the 25th of each month but it’s changing next financial year to the last Friday of each month, custamisable spending periods would be amazing!

I get paid 4-weekly, every 4th Wednesday, as do most TfL employees.

1 Like

I’m paid on the last working day of every month just so things are awkward :laughing:

Monthly, also on last working day of every month.
Sometimes for December, I’m paid before 24th Dec. :smiley:

1 Like

I know not everyone is a student, but those who are relying on student loans at university receive an instalment three times during the academic year (once a semester). These dates are based on term-dates which are different every year and differ between universities too. It would be really useful to see how much I can afford to spend per week based on this semesterly income.

Obviously this wouldn’t suit anyone else, so ideally it would be great if you could customise the spending period to your own situation. I think it would be nice to be able to select an interval (every week/month etc.) or a specific date, whether it be in 2 weeks, a month, or a manual entry and base the targets on that :grinning:

3 Likes