Stag do kitty fund

Monzo Chat Travelling with Monzo
1

Hi!
I’ve been tasked with organising my best mates stag and with such territory comes kitty organisation. Is monzo a good way of doing this? We are travelling to the Czech Republic so Monzo seemed the obvious choice for me and it saves us carrying around wads of cash!

Does anyone have experience of using Monzo for something like this? Any tips?

edit:

  • I already have a monzo acc.

  • It’s a big group of us at 19 people

  • Flights and accom already booked - this is purely to avoid a line of 19 people paying separately for meals and rounds. It will also pay for the group activities

Thanks in advance
Niall

2

Hi Niall. While Monzo is just a bank account at the end of the day, the lack of fees for buying abroad and withdrawing cash (up to £200 a month when abroad) might help. However, if you wanted to set aside money for different things (breaking the kitty down into categories), the pot features might be what you’re looking for to help manage spending.

That being said, setting up a new bank account solely for a stag do kitty seems a bit excessive.

3

Well Niall,

Can say I’ve personally used the “Shared Tabs” feature for a few group lads holidays now and everytime they work great. So in terms of youre group spending and splitting tabs or tracking who owes what for flights etc its very good!

If you’re looking for a group way of saving before youre trip into a “pot” there is currently no such way of doing this im afraid and whilst you could hack tabs to kind of do this it gets a bit messy where you can create custom transactions and put there savings in as you “oweing them”. But again i wouldnt recommend this way

4

Hi Peter,
Thanks. Luckily I already have a monzo account so no additional hassle on that side. This is the first I’ve heard of the £200 withdrawal limit. do monzo charge for every£ withdrawn over £200 or just block the card?

good idea with the pot features. I’ll look into it.

5

Are you looking to have all of your money available to you from day one of the Stag, or did you want to allocate the funds each day?

6

Probably all from day one I’d say Nick. We have little idea as to how much we’ll spend in total so planning on playing that part by ear.

1 Like
7

OK, I’ve just read your edits…

19 people is quite a lot, so I’m assuming the overall budget is pretty big?

I wouldn’t want thousands sitting in my Monzo account which was the only funds designed for 19 people.

If you put it all in a Pot, and then allocated each morning (or even before you were about to spend something), it would limit the risk involved (someone stealing your card and going on a contactless spending spree).

But… It’s a bit of a hassle allocating it each time.

I’d also 100% spread the money over multiple accounts (either do it with someone else going who has a Monzo account, or open a “throw away” account like Revolut).

This doubles your ATM withdrawal limit (if using Monzo), spreads the risk of losing all your money at once, and you wont have to worry about being the sole bearer of the responsibility.

If you wanted something more permanent, Starling don’t have limits on the foreign ATM withdrawal.

Starling (if you don’t know), are a fully fledged UK bank like Monzo - Some prefer it to Monzo, others don’t - A lot comes down to what user interface you like to be honest.

If you open a Starling or Revolut account, it won’t leave a hard footprint on your credit record (make sure not to take out an overdraft with Starling for this) - But Starling do report to 2 of the 3 credit agencies, so it would appear there as a current account (Revolut wouldn’t).

Someone might be able to correct me, but I believe the Revolut exchange rate is worse over the weekend (as the markets are closed) - I’m not sure if this affects cash withdrawals or not…

Edit from an article I’ve just found…

The digital bank might have 4.5 million customers across Europe - with 1.6 million users in the UK alone - but its travel service does not reflect that scale. The lender, founded in 2015, allows customers to withdraw £200 a month from ATMs for free, after that it charges a 2 per cent fee. It does not use Mastercard exchange rates.

The bank provides foreign exchange at interbank exchange rates without any additional fees on most currencies during the week, but charges between 0.5 per cent and 1 per cent on all currencies at the weekend.

If you don’t plan on using the account in the UK, I’d probably go for Revolut though.

Lastly, make sure you withdraw any cash in the local currency (and pay for things in the local currency) - If you are asked if you want to pay in GBP, always say no if you plan on using Monzo, Revolut or Starling.

Hope this helps :smiley:

8

Note that dough from 19 people deposited in one account quickly may trigger fraud warnings on your account,

tbh I think PayPal money pools are the way to go for you, easy to set up and see who’s paid and put a minimum/exact deposit rule, also no need to be a PayPal user to deposit money into the pool, I think it makes more sense for such a large group.

9

Whichever way you decide to manage money and spending, my advice is to make sure you keep all paper receipts, it’ll be easier to identify what was what afterwards – especially considering you’re going somewhere abroad and in-app merchant information might not be as insightful as you’d hope. Your sober self will thank you afterwards.

10

Thanks everyone for your advice. By the sounds of things best thing to do is to split the kitty amongst a few of our monzo cards to prevent hitting the cash withdrawal limit! Looked into a Revolut card too!

11

How does spending from the money pool work?
Is there a PayPal debit card to use with the pooled money?

12

I had a PayPal debit card not sure if it still exists :wink:

13

You’d have to withdraw the money to a bank account and use that card, but using the pool is by far the easiest way to collect the money in that circumstance

1 Like