Everyone budgets differently though. For some “left to spend” is useful, for others it may vary from month to month and they won’t be able to set that amount. I believe this is why Starling left it with just spending insights for now.
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I’ve hidden it through the labs. If you have two accounts it’s annoying being told you are going to run out of money incessantly!
You can get this from a second app like Emma. Why does it need to be built in the bank’s app now we have open banking? The great unbundling of features is just starting.
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The point of OB is that you can get many services but display them all in the same place. If you’re gunna get that from Emma then you’d want to use Emma for everything and I’m not certain you can do much of the actual banking stuff (moving money around) in Emma (feel free to correct me). Having to use multiple apps is surely the opposite of what you want from open banking.
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That was the one feature that made my wife and I move from Starling to Monzo. In all other respects we preferred Starling at the time but left to spend was significant enough, and still is the reason we stay with Monzo.
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I think it’s more you’re no longer tied to any provider’s systems and can layer additional features on top, such as left to spend, regardless of the provider
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You don’t set anything, it just works out how much is left after bills, that’s what makes it useful. It varies all the time (4 week/5 week months etc.) but that’s the app’s problem not mine.
For me the actual balance is rather pointless… it’s mostly committed anyway and just a big number that I cant use. Left to spend is how much I actually have,
Everyone’s different I know, but for me I wouldn’t join a bank without it, even though monzo seems to have stalled that one feature keeps me around.
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Personally, I don’t find Left to Spend that useful as it never lines up properly with my payday. However, I don’t need it because of the other feature that Monzo has that’s keeping me here - pay from pots. So, I just transfer on payday the amount I know will cover all my bills into the Bill Pot, and then forget about them knowing that whatever is left in my main pot is available to spend.
If/when Starling introduces that though (they’ve talked about it in the past and with their new Spending Card Space it shouldn’t be that difficult for them to adjust that into a ‘Bill Space’ service), I’ll need to take a long hard look at the two to see if it’s worth switching. I probably wouldn’t CASS it, and just manually switch over so that I’ll keep my Monzo account open as well.
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Anyone tried Starling on iOS 14? It crashes on launch on my iPad. Haven’t updated my phone yet for that reason.
Hadn’t tried it, have now.
Crashes unfortunately
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It crashes instantly upon launch, at least on an iPhone 8. I downgraded as I needed to make a payment. Note that an encrypted iTunes backup is enough to preserve the existing session and not have to go through the “new device” auth flow so that’s quite nice.
I remember looking at their Android app and they seem to use some pretty advanced anti-reverse-engineering obfuscation techniques. I wonder if the iOS version is similar and those techniques are causing it to break, or make it think that the device is compromised and it intentionally crashes the app?
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Usually beta versions of an OS aren’t compatible immediately. For example, Android Betas aren’t supported right out of the box (Here is a Starling Blog post: https://www.starlingbank.com/blog/testing-android-q-os/) and the same applies to the first iOS beta versions. It will be the OS or app compatibility that needs to be tested first. I reckon with the second beta release you should be able to run the app again.
Generally though OS betas should be tested on secondary devices only to avoid any hiccups for serious things such as banking. 
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While this is true, I think Google/Apple get a lot more valuable feedback from people who live dangerously and install on primary devices. So many more things can be discovered that you wouldn’t otherwise
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Yes but the current beta of IOS is the developer beta - not the public one. This is the first time that app developers have ‘got their hands’ on it so it’s not Starlings fault if their app doesn’t work on it right now. I’m sure they’ve downloaded it and are working on fixing it so that their app will be ready when the final version is released in sept
Unless you’re specifically an App developer, you should at least wait until the first ‘public’ beta is released next month before getting it to see the changes. That delay is to give the app developers time to update their app to make them a little more compatible.
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Oh I’m not debating this all, in fact I couldn’t give a toss if Starling works or not – I don’t bank them.
I was only addressing the point that betas should be installed on secondary devices only (something which Apple and Google themselves say, even for the public betas). The real-world feedback from primary devices is much more valuable but I guess they don’t want to encourage that for liability reasons
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I suppose that technically you’re right, but why do some apps work absolutely fine and others fail? I wonder if it comes down to trying to be clever with the system instead of following the developer guidelines.
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It’s interesting you say that. A year or two ago there were some this forum who were lambasting Monzo because the app didn’t work on the latest beta. Starling was held up as an example of good practice.
Wish I’d registered an account back then. Could have bookmarked those comments for later review. I shall endeavour to find them.
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I remember those days, and I was one of the people moaning. We weren’t complaining that the app doesn’t work but rather Monzo coming out and actively saying that they won’t make it work at all until final release day. That’s why a beta exists. To see what broke your app, fix it and seek feedback.
But enough of this off-topic stuff, this should probably be moved to the WWDC thread @Feathers
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The logic being that the funds were awarded to different companies to promote competition in the market place , that they were given to companies that didnt , or couldn’t use them to the detriment of other bidders, and then had to return them doesnt really mean Starling should get more funding from the same remedies fund, as that wouldn’t promote competition it is only consolidating Starlings advantage sour grapes lol
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