Targets

I confused myself when writing that last post…take 2 -

bold text is text that I’ve added to my previous post

The design in your screenshot enables you to easily see where you are in the month vs your category’s target, for each individual category.

But the bars aren’t a comparison of the amount spent in £ against the target for the total spend or a comparison of the amount spent in £ vs the other categories. They do enable you to compare the amount spent as a % vs the other categories.

I like the design & how easy it easy to see where you are, in terms of % spent from each category target vs % of the month that’s passed, although as I’ve discussed here

I prefer the orientation of the current design which is focused on amount remaining, rather than how much has been spent.
You could incorporate the position in month tracker (although it would be in reverse chronological order, which would be hard to get to grips with), either extend the bars - as you suggested - or align the timeline with the category bars & keep the rest of the design the same.


In other words, this is hard to explain in writing & I’ve made a mess of my comments :grimacing:

I thought I was running the test flight build but targets never appeared. Do I need to do something?

They’re available for TF & the standard app now. You should find a target button in the top left of the Spending tab.

:+1:t2: I somehow was on the old test flight so deleted that and re installed the App Store version. All good now :clap::clap:

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Having used Monzos targets for a while now I agree id like to have some indication of how far through the month I am - green is interesting but id like to know ‘how green’ i am by comparing to how far through the month we are. I do this calculation myself based upon the date but its always a bit annoying as I know the app could be showing it

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Dylan came up with a good looking design for this here

https://community.monzo.com/t/targets-month-progress-bar/6359/6?u=alexs

You’ll get it during the day. It’s still a fairly manual process :slight_smile:

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@hugo Will it be a push notification/feed item?

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Mine just came through… Ouch!


Nice report though and I like the bet that came with push notification.

I bet you can do better this month

I bet I can too!

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The team’s taking turns to lick envelopes and head out to the post box then? :smile:

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This is exactly what I wish was in the targets screen!

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Now into my second month on Monzo I think im getting a bit smarter at budgetting (however I wonder whether my new process could be reflected in the app some time?)

Before I was thinking - what should my monthly budget be? and have been setting my topup (and then target) amounts to match that.

However I was either thinking I was doing great or terrible depending upon how many ‘exceptional spend’ things I did like go away for the weekend to visit friends/paying for presents/holiday (and Christmas coming!)

My new approach for budgeting is something like this:

  1. Figure out how much money i should have in a ‘normal’ month (however this includes ‘typical’ entertainment / eating out etc)
  2. If I know something exceptional is in that month (e.g. holiday etc) then add on an amount for that (I have to calculate that myself off app)

This should result in my target spend each month actually being different from each other

Does anyone else do it like this (or have a better way)?

If my process to be reflected in app some way it could eventually be:

  1. “your typical daily/weekly spend is X - so we suggest a monthly budget of Y”
  2. “do you have anything special this month?” top up budget for holiday / party / birthday etc
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Targets has noticeably improved my budgeting, but I still don’t think I’m disciplined enough.

Just 2 days ago I spent a little too much money that I hadn’t budgeted for because there was last minute comedy gig announced and just couldn’t resist. Now I expect I’ll have to adjust targets that I shouldn’t be doing.

Until the virtual savings accounts are available I’m gonna start using https://squirrel.me/.

Wow squirrel looks great - hadnt heard of them before - their trustpilot reviews are very positive

Squirrel is cool - they were in the Techstars/Barclays Accelerator program a year or two ago.

I can’t help but feel that their service has a barrier to entry which is much too high though. I don’t think I’m comfortable with the idea of asking my employer to pay money into my Squirrel account.

I was a little sceptical too, but then I saw their trust pilot score, reviews, plus their FCA regulated and decided it’s worth a try.

Eech, £4pm for what’s essentially “a feature”. It’s not much, but for a feature that’s supposed to help you save money, I’d have thought most people would be better off not paying for it…

That’s one of reasons I’m looking forward Monzo’s release of this feature. That I’m confident it’ll be done better.

Agreed! This is def something that would improve the app!

Hello,

I really like what I read.
There’s a free app for macs called cashculator. It’s a very basic app that allows you to set your own categories and track actual vs planned spending plus gives you some graphs on income, spending and balance. For me, a great feature would also be to be able to see something like that on here.

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