Hello Monzo Community! You may remember me from my last post about our Money / Monzo campaign. I’m Natalie from Brand and I’m back to unveil (or should it be uncover?) an exciting project two years in the making.
Introducing: The Book of Money
We’ve been doing this banking thing for ten years now, and in that time we’ve picked up a thing or two about money. And we thought we’d try and write some of it down…
Say hello to: The Book of Money
A personal finance book by Monzo, it’s published by Penguin Random House and coming in September – and you can pre-order your copy now!
[Amazon]
A book about money (not Monzo)
The Book of Money brings together a tonne of knowledge from experts around the bank, insights from conversations with customers, practical exercises, fresh illustrations and our friendly tone of voice – to create a personal finance book that’s accessible, empathetic, and maybe even a little entertaining.
Our goal is to give people the skills, tools and confidence to change their relationship with money for the better.
We start the book with reflections on where our money beliefs come from, and how you can group your goals and motivations into financial ‘eras’, different stages that require a different approach to your finances.
We then move on to more practical money skills chapters like:
- Balancing your budget: how to avoid the day-before-payday dread
- ‘Doing money’ together: how to take the tension out of sharing finances with friends, family and partners
- Becoming an investor: why it’s not just for millionaires
- Life after work: how to leave pension procrastination behind
- Debt and borrowing: getting on top of your debt and using credit to your advantage
- Property: renting, buying and making the most of where you live
There’s a whole section where we explain investments and inflation with an elaborate analogy involving Freddos…
A personal finance book for people who’d never normally read one
…which I know might not apply to lots of you here! While we hope there’s something for everyone in this book, the accessible writing style and playful illustrations make it perfect for students or young professionals. We also heard from people in their 50s and 60s who said they’d gift it to family and friends who were just starting out.
How we made The Book of Money
Writing a book is a first for us, and learning about the world of publishing has been a fascinating process, not least because of the strict deadline involved, like this kind of deadline:
Writing a book might usually involve a lone author tucked away in an idyllic cottage with a typewriter. But the book is written by “Monzo”, which really means dozens of people around the business with their own specialist knowledge. So writing the book involved a very complex process that looked a little something like this 
:
We’re still counting the number of people involved!
Then, the challenge for our writers Emily and Maja, working closely with me, @bea and our project lead Lizze was to bring this all together and make it sound like ‘Monzo’.
The book is also filled with fun illustrations, infographics and charts, as well as some practical exercises. Designing such a visual book also posed an interesting challenge for our Creative Director (who is coincidentally called Coral!). We knew illustrations would be really important to explain complex concepts. But our usual design style is full of colour and photography, which doesn’t translate well into the black and white medium of a book! So she had to work in greyscale and make sure all the details would translate well during the printing process.
Organising the book club
Once we had a manuscript, we wanted to hear what people thought and check we had actually achieved what we set out to do. So we started a book club! And invited a dozen or so people to read it and give us feedback, including @davidwalton representing the community!
Early readers said things like “it makes you feel human about your finances”, that the book is “non-judgemental and easy to understand”, and “I wish I had read it 10 years ago”.
But that’s not all! Reading the book even inspired people to:
- Check their bank balance daily to ‘understand what’s going on’
- Put the 50-30-20 budgeting rule into practice
- Learn more about investing after thinking it’s only for rich people
- Open a pension pot, even though they’re a student in their 20s!
- Increase their workplace pension contributions
- Plan to buy the book for their partner because they’re bad with money
Older readers also said they would gift it to their adult children to help them on their money journey. Such feedback gave us confidence that the book can play a role in sparking money conversations among families — which we believe is so important!
How to get your copy
You can pre-order the book from Waterstones or Amazon (and we’re planning to put together a list of independent stockists once Penguin have confirmed who they are). It’s £10.99 for the paperback and £5.99 for the eBook, and our share of the profits will go to charity (more on that soon 
).
Audio editions are available on Audible, Spotify and Google Play.
The book will actually go on sale this September – after it’s proofread, typeset, printed (and everything else it takes to create a physical book?! 
)
In the meantime, Penguin will be talking to retailers about stocking it, and we’ll both be doing some marketing to create buzz and boost pre-orders.
We can’t wait for you to read it!
