Hi there. I’m hoping someone from Monzo will pick this up and provide some guidance on plans going forward.
There are some weird ways that Monzo handles ‘transfers’. It manifests itself in a number of scenarios and it’s something I’ve brought up before. It’s only really become a big issue now I’ve gone #FullMonzo and am using the joint accounts so i’ll start with that
Joint accounts
When transferring money between a personal and joint account the outbound transfer is included in ‘spent today’. If you then transfer the money straight back then it doesn’t offset that. I don’t understand why transfers are included in ‘spending’ when it’s just moving money from one place to another. Transfers to pots are not included in spent today which is correct.
Round ups
This has been brought up on another topic, but the inclusion of the round ups in spent today is very confusing. If i spent £2.40 in Pret and £0.60 is transferred to a pot, £2.40 should be shown in spent today. It is inconsistent with just making a transfer into a pot and it is the same financial principle
Transfers to other accounts / in general
I’ve brought this up before and while I understand it’s complex and there are other priorities it would be good to understand from Monzo what their plans are for this. There are many scenarios where people will have non-Monzo accounts, and transfers to these again skew the ‘spent today’ figure. There should be a category called ‘transfer’ which excludes the TX from ‘spent today’ and summary. Similarly, I don’t understand why on summary incoming transfers are included.
In summary, there should be better distinction between and income or expenditure item (like salary or food or holidays) and capital items (like saving, moving money)
Just my thoughts - be keen to hear if people agree, if they disagree then why, and also Monzo’s plans/thoughts on the above.
Fully appreciate the joint account is in Labs, so not trying to complain, just interested to hear if Monzo think this is an issue to be looked at or whether it’s just me. I’m guessing perhaps when they look at better bill splitting which has similar principles it might be looked at.
I am referring specifically to transfers between a joint account and that person’s corresponding personal account. In what scenario would that be spending (ie money you’ll never get back again) vs moving it from a joint account to your personal account? Maybe i’m missing something and if so I’ll be the first to hold up my hand and admit it…?
Spend just means money being removed for your main account balance, so moving it somewhere else like a pot or another account is spent for this purpose
Yes but the way Monzo treat this is not consistent. If you move money to a pot it doesn’t show in ‘spent today’. So it should be one way or the other but consistent.
I misspoke shouldn’t have said pots. Those are still in your account but not in your main balance, all other scenarios are not so spent seems fine. Otherwise you’d have to have spent today, transferred today, moved today and repaid today
Yes at the moment I think Monzo treat ‘spent today’ as money leaving your account (except for transfers to pots which is the correct treatment IMO but not consistent with other things).
If this is the desired meaning of ‘spent today’ then that’s ok, but it isn’t very insightful because it doesn’t show money in so is a useless metric.
Yes that sort of makes sense - your pots are just like carving your balance into different labels (or pots :))
But i still think the way transfers from joint <> personal are inconsistent.
Yesterday i sent £500 from my joint to my personal and £500 from my personal to my joint (for testing) and now both say i spent £500 yesterday which just isn’t very insightful or true.
Agree with all the main points in the first post, there could be some sort of option to exclude items in the same way as you do from Summary.
I appreciate some transfers are money spent but a lot of time for me they aren’t, I’ve brought it up before in a similar thread.
For example I have a SO setup to send a portion of my salary into a help to buy ISA. I always get a shock when I then buy a morning coffee and it states “spent XYZ today” on the notification. I have to open the app to check where it’s gone luckily I quickly notice.
Asking around, it’s basically what you’ve already discussed. Transfers are currently all treated the same. So if it’s going to another bank account, we’d call that “spending.” But yes, if that bank account happens to be your own (joint account or otherwise), calling that spending feels inaccurate.
So do we treat joint account transfers differently to other transfers? Or go for consistency?
There’s not really a home for internal transfers in your Summary screen at the moment.
That’s not a definitive answer, I know, but it’s something we’re already thinking about
There’s not really a home for internal transfers in your Summary screen at the moment.
The point of summary is to show you where your money is going, coming from and if you have enough. Transfers don’t affect any of this (except the last bit about if you have enough, since that is ‘enough’ in your Monzo account to pay your committed bills and predicted outgoings). IMO internal transfers (categorised by you in a ‘transfer’ category which denotes transfers to / from an account you own would solve this, that transaction being excluded from summary and ‘spent’
So do we treat joint account transfers differently to other transfers? Or go for consistency?
Agree it would be inconsistent to do for one not the other long term, but short term since it’s presumably a reasonably easy fix given you can identify it’s your account it would be good if those transfers were treated like pots. But imagine it’s not as easy a fix as thought.
Perhaps the middle ground is enabling you to toggle transactions on/off of the ‘spent today’ figure in the same way that you can ‘exclude from summary’ - this way people can deal with how they want since you’ll never please everyone
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Anarchist
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I don’t think there’s a way to automate this which would suit everyone.
I could transfer cash to my joint account and that would be moving money.
I could transfer cash to another account and that might be spending.
I could transfer cash to my account with a different provider and, to me, that would be moving money, but to Monzo, it would be spending money. Even if it was destined for a savings account.
I agree that transfers should be treated differently.
The issue stems from the fact that in traditional banks view there are only debits / credits. However, if Monzo is hoping to do something different to traditional banks then it has to re-think this.
I use a money management app that has 3 categories for each transaction:- income, expense, transfer. So when I make a purchase on a credit card it’s counted as expense, however when I pay-off the credit card, it is transfer.
I’m sure I read in a different thread about Monzo aspiring to have similar money management features : can’t find it right now though.
shouldn’t have said pots. Those are still in your account but not in your main balance, all other scenarios are not so spent seems fine. Otherwise you’d have to have spent today, transferred today, moved today and repaid today
luckily I quickly notice.