Being a British bank, I feel the Monzo community will be able to relate to where I’m going with this:
So what does any British citizen love doing?
Going to the pub of course.
Say I am planning on going to the pub tonight and I know that once I have had a few pints I won’t think about / care about what I’m spending.
I, knowing my lack of self control pretty well, could plan for this to happen in advance and set a “spending restriction” of say £20 on the “Eating out” or “Entertainment” category (whatever people may categorise pubs in to) to last for a defined duration of time only which would then automatically decline my payments once this amount is reached.
The next morning, that “spending restriction” could then be automatically lifted, allowing hungover me to put some greasy food in my stomach.
Obviously this is a pretty precise example; but this could be used to help budgeting elsewhere; say for example I only want to allow myself to spend £25 in groceries a week I could create a restriction on the groceries category for the duration of a week.
This could be perceived as being pretty similar to targets; however this would have finer control over duration and would stop people who compulsively go over their targets.
I think this has been suggested before, and I like the idea, but what happens when you’ve just got the round in for your 30 friends and the machine rejects your payment?
Something like this has been suggested before. The problem is the drinks have already been poured before you are asked to pay. If I were a pub landlord and people couldn’t pay a couple of times I’d put up a sign saying we don’t accept Monzo.
Thinking about the merchants once again; if I do a big grocery shop that gets declined, I’m not sure the staff would be particularly impressed that they now have to put it all back…
It’s not the first time I’ve seen people realise they don’t have enough cash and put things back at the till. Seems to be less common now with card payments.
