Using your rounded up cash to help feed the homeless

I’ve been thinking about the impact of saving using rounded up cash from your transaction via Monzo.

A lot of smart advisors have sprung up around this idea and I think that’s because there is such low impact on the end users wallet, having little 50p’s and 25p’s siphoned here and there adds up over time, but doesn’t impact your monthly bottom line.

I would love a way in Monzo to click a little toggle that said “Help the Homeless” which took those funds and gave them to a large mutual fund that went to helping the homeless on our streets.

The form of payout could be linked to a homeless person by giving them a Monzo card (which they can check using any ATM - They don’t need a phone).

One of monzos early goals was to help the unbanked, and this is one way thousands of better off users of monzo could help put money in the pockets of homeless people every day.

I understand this is naive and open to abuse, but thought it was an interesting idea so thought i’d share.

This is an amazing idea. I would definitley opt in for this.

One issue I can see would be distributing these cards to the homeless. How would we verify identity etc? a lot of homeless people would not have any documentation to prove they are who they say they are.

Alternatively we could just donate the money to reputable food banks in the area instead.

Yeah thats one of the trickiest parts. Have you seen this thing Yoti before? It aims to help identify the homeless so they can get things such as social security benefits, etc. Perhaps that’s enough for the know your customer portion of signing up to Monzo?

They implemented something for Big Issue sellers last month:

And I believe Charity Pots are on their way (although it’s gone a bit quiet on that front), which allow you to group all your roundups and send them to your selected charity at the end of each month.

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Yeah this is very cool!

I still think the benefit of a mutual fund provided by monzo users means homeless people have time freed up to go and do more productive endeavors during the day without having to worry about getting enough money to get a meal or a hostel for the night.

I think this is a very bad idea. You should not give money to people on the streets, it should be given to a homeless charity instead. Far too much admin in getting cards for homeless people, deciding if they are genuinely homeless at day one and then forever more.

Charity pots are a much better idea for this purpose.

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I agree, much better going to a charity

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I’d rather donate to a charity than give money direct to the homeless.

In my experience, with all the empty vodka & wine bottles that are dropped in my street on a daily basis and the mess(tents, needles, bottles) left in the fields near my house, a homeless charity would be the last charity I’d give money to.

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Charity pots are coming soon, so maybe set one up to donate to Shelter (if that’s one of the first charities on offer?)

I also side with the charity camp. Also, as we’re talking about altruistically helping people, shameless plug to information about Effective Altruism:

This works as long as you limit what the money for the individual homeless person can spend the money on it should only be able to be used for essentials like food and water and sanitary products and shelter. Not vices like booze or smokes.

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You know that homeless charities probably won’t just hand your money out to homeless people, right?

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Charity Pots is definitely something we’re aware of!

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Unfortunately i agree with most here, giving the homeless money for most means they’ll buy more drugs and alcohol.

What is a good idea is giving money direct to charities for them to buy and provision. Food banks for example can do more with money than they can with donated food, donated food is a waste of money, and a bit of a nice healthy profit for tesco and the likes.

So easy ways to donate to charity through monzo might be a nice idea.

Or make it a system where you select which charity you want to put your money towards. Personally I’d put mine towards SSAFA and not one of the homeless charities, nothing against them but I’ve personally used SSAFA in the past.

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