Virtual 'Savings' Accounts

Wait… What? You got this already? Damn you guys are good. Thing is for me, you best get Android App Parity or I’m going to have to buy me an extortionately priced iPhone and renounce the customisability and choice I so adore from the Android platform. Seems that you’re working on it so I’ll wait…

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Nooo, don’t betray android for pesky ios! :smiley: Us, android people, need to stick together and patiently wait. I’m not too fussed overall, I feel like gap is closing for old stuff and not growing for new functionalities.

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Another vote for savings pots here. It would be ever so convenient for me to be able to allocate money to different pots (such as holiday, car etc) as I go along.

I would prefer if this could be implemented in a simple manual fashion (as Loot does) as a priority with further functionality (such as automation) coming later.

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One of the main reasons I joined Monzo was the idea that I might be able to have a rule-based account, such as “if there is over X left in this account by end of month, then transfer Y to another account”. There are many schemes and techniques covered in this thread, but if there’s something which will let me do just that simple thing then I’d be happy. I really like the idea of the virtual accounts too.

Just been using my Monzo card in EU for the first time - all went very nice and smoothly :slight_smile:

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Sounds like amazing ideas. Hopefully to be implemented by the roll out of the current accounts. Great job!:+1:

Hi everyone,

I’ve become an avid Monzo user myself and like many of you I particularly like (or dislike at times!) how much it tells me about my spending habits. Being able to create various savings pots is great and there’s actually a few bank-agnostic options out there (even though they’re focused on savings and do not allow for budgeting at the same time they’re still nice to have).

Bouncing off the OP’s point my question is: what would be your preferred format for savings? (I’m particularly looking at you @richardray, @harryjest, @Danthejaw, @dafzthomas, @dc.robertshaw, @JamesBell, @UrgeToSplurge, @MarcGeoffrey, @SladdinCJ)

  1. Direct debit (simple pre-determined amount on a daily, weekly or monthly basis so you can reach your savings goal in time)
  2. Put whatever’s left over of your daily/weekly/monthly spending limit aside automatically or manually
  3. Round up/Save the change (as discussed here: Save The Change 1)
  4. Create your own rule, i.e. I know I spend too much on hip coffee (I definitely do!) and I decide that every time I buy a coffee I automatically match that amount and put it aside / Or like @Fawxy said, allocate a chosen percentage of every transaction to my savings pot.
  5. My very own twist on 3) & 4): Every payday that I celebrate with my colleagues, I match the amount that I spend on drinks and set it aside towards my savings goal - This could even become a competition, with Monzo teams from different cities or boroughs competing for the top saver spot. In a nutshell: a drinking/saving contest! (I’m planning on setting this up as a Monzo meetup if this option proves popular)

Any thoughts from this inspired community are most welcome.

Cheers,

Audrey

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Hey Audrey,

I’d be happy with the DD option. For me, its all about restricting access to a savings pot. Setting goals is one thing but there is always a reason to dip into your savings. I’d like to be able to restrict access to saving pots to help me reach a goal.

For example (Holiday Savings Pot):

I need to save £1000 in 5 months. I set the DD to £200 per month. I set access notice period to 20 days and set the date I am going on holiday. Knowing I have to give 20 days notice to access my holiday fund will stop me dipping into the pot before my holiday. On the date of the holiday my money is released automatically.

Hope this helps :blush:

Dan

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Thanks Dan, very helpful!

So basically you want to be able to give yourself a slap on the hand if you’re tempted to spend your money :slight_smile: That’s a great idea.

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I think that there are many use cases for virtual accounts, and it might be a bad idea for Monzo to be opinionated by baking one or more of them into the app.

For my own purposes, I’d really like to be able to do long-term “envelope budgeting”, putting aside so much a month for holidays, so much for car servicing, so much for buying a new car in 3 years time, etc. I’d like these ringfenced to the point that it’s very clear how much is in each pot, and such that the money is not available to spend until I choose to transfer it into the “general spending” pot. I think that this level of tracking/policing needs to be built into the account.

However, on top of that, there’s loads of potentially complex rules about where my salary goes. How much goes into each pot, and is it done automatically? What happens if there isn’t enough one month? Or there’s an excess? Is this the kind of thoughtful budgeting that I’d rather be using my PC for, rather than a smartphone?

Maybe the right structure is for the account to provide sub accounts to enable the ringfencing, functionality, then allow applications using the Monzo API to apply “smarts” on top of that?

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Thanks @RichF, this is really interesting!

What if you were able to automatically put money aside into virtual buckets for each savings category after payday and then simply had a spending limit for the rest? That way you would know how close you are to spending what you’ve put aside (with a notification when you’ve reached 80% of your spending limit for example) and you would have the flexibility of choosing whether or not to spend further without having to worry about using your overdraft.

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I’m trying to separate the “automatically put money aside into virtual buckets” from the rest of what you are talking about. I think an implementation for “the rest” is fairly straightforward to imagine ; virtual accounts, warnings when they are getting low or going down too fast, not incurring penalties when one virtual account is “overdrawn” but the entire account is in credit.

The “automatically put money aside into virtual buckets” is less straightforward. I’ve got a set of rules for my budgetting that takes into account a whole bunch of complications, including maintaining a shared the budget with my wife, coping with her salary being sporadic, handling buckets that are saving up for a specific event vs those that are just smoothing out more intermittent expenses, etc, etc. I’d be surprised if Monzo (or anyone else) came up with a single process for automation that would fit my requirements - but I could image people coming up with tools using the Monzo API that I could assemble into a useful process.

An example might be how to handle sporadic salary. My solution is to have a buffer account with a max value. Every month, if I’m short on income to fund my other requirements, I’ll dip into the buffer. If I’ve got more income than I need to fund my requirements, then the first action is to top the buffer up to it’s max value. I can imagine this as a discrete bit of function that someone might make available as part of a smorgasbord of budgeting tools.

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I totally agree that there’s some rules that it wouldn’t make sense for Monzo to build into the app as standard because most users wouldn’t need them.

As you say developers will hopefully be able to use the API for this but hopefully this functionality can also be made accessible to ‘normal’ users too, through IFTTT & / or Zapier.

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I believe ‘egg’ bank used a similar technique, namely a virtual credit card number for use online. Each time I needed to use a card I would access the ‘egg’ site and get a virtual one-off card number. Each one was a once only use and if obtained by hackers could not be used.
This was really useful and gave me a secure feeling when buying online.
With respect to being able to ‘file’ funds to sub-folders, I think it is a useful option.

It looks like virtual cards are on their way, after the current accounts launch :crossed_fingers:

Click the :arrow_down_small: in the top right hand corner of the quote to view the full post.

I’d be interested to hear more about what you have in mind there, how would you use the ‘sub-folders’?

I was thinking of a simple filing system for allocating funds under a series of labels. E.g. A single ‘savings’ folder could hold a series of sub-folders in which I could allocate individual sums. I might want a 'holiday folder with sub-folders such as a ‘currency’ folder, for holding funds that I want to use to buy cash (nitwithstanding the wonders of Monzo for travel, one needs some cash); ‘holiday charges’ for paying the travel costs; ‘misc’ for other holiday funds.
It’s no more complex than any standard nominal account table where say the 9000 series is for journal entries and the digital system allows for sub-divisions of the sums, so 9100 might have 9110, 9120 etc. Instead of numbers, users could allocate names.
There may have to be limits on the number of levels and sub-folders (or sub-sub-folders,) but I hope that elucidates the idea.

That sounds a bit like this :smiley:

would that work for you?

I like the idea of integrating with other providers but would still like to see a Monzo savings account, or second account, or even a Monzo virtual account into which i could ‘hide’ some assets, as you put it.
The best solution from my point of view would be to have a simple savings account for hiding such money, with the sub-folders for labelling such money.

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For me all of these options are great :smiley:

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Expanding on this idea, what if there was a feature where on a transaction basis, you were able to automatically save your change, with the user setting certain thresholds.

For example, transactions under £5, it would simply round up to the nearest £ and put the change difference from that to the transaction amount into a virtual account for you. A £1.32 sale, would put £0.67 in your savings account, meaning your balance reduced by £2

The user could then set thresholds for example, to round up to the nearest £1, £5, or even £10 subject to their saving goals.

I guess conceptually I’m trying to virtually create the moment you dump all your cash change into a saving jar.

That’s definitely a cool idea, there’s been some more discussion about that type of functionality here too -