Virtual 'Savings' Accounts

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 youā€™ve put aside (with a notification when youā€™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.

2 Likes

Iā€™m trying to separate the ā€œautomatically put money aside into virtual bucketsā€ from the rest of what you are talking about. I think an implementation for ā€œthe restā€ 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 ā€œoverdrawnā€ but the entire account is in credit.

The ā€œautomatically put money aside into virtual bucketsā€ is less straightforward. Iā€™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. Iā€™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 Iā€™m short on income to fund my other requirements, Iā€™ll dip into the buffer. If Iā€™ve got more income than I need to fund my requirements, then the first action is to top the buffer up to itā€™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.

2 Likes

I totally agree that thereā€™s some rules that it wouldnā€™t make sense for Monzo to build into the app as standard because most users wouldnā€™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 ā€˜normalā€™ users too, through IFTTT & / or Zapier.

1 Like

I believe ā€˜eggā€™ 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 ā€˜eggā€™ 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 ā€˜fileā€™ 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.

Iā€™d be interested to hear more about what you have in mind there, how would you use the ā€˜sub-foldersā€™?

I was thinking of a simple filing system for allocating funds under a series of labels. E.g. A single ā€˜savingsā€™ 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 ā€˜currencyā€™ folder, for holding funds that I want to use to buy cash (nitwithstanding the wonders of Monzo for travel, one needs some cash); ā€˜holiday chargesā€™ for paying the travel costs; ā€˜miscā€™ for other holiday funds.
Itā€™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 ā€˜hideā€™ 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.

3 Likes

For me all of these options are great :smiley:

1 Like

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

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

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

Thatā€™s definitely a cool idea, thereā€™s been some more discussion about that type of functionality here too -

And put the missing penny into my account like Richard Pryor in Superman III and it wonā€™t be long before I could buy a Ferrari :sunglasses:

5 Likes

I know this idea has received traction at Monzo Towers, which I pleased about. Iā€™ve just had my salary paid into my current account and Iā€™m already antzy that my rent money (which gets paid 22 days after my pay cheque) is just swashing around with my other money. I do trust myself not to splurge on a new toy with my rent money, but in my minds eye,Iā€™ve already spent that cash so I donā€™t want it available in my balance. I will probably transfer the money to a legacy bank account for a while, which not ideal.

3 Likes

This might help in future;

Answered by @alisufyan

I signed up to the forum just now specifically to ask for this. My friends also agreed it would be a great idea.

They mentioned it would be great for saving for things such as holidays - being able to set money aside.

I personally want it for tax reasons. Iā€™m self employed and fill out a tax assessment at the end of the year, at which point Iā€™m told how much tax I owe. Iā€™d love to be able to easily stick 20% of any of my job earnings into a virtual pot so I know that itā€™s not for me to spend, and will go to the tax man at the end of the year.

I feel Monzo is successful because of itā€™s vastly superior app, so this feels like a ā€œmust haveā€ feature as it seems like itā€™d be quite simple to do! Though I was a bit sad to see that this thread started in Jan 2016 - almost 2018 now and this feature isnā€™t in yet?!

1 Like

Pots were introduced last Monday on iOS and will be appearing at the start of next week on Android.

These operate as a stand-alone means of segregating funds but will also form the basis (from a UI standpoint) of any future third party savings account integration.

3 Likes

Well thenā€¦ I retract my earlier statement. :grinning:

1 Like

Not sure I would put a years worth of to be paid tax in a pot when you could earn something off it in another type of account

I am looking forward to this feature being developed further, as itā€™s not quite where I need it yet.

For some reason, I get paid 13 times a year, which really complicates things when it comes to direct debits and every day living money. Because often, my bills would come out before I got paid, which means I have to be very careful with spending on ā€œlivingā€.

For this very reason, I looked for a 2nd bank account to separate my day to day spending and direct debits and bills, and now Iā€™m the proud owner of a Monzo current account :grinning::grinning:

I hope to see pots progress to the point that I can separate bills and every day money and manage it all in one Monzo account. For the time being, I still have a current account with another bank for bills. :frowning_face:

Keep up the good work.

3 Likes