Why would it be a blocker for some? Even if no multiple accounts or virtual savings pots, could you not achieve that separation by using Monzo for your day-to-day spending as we are doing now on the pre-paid and have other legacy accounts for other bills/reg payments?
No one is going to be forced to fully move to Monzo and close everything else!
I think monzo is great but I donāt use it for day to day spending now.
I use monzo a lot less then I did when I first signed up. The logging in to different places then topping up constantly means I usually keep with my legacy accounts. I can see it all together from one login with less hassle at the minute.
Think the second account or solution for it should be up there which is why Iām interested to hear what the solution will be.
Iām really glad to see there are so many people interested in an integrated budgeting feature. I would love to see planned expenditure automatically ringfenced from your income each month. By giving as much of your income over to planned expenditure as possible you would then have a much better idea of how much you have left over spend or save. Some of these planned expenditures will be static (e.g. the same amount each month, mortgage, TV license) but some will be variable (e.g. change each month, so like gas/elec bill, mobile call charges). If you could set initial budget amounts to ringfence for the variable expenditures, the app could then analyse how much is spent on each variable cost and then begin to predict how much you are likely to spend on one of these, or at least define a typical range value for how much you typically spend. Now hereās the smart bit: get Monzo to automatically adjust the ringfenced amounts based on your historical spending!! Predictive dynamic budgeting, anyone?
Does this sound like a feasible ānice to haveā objective?
Thatās an almost identical description of the targets feature! Great minds
The predictive dynamic budgeting bit isnāt 100% automated right now (Monzo tells you how much you typically spend & then you have to update the target yourself) but I find that itās good to sanity check the prediction & adjust the target for any unusual payments that I know are coming up.
Waitā¦ What? You got this already? Damn you guys are good. Thing is for me, you best get Android App Parity or Iām 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 youāre working on it so Iāll waitā¦
Nooo, donāt betray android for pesky ios! Us, android people, need to stick together and patiently wait. Iām not too fussed overall, I feel like gap is closing for old stuff and not growing for new functionalities.
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.
One of the main reasons I joined Monzo was the idea that I might be able to have a rule-based account, such as āif there is over X left in this account by end of month, then transfer Y to another accountā. There are many schemes and techniques covered in this thread, but if thereās something which will let me do just that simple thing then Iād 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
Iāve 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 thereās actually a few bank-agnostic options out there (even though theyāre focused on savings and do not allow for budgeting at the same time theyāre still nice to have).
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 @anon17259854 said, allocate a chosen percentage of every transaction to my savings pot.
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! (Iām planning on setting this up as a Monzo meetup if this option proves popular)
Any thoughts from this inspired community are most welcome.
Iād 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. Iād 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 Ā£1000 in 5 months. I set the DD to Ā£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.
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, Iād really like to be able to do long-term āenvelope budgetingā, 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. Iād like these ringfenced to the point that itās 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 āgeneral spendingā pot. I think that this level of tracking/policing needs to be built into the account.
However, on top of that, thereās 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 isnāt enough one month? Or thereās an excess? Is this the kind of thoughtful budgeting that Iād 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 āsmartsā on top of that?
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 youāve put aside (with a notification when youāve 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.
Iām trying to separate the āautomatically put money aside into virtual bucketsā from the rest of what you are talking about. I think an implementation for āthe 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 āoverdrawnā but the entire account is in credit.
The āautomatically put money aside into virtual bucketsā is less straightforward. Iāve 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. Iād 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 Iām short on income to fund my other requirements, Iāll dip into the buffer. If Iāve got more income than I need to fund my requirements, then the first action is to top the buffer up to itās 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.
I totally agree that thereās some rules that it wouldnāt make sense for Monzo to build into the app as standard because most users wouldnāt 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 ānormalā users too, through IFTTT & / or Zapier.
I believe āeggā 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 āeggā 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 āfileā funds to sub-folders, I think it is a useful option.
I was thinking of a simple filing system for allocating funds under a series of labels. E.g. A single āsavingsā 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 ācurrencyā folder, for holding funds that I want to use to buy cash (nitwithstanding the wonders of Monzo for travel, one needs some cash); āholiday chargesā for paying the travel costs; āmiscā for other holiday funds.
Itās 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.