Really interesting to see this thanks - people use these accounts so differently! I’ve had a few savings account pots but decided to just use an ISA when they came out, so my selection is more limited.
Monzo have a hard road ahead taking in all these different use cases. I do love the design so far and they have a great team, so am confident they’ll find a way.
Would it do any harm for you if these accounts were not presented as under monzo as long as they were handy to access though? If anything it feels like Annual memberships for example would be handier for you if you could pay direct from that account (if pots were promoted to proper account status), and if you could order your accounts it could be at the end and not often visited. Are there no pots you would promote to top level status if you could?
I totally see how having to swipe through loads of accounts could get painful, so grouping or a vertical list might be a better option for those with lots of pots, or at least the option to set order would be handy.
I don’t really see why they need to be tied in the UI to one account, isn’t that just an artefact of how Monzo presented them previously? I find it kind of weird personally that a CC, ISA and other pots are all under a monzo current account.
It would be fascinating to know how many use lots of pots, and how many users just use the monzo account, I imagine the distribution would be heavily biased towards low numbers of pots.
It’s good to see you explain your issue more clearly, on first read I thought it was a bit selfish of a point of view but now i’m understanding it a bit more.
I think the core issue for you is just the savings pots essentially. If ISA’s and external savings pots didn’t exist, I think there would be no problem at all. So the way I am seeing it is less change other stuff to fit the way they work in your head, but more can we fix the issue of a savings pot being a sub account.
I’m not sure this is still solvable, but to me the issue is this way around. Sub pots still makes a lot of sense, but in a lot of way it does feels like the large amount of money held in a single savings pot generating interest is it’s own beast. Maybe these external savings pots should be thought of as a parent account rather than a child? Or maybe it’s just a hangover from how people used to have to manage their money in the past with lots of different accounts and you’re not viewing it in your head in the new Monzo way? I’m not sure, what do you think?
Edit: here’s how the current planned heirarchy is (I think)
Monzo Current Account
Pot 1
Pot 2
ISA Savings Pot
Savings Pot
Joint Account
Joint account pot
External Credit Card
External Account
external account pot
External Mortage
Or is a mortgage a sub account of an external account
It’s rather that I think the monzo way on this particular small detail has been a mistake since the start, the cracks are showing, and they should fix the abstraction and simplify it while they still can.
I don’t think a hierarchy is necessary or helpful (accounts in accounts) - accounts should belong to a set of users. It was a mistake in retrospect and only causes confusion (witness loads of confusion about how to get to the joint account above, confusion over what should be a subaccount and what should be top level, etc). I’d think of it more like this:
Monzo Current (alice)
Joint Account (alice, bob)
Business Account (users: alice, mary)
ISA Savings (alice)
Credit Card (alice)
Pot 1 (alice)
Pot 2 (alice)
Shared Pot 3 (alice, james)
Shared Pot for kids (alice,jim,bob)
Mortgage (alice, bob) - like the idea of this as an account with a negative balance showing payments etc
With some accounts having shared access, some belonging to just one user. Would then be nice if users could order those accounts and possibly group them. I don’t think these desires are outlandish or something that’s only in my head, it seems to me genuinely more useful and intuitive this way
Groups of accounts would be good, many who use pots extensively would like them, maybe even they’d be better than subaccounts if they could make their own ‘Savings’ group say and a Kids group with an account per child. Perhaps this is what @bruno was getting at above - perhaps groups are the way to fix this for everyone, and still get rid of the accounts within accounts (if monzo want to do that).
I think users pots should be accessible by scrolling vertically from Monzo card - and other bank accounts accessed by scrolling horizontally from Monzo card but still with a detailed spend summary under each card
For paying directly from a pot, initially this sounds like a good idea, but personally think paying from your main balance and then the money being automatically taken from the appropriate pot would be better. This way you have one view of your transactions, if there isnt enough money in the pot the bill still gets paid (shows an error on the pot withdrawal) and I only have one set of details to pay things with - eg one card / one bank details.
Would I want to promote any of my pots… maybe General Savings so I have more visibility of the balance. But then I want it to be clear what’s my personal saving and what is joint savings, so maybe they are better under the respective accounts! I do like your idea of grouping, as I could have general and kids savings grouped, but this wouldn’t really be an account, more a collection of related items.
Is there any way of getting notifications when you fall into your overdraft? I like to use pots to keep my available balance low to deter me from spending, but theres a couple of times I’ve fallen into the minus and not realised.
I’d check your notification settings for the Monzo app then
You should get a push notification for the transaction. EG £3.50 at Greggs then immediately after that you should have got another one that says ‘Your last transaction took you below your £20 free buffer’.
I might have just missed it. I’m not even sure which transaction would have tipped it over the edge.
Though… I wonder if this mixes things up.
Direct Debit pops up scheduled but with current balance won’t go into the red
Between then and it going out, I make some transactions which then put me at an amount that when the DD does come out, I’m in the red.
DD comes out, but it’s already checked earlier that I have enough money, so doesn’t throw up an alert.
Yeah it’s like the attic in my house for me. Full of stuff I don’t “need” and perhaps the odd bit of stuff that might be useful but I can never be bothered to go rummaging in there and can therefore do without
Yep, this is fantastic work team! Very excited for this. Solves a lot of problems I’ve been having with pots being hidden. Can’t wait to see this released
I’m not keen on the idea of swiping to access accounts and pots. Depending on where I am and what I want to get to, and how many pots I have, it could involve a lot of swiping and a lot of wasted time.
I’d much rather see a list of what’s available (in some form or other) and then tap the chosen item to select/view it.
I think the account switcher and navbar in the Starling app works well where multiple items and heirarchy are involved.
Looking at that mock-up - looks great but has Summary disappeared again? Will we have to set budgets now, and will we get back the ‘notch’ to show progress over the month?
I’m really looking forward to trying this out. As I read through the explanation of the design I was a bit worried about all the scrolling but the animation showing the way you’ll be able to expand all the pots/cards to select the one you want looks really neat!
Finding this forum was a blessing and a curse. A blessing that I get to see all the cool stuff coming and a curse in that I spend my days waiting for the updates to hit my phone!!
