I understand where you’re coming from here but I think there’s a big difference between a page of analytics which it seems you want and a simple Summary that can encompass most things in more broad, general categoriewgich my mum can understand and follow.
Also perverse is a very strong word and I feel like you are either trying to provoke a reaction or you don’t know what it means.
I don’t want a page of analytics (though, technically, I don’t see it being a challenge to make that possible as well as provide the same usage 95% of users currently enjoy).
What I want? Well, for a start, simply for the Summary page - which is already a major feature of the app - to work as intended. With equivocal/ambiguous categorisation, it’s misleading at best and meaningless at worst.
There are endless reasons why following well-defined standards is a good idea, especially ones so well underpinned. However, outside of generalisations, I think there are enough good specific reasons here too.
I don’t think I agree. Google says:
contrary to the accepted or expected standard or practice
That’s actually more precise than I thought.
Just because you find it useless does not make it useless. This seems to be a running theme in your comments, you are right and everyone else is stupid.
Myself and many other people find the summary page very useful as it currently is, definitely not meaningless or misleading. Please open yourself up to other opinions.
I find Summary to be incredibly meaningful and has helped me understand my finances better than ever before.
It might be contrary to your own expectations, but that’s hardly a reason to call the whole approach perverse.
For me it works as a Summary, the page isn’t called “Deep Dive”.
I’ve never said or implied anything about me being right or anyone else being less right rather referred to universally acknowledged standards that have been refined through lots of hard work.
What I actually said was not the caricature you just presented, rather that a) it’s critically flawed according to all known theory and b) it could be improved at no loss to the people who currently find it useful so why not do so?
Why are we trying to reinvent the wheel here?!
That’s great for you and I’m really happy for you. But my concerns are more about the general cause not just individuals. I and many others long for this meaning as well. Unfortunately with non-mutually exclusive categories, it’s a pipe dream.
I also hope to improve myself whenever possible. I would assume Monzo feels the same if it has the opportunity?
Nothing to do with my expectations. Rather, exactly the words I used: standard or practice.
This has been acknowledged for hundreds of years, I’m not sure what’s changed recently that’s nullified this.
I have no idea where you’re getting the concept of Deep Dive (whatever that means) from - I’ve never suggested anything like this.
You have a point in terms of mutually exclusive categories in a perfectly designed budgeting app, but I don’t agree that the current list of categories are broken.
Yes there’s arguably some overlap, but you can decide yourself where one payment goes compared to another and stick to your own predefined rules within what parameters your presented.
Each individual will decide differently where one transaction will go. I might decide a pint of beer goes into “Entertainment” whilst someone else will feel this is “Eating Out”, “Groceries” or “Shopping”. It’s not up to you, me or Monzo to dictate this.
Budgeting is not completely universal and I think that the app as it stands is versatile enough that I can fit my categorisation neatly enough into their predefined labels sufficiently.
tl;dr I think you’re being far too rigid
Oh would that I could!
If that were the case I would never have brought this up; in practice it’s not remotely viable for a significant subset of users.
I’ve even asked over and over how one would do this with examples. Nobody has presented a workaround yet.
The fact it’s not close to being possible with my spending habits is the point I’ve been trying to make all the time 
In your opinion. You have zero evidence for this.
I refer you back to my last post, you can decide where one spend goes and stick to that decision. It is possible.
My evidence is the scores of posts making up a significant subset.
Funnily enough I was aware of your last post when I made that comment. If it’s possible I’d love for you to explain how with the multiple examples I’ve given.
We have differing opinions and aren’t going to agree, that’s fine. The categories work fine for me and I’ll explain how below.
92 people have contributed to this topic. There are getting towards 3 million Monzo customers, certainly well over 2 million. You can’t claim there are a significant subset of users who agree with your opinion. Some do, yes.
It’s not for me to tell you how to budget and/or categorise as that’s very individualised. But the way I do it might give some insight, so my categories and rules for budgeting are:
Bills I don’t use for budgeting, but all direct debits related to essential bills are categorised as this. Finance is for my income and for anything that goes towards external savings / investments (a future goal).
Holiday is used sporadically for that, usually with items excluded from Summary as I save money on pots to pay for big holidays and don’t see this as part of my monthly budget.
No worries
My main point wasn’t this thread but all the others that have posters mentioning this.
Thanks for this. It still leaves a lot of ambiguous issues which I still am unable to categorise consistently but does clear up a couple of them.
I use summary in full.
yeah, I’d quite like a “gifts” category too tbh
Like the new category picker in labs but not sure why you you need to click done on the selection box? why have two clicks when one should be sufficient to select the new category?
Judging by the things revealed in the Android Teardown thread, it’s probably to do with the custom categories coming with the new version of Monzo Plus. Hopefully they can change it back for free customers though
I also would imagine that’s what the design would imply.
I wonder how that would translating to allocation of ££ to each category within.
I am sure many of us noticed 3 more categories at link accounts section.
Why same 3 categories not available on my main account yet?
It’s been said in the connected accounts thread that they should be rolling out to Monzo accounts too, sometime soon🤞
As @Alexxxxx says, but, at a lower level, they recreated both feed and the category schema for the connected accounts from scratch so it was easier to add them in than for the existing main feed
I can’t see anything like this
