What budgeting ethos will Mondo use

With budgeting coming down the line, I was wondering what’s behind what’s coming (if you know what I mean!).

I can see three possible ways to approach budgeting…

  1. The set a spending limit on a category then notify me/ sms me/ block me /send someone round to sort me out if I’m going to go over approach.

  2. The set a budget for income and expenses over a period (week/month/year) then Mondo will track what’s come in and out. [for the record I used to do an annual budget like this, but I realised I kept re-writing it every six months with the spending being in the front half of the year and the back half of the year being all austerity!].

  3. Some kind of envelope budgeting system where the money you have is allocated to jobs. This doesn’t forecast, which is why it isn’t the same as 2), but asks you to decide what you want to do with the money you have.

The challenge for Mondo is that all three are perfectly valid ways, and work for different people. Only 3 works for me, but I know lots of people who are great at doing 2!

So without getting into the implementation (I’m sure Mondo will execute it brilliantly), can someone from Mondo share the thinking behind what’s coming (if they are that far forward with it!).

Short answer Dave, we don’t know yet :scream:

We will actually kick-off the design sprint for the budgeting functionality on a week or two. Once we have something to show we’ll give you a glimpse and ask for thoughts as we always do.

Thanks a lot for your initial thinking about it, we’ll add those 3 models to the pool.

There are so many ways to budget and so many questions around how “strong” should our budget be (block a card to avoid you over-spending buying clothes online may be acceptable but not blocking your card to avoid you over-spending on a restaurant, because you’ve already eaten the food). Get all those little nuances right, I think, is the key to make a useful budgeting tool. It’s going to be fun :slight_smile:

I have to say, I don’t envy you! Lots of the app is about mechanics and simplicity which is great. Budgeting gets to the heart of people’s philosophy about money, which I suspect is more challenging task. Good luck! :wink:

Throwing a curve ball in the mix - in these days where people use multiple banking providers, how much use is budgeting functionality which is unique to one bank only?

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Just wanted to chime in and say that for me, as Mondo is currently, it gives me all the functionality I need to be able to spend on a card easily, and define my own budget by only adding money into the card on a weekly basis.

Every Sunday I load £100 onto the card for week spending. This basically keeps me at this limit, and encompasses nearly all spending that isn’t otherwise accounted for in my direct debits from my current account.

I realise this isn’t the aim of Mondo, as its aim is to become a clever kind of bank sitting in the real modern world for once, but my use of Mondo as it is has been using as a way to budget properly, see my spending, and stick to limits.

I don’t have a specific suggestion with all this, but I hope Mondo might find it useful to understand one persons point of view. Budgeting is key for me.

(I think you also might find a few of us being fussy when we lose our awesome top up card - but hey the app is likely to bring me over to the bank alone!)

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