Ah even better - there’s a way to do it automatically on Android 
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Oh wow, that’s exactly what I’m looking for! Appreciate you finding it. Many thanks. 
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- Daily - Unplanned daily expenses like grabbing lunch or buying drinks, things like birthday cards etc
- Groceries - Supermarket, MyProtein & Musclefood purchases
- Planned - Direct debits, standing orders, recurring billing and real world recurring things like petrol, hair cuts etc.
- Shortfall - Unlocked savings pot for if Daily runs dry or I need to make any larger unplanned purchases
- Car Insurance - Self explanatory
- Pennies - ^
- Savings - ^
My partner and I have the same two pots, one for petrol and one for groceries. We each put £X in them at the start of the month and take the costs out when we do a food shop or refill the car. Helps us make sure we have enough for petrol and food, whatever else the month throws at us.
We usually split the bill between us, but from time to time we might not for various reasons, which is why we don’t use our joint account to pay for those things.
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Looks super organised. I’m trying to set up something like this. How do you manage each pot? do you set up a transfer from your main account into each pot at the beginning of the month covering each payment in the associated pot? How do you manage more dynamic bills like phone bills which can change month to month? Also if your bills are in separate pots does this still count towards your overall budget?
Welcome back @anon86920485!
To split my salary up, I’ve used the Monzo API - as I get paid on the last working day of a month, I didn’t fancy having my salary undivided for a few days (especially at Easter, where the last working day might be a Thursday)!
On receipt of my salary, I divide the salary up into bill pots based on the regular amounts (for most of these, they’re pretty fixed, but I’ve rounded them up to the nearest £10 to give me a buffer). Each of the pots has a goal set of the expected amount for each of those bills. I’m hoping the upcoming salary sorter is going to remove the need for me maintaining this!
In the future, it might be that it divides my salary into pots by adding a set amount, or increasing to the pot goal if the set amount won’t reach it.
As for paying from them, I use the Bill Pots feature in Labs to move the money from pots to my main account on collection:
For those subscriptions that are card-based, I revert back to the API and move the money on receipt of a transaction for specific merchants. This goes a bit further and moves from some pots based on the context - i.e. there’s set days that it’ll come from the socials/work expenses pots, but this is soon to be based on my calendar entries, along with repaying back into these pots when I split a payment / get repaid by work.
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I have 16 pots.
Under sole account:
Tax 2018-19
Tax due on account 2019-20
Tax to date 2019-20
Rental income tax
(I’m self employed so pay by self assessment)
Child benefit (We receive child benefit, but will probably have to pay it back after my self assessment, so better to just keep it aside)
Flat contingency for our rental property
Bills pot for said rental property
Then in our joint account:
Household bills
Non-household bills
Car bills
Credit cards
Holiday savings
Nest egg savings
Furniture fund (we’ve just moved house)
Events and appointments (e.g. if we plan to go to a wedding the day before payday, I will put some money in here so it doesn’t get accidentally spent)
Temporary bills pot for flat bills that are coming out of the wrong account
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I love this post; I’m glad it’s not just me who’s somewhat obsessive with pots 
I’m always interested in how others use theirs to manage finances. I’ve found pots has helped me get so much more control and budget day-to-day and save so much more than I previously was able.
I use mine for two purposes - saving, and smoothing out any large items of expenditure to try and keep my outgoings consistent each month.
Savings 
-
Miss Piggy Bank - effectively my Coin Jar for round ups, a couple of IFTTT automations (£1 each day and the 1p challenge), and I sweep any money left over at the end of the month into here to keep it from being spent the next month. I then periodically decide which other savings account to drop it into -
House - a never-ending deposit fund. My main balance is in a stocks and shares ISA elsewhere but given the fluctuations at the moment, I’ve decided to start paying cash into a savings account to avoid this and get a little bit of interest -
Car - mine will need to be replaced at some point so this is my deposit. Also used to cover annual insurance, any repairs, annual parking permit, MOT and service etc.
Expenditure
I pay a fixed amount into all of these on the first of the month so when the expense hits, I just withdraw from the relevant pot:
-
Run - I run a lot and enter a few races, so this is my new pair of running shoes every few months and various race entries -
Phone - I’m on a SIM only contract so will no doubt have to replace my handset at some point -
Christmas - between gifts, going out, and travel, this costs a fortune and leaves me painfully short in January. I worked how much it cost me a couple of years ago and divided by 12 and now pay this in each month. Makes a world of difference to the new year! -
Holidays - as with Christmas, I build up a fund so I never take the flights, hotel, and spends hit in one go. Also makes me feel less guilty about going away -
Birthdays - another one I always used to forget about and that catches me out every October when most of my family has them. Even more painful as I usually have been on holiday in September. This completely removes the impact. -
Passport - I didn’t realise how expensive a renewal was and I have one in a few months. I’m intrigued which colour I’ll end up with 
-
Switch - always need to be ready for that next Zelda game to be released 
-
Gigs - a bit of an obsession of mine and a hefty cash drain in the last part of the year. I have 5 so far in November alone 
-
Clothes - I always used to be awful at spending money on myself. This makes me more willing to invest in new clothes whereas previously I wasn’t bothered and would just make-do 
And lastly, what this looks like 
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Out of interest how does this work in practice? You have some program somewhere that does a predetermined split based on a API trigger of £x at Vendor Y?
Is it something you can update/adjust/etc on the fly or is it pretty set and forget?
I’ve subscribed to receive webhooks from every transaction (both personal + joint account). On receipt of the webhook, there’s a whole range of rules that it checks against to determine the required actions to take. Rules are defined as such (an example of one rule for money paid into the joint account):
'name' => 'food_splitting_from_anthony',
'account_id' => $accounts[ 'joint' ][ 'id' ],
'match_description' => '/^Food$/is',
'match_scheme' => 'payport_faster_payments',
'match_amount' => 20000,
'pot_deposit' => [
$accounts[ 'joint' ][ 'pots' ][ 'smol' ] => 400,
$accounts[ 'joint' ][ 'pots' ][ 'pet_plan' ] => 1025,
$accounts[ 'joint' ][ 'pots' ][ 'healthy_pet_club' ] => 1199,
$accounts[ 'joint' ][ 'pots' ][ 'spotify' ] => 1499,
],
After checking all rules, it builds up a list of actions (such as depositing into multiple pots, one pot etc, or withdrawing from multiple/one), and then carries them out.
I’ve kept it fairly flexible as I was going to make it customisable via a UI and release to friends who want the lazy salary sorter, but I just haven’t found the time / expected more of the salary sorter.
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Where did you get your pot images from ??? They’re beautiful
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@nicdall designed them so I take zero credit! I think they are great.
They can be found here
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14vQkt12x221aZ-opcGafJVUXf9xorVgS
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Where are these pot images from? Also great.
