Following on from @nikimukhi class document I thought it would be fun to see/ share how you’re set-up and what your goals are! Whether that be ISAs/ LISAs/ Stocks and more!
For me as a recent graduate I’m working towards a few things:
Starting my career in Law (whilst studying the LPC part-time) ;
Saving for my the deposit on my first Home ;
General saving
So my set up is this (please excuse the crude flow chart)
25th of every month is payday, salary comes into Monzo
26th of every month (1 day after payday just in case I need to stop something) - I have 3 standing orders that come out…
A LISA for a home deposit
A Marcus savings account - This is my “general” savings, e.g more expensive treats, new phone, holidays etc
£50 a month towards an emergancy fund
1st of the month comes round and all Direct debits and rent comes out (Girlfriend pays me her share of the bills too on the 1st)
This leaves me 24days with the money in my account to do groceries, transport, buy a new tshirt and all the rest.
I find this way works best for me, I get rid of “excess” money into savings accounts, before I get chance to really see it, then I have a few days between payday and bills coming out, to sort potential problems out, e.g. Pay didn’t go through properly
That gives me the rest of the month knowing exactly what’s in my account, and where it’s being spent.
Before Monzo, I simply was playing a guessing game every time I spent money “Did a bill come out last night?!? Who knows!”
Mine’s a bit all over the place as I get paid weekly, but my bills are monthly.
Every Friday my salary comes in and immediately bits of it fly off everywhere. A portion goes into my savings, a portion goes to paying off some debt - and then 1/4 of the monthly total of my bills goes into a Bills pot.
The day before any bill is due out, the required amount is shuffled back into my main account. I am extremely eager for the committed spending pot.
Whatever is left in my main account is mine. Also any month that has five Fridays gives me a little windfall. Yay for me.
Nah, now that I’ve automated it all I have essentially turned all my monthly bills into an equal and manageable weekly bill.
It’s a bit of a ball ache if the amount of any of my bills changes and I have to re-do all the transfer maths, but I mostly don’t have to even think about it.
Yes but they are the same each month. Don’t mind sharing:
£500 to food budget
£120 for transport
£30 to short term savings
£70 towards the childrens/wife/xmas pots (at the moment I’m putting £70 into one and once the £200 limit is reached moving onto the next event, which would be my wife)
£200 for holiday
£25 sport and leisure
£20 haircut
I have to admit, the main reason I started using Pots is because using the budgeting feature in summary didn’t work for me. If i budget £500 for a food shop I want it hidden from my total but this didn’t work. However I am happy with the way my set-up is. I guess it’s one of the great things about Monzo, it’s flexible for people to use as they wish.
Interest would be good, but also more categories and categorizing certain amounts within a transaction. I don’t like classing alcohol as groceries as that is for me not my family so it should come under shopping (or Personal Care!!) but if I buy it with the rest of the food shop it automatically declares it all as groceries. So that would be a nice feature. Being able to take £9.99 of this £100 transaction and categorise that as something different to the rest.
I think this is something that Monzo desperately need to get right - I’m not on it yet but the Dozen’s money management visually looks brilliant - whereas Monzo’s just doesn’t really work.
The flexibility is great - I just want them to continue to innovate!
Hopefully this is something they have in the pipeline (especially now Flux are on board)!
All money to other current/savings accounts pretty much transferred on payday. The rest happens on demand (with payments into and out of the Fuel pot managed by IFTTT).
(Tops up fuel pot to a set level with any left-over topup money going into the roundup pot.)
This looks cool and really neat and organised! Its fascinating to see how differently everyone uses the features held within Monzo.
I typically prefer to manually move money around and just keep and eye on my spending through summary whereas you seem to really use the power in IFTTT - or use a wider array of Pots.
I’m still building up a system that works well for me - however my “savings” just got wiped out for a deposit for a new flat i’ll be renting