The #1 killer feature in Monzo for me is the “you have x £ left for y days”. This feature alone is why I dumped Starling and went with Monzo. It was incredibly useful for figuring out how I was doing that month and to see if I could afford to eat until payday…
In the last update (that I took notice of) they moved this key feature from the top of the account page under an additional click. This was annoying and frustrated me every time I had to do this, particularly at the start of the month when I was organising pots after having got paid and I had to go in and out of this page several times.
Today it seems they have entirely removed this feature
WHY???
Apparently you can get something similar in trends… why do I have to learn something new and try to set this up in exactly the same way as it uses to work? In my brief look at trends it seems to go to the first of the month, not payday - what good is that? I want to know if the money I have lasts till payday not the start of next month.
Monzo is basically no more useful to me than all the other accounts out there. I may as well go back to NatWest.
You need to edit the Target and Spending settings for your preferred date of the month of which you get paid.
If you head to each section you can adjust this.
Setting target, and then go to Home Screen, swipe down, then across to edit Spotlight - you can then have left to spend set when you swipe down in the Home Screen.
Ok, I don’t want to set a spending target though. This will change every month based on how many days there are. I want to see how much money I have left to spend in the account and how many days there are left. Is the only way to see how many days there are left to set a target that I will ignore completely?
I use revolut as my main bank and Monzo as my bank for DD as it is where my salary is paid. I tend to leave the minimum in my monzo to cover all DD and then the rest is in Revolut or savings.
‘Target’ spend… I don’t need a target spend, and a reminder that I’m ‘underspending’ this month. It’s not a competition! I just want to know how much money I have left, but as transfers out don’t count it’s never accurate - I could transfer half of £200 out and it’ll still think I have £200 to spend!. A pointless hot mess that I don’t understand could be useful.
‘Target’ spending is the wrong concept here, especially when it leads to prompts that suggest a customer is “underspending” for the month. Spending should be framed as an upper limit, not a goal to hit, and the language in the app should reflect that.
Problem with “Target” wording
Using “Target” implies the objective is to spend up to that amount, which is the opposite of what most people trying to budget responsibly actually want.
The current approach can feel as though the app is encouraging users to reach a spending goal, rather than helping them avoid overspending.
Use “safe to spend*” instead
Replace “Target” with “safe to spend”, defined as the amount that can be spent without jeopardising upcoming commitments.
“Safe to spend” should be calculated as current balance minus committed spend, with the additional option to exclude individual transactions partly or fully (for example, exclude £50 of a £100 transaction if that £50 will be reimbursed).
Improve Trends logic
Update Trends so it can work from the “safe to spend” figure rather than a fixed spending target entered by the user.
Allow the current period in Trends to reset automatically on salary receipt. This should be promoted by Monzo based on an algorithm, but otherwise it should be trivial for the user to specify a credit amount, and inbound payee. It should also suggest the pay frequency (weekly, monthly etc) while still letting users specify this instead. This is needed to effectively calculate a “per day” figure.
More flexible pay schedules
Expand the available payment schedule options to cover weekly, fortnightly, every 28 days, 13 pay periods per year, and similar non-standard patterns.
This would better support people whose income does not follow a simple monthly cycle.
Show “safe to spend” and per day amounts on home screen
Give users the option to show “safe to spend” as the main figure on the card home screen, with the actual balance in smaller text underneath. This keeps the focus on what is realistically available to use, while still keeping the full balance visible.
Similarly, give users the ability to see daily or weekly calculated safe to spend figures.
That’s the prescription.
Please note that this free consultancy is available for a limited time only.
* “safe to spend” was a Simple trademark. But I think that the successor company has now been dissolved and the trademarks have lapsed. So get in fast!
If they should have made trends more like summary, then why not just enhance summary though? I still don’t get it. Most people want to budget their money. Summary did that best. Trends is more like data after the fact.
