Monzo

Lydia42

Hi
I've recently had my light bulb moment and am trying to sort finances. No long waffling story, just not all that clued up with the current bank accounts and banking apps available.
Looking for advice - i see lots of people say they use Monzo to help budgeting, etc. Can someone explain is this just a budgeting app? A credit card? A bank account? Is it any good? What's the best for keeping track of spending if you current bank takes a few days to update balance?
Thanks

18cc

Would second the above - it is an excellent current account. Obviously, only proviso is that you need a smartphone. You just download the app, apply, upload your ID and the account is opened quickly. You get an account no, sort code (04-00-04), debit card, and can do DD and SO.

Alexd52

Another endorsement for Monzo. Their customer service agents are very helpful should you have any queries/problems. Another one to consider is Starling, pretty much the same Monzo in most respects, but has better terms if withdrawing money whilst travelling abroad.

t1redmonkey

Any idea if Monzo does a credit check on you when opening an account with them?

WillPS

t1redmonkey wrote: »

Any idea if Monzo does a credit check on you when opening an account with them?

They only do a hard search if you apply for an overdraft.

Monzo is good - I personally prefer Starling but there's not an awful lot of distance between them.

18cc

can you do dd and so from starling ?

Alexd52

18cc wrote: »

can you do dd and so from starling ?

Yes you can, it's just the same as any other bank but only online access

MrLolly

Monzo is great. Starling are like the stuck up version of Monzo. They!!!8217;re unhelpful and often quite abrupt

ftbwannabe

The monzo features that have helped me most since my LBM are the ability to categorise spending, set a desired budget for categories of spending, and pots.
For example, I can categorise all my grocery spends (& once you categorise a payment it learns that, so the next transaction with the same place goes into the same category automatically, and I can see a summary of all of them aka how much I've spent so far/last month/etc. The budget feature means I can set a groceries budget & see at a glance if I am close to (or ovre) that limit. It doesn't prevent me spending more, but it alerts me when I have.
Pots are a way of squirrelling money away from your total available balance. You can transfer money in & out of them as you like, & people use them in lots of ways. I use them to keep cash aside for quarterly or upcoming transactions, eg where I'm going to put £20 aside each month, to pay for something costing £80 a few months ahead. They can also be used like a pot with all your spending money in for the month, & you'd transfer money from that pot to your main balance when you've been to/are going to the shops, etc.
I think lots of people use a monzo account to have their spending cash in, separate from the account their direct debits for bills are taken from. That's how I started, but I now use it as my full main account.

Alexd52

MrLolly wrote: »

Monzo is great. Starling are like the stuck up version of Monzo. They!!!8217;re unhelpful and often quite abrupt

Really! I have contacted them on 3 occasions and each time they have been really helpful and courteous, no different to my dealings with Monzo.

Mumtomany

Sorry to hijack your thread, also looking at Monzo, do they pay interest? Can you have savings pots?

Thanks