Monzo
Lydia42
Posts: 133 Forumite
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
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
Total Debt November 2018: £23, 795
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Comments
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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.0
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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.0
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Any idea if Monzo does a credit check on you when opening an account with them?0
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They only do a hard search if you apply for an overdraft.t1redmonkey wrote: »Any idea if Monzo does a credit check on you when opening an account with them?
Monzo is good - I personally prefer Starling but there's not an awful lot of distance between them.0 -
can you do dd and so from starling ?0
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Monzo is great. Starling are like the stuck up version of Monzo. They!!!8217;re unhelpful and often quite abrupt0
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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.Starting debt (Aug 2018) £17,900
Debt free September 20210 -
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Sorry to hijack your thread, also looking at Monzo, do they pay interest? Can you have savings pots?
Thanks0
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