Monzo Blog

The latest updates, stories, ideas and guides from the Monzo team.

How Money Works

23 May 2023

How to start a ‘Spontaneity Fund’ for last-minute trips

If you want to take advantage of cheaper travel deals right now, consider starting a 'Spontaneity Fund'.

Monzo Me

21 May 2023

“I keep a £500 ‘Spontaneity Fund’ for last-minute holidays”

Josh, 26, has a 'Spontaneity Fund' to help him take advantage of cheap travel deals.

Imagine we have 4 tasks that normally take 1 hour each. In the baseline, team A does all of the work, taking 4 hours. They have an occupancy of 80% meaning that translates to 5 hours of Team A’s scheduled time, costing £128. In the ideal scenario for moving the work, team B do it all with the same handling time and occupancy, but cost £72 leading to a £56 saving. However, what if team B can only complete two of the tasks but have to send the others back to team A (after spending half an hour identifying that they can’t finish them). In this case, if both teams have 80% occupancy, we need 3.75 team B hours but also 2 team A hours, leading to a total cost of £105 - still a saving of £23, but only 41% of the total opportunity. And that’s not the only thing that can affect cost. For example, if team B are twice as slow as team A at doing these tasks, then we will need 10 team B hours costing £144 - a £16 loss vs the baseline. Or if team B have much lower occupancy (e.g. if they are scheduled less efficiently) - if team B have an occupancy of 50% instead of 80%, we need 8 team B hours to do the 4 1-hour tasks, and this costs us £115. We only save £13 vs the baseline, 23% of the amount we save if team B have the same occupancy as team A.

Technology

18 May 2023

Sensitivity analysis

This blog explains sensitivity analysis, which is a useful data science technique for assessing the impact of different variables on an outcome metric.

How Money Works

15 May 2023

7 ways to boost your summer savings – while still having fun

If you'd like to increase your savings in time for summer without making huge sacrifices, read on.

Monzo Me

12 May 2023

"My elaborate savings system helps me attend Eurovision every year"

Sylvia, 38, is a graphic designer and Eurovision superfan with a unique way of using Monzo Pots to save money to attend each year.

Technology

10 May 2023

How we manage technology risk at Monzo

In this post, three Monzonauts explain how they work together with each other and other disciplines to manage risk in a fast-moving tech-focused banking environment.

How Money Works

8 May 2023

Only got Monzo for a holiday? Here are 8 reasons why you should use it at home

Make your positive money habits last longer than a holiday romance.

Monzo Me

4 May 2023

“I only got Monzo for holidays – now I use it for everything & have saved £10k”

How self-employed PT Oscar, 31, went from using Monzo only for travelling to using it day to day and saving up £10k

Diversity and Inclusion

4 May 2023

Our 2022 diversity and inclusion report

We’re proud to serve over 7 million customers across the UK. Those customers come from many different backgrounds, and so we need a team who represent the same kind of diversity to best understand and solve their problems.

How Money Works

27 April 2023

7 payday tips to make your money last – while still treating yourself

Don't forget to factor in treats and enjoyment when managing your money after payday.

Shows balance read time since Jan 2020 and how it evolved over time. It increased whilst Monzo’s user base increased over time.

Technology

28 April 2023

Speeding up our balance read time: The planning phase

The ledger is where we keep track of all customer money movements coming in and out of customers’ accounts. We started a project to speed up the ledger balance read time. In this post we’ll cover the planning and experiments we ran.