Creating and Editing an Expense Jar
To create an Expense Jar, go to your Profile in the top left of your Monzo app, and scroll down to your Do more with Monzo menu. From there, tap Create an Expense Jar and then name your new Jar. Remember, Jars are meant to help you easily budget your money, so you can create Expense Jars for your bills, your subscriptions, your rent payment, and more.
After you create an Expense Jar, you can choose to pay your expense directly from this Jar, or just use the Jar to 'hold' the money you'll need for your expenses.
If you choose to pay directly from the Jar, you will select which categories (like Bills, Groceries, Shopping, etc) or choose from a list of popular merchants (like Amazon or Starbucks). If you don't see the category or merchant you need, you can always add a custom option.
You can also choose to enable Auto-cover. This feature allows Monzo to automatically move money from your main balance to the Expense Jar if you make a purchase and the Jar doesn't have enough money. If this is disabled and you make a purchase your Jar can't cover, then the charge will be declined.
đź’ˇPro tip: A Jar with a merchant assigned to it will always take priority over a Jar with a linked category.
For example, if you have both a "Starbucks" Jar (with 'Starbucks' linked as a merchant) and an "Coffee" Jar (with 'Coffee' linked as a category) - when you tap your card at Starbucks, it will come out of your Starbucks Jar.
ℹ️ Please note: Merchants and categories can only be assigned to one Jar at a time. So you can't have Starbucks linked to both a "Coffee" Jar and a "Dining Out" Jar at the same time.
Individual Jars can have multiple merchants and multiple categories linked to them at the same time. And you can even mix and match both merchants and categories in the same Jar.
ℹ️ Please note: Even with auto-cover enabled, we never move money from other Jars to cover your spending. And there currently isn't any way to have allow money in Jars to cover sending on your main account. Money in Jars is designed to be protected in a way that prevents you from accidentally spending money you were trying to save.
If you ever decide to close an Expense Jar, we don't cancel any recurring charges you had set up with merchants linked to the Jar. You would need to cancel those bills with the merchant itself. If a transaction comes through from a merchant after a Expense Jar is closed - the transaction will go to the main account balance.
