Challenger Banks and Open Banking Apps - Experiences?
Discussion
I'm remortgaging and likely to change providers as a result. I'm currently tied to my mortgage provider for current account, because of having an offset mortgage, so I might also be in the market for a new current account.
I've been looking at some of the new challenger banks tonight, Monzo and Starling Bank particularly, as I'm interested in one that'll do proper transaction tracking and budgeting. I'm also looking at some of the new apps that will do that for you from any bank.
Problem I have is that my current account is regulated outside of the UK so doesn't support open banking and I can't test anything easily. What I currently do is use an extremely complicated spreadsheet, but I download bank statements then use a VBA script to allocate each transaction to a category that builds up a hierarchy of spending. I have last years transactions as the basis of a budget and track progress against it as I go.
Fundamentally it's just the bank statement, a category and some analysis. So I'm looking for something that'll do that for me, have the bank build up the categories based on what businesses do, and or let me assign manually and then drop it all into an app so I'm not messing around for half an hour each month.
Do any of the bank accounts or open banking apps work that way? And support Android Pay, and that's important too. My other requirement is to support joint accounts, so I'm leaning towards the apps as the banks don't appear to do joint accounts yet.
On an initial look the apps seem to be aimed at single people living month to month and focusing on letting you know if you're going to run out of money if you don't calm down. That's not me. I'm more interested in an expected spend based on usual patterns, knowledge of when payments are due and then tracking progress against that and seeing where I am each month.
So, I has anyone used any of the apps or accounts in anger and can tell me which are worth looking at and which are rubbish?
Thanks!
I've been looking at some of the new challenger banks tonight, Monzo and Starling Bank particularly, as I'm interested in one that'll do proper transaction tracking and budgeting. I'm also looking at some of the new apps that will do that for you from any bank.
Problem I have is that my current account is regulated outside of the UK so doesn't support open banking and I can't test anything easily. What I currently do is use an extremely complicated spreadsheet, but I download bank statements then use a VBA script to allocate each transaction to a category that builds up a hierarchy of spending. I have last years transactions as the basis of a budget and track progress against it as I go.
Fundamentally it's just the bank statement, a category and some analysis. So I'm looking for something that'll do that for me, have the bank build up the categories based on what businesses do, and or let me assign manually and then drop it all into an app so I'm not messing around for half an hour each month.
Do any of the bank accounts or open banking apps work that way? And support Android Pay, and that's important too. My other requirement is to support joint accounts, so I'm leaning towards the apps as the banks don't appear to do joint accounts yet.
On an initial look the apps seem to be aimed at single people living month to month and focusing on letting you know if you're going to run out of money if you don't calm down. That's not me. I'm more interested in an expected spend based on usual patterns, knowledge of when payments are due and then tracking progress against that and seeing where I am each month.
So, I has anyone used any of the apps or accounts in anger and can tell me which are worth looking at and which are rubbish?
Thanks!
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