Pots eg Monzo

[tallcypowder]

Can someone explain to mw how pots work when you have averaged costs on a SOA.

I understand fixed monthly costs. For example £400 for groceries. All supermarket spends come out of that pot. Great.

How do people do non fixes costs such as birthdays. Say I put in £50 a month. If I have £100 in after two months and have 5 birthdays the following month, spending £20 each. So pot falls to zero. Then the next month I need £100 for Christmas. So now I am in negative. Do people have a constant float? So it always has a chunk in.
Am I overthinking this?

Yes you need to put in a bit more to get yourself going. I robbed Peter to pay Paul.for the first 3/6 months until they were all a bit more settled. Ie I saved a bit more in Holiday than Christmas as that was the next upcoming bill.

You're overthinking it, it's the same as any budget, you work out how much you're likely to spend in year and save weekly or monthly to get to that amount but if course you might spend the whole amount beforw the year is up depending on when you started so in the first year you'll need to use money not from the savings pot but after that it should work out fine

So say you expect the annual amount to be £120 so you save 10 per month, in the first year you might have to pay after 6 months so you take the 60 from your pot and 60 from elsewhere so by the 2nd year you have the full amount and so on