Ariana*, 26, based in Edinburgh, works as a process engineer and earns £44k a year. In 2019 she joined Monzo for fee-free cash withdrawals and instant spending notifications while she was travelling around Brazil.
Nowadays, Ariana relies on Monzo in her everyday life and still never travels without it. Last year she took a five-day holiday to Rome with two friends. The group all had very different money personalities. While Ariana loves treating herself to lots of different food and drink on holiday, one friend preferred a more frugal approach, while her other friend landed somewhere in the middle.
The group managed to avoid money disagreements despite having different attitudes to money while on holiday.
Here’s how Ariana and her friends used Shared Tabs, payment requests and honest communication to have a fun, conflict-free holiday.
“We all had very different approaches to spending money on holiday”
We agreed we were going to have a chilled holiday and that we weren’t going to do any expensive touristy activities.
But compared to the others, I’m a lot more lax with spending money on food, especially on holiday, because I'm quite rigorous with my budgeting at home.
I love food and it's a big part of travel for me. I'm happy to have a three course meal, lots of snacks, a nice coffee out, gelato and a few Aperols.
This didn't match my friends' idea of a holiday diet, as she eats more for utility. Because food in Rome is so expensive, we decided not to go Dutch so things were fair.
“Going away together really showed me that different people have different attitudes to money”
I’d never been on holiday with one of the girls before so I didn’t know how frugal she was. I wouldn't care about an extra two euros, but she obviously did and that’s fine. It was easy enough to adjust how much we owed on our Shared Tab with Monzo.
“Group holidays can be stressful, and the more people involved the harder it is to please everyone”
Have an upfront conversation about what you're willing to spend and what you want to do on holiday. Make sure you book the right destination. If you want a beach holiday but your friend wants to go to museums it’s probably not going to be a good holiday for everyone. There might be resentment.
Be up-front about your non-negotiables for the trip at the beginning. For example, my friend wanted to do a guided tour through Pompeii, which was more expensive than general tickets, because she wanted to know what she was looking at.
“It's much easier to send and request money from friends when they have Monzo”
One of my friends is a bit flaky and disorganised. So when I booked the accommodation, I was glad I could just ask the girls to pay me back using Monzo. It doesn't feel like you need to chase people. All she had to do was click a button.
Payment requests also mean you don't need to send any messages. Even phrasing a text asking for somebody to pay you a tenner can be a bit stressful and awkward. You have to remember to do it and it’s just life admin you don't really want to deal with. That was the most useful thing about using Monzo on our trip.
“I made sure we all had Monzo so we could use Shared Tabs”
One of the girls and I went on another holiday two months before Rome and while we were there I asked her to get Monzo so we could use Shared Tabs to keep track of who owed what. Up to that point, it was really difficult to keep track of our expenses.
Shared Tabs worked so well between the two of us that we asked our other friend to get Monzo so we could do the same thing in Rome.
“We used Shared Tabs to minimise awkwardness when splitting the bill”
We went to a fancy restaurant with a massive wine list and we had no idea what to order. The two of us who were drinking wine asked the waitress to give us whatever would go with the meal. Our friend who doesn't drink immediately said “We need to make sure that's not on my bill”.
It was quite funny because obviously we wouldn’t make her pay for our wine.
We told her we’d take a picture of the receipt so she’d only have to pay for her pasta and Diet Coke. We used the Shared Tab feature to adjust how much we each needed to pay towards the bill.
“Shared Tabs lets everyone pay their fair share on group holidays”
It’s really valuable when you’re travelling with friends and different people pick up different bills, and you want to split costs equally and make sure people are paying their fair share.
Another useful feature of Shared Tabs is that you can add cash transactions. For example, if you’re at a market and need to pay for something in cash and one of you has cash and one doesn’t, it’s easy to add it in there.
“There would have been more awkwardness on the trip if it hadn’t been for Monzo”
With other banks, quite often the transactions don't show up until later on. So if someone realised a month after our holiday they’d paid for something but they didn't ask for money during the trip, it might have been awkward for them to chase that up. Especially if they weren’t that close to the person who owed them money.
“I have a Pot that I put £100 in every month to save for holidays”
My holiday Pot has a custom image that I change depending on the trip I'm going on or the destination I'm saving up for.
I like that Pots let me automate saving money for holidays. I’ve set it up so that whenever I get paid, the £100 a month goes straight into my Pot. It’s nice that I don't really see it and I can lock the money away so it's not available until a certain time.
“I don't even remember how I used to plan holidays when I didn't have Monzo”
Using Monzo is the norm for how I plan my holidays. It used to be a lot more difficult to keep control of your money when you were on holiday. I think a lot of the stress of coming back from the holiday is being afraid of how much you've spent and the fear that you've spent too much.
That’s never an issue with Monzo as it gives me visibility over my spending, helping me stay in control.
To apply for a Monzo bank account and access Pots you must be a UK resident. Ts&Cs apply.
*We’ve changed her name.