Monzo Max £19-a-month cost explained as full list of benefits reveals if it's worth it
The monthly cost of Monzo Max has increased to £19 leaving customers to decide whether the benefits of the subscription are worth the continued spending.
There's a few changes going on at Monzo, as their chairman Gary Hoffman is set to step down from his role next month after eight years in charge of the bank.
Founded in 2015, Monzo has now got over 16 million customers which makes it one of the most popular banks in the UK.
One of their biggest products is Monzo Max, their account where you pay a monthly subscription that's just gone up to £19, or £228 a year, to get some added perks including better banking deals and freebies out in the physical world.
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The question hanging over all of this is whether it's worth it in the end, £19 a month might be a lot of money if you're not using the benefits or not very much if you are.
What do you get with Monzo Max?
Monzo has four tiers, Free, Extra, Perks and Max.
Free is, obviously, free, while Extra and Perks will cost you £3 and £9 a month respectively.
For those tiers you get better rates on Instant Access savings and some other benefits, but it's not until you hit the Perks tier that you start getting the namesake bonuses.
They include an annual railcard, Uber One membership, a weekly treat at Greggs, and a monthly ticket at Vue, but Max is where you get all of that and some extras.
The list of benefits you only get with Monzo Max are:
- 3.50 percent AER variable on Instant Access savings
- Worldwide travel insurance
- Worldwide phone insurance
- UK & Europe RAC breakdown cover
- Family on your insurance and cover plans for another £4 a month.
You also get every other benefit from the other tiers of current account, which include:
- Annual Railcard
- Annual Uber One membership
- YouTube Premium Lite
- One Greggs treat every week – up to 52 a year
- One Vue cinema ticket every month – up to 12 a year
- 3.65 percent AER variable on Select Access savings
- £600 fee-free withdrawals outside the EEA every 30 days
- Three fee-free cash deposits/a month
- Discounted investment fees
- Unlimited connected banks and cards
- Virtual cards
- Advanced roundups and custom categories
- Unlimited fee-free withdrawals
- Billsback
- Credit insights
If you want the Free account your Instant Access savings interest is only going to be 2.75 percent, and 3.15 percent for Select Access savings.
Your free withdrawals will also be limited to £400 every 30 days.
Is it worth it?
If you're spending £228 on Monzo Max then you need to make sure you're justifying that purchase, and you do that by actually using the features you're paying for.
If you're never going to Greggs or the cinema, don't use Uber One, don't need travel insurance or breakdown cover then it's not the best choice for you.
However, if you do need those things or are already paying for them this could be a more cost-effective way of getting them.
Someone who was to individually buy YouTube Premium Lite, Uber One and get a railcard would be spending about £180 a year, which means if you want those services and want to get value for money then you'd only need to find another £48 worth of value in what your annual spending habits to make it worthwhile.
Taking YouTube Premium Lite alone, that's £7.99 a month you're paying for it, meaning you're almost all the way to covering the monthly cost of Monzo Perks which comes with the same thing included, or a decent chunk of the way to a Monzo Max payment.
Look at your spending habits to see if you're already forking out money for some of these benefits, if you're already paying for several of the benefits you could get a lot of value out of Monzo Max.
There are people who swear by it and say it's 'taken like £40 worth of expenses away' a month for a cost of £19, while if you have cash to put in the savings accounts the extra 0.75 percent of interest means you could gain enough money to better offset the cost.
Topics: Money
Joe Harker