Monarch Money Review: The Best Budgeting App Around?

Monarch Money is a comprehensive budgeting and finance tracking app that offers detailed budgeting features, simple goal-setting, investment tracking, and financial reporting. Monarch is probably the closest app to what Mint.com used to offer–but requires a paid subscription.

Monarch offers a slick mobile app that gives you access to almost every feature of the web app–plus a simple dashboard to give you quick insights into your money. Monarch is expensive at $99 per year, but is competitive with other leading budgeting apps like You Need a Budget and EveryDollar.

Key Features 

Monarch offers a lot of money management features in a single app–but its budgeting and goal-setting stand out. Here are a few key features that make Monarch one of the best financial apps on the market.

1. Powerful Budgeting

Monarch is foremost a budgeting app that offers complete control and customization of your monthly budget. Monarch will analyze your spending and automatically create a suggested budget based on your spending.

You can create as many spending categories that you want and set rules for Monarch to automatically categorize all future transactions accurately. Monarch also sends alerts when you go over-budget and for other happenings within your accounts.

2. Financial Dashboard

Monarch has a customizable dashboard that lets you see key financial metrics in your life including:

• Investment updates
• Net worth
• Recent transactions
• Budget update

This gives you a quick at-a-glance view of your entire finances, and you can organize the layout exactly how you want.

This dashboard is also available on the mobile app–letting you quickly scroll down to view your finances.

3. Automated Tracking

Monarch is designed to sync with all of your financial accounts to actively track your transactions. These transactions are updated in real-time–allowing Monarch to update your budget, accounts balances, and give you alerts as it happens.

4. Account Sharing

Monarch is one of the best budgeting apps for couples and families because it offers the ability to share access to the app but with individual logins. This gives both partners control over the budget–encouraging active participation in the budgeting and money management process.

Monarch is also unique in that you can allow access to a financial advisor or money coach to view your budget and complete financial picture–helping them give you accurate financial advice. This collaborative nature makes Monarch a unique app for financial accountability that can help you reach your goals faster.

5. Track Recurring Expenses

Monarch also analyzes your expenses and finds recurring transactions. This can be a quick way to find unused subscriptions to cancel, but also lets you see how much money you spend on certain days of the month.

Monarch offers a calendar view for your recurring transactions to see every upcoming expense for the month. This can help you plan and anticipate transactions before they happen. You can also set up recurring transaction notifications so you are notified before they occur.

How Monarch Money Stands Out 

Monarch Money is one of the better budgeting apps on the market–with a well designed user interface, fully-customizable budgeting, and financial reports and views to give insights into your overall financial picture. Monarch makes it easy to track what’s going on in your financial life and it gives you timely notifications to help you make better money decisions.

Monarch also tracks your investments and account balances to give you the big-picture view of your money. The net worth tracking is especially powerful–as you can see if your net worth is going up or down over time.

Comparable Budgeting App Options 

Monarch Money is one of the better budgeting apps–but it’s also expensive compared to some on the market. It also may not be the right fit for you. Here are a few alternatives to consider:

Empower Personal Dashboard

Empower Personal Dashboard (formerly Personal Capital) is a free money-tracking and investment planning app that lets you connect all of your financial accounts for automatic tracking. While it is primarily designed to offer financial planning advice and insights on your investments–you can also create a basic budget within the app. 

Empower Personal Dashboard shines by:

• Showing you how much you’re paying in investment fees
• Analyzing your retirement plan
• Offering financial planning services for certain clients (for a fee)

The budget isn’t as customizable as Monarch–but the app is free to use.

EveryDollar

Financial guru Dave Ramsey has created a simple budgeting app that helps you give “every dollar a job.” The app is free to download and use–but if you want it to automatically track your transactions–you’ll need to pay for a monthly or annual subscription. 

EveryDollar has one of the simplest user interfaces of any budgeting app–and also builds in Dave Ramsey’s “7 Baby Steps” approach to your finances. You’ll need a premium subscription to unlock the best features, including:

• Paycheck planning
• Debt snowball
• The financial roadmap

EveryDollar is $79.99 per year or $12.99 per month.

How To Apply 

You can sign up with your Apple ID, Google account, or email address. You can create a free account–but can’t use any of the features unless you sign up for a 7-day free trial. You’ll need to input your credit or debit card information, which will be charged at the completion of the 7-day free trial.

Once you create an account, you can then connect your bank and other financial accounts to start tracking your finances. Monarch will analyze your connected accounts and make a suggested budget for you automatically.

Who Monarch Money Is Best For 

Monarch Money is best for those looking to track their finances, set a customized budget, and get a view into their entire financial picture. It is a premium app that costs a little more than others on the market–but there are no ads and it has powerful budgeting features. Monarch is designed to keep you in sync with your partner as well–so couples that want to get on track with their money would benefit from Monarch’s account sharing features.

Final Take 

Monarch Money is a well-designed financial app that offers some of the best budgeting and tracking features on the market. You can connect all of your accounts, create a budget with your partner, and track your overall net worth and investments at the same time. Monarch is a bit pricey–but can be more than worth it for users that utilize all the app has to offer.

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