Monarch Money review
Moneywise.com / Moneywise.com
Updated: September 20, 2024
4.3
4.3
Cost3.5
Ease-Of-Use4.5
Supported Assets 4
Investment Tracking4.5
Customization4
What we think of Monarch Money - we’ve tested it!
I’ve been using Monarch Money since Mint.com announced it was shutting down, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the easy transition to Monarch Money. While I don’t like paying a subscription fee, I appreciate that there’s no advertising, and my information is completely private. It offers just about anything I could want in a personal finance app, including tracking transactions and balances for all of my financial accounts.
Who is it for?
Monarch Money is for anyone who wants detailed information about their personal finances through a handy dashboard and is willing to pay for an annual subscription.
Offer: Get 30% off your first year with code WELCOME and start your free trial today!
Code: WELCOME Valid from: 9/21/24
Monarch Money pros and cons
Pros
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Reliably connects with 10,000+ financial institutions
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Track account balances and transactions
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Tools include features for budgeting and goal-tracking
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Share with household members and financial advisors for free
Cons
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No free plan
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Limited features for loan accounts
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You can’t pay bills through Monarch Money
If you use several banks and brokerages, keeping track of all of your finances can be tricky. Adding in all of your assets and potential liabilities makes it even harder to keep tabs on your complete financial picture.
Thankfully, companies like Monarch Money simplify life by consolidating all of your finances on one platform. If you want to budget, track spending and plan for the future, it has the tools you need.
However, Monarch Money isn't the only all-in-one financial management tool. That's why our review covers how it works and the top alternatives so you can make the best choice.
What is Monarch Money and how does it work?
Monarch Money is a personal finance management platform that helps you monitor every aspect of your finances. If you want to consolidate all of your bank accounts, brokerage accounts, assets and liabilities under one platform, it's one of the best solutions.
You can't use Monarch to pay your bills or actually move money around. However, it's an excellent way to get a snapshot of your finances. It also has excellent scenario-testing tools to help you visualize how your spending impacts your various financial goals.
Available Accounts
- Checking accounts
- Savings accounts
- Investment accounts
- Credit cards
- Loans
- Cryptocurrency accounts
- Home and vehicle values
- Manual accounts
Monarch Money features
With Monarch, you get an all-in-one financial management platform. Here's a breakdown of the major features:
Financial planning and goal setting
Monarch syncs with over 11,200+ financial institutions, and the software can import most of your assets, liabilities and transactions automatically after you connect. You can then view all of this data in a sleek spreadsheet-style view for an overview of where you stand.
Monarch categorizes your transactions automatically and allows you to create custom categories, monitor your monthly cash flow and forecast how your spending impacts your financial future.
You can forecast your income and expenses by month or year in Monarch Money.
If you're planning for retirement, the forecasting ability is particularly useful because it helps you visualize how your spending habits impact your path to retirement. And with its Spending Insights tool, you can also view your spending across different categories and even different merchants to find where you're overspending.
Monarch also lets you create goals and track your progress towards them. These could include building an emergency fund, going on a vacation, or saving up for a home down payment. Its software highlights your available savings for a consistent reminder to set aside money to fund your various goals. However, Monarch's software uses read-only data, so it can't actually move money for you — that last step is up to you.
Goal tracking is easy with Monarch Money.
Investment tracker
Another useful Monarch feature is its investment tracker. Like its main financial planning dashboard, Monarch syncs data from your online brokerage accounts and any investing apps you're using. This lets you chart your entire portfolio for a complete view of performance and asset allocation.
Overall, Monarch's investment tracker is fairly comparable to the dashboard you get with Empower.
Monarch offers basic cryptocurrency tracking with exchanges like Coinbase, Binance US and Crypto.com, but doesn’t support other crypto platforms or wallets. This lets you track your crypto holdings alongside other assets like stock and ETFs you own. For serious crypto investors, a portfolio tracker like Kubera is far superior.
Net worth tracker
If you're looking for a comprehensive net worth tracker, Monarch is one of the best options out there. It can track a wide range of assets and liabilities, including:
- Bank accounts
- Credit card debt
- Investments
- Loans
- Online accounts like Venmo and PayPal
- Real estate (property prices are from Zillow)
- Vehicles (via VinAudit)
- Cryptocurrency
Additionally, Monarch lets you manually add assets or liabilities. This level of customization is useful if you're investing in alternative assets like artwork, collectibles, or even wine.
Recurring bills and subscriptions
A new Monarch feature is its recurring bill and subscription reminder calendar. This feature automatically detects bills and subscriptions and then organizes them in a calendar to help you keep track. It also sends notifications three days before upcoming bills, giving you enough time to cancel a subscription or service if you don't actually need it.
Transaction rules
While this falls under Monarch's budgeting tools, its transaction rule feature is helpful and sets it apart from many competing finance apps. Transaction rules let you create rules to rename and reorganize transactions.
For example, if you have a recurring gym membership subscription that costs $24.99 per month and is paid with a specific card, you can create a rule that automatically categorizes it as a gym expense. The same idea applies to other subscriptions or any regular transaction.
Some personal finance software has syncing issues with banks, leading to duplicate transactions or incorrectly categorized expenses. But Monarch's connections generally work well, and the rule-based system helps you avoid bad data.
Personalized advice
With its Advice Wizard tool, Monarch provides tailored advice to help you with some of the more common financial questions people have. All you have to do is answer a short questionnaire and it provides some suggestions to help you reach your goal.
Advice covers topics like whether to rent or buy a home, how to save more money each month and which goals to prioritize. According to its website, this wizard was built by actual financial advisors. Monarch holds itself to the fiduciary standard, meaning it must give advice that's in your best interest, not its own.
You'll still get way more personalized advice if you work with an actual human financial advisor. These days, many robo-advisors also offer automated and human options for seeking help. But it's nice that Monarch keeps adding tools to help its users reach their goals.
Account collaboration
You can invite a household member to join your Monarch account. I added my wife, for example. From there, you can create a shared space, which is useful for housing a joint account or shared savings fund. Adding collaborators to your account is also completely free, which is great news for couples.
You can also add a financial advisor to have view access to your Monarch Money account.
Monarch Money cost
Monarch Money doesn’t offer a free plan, so you’ll have to pay to use it beyond the one-week free trial period. This plan costs $9.99 per month or $8.33 per month if you pay annually.
Expert tip
I suggest new users review available features to ensure Monarch Money works to help them reach their financial goals. Start by connecting all financial accounts, then go through the budgeting section and advice section so you can track their income and spending in alignment with their financial values.
Next, go to the goals feature and set both short-term and long-term goals. I added goals for retirement savings, my taxable stock market investments, alternative investments, my kids’ college funds and paying off my car loans. Everyone’s finances are unique, so set goals that make sense for you and your family.
Is Monarch Money safe?
Monarch Money is safe, and the software uses read-only data to help you manage your finances. This means it can't actually move money from your account or make any changes to your finances. It works with financial data integrators like Plaid to securely read your data. Plaid is the same company many investing and saving apps use to securely connect to customer financial accounts.
You can also increase account security by enabling features like multi-factor authentication.
Monarch Money vs. Mint
If you've been a long-time Mint user like me, you may be looking for a new home for your finance tracking. I’ve tested many platforms and find Monarch Money to be the most similar to Mint but with more features and more reliable connections to banks.
Mint was free and ad-supported, which isn’t the case with Monarch. But if you’re willing to pay for personal finance apps, Monarch Money works well and is an excellent choice for former Mint users.
How do I contact Monarch Money?
You can contact Monarch Money by emailing [email protected]. Premium plan customers get priority support as well.
Best Monarch Money alternatives
Monarch provides a comprehensive yet beginner-friendly way to track your finances. However, certain alternatives might be superior if you need help with one particular aspect of personal finance.
These days, there are more than a dozen apps and tools that can help you manage your finances. But if you want a robust app that meets the typical needs of someone who wants to track their money in one place, Monarch could be for you. It has a sleek, user-friendly dashboard, and there’s a minimal learning curve for people comfortable navigating the web.
If you want a free Monarch Money alternative, you should consider Empower, though it offers fewer budgeting features and is primarily built around tracking your investments. For serious crypto enthusiasts, Kubera and Lunch Money are both good options. YNAB is a good alternative if you’re focused primarily on your budget.
But if you want a one-stop shop that can reliably track your income and expenses and help you plan for your financial future, Monarch Money fits the bill.
FAQs
Eric Rosenberg is a finance, travel and technology writer in Ventura, California. He is a former bank manager and corporate finance and accounting professional who left his day job in 2016 to take his online side hustle full time.
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