Some say you have to spend money to make money. Monarch is one of the most expensive apps for budgeting and personal finance we've come across, but it excels in some areas, including transaction management and budgeting. It appeals to people who want to zero in on their income and spending and see how today's choices will affect their future financial stability and growth. Monarch makes it easy to get this information quickly. Still, there are three budgeting apps we recommend more highly: Simplifi, which is best for most people; Quicken Classic if you want more than what Simplifi gives you; and YNAB, which you should try if other money apps have never clicked for you.
There are some free personal finance apps, though none of them are as good as Mint was before it was closed down. NerdWallet and Empower are free, for example, but they focus on specific areas of personal finance rather than give an all-around look at your money, budget, and financial plans. And there are free versions of Credit Karma and WalletHub -- and they're worth using, but they analyze your credit score and credit report, which is different from what Monarch does.
Getting Started With Monarch
Most personal finance apps are easy to use. I'd put Monarch in the top five in terms of its usability and aesthetic qualities, even though it's a relatively young app.
If you decide to use Monarch, I recommend setting it up on a desktop or laptop computer, not your phone. It's a little easier. As with most personal finance apps, the first thing you should do after creating an account is connect your online financial accounts, like your checking account and credit cards. The app shows its competence right from the start by using AI to find the best way to connect each account. For example, it warned me when I started linking to a credit card that the option I chose was not the best one for that account, and it suggested a handful of alternatives, one of which worked fine.
I browsed through the unusually thorough settings, which include setup tools for features like notifications, categories, tags, and members (you can share your account).
Managing Your Financial Transactions
Monarch gives you a unique blend of transaction details and options. It shows you transactions you've imported or entered manually in a register, like most other personal finance apps do, listing the merchant, date, amount, and category of spending or income. You can add notes and tags, mark the transaction as recurring, attach a receipt or other file, and split it. That's all standard stuff.
But no other personal finance app lets you attach transactions to goals or assign them to one of your collaborators for review. And most don't have tax-related business categories, like Monarch does (though Rocket Money lets you mark expenses as tax-related). Monarch is also exceptionally flexible in how you can assign rules to transactions. For example, you can specify that any transaction paid to a specific merchant for a specific amount should be categorized the same. There are numerous other options here. You can also edit multiple transactions at the same time in the register.
Budgeting Your Money
The budgeting tools you get in personal finance apps tend to be pretty similar -- with the exception of YNAB and Simplifi, which have different approaches but phenomenal tools. The budgeting tools in most other apps look different, and they all have strengths and weaknesses, but they're basically calculators. They pull in categorized transactions and show you where your money is coming from and how you're spending it. They let you set target goals in each spending category (groceries, transportation, etc.), which are really educated guesses in most categories. How much money will you spend on dining out, for example? They keep running tallies of your dollars based on your transactions, giving you three numbers in each spending category: how much you budgeted, what you spent, and how much is left over.
In Monarch, however, there's one option that sets it apart. If you spend only $278.98 of the $300 you budgeted for groceries, you can choose whether to carry the remaining $21.02 to be used next month. That's an option in Monarch, but you don't see it in many other personal finance apps -- and it's important!
Another option is to let the app set up your budget amounts based on historical averages. That way, the app can give you a monthly or yearly budget forecast. You can create your budgets by category or by the groups they're assigned to, edit Monarch's default budget structure, and exclude specific categories from your overall budget.
Managing Subscriptions, Bills, and Cash Flow
Like PocketGuard, Monarch has basic tools for identifying and managing recurring transactions, whether they're subscriptions that are set up for automatic withdrawal, like Netflix, or periodic bills that you pay offline and mark as paid in the app (maybe your rent). They show up on an interactive calendar and in a list that you can drill down on. Monarch does not have any service for canceling unwanted subscriptions like Rocket Money does, nor does it offer online bill pay like Quicken Classic does.
Monarch has an edge over most other personal finance apps with its cash flow feature. It shows you multiple, customizable charts and lists that can be viewed by category, merchant, or group. You can also filter them by tag or account and view them as monthly, quarterly, or yearly. At a glance, you can see how your income and expenses balance out over time. Monarch is the only personal finance app I've seen that can generate a Sankey diagram (shown below), which is a data visualization technique that illustrates a flow from one set of values to another, which works well for cash flows.
Most personal finance apps also work like giant calculators when it comes to setting goals for your money. With Monarch, you can create and prioritize goals, and assign them to bank accounts. You can either link transactions to goals or update them manually.
The app also lets you create a portfolio of investment types (mutual funds, ETFs, derivatives, cryptocurrencies) by connecting to your brokerage accounts or entering holdings manually. Benchmarks are updated in real time when the markets are open, while your holdings are updated daily. These tools may suffice for very casual investors, but serious market watchers should consider Quicken Classic, which has more tools for managing and tracking your investments.
You see reports throughout Monarch, like the cash flow page and the Sankey diagram. There are also dedicated pages for charts and lists related to income and expenses. They're colorful, comprehensive, and customizable, and I enjoyed using them. But here again, Quicken Classic is king when it comes to reports.
Monarch's Help and Support
As easy as it is to use, Monarch offers great support. It probably has as many thorough, well-written articles in its help center as any app I review. There's an AI Assistant that you can "converse" with to get expert advice on financial topics, like ways to save money, succeed at budgeting, and achieve your financial goals. Where appropriate, this tool includes links to articles in the help center. If you still need help, you can leave an online message for support.
Is Monarch Safe to Use?
Monarch tries to collect the minimum amount of financial data needed for a feature to work. With the data collected, Monarch employs industry-leading security practices, as do the data providers the company partners with. The app does not store your username or password and has read-only access. This means Monarch cannot move money in or out of your accounts. The company has very strict security practices that include encryption, role-based access controls at each layer of its infrastructure, and one of the strongest bug bounty programs in the industry, according to the company.
Verdict: Expensive, But Otherwise Near the Top of Its Game
Budgeting and transaction management are especially good in Monarch. Its dashboard may be the best I've seen, and the mobile app has a monthly progress report with a series of charts showing your financial status to date. Cash flow content is solid, and I like how the app provides an unusually good setup tool through its settings. Monarch is a great app, though it's expensive. When looking at the user experience, price, and feature set of personal finance apps, three Editors' Choice winners come out on top. They are Simplifi, which we recommend first to most people, Quicken Classic if you are more of a power user, and YNAB if you've tried other budgeting apps before and never found one that worked for you.
