The Monarch Review

Some say you have to spend money to make money. King 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 expenses and see how today’s choices will affect their future financial stability and growth. King makes it easy to get this information quickly. Still, there are three budgeting apps we recommend even more: simplifiedWhich is best for most people; Quick classic If you want more than what Simplify gives you; And YNABWhich you should try if other money apps don’t click for you.

What is the price of the king?

Monarch is more expensive than most other apps for budgeting and personal finance. It costs $14.99 per month or $99.99 per year only YNAB There is an equally high monthly subscription fee. simplified ($47.88 per year) costs less, and does Fast classic ($71.88 per year for Deluxe).

There are some free personal finance apps, though none of them are as good as they were before Mint shut down. NerdWallet And empowerment For example, free, but they focus on specific areas of personal finance rather than an all-encompassing look at your money, budget and financial plans. And there are free versions Credit action And WalletHub—and they’re worth using, but they analyze your credit score and credit report, which is different than what Monarch does.

Starting with the king

most of Easy to use personal finance apps. I’d put Monarch in the top five for 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, such as your checking account and credit cards. The app shows its prowess from the start by using AI to find the best way to connect each account. For example, when I started linking a credit card it warned me that the option I had selected was not the best for that account, and it suggested a few options, one of which worked well.

I browsed through the unusually thorough settings, which include setup tools for features like notifications, categories, tags, and members (you can share your account).

Manage your financial transactions

Monarch gives you a unique mix of transaction details and options. It shows you transactions that you’ve imported or manually entered into a register, as other personal finance apps do, listing the merchant, date, amount, and expense or income category. You can add notes and tags, mark the transaction as recurring, attach a receipt or other file, and split it. All that standard stuff.

But no other personal finance app lets you link transactions to goals or assign them to one of your collaborators for review. And most don’t have a tax-related business section, like Monarch does (although Rocket Money lets you mark expenses as tax-related). King is also exceptionally flexible in how you can assign transaction rules. For example, you can specify that any transaction paid to a specific merchant for a specific amount should be classified as the same. There are many more options. You can edit multiple transactions at the same time in the register.

Budget your money

The budgeting tools you get in personal finance apps are pretty much the same—except for YNAB and Simplifi, which have different approaches but are great tools. Most other app budgeting tools look different and all have strengths and weaknesses, but they are essentially calculators. They categorize transactions and show you where your money is coming from and how you’re spending it. They let you set goals for each spending category (groceries, transportation, etc.), which is really an educated guess in most categories. For example, how much money do you spend dining out? They continue to tally 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.

Monarch, however, has an option that sets it apart. If you spend only $278.98 of your budgeted $300 on groceries, you can choose to carry over the remaining $21.02 to use next month. It’s an option in Monarch, but you won’t see it in many other personal finance apps—and that’s important!

Another option is to let the app set up your budget amount based on historical averages. Thus, the app can give you a monthly or yearly budget forecast. You can create your budget by department or by their assigned group, edit Monarch’s default budget structure, and exclude specific departments from your overall budget.

Managing subscriptions, bills and cash flow

like Pocket Guard, Monarch has basic tools for identifying and managing recurring transactions, whether they’re subscriptions set up to automatically withdraw, like Netflix, or recurring bills you pay offline and mark as paid in the app (maybe your rent). They are displayed in an interactive calendar and in a list that you can drill down to Monarch has no service for canceling unwanted subscriptions Rocket Money Does, no it offers online bill pay like Quicken Classic.

Monarch is ahead of most other personal finance apps with its cash flow features. It shows you multiple, customizable charts and lists that can be viewed by categories, traders or groups. You can also filter by tag or account and view them monthly, quarterly or annually. At a glance, you can see how your income and expenses balance 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 depicts the flow from one set of values ​​to another, which works well for cash flow.

Most personal finance apps act like giant calculators when it comes to setting your money goals. With Monarch, you can create and prioritize goals and assign them to bank accounts. You can either link the transaction to the target or update it manually.

The app lets you build a portfolio of investment types (mutual funds, ETFs, derivatives, cryptocurrencies) by connecting to your brokerage account or manually entering holdings. Benchmarks are updated in real time when markets are open, while your holdings are updated daily. These tools may be enough for the very casual investor, but serious market watchers should consider Quicken Classic, which has more tools to manage and track your investments.

You can see reports throughout Monarch, such as cash flow pages and Sankey diagrams. There are also pages dedicated to charts and lists of income and expenses. They are colorful, comprehensive and customizable and I enjoyed using them But here again, Quicken Classic is king when it comes to reports.

King’s help and support

As easy as it is to use, Monarch offers great support. Its help center has perhaps as many thorough, well-written articles as any app I’ve reviewed. There’s an AI assistant that you can “conversate” with to get expert advice on financial matters, such as ways to save money, succeed at budgeting, and achieve your financial goals. Where appropriate, this tool includes links to Help Center articles If you still need help, you can leave an online message for support.

Is King safe to use?

Monarch strives to collect the minimum amount of financial information necessary to operate a Feature. With collected data, 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 account. The company has very strict security practices that include encryption, role-based access controls at every level of its infrastructure and one of the most robust bug bounty programs in the industry, according to the company.

Verdict: Expensive, but otherwise near the top of its game

Budget and transaction management is especially good with Monarch. Its dashboard may be the best I’ve seen, and the mobile app includes a monthly progress report with a continuous chart showing your financial status. The cash flow content is solid, and I like that the app offers an unusually good setup tool through Settings. Monarch is a great app, although it is expensive. When looking at personal finance apps’ user experience, value, and features, three Editors’ Choice winners come out on top. they are simplifiedThe first thing we recommend to most people is, Fast classic If you are more of an energy user, and YNAB If you’ve tried other budgeting apps before and haven’t found one that works for you.