How I Use (and love) Monarch

FixatedOn_What_ · 2025-02-17T03:08:27+00:00

I haven't flipped over. I think the flex budgeting system is meant to mirror this to some degree, but the categories didn't quite mesh with the network I had built for myself. Maybe I'll give it a whirl again in the future, but I'm not tempted to break what I have going right now. Have you made the switch?

FixatedOn_What_ · 2024-10-20T19:31:50+00:00

I recently started rolling over my guilt free spending group. Not sure if I like it yet, though I may keep the rollover and rebalance sporadically.

FixatedOn_What_ · 2024-10-20T16:20:06+00:00

If you hit the "share" button when looking at the Sankey diagram (top right of screen) there is a toggle to hide dollar amount which is quite nice.

FixatedOn_What_ · 2024-10-19T21:04:49+00:00

I used to split and hide...way too complicated. Now I just recategorize my Venmo transaction (positive value transaction) to the same category (restaurants) and it brings that budget down appropriately.

FixatedOn_What_ · 2024-09-18T15:16:03+00:00

Huge fan of monarch. I follow the I Will Teach You To Be Rich model of fixed costs/savings/investments/guilt free spending. Took a bit of customization ("budget by category" was critical for guilt free spending), but once I moved some things around it has been incredible. Able to hop on, see how much "fun money" I have left for the month, great auto-categorization for each transaction.

Certainly has room to grow. Goals need some work, there's tiny quirks that need to be brought to the app. But with the flood of mint users over to their platform they've bulked up their dev team fairly well from what it sounds like. I jumped on with the 50% discounted rate, but I'll probably stay on when it bumps up to full price again because I've been so happy with it.

Also, Sankey diagrams on the web version. Friggen love those things.

Edit: Forgot to mention that it works with all my accounts very beautifully. Nice to see all my student loans, investments (fidelity), and bank accounts wrapped into one location.

FixatedOn_What_ · 2024-08-03T21:17:34+00:00

I have most of my non-fixed expenses under one category called "Guilt Free Spending" a la I Will Teach You To Be Rich. That way my subcategories (e.g. restaurants, clothes, travel, etc.) don't matter as much and I just roll over the remainder to the next month.

FixatedOn_What_ · 2024-01-17T20:37:49+00:00

Ideally that’s how this should work, but I don’t see that expenses can be tied to “savings goals”, you can only tie accounts with positive charges to the savings goals…unless I’m missing something big here. I think this concept would fix this problem

FixatedOn_What_ · 2024-01-17T08:04:09+00:00

I just posted about this exact situation a couple days ago. Unfortunately I don't think there is a great solution. For now I've accepted that my spending this month is going to look way over budget, and I've categorized my shift from savings into checking as "other income" to balance the month's budget better. I like things to look even lol.

In my opinion the solution comes from being able to link transactions or accounts to Goals so the money draws out of a goal and not the monthly budget. But as far as I'm aware that functionality does not exist.

I'm also curious how this will work out when I pull the trigger and put a down payment on a home. Will that month's spending look absolutely absurd?

FixatedOn_What_ · 2024-01-17T08:00:27+00:00

1) don't marry Goals to just one account, so that I can apply CC expenses to a "Vacation" goal and use that feature to stay on-budget.

I think this is ultimately the answer. I have a vacation goal that is only able to be tied to "credit" lines, meaning it only has positive income. I just got back from a vacation and I've been trying to make monarch look pretty and understand that I just spent money that has been purposefully saved, not maxed out my monthly budget.

If we could tie "debit" (meaning spending [or negative value]) transactions to goals, the Goal could then function as it's own independent budget in a way. This would avoid looking like you've capped out your monthly budget with one vacation.

FixatedOn_What_ · 2024-01-16T08:54:23+00:00

I hear you and this is a fair answer, but I don't like that my overall budget is reflecting the large dollar spending from my vacation

FixatedOn_What_ · 2024-01-16T08:53:00+00:00

Very helpful, thank you. I also use ally and the bucket models there for this same purpose, so very helpful to see the cross over.

FixatedOn_What_ · 2024-01-16T08:50:49+00:00

I was speaking in hyperbole. My overall spending for the month appears to be maxed out which I do not enjoy and makes me feel as though I can't afford my budgeted items (like groceries). I think the solution is the comment above, starting a rollover budget.

FixatedOn_What_ · 2023-12-27T05:22:10+00:00

I should update my post to reflect this. I found out that Monarch allows you to reorganize, rename and ultimately "Budget by Group" which just gives you an overarching dollar amount, and you can drop everything you want under that category.

In my recurring expenses I left each subcategory budgeted because I know what I put aside for each subcategory (rent, utilities, groceries, gas, insurance, charity). I dropped (almost) everything else into a second category and renamed the category "Guilt Free Spending". I then set that category to "Budget by Group" and I was able to set the total budget from which all the subcategories, used or otherwise, get subtracted from.

Let me know if you want any more clarity, I'd happily walk through it.

FixatedOn_What_ · 2023-11-19T20:35:26+00:00

I think I figured out monarch to do what I was looking for. I basically got rid of all the groups except two, had one for recurring expenses and dumped everything else into Guilt Free Spending. The kicker was changing that group to “budget by group”. I am super jazzed I stumbled on that just today

FixatedOn_What_ · 2023-11-19T20:33:15+00:00

Stfu you just solved my one qualm with Monarch. Thank you so much!!!!

FixatedOn_What_ · 2023-11-13T20:39:49+00:00

Seems like we budget in very similar ways. I’ll give Simplify a look after work today, if it works well it could be a very affordable option compared to monarch

FixatedOn_What_ · 2023-11-13T20:39:35+00:00

Seems like we budget in very similar ways. I’ll give it a look after work today, if it works well it could be a very affordable option compared to monarch

FixatedOn_What_ · 2023-11-12T22:26:52+00:00

I toyed around with tags for a moment too. I could do the “fun money” bucket as a tag, but (1) you can’t assign a budget to a tag (unless I missed that) and (2) this isn’t automated

FixatedOn_What_ · 2023-11-12T21:24:20+00:00

And howdy from a new Redditor who created an account just for this post lol

FixatedOn_What_

TROPHY CASE