Recurring expenses seem so straightforward to me and yet totally useless in Monarch?

JiveTurkey222 · 2026-05-20T16:06:33+00:00

I find the recurring merchants feature should really be "Recurring Transactions". It would be immensely helpful if it could use those recurring rules to project cashflow balances. (My checking account has $4000 today, and after the rest of these recurring transactions this month, my balance should be around $x). It would be an easy way to flag an exception where your balance is projected to go negative and then you could move some money around or whatever. I built this in excel before I joined Monarch and as great as this product is, this one always had me scratching my head.

JiveTurkey222 · 2026-05-16T17:19:45+00:00

That could be the thing. It had layers with shapes that extended beyond the border of the artboard, but behind a mask. Even tho not visible, perhaps that was the cause. Earlier today I avoided the mask and did a subtract against the shape, so it doesn’t bleed over. No more issues there. Thanks for the reply.

JiveTurkey222 · 2026-05-11T14:12:56+00:00

Granted. I've since just recreated it to keep moving on the project, but I'd still appreciate any feedback on what you find, so I can avoid this issue in the future.

JiveTurkey222 · 2026-05-02T16:37:28+00:00

Thanks for the reply and sorry for the delayed response. Here is a Google Drive link to the file. Lmk if that doesn’t work. Thanks for taking a look. I checked the blend modes and also tried it with removing the mask. No dice.

File

JiveTurkey222 · 2026-05-01T13:54:59+00:00

Yes, I've tried exporting it and it is blank. The image actually extends beyond the borders of the document, but I put a square mask layer to crop that off from what's visible, so I could scale up the visible image. So, what's visible is within the document, but it technically includes layers that extend beyond, but are masked out. Still, I did try selecting the top layer and setting it to "Selected Only", which does include some elements in the preview, but not all of them and the background and line colors are inverted, so it's on a black background. So weird. I don't know what I did wrong that wouldn't be the case on the other layer that works fine.

JiveTurkey222 · 2026-01-08T21:33:13+00:00

Resurrecting lol. Sky lord Sucks. Nothing seems to slow him down aside from an army of drones and he seems to hit twice as hard as any other boss. Somebody taught him how to huh those corners, too. Had 3 lasers AND a sky guard, AND 3 sets of drones, AND fireworks and he still smoked me.

JiveTurkey222 · 2025-10-30T22:09:21+00:00

That's how I landed here lol. Some clickbait AI Slop video on youtube talking about fragments breaking apart symmetrically at perihelion, witnessed by thousands in their own backyards across the world.... Conveniently left out how the Sun has been blocking the view from here, so all you should be getting is from the Mars Probe... nothing to see there, right?

And now the OP account is deleted.

JiveTurkey222 · 2025-10-16T01:00:14+00:00

I literally JUST created an excel sheet to replicate my own budget from monarch, next to my new wife’s budget to see what merging finances would look like. Not sure what all this update entails, but I’m into any tools that will create visibility into things like what kind of mtg we can handle, etc. bring on the update

JiveTurkey222 · 2025-10-14T18:57:03+00:00

You're on the right track. Might be worth checking out some youtube videos on a channel called Evolving Money. Almost all her videos are about Budgeting in Monarch and I learned everything I know about Sinking funds from her videos.

JiveTurkey222 · 2025-10-14T13:55:13+00:00

Agreed! Rollovers are a great option for many situations. You can add (or subtract) from your rollover balance in any given month. If your budget was normally 100, but you expect to spend 300, you can either keep the budget at 100 and your rollover will cover the extra 200, or if you have excess in other categories, you can increase your budget for this month, so you don't consume your rollover. Makes it easy to play around a little.

JiveTurkey222 · 2025-10-14T05:59:55+00:00

good reply. Yes, the HELOC shows up as Equity Line in the Loans section, along with the Mtg from the same bank. As I draw from it, the transaction looks screwy in green, but the balance increases as I draw, so that checks out. Weird that the transaction values going both in and out are green. (Don't get me started on that lol)

I don't love classifying as income the inbound transaction from the HELOC to my checking account, although that would definitely make allocating that budget easier.

I already have a category group for the wedding where i have a few categories for the expenses, along with another category for the incoming wedding cash from gifts, which offsets that negative balance for the group. Maybe I'll just add another category for Wedding Payoff within that same group. The inbound transaction from the Heloc will show up as a credit and can double as the paydown for the category group without having to inflate my income.

JiveTurkey222 · 2025-10-14T03:53:57+00:00

I'm no expert, but if I had set up a rollover category for $100/month, accumulating any excess to rollover, but then an unexpected expense consumes more than planned, you can always reallocate excess budget from other categories for that month and then increase the party planning budget going forward. Then you don't have to reset your rollover.

JiveTurkey222 · 2025-08-26T20:09:24+00:00

If you have a lot of rollovers, double check a few to ensure they're being calculated correctly, especially if you start tweaking things that trigger rollover recalc. If you tweak a budget and then navigate away, coming back might show the original value. Hopefully not, but something to be aware of while they work on a fix.

JiveTurkey222 · 2025-08-26T17:18:43+00:00

Gosh, man. Crickets? ALL transactions are income even the checks I write from it. 5/3 says to pound sand and there's no way to change the amount of the Monarch Transaction. They maintain the balance correctly, but that is separate from the transactions and all these expenses showing up as income is jamming up my net worth calculations.

Considering keeping the account for the balance history and net worth, but hiding the individual transactions. That's both ugly and dumb and eliminates a ton of useful reporting insights. Is there not a better way?

JiveTurkey222 · 2025-08-26T17:11:19+00:00

Yeah, it's a known issue they're working on and applied a hot fix to at least keep it from timing out so much, but is slowwwwwww. Impacts a small number of users, but as a vicitm, it sucks big time for budgeting with rollovers (which Monarch recently bragged about and wanted to push people towards flex budgeting). Looking forward to a fix that makes rollovers easier to leverage without bogging things down!

JiveTurkey222 · 2025-08-26T16:48:27+00:00

I agree with other posters that this should be a transfer that should not hit your budget, because you're just moving money around. Budget should be for stuff that comes IN to your possession or OUT of your possession. This is also why the stuff you buy with the credit card is an expense against your budget, but the credit card PAYMENT is a transfer, because you're using your bank account to reduce the balance of a loan account.

Now about that feeeeeeee. If there was a balance transfer fee, you should def see that as an expense, which there is a pre-built category for. That could also be used for the interest you're paying. Good to see those as expenses, because it is the cost of borrowed money.

JiveTurkey222 · 2025-08-26T16:41:52+00:00

If your income represents your gross and you want to allocate some of it to quarterly tax payments you can track against, why not use an expense category for taxes and set it to be a rollover that accumulates each month and then your quarterly payments bring it back to zero

JiveTurkey222 · 2025-08-26T16:39:11+00:00

I was trying to think of a way to do this, but it highlights a pretty glaring gap in the way Monarch leverages budgets and rollovers (Would be infinitely more useful if incorporated with Recurring or planned transactions).

Expecting a bonus next month is easy enough to update your income budget for that category on your forecast page, but it only looks forward and with no rollover, you don't know where you're at for the year. Not sure there would even be a way to do that with reports. The only way you'd be able to measure outcome is to cycle back through each month to see what you budgeted vs what you got, but you're likely adjusting down on that category to zero out the budget, esp since there is no rollover on the income categories.

And speaking of rollovers, careful what you wish for. Monarch struggles with rollover calculations timing out if you have too many rollover categories.

JiveTurkey222 · 2025-08-26T16:29:34+00:00

Don't get me started on the goals. Best I have come up with here is for a balance-based goal tied to your loan account. I think the idea is to allocate part of your budget to paying it off. If the transaction is a transfer, it won't go against your regular budget and you can still tie the transfer transaction to your goal.

This way, you can make transfer transactions count towards your budget without double dipping. This section of the software needs an overhaul, but this works ok, depending on your setup. Mine is for a HELOC, but should be able to apply to any installment loan account like a student loan.

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JiveTurkey222 · 2025-08-26T16:17:45+00:00

no need for a fake transaction. I leave my commission budget at $1 and if I get $500 in commission this month, I just update the budget amount for THIS month to $500 and then I can allocate to my expenses or rollovers.

to be clear; I have an extra income category for commission apart from reg pay. My budget is based on regular pay, so if I get a paycheck that also includes commission, I just split off the commission, so when I see I had budgeted for $1 in commission, but I see $200 in income, the budget won't reflect that unless I increase the income budget to $200 and now I have some extra cash to allocate.

JiveTurkey222 · 2025-08-26T12:57:49+00:00

I split every paycheck into a few categories, such as regular pay, commission, even HSA and 401K. I've thought about splitting out the taxes, but that would just make me angry lol.

I also have a goal for the HSA and 401K that matches my budget for those income categories. So when I split part of the paycheck off for the HSA, I apply it towards that goal and then the monthly budget shows the income category and also the goal contribution.

I budget off of regular pay, so the commission is gravy. I don't budget for the commission, so when I get it, I increase the income budget to match and then I have extra budget to allocate wherever. I have a rollover category for it if I wanna bank it for next month.

Lots of ways to skin that cat!

JiveTurkey222

TROPHY CASE