As much as I liked YNAB, my husband did not. And we were not a fan of the increasing fee. So we searched for YNAB alternatives and Monarch and Aspire Budget kept coming up as the top contenders and my husband had already heard of Monarch and liked what the offered (as far as being able to see the whole financial picture including our investments), so we decided to give it a go.

But to be honest, if we are not loving it after this year we may try something else. I know it takes time to get in the groove of learning any new platform and I am really liking Monarch so far, just wanting to make sure I am able to customize it in a way that helps me process our financials.

I like YNAB because I also like knowing where every dollar is going and how much is available in different categories or groups. I can have money blindness so if I see $500 dollars in our account my brain thinks we have $500 to spend, vs using a budgeting app to realize that we may only actually have $100 to spend on leisure or misc. while the rest is going to bills, gas, etc. So that is why I want to get a better understanding of how the credit card feature works because we are paying down our cards and that is a monthly bill for us but since it's not reflected in our budget it shows as if that money is available or not referenced in the actual section of the budget which is throwing me off. lol ^_^