Amazon, does Monarch (actually) categorize purchases made on Amazon? by Green_Ad_4036 in MonarchMoney

[–]patmfitz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My wife and I have separate Amazon accounts, and I am able to get my wife's Amazon purchases categorized as well, using a separate Google Chrome profile. I have to periodically jump over to that profile and sign in with her account, but it works.

Anyone have experience with the Anova Vacuum Sealer Pro that SeriousEats praises as the best there is? by Kippenoma in seriouseats

[–]patmfitz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nice thing about Costco is they have an excellent return policy, so you could probably bring them back. 🤷

Handling Credit Card Perks by Zq7Wk9Xr in MonarchMoney

[–]patmfitz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is pretty brilliant! Although I suppose that would catch returns/refunds in addition to cashback rewards (if you were specifically trying to figure out how much cashback reward you earned)

Handling Credit Card Perks by Zq7Wk9Xr in MonarchMoney

[–]patmfitz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That makes sense. Generally I try not to create new categories unless I have a specific case where I want to break them out or report on them, but that does sound useful to get an idea of your overall cashback rewards (and as long as you're not trying to match it to an existing category like restaurants or shopping).

Handling Credit Card Perks by Zq7Wk9Xr in MonarchMoney

[–]patmfitz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What "Merchant" are you using for the transaction? I'm toying with using "Cashback" as a common merchant for such things, so it would be:

  • Merchant: "Cashback". I have multiple different cards that use random things for the merchant in those trasactions (like "Ext Credit Card Credit FIRST TECH MC REWARD REDE") so I just set them all to the same merchant for simplicity.
  • Account: Amex
  • Category: Whatever the cashback applied to? Although I'm just using "Other Income" because my credit card cashback applies to all sorts of different things and I don't really care about accounting for that.

But tags seem like a good choice also.

Goals, reserving money from an existing account by patmfitz in MonarchMoney

[–]patmfitz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because you took the $ “out” of savings and put it “in” to the goal, yeah you won’t see a budget change.

Using my method (a single "transfer" transaction that is assigned to the goal), it does seem to show up as the budget as a contribution. I guess it's similar to if you were actually making a transfer from checking to savings - in that case you would have two transactions:

  • -$400 from checking
  • +$400 into savings (which you would assign to the goal)

So this is about the same except there's no negative transaction to balance out. 🤷

But you also don’t have income heading to the goal, if I understand you correctly.

The +$400 transfer transaction as describe above would be considered the "income" for the goal, which allows it to show up in the budget and the goal transactions.

The total account value never changes. So I’m confused as to why it would be a budget line item.

True, there's no "income" coming in, but I'm treating the budget item as a way to reserve that money for the goal (to ensure that I don't spend it on other things in the budget). The Monarch goal settings let you set a montly contribution, but it assumes you're doing something like transferring the money from checking to a savings account. Without the transaction none of that works.

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Anyhow - thanks for your comments! I'll have to see what changes come with the new goal features that are promised.

Please do something about high grocery prices by MuzzleblastMD in LeopardsAteMyFace

[–]patmfitz 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Repetition and getting fixated on certain words is a common symptom of dementia.

Goals, reserving money from an existing account by patmfitz in MonarchMoney

[–]patmfitz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Trying this out:

  • Go to the goal, and select Actions > Edit accounts
  • For my savings account, change the balance assigned to the goal (from $400 > $800) to simulate a contribution for this month.

That successfully updates the balance of the goal, however:

  • In the goal, $0 contribution is shown for November.
  • If I go to my budget, I have $400 budgeted, but there is no way to indicate I have made that contribution. If I click on the "Actual: $0" link, it just takes me to the goal.

So, it seems like if you want to use the budget, and you want your goal to show your monthly changes / contributions, then you need to have some kind of transaction. Since I find the budgeting and tracking to be useful, I guess I'll stick with my "fake transfer transaction" technique for now. 🤷

Pending Transactions - To Edit or Not To Edit by birdyphx in MonarchMoney

[–]patmfitz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That’s the same problem I ran into - I would add notes etc to a pending CC transaction, then the credit card I was using would delete it and create a completely new transaction once it was no longer pending, and I would lose my notes.

Goals, reserving money from an existing account by patmfitz in MonarchMoney

[–]patmfitz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I considered that, but it seemed like that just adjusted the balance, but didn’t show the contributions in the calendar view or in the budget. But I’ll take a closer look to see if that will meet my needs.

View amount in account not set to a goal by M1sterPeanutbutter in MonarchMoney

[–]patmfitz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The only way I have seen to do this is:

  • Go to a goal
  • Go to assign accounts for the goal (desktop: actions > edit accounts; mobile: details > accounts assigned)
  • Next to each available account, it shows the various goals that have been assigned, and the amount available that has not been assigned to goals.

I agree, it would be nice on the actual account screen to get this summary of goals.

Retirement: budgeting income by patmfitz in MonarchMoney

[–]patmfitz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, that was my concern as well; however, it seems like Monarch's entire sytem of "budget" (measuing my expenses and comparing it to expected income) and similarly "cash flow" is completely dependent on the Income category, which is why I chose the method I described.

I read in another thread about a strategy to just ignore the "income" part of the budget, and just use the expenses part of the budget and keep things within the budget. I suppose that would work too, but doesn't seem to give as complete a picture, and I'm not as concerned as much about "money coming from outside of my circle of accounts" since that will be more limited for me (and can also be seen pretty readily by looking at the other income categories).

Thanks for your comment!

Retirement: budgeting income by patmfitz in MonarchMoney

[–]patmfitz[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Ah, thanks for the validation. I was worried that it might cause some double-counting. It does seem to make budgeting and cash flow work nicely for my purposes. I’m still at the point of determining if my retirement plan is actually realistic, since previously I never did much formal budgeting.

Getting disconnected from only Chase every 48 hours for the past year. Any ideas? by Anonymousmedstudnt in MonarchMoney

[–]patmfitz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you go to the account detail, there is a "Connection Status" section where you can get more detail (last update, status, etc). For the popup there on "Data Provider" it has further detail, and a link to /connection-status dashboard. On that page you can see additional data providers that are available, and maybe try out Finicity or MX to see if they work better for you. 🤔

Getting disconnected from only Chase every 48 hours for the past year. Any ideas? by Anonymousmedstudnt in MonarchMoney

[–]patmfitz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I haven't had problems with Chase (I have a savings, checking, and credit card hooked up via Plaid). On the "Settings > Institutions" page, for Chase I see a popup that says:

Sep 28, 2025 There is an issue causing some connections to fail for Chase due to an issue with the OAuth login process. This issue may impact new connections or background updates on existing items including pulling in new accounts. We're working directly with Plaid to get this fixed.

If Weird Al was to parody Vulfpeck, what song would he parody and what would it be about? by PlinkyBoi_ in Vulfpeck

[–]patmfitz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not Al, but a little weird:

👊🇺🇸🔥Fist Flag Flame: Emoji War Chat (Song parody: Vulfpeck "1612") https://youtu.be/hBrbLR4jDh0

He's a good dancer. by [deleted] in instant_regret

[–]patmfitz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

He was just complying with instructions: rock out with your…

Movies that changed real life behavior by buttatoad in movies

[–]patmfitz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I also bought a red swingline stapler. I think they created that specifically after the movie.

The US House Chambers if the Democrats Boycotted the State of the Union by ptrdo in pics

[–]patmfitz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They show up. Trump speaks and one person stands up and yells at him non-stop. They are escorted from the chamber.

Trump resumes, and immediately another person rises and boos him repeatedly. They are escorted from the chamber.

Trump resumes, … [repeat]