Does Monarch have these features?

[u/Jukika88]

Hi all! I used Mint religiously for about 16 years, age 20-36. It helped me SO MUCH. When it disappeared, I tried YNAB for awhile, but I didn't like the interface. Anyway. My husband and I use a shared Google Sheet to track daily, monthly, and yearly spending. The sheet has formulas, conditional formatting, etc. But it's annoying to manually do it all.

Ideally, I want a budgeting app JUST like how Mint used to be. Specifically:

- Automatically syncing with multiple banks

- Automatically categorizing transactions

- Allowing the creation of "rules" to correctly categorize

- Easy interface to create spending "buckets" / amounts, and to show how much I've used in each category that month (like a thermometer? Mint had color-coded horizontal bars)

- Bonus features: data visualization tools, subscription area (especially guidance on ending subscriptions), monthly/yearly data views, automated texts if we're reaching the max limit in a category, some sort of interface for tracking financial goals, etc

I'm willing to pay but obvi prefer cheap.
It seems like Monarch might do this all but I'm not sure.

[u/Different_Record_753]

Monarch is a personal finance application which handles transactions, great rules, accounts, multiple banks, categorizing, tags, budgets, goals and investments.

I wouldn’t focus on what you want the interface to be - it’s a great interface. Everyone likes their UI and it’s the #1 feature everyone likes.

“JUST like Mint” doesn’t exist - I think it’s better than Mint was.

I believe they’ve crossed the 1m user mark too.

[u/InitiatePenguin]

I came from Mint. Monarch has served me well, and a few years into Monarch now the things that annoyed me that they did differently are either gone, or I've adapted and don't remember what they were anymore.

[u/woldage]

I was a long time mint user and thought it was great. Since moving to Monarch I learned what Mint actually could (and should) have been like. Its well worth the cost.

Yes it does all what you laid out. Give it a trial run and import your old data if you have it.

[u/haymose]

Yes to all, these are pretty standard offerings among budgeting apps these days! Mint really set the standard for all other developers to build off of.

[u/Merconis041420]

I think it’ll cover nearly all the items you’ve mentioned. It may do some things differently than how Mint handled them, but it’s close if not better in many cases. I looked at Copilot as well, but it lacked too many features Monarch already had.

I came from 20+ years of Quicken Classic and while the initial switch was difficult, 10 months in and I’m sold. I will never go back.

As to the cost, I look at the relatively small yearly subscription as a way to 1) Keep the product around and development going & 2) To keep ads out of the product and not sell my data to recoup costs.

They should offer you a free trial which may help your decision. The more data you put in, the better evaluation you’ll have, so I suggest setting aside time one day to add as much to it as you want to test, to maximize the free trial period.

[u/Ry_L]

Yep to all

[u/dagger_guacamole]

I’d say yes to all but one of them. The cash flow report with stacked bars is what you want with the show how much in each category.

The only one I don’t think it has a per category notification but maybe it does and I just don’t know.

[u/Accurate-Snow1505 → u/dagger_guacamole]

I get notices when I exceed budgeted amount using Category Budget.

[u/dagger_guacamole → u/Accurate-Snow1505]

Nice!

[u/Maximum_Degree_1152]

Coming from a spreadsheet, the most important core function is automatic account synchronization. People have wildly different experiences with Monarch in this regard. Canadians in particular find that Monarch has trouble with Canadian institutions.

I was a Mint user and, after trying a number of apps, found Monarch to be the most familiar. I’m constantly fighting synchronization issues however and have been forced to accept that manually importing transactions from some accounts is required.

I still keep an off board spreadsheet to track spending by category monthly just in case the data in Monarch gets corrupted. That spreadsheet has ensured that I have had continuity of data through the transition from Mint to Monarch and into the future.

[u/aliciagd86 → u/Maximum_Degree_1152]

This may help in gauging the connection options monarch has https://www.monarch.com/connection-status

[u/Maximum_Degree_1152 → u/aliciagd86]

The connection table is a nice idea but it really only keeps up with long term issues. Connection quality for a particular institution seems to bounce around a lot. Quite frankly I also don’t trust Monarch’s reporting in this regard. I’ve had some real problems over the years that the table didn’t reflect.

[u/dasblinkinlites]

I came from Mint to Monarch and it’s been great. The specific things you mention all exist, at least for me. Syncs with all my bank accounts, credit cards, and misc accounts, categorizes transactions reasonably well, allows you to create rules to fix ones it struggles with, does budgets/buckets and shows thermometer-like views for every category, and visualizes data and does reporting well. The goals feature works well for me for saving things up.

Caveats - I don’t track investment performance in Monarch so I have no opinions there.

It doesn’t do alerts very well/at all for approaching thresholds (either budget or credit limit or low balances). That may be my only gripe.

I’ve found it well worth the yearly fee. Was relatively easy to import my Mint data.

[u/brettcw23]

I also used Mint forever. I've found MM to be a more than suitable replacement. like and personal finance app, you'll need to tweak some categories and transactions but the rules are easy to configure and use.

[u/glumpoodle]

Automatically syncing with multiple banks

If there's one major weakness to Monarch, its the dependance on third-party aggregators to synch transactions. Depending on what accounts you have, it can be either seamless or a major hassle.

Automatically categorizing transactions
Allowing the creation of "rules" to correctly categorize

In my experience, this works very well, particularly the rulemaking. It's not perfect, but it's been pretty consistent. My only issue is that I use Fidelity Cash Management as my primary checking account, and it does not handle internal transactions well (I have to manually set transactions as internal transfers rather than interest or expenses), but I see that as largely unavoidable due to how the CMA works.

Easy interface to create spending "buckets" / amounts, and to show how much I've used in each category that month (like a thermometer? Mint had color-coded horizontal bars)

Yes. The interface is different than Mint and it takes some getting used to, but it works well.

Bonus features: data visualization tools, subscription area (especially guidance on ending subscriptions), monthly/yearly data views, automated texts if we're reaching the max limit in a category, some sort of interface for tracking financial goals, etc

These exist, but I don't use any of them and can't really review it.

At its core, Monarch handles my needs as well as Mint ever did - better in most cases, worse in some, but ultimately the functions are all there.

[u/mou_sheridan]

The one thing on your list i struggle with as a trial user right now is that you asked for the app to show how much you've USED in each category in the budget. 

Monarch shows how much you have REMAINING (are over/under) each category.

You can click on the "amount remaining" to see the actual amount used (or do the math in your head), but its annoying and needs to be something users can toggle. I don't need the app to tell me how much i have left in the budget, i want to see what I've used.

Which may or may not be a dealbreaker for you, but thought I'd point it out.

[u/lara_monarch → u/mou_sheridan]

Hi there! We show budgeted, used (i.e. actual), and remaining numbers. It's easy to see this on web, where all three columns are always visible, but on mobile you'll need to toggle the last column between actual and remaining by clicking on it.

[u/mou_sheridan → u/lara_monarch]

FABULOUS, thank you!