Monarch Money budgeting app review 2024

The right budgeting app can turn managing your money from a tedious task to a treat. Monarch Money might fit the bill, with an intuitive system that helps you track your expenses, create a budget, and even monitor your investments.

Below, CNBC Select reviews Monarch Money’s features, pricing and whether it’s right for you.

As with any fintech platform, Monarch Money has a handful of pros and cons to consider before signing up for the app and committing to an annual subscription.

Pros

• The dashboard is fairly straightforward to navigate, making it easy to set up your account.
• Like many other budgeting apps on the market, Monarch Money allows you to connect your bank accounts, investment accounts, and credit cards so the dashboard automatically updates to reflect your transactions, balances and net worth every time you log in.
• The dashboard shows your monthly recurring expenses, making it easy to identify your subscriptions, memberships, and other regular payments.
• The dashboard also includes a net worth tracker, a monthly progress tracker for your income and expenses, an investment tracker for your portfolio and cash flow, plus spending and income reports.

Cons

• Monarch Money costs $99.99 when billed per year ($8.33 per month or $14.99 billed monthly), which may be more than you’re willing to pay for a budgeting app.

Monarch Money works by syncing information from your bank, credit cards and investment accounts to give you a bird’s-eye view of where your money goes. Users can also connect student loans, other debts and assets (like crypto, property and vehicles). You can create a monthly budget and monitor your transactions and recurring expenses. You can also use the app to track your net worth over time and monitor investment portfolio activity.

Some of Monarch Money’s more useful features include:

• Personalized and prioritized goals: You can create a list of custom goals (like “down payment for a house” or “Paris vacation”) and then assign financial accounts to each goal. Monarch will then make some simple recommendations based on the amount you set for each goal, the balances of your linked accounts, and other factors to help keep you on track. While the app’s advice can be helpful, you’ll probably want to use a financial advisor for more complicated goals such as saving for your retirement.
• Zero-based budgeting: On the budgeting side, Monarch Money enables the zero-based budgeting approach, similar to YNAB. It tells users exactly how much money they have left to spend each month, though, it doesn’t force you to give every dollar a job.

Monarch Money’s comprehensive dashboard (and subscription fee) is best for those who want to see all of their finances at a glance, and will actually use the app to inform their decisions about what to do with their money.

$8.33/month or $99.99/year (billed annually)

$14.99/month (billed monthly)

Monarch Money offers a 7-day free trial.

You can sign up for Monarch Money on their website or by downloading the app and following the prompts to include your information, like your name and email address. The app is available in Google Play and the App Store.

Monarch Money is a strong budgeting and expense tracker platform, but it’s not the right choice for everyone.

If you refuse to pay for a budgeting app, then Empower is another platform that syncs to your online accounts so you can track your transactions and monitor your investments. However, unlike Monarch Money, Empower is free to use unless you want to add on investment management services. In this case, you’ll pay 0.89% of your portfolio (for accounts under $1 million).

If you’re looking for a budgeting app that takes a different approach to organizing your money, then Goodbudget is worth a look. It enables the cash envelope system virtually. Your first 20 envelopes are free but for unlimited envelopes, this will run you $70 a year. At that price point, Goodbudget is a bit more affordable than Monarch Money but it’s an entirely different budgeting method.

At CNBC Select, our mission is to provide our readers with high-quality service journalism and comprehensive consumer advice so they can make informed decisions with their money. Every personal finance article is based on rigorous reporting by our team of expert writers and editors with extensive knowledge of budgeting products. While CNBC Select earns a commission from affiliate partners on many offers and links, we create all our content without input from our commercial team or any outside third parties, and we pride ourselves on our journalistic standards and ethics.

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