Honest Monarch Money Review After 2 Years of Use

Monarch Money Review: How a Budgeting App Finally Made My Brain Click (After Two Coaches and Too Many Spreadsheets)

I have worked with three money coaches. Two of them were genuinely great humans who gave me solid frameworks and wanted to help. But both of them built their systems around spreadsheets.

And every single time, the pattern was the same: I'd get excited, set everything up, feel on top of my finances for a hot minute, and then the maintenance of the spreadsheet would slowly become its own job. I'd fall behind. The dread would creep back in. And eventually I'd stop opening it altogether.

I didn't have a motivation problem. I had a system problem. The systems weren't built for a brain like mine.

My third money coach changed that. Her membership included access to Monarch Money, and she walked us through setting it up on group calls, built the habit of monthly money meetings into the structure, and helped me actually explore the features instead of just theoretically knowing they existed. That was about two years ago. I'm still using it. That has never happened before.

This is my honest review of what Monarch Money is, how I use it, what it's done for our family's finances, and who I think it's actually for.

Disclosure: I am a referral partner with Monarch Money and will receive a commission if you sign up using my link and discount code. I only promote products my family personally uses. All pricing and program details sourced from Monarch materials as of June 17, 2026. If pricing or terms have changed since then, please rely on the current website and offers.

Why Spreadsheets Never Worked for Me (And Why That's Not a Character Flaw)

Managing finances has been a real challenge for me as an AuDHD adult who struggles with math and always felt like I got left out of some conversation everyone else had about how to manage money. I have done a lot of self-education to try to close that gap—reading books like Tori Dunlap's Financial Feminist, listening to podcasts, investing in money coaching—because I knew that old emotional patterns, self-doubt, and a genuine lack of knowledge was costing us real money.

But here's the thing about spreadsheets when you're neurodivergent and managing a complex financial life: they require you to manually do the thing that your brain already struggles with.

You have to remember to open it.

You have to log in to ten different accounts to pull the numbers.

You have to hope your husband answers fast enough when you need him to approve a login code so you can check an account in his name.

It constantly felt like a big project just to have a money meeting and actually know where our money was going. So I'd avoid it. Which made everything worse.

I didn't have a motivation problem. I had a system problem. The systems weren't built for a brain like mine.

Monarch Money is the first budgeting tool I've used that works with how my brain actually operates—not how I wish it did.

What Monarch Money Actually Is

Monarch Money is a budgeting and personal finance app that connects all of your financial accounts -- checking, savings, credit cards, loans, investments, mortgage -- into one dashboard.

It tracks your transactions, categorizes your spending, lets you build a budget, set financial goals, track your net worth, manage subscriptions, plan for irregular expenses, and work toward debt payoff. It works on web, iOS, and Android, and syncs with 13,000+ financial institutions.

It costs $99.99 per year for the Core Plan. There is a 7-day free trial. With my referral link and discount code, new users get 50% off their first year -- that's less than $4 a month.

It is not free. That matters, and I'll address it directly in a minute.

What Finally Made Budgeting Click

The thing that changed everything for me was syncing in all of our accounts and letting Monarch do the heavy lifting. Instead of sending my husband a code to approve me logging into his account, or manually opening up ten browser tabs to piece together our financial picture, everything is in one place.

It took us a little while to sit down together and get all of our accounts connected, but once we did, our money meetings became completely different.

Monarch also works similarly to accounting software I use for my businesses, in that you can create rules for different transactions. Over time, the software has learned what our car insurance company is, which stores are usually groceries, which charges are recurring subscriptions.

Reviewing transactions each month is now genuinely simple instead of a project. And when I need to split an expense -- like when my husband comes home from Costco with groceries and also somehow a new pair of pants, as any good millennial man does -- I can go in and split that transaction across categories.

I also really love that you can set up your budget by category or by groups. Over time I've figured out what feels right to budget by group (like our fixed expenses) versus what we want to track by individual category, like gas, groceries, and supplements, which are the variable costs we actually want visibility into and control over.

THE THING NOBODY TELLS YOU ABOUT BUDGETING APPS

The value isn't just in seeing your spending. It's in the fact that the data is already there, already organized, already waiting for you.

You're not building the spreadsheet. You're just reviewing what the system already knows.

What My Monthly Money Meetings Actually Look Like Now

Now I log into Monarch Money intentionally at least twice a month instead of dreading and avoiding a long money meeting once a month, maybe. That shift alone has been huge.

I head to the transactions tab and verify that expenses have been categorized correctly. If something seems off I go in to correct it, or split the transaction.

Budgeting as a family with irregular income has always been a challenge. My husband is in sales so his pay is variable and I own my own businesses. Now, I check in with him on what commissions he's expecting, we look at other income we may be anticipating, and I assess whether this will be a month we need to dip into savings, will roughly meet expenses, or can actively pour into savings goals.

I've created a Group in Monarch with Categories of aspirational goals, broken down and named clearly. So in the months we have extra during his busy season, I already know exactly where that money should go: into specific buckets in our high-yield savings account by percentages, or into additional debt paydown, depending on our priorities at the time.

That structure exists and waits for us. I don't have to figure it out in the moment.

Then right before the end of the month, I have a Note on my laptop with hyperlinks to all the bills we pay manually, or balances that I like to check in on (for example my student loan processor sometimes randomly doesn’t run the right amount).

Between everything I have set up on that note, and Monarch, something that used to take hours of self-doubt and recreating the wheel each time now takes a fraction of the time. Because of our variable income, we don't have everything on autopay—but this system makes manual bill management actually manageable.

The Side Quests to Savings: What Visibility Actually Changed In Our Budget

One of the most useful things Monarch did for us wasn't a feature per se—it was just showing us what was actually happening. Once I could see our budget organized by category, I started going through it line item by line item to consider whether each expense was as cost-effective as possible. Some of what I found:

• We were both paying separately for Apple Storage on our phones. We could be on a family plan. Fixed. $9.99 saved monthly.

• We were subscribed to things we weren't using. Cancelled. More money saved.

• Groceries were significantly higher than I'd realized. That got me serious about meal planning and buying in bulk from Costco, ButcherBox, and Thrive Market more consistently to bring that number down.

• I started tracking mortgage interest rates with the goal of knowing when a refinance would actually benefit us. That saved us over $300/mo

• I am looking into switching to Mint Mobile for a more cost effective bill for our phones. That’s next up on the list.

I try not to take on too many things at once…that's a recipe for doing none of them. But over time I have been choosing one line item at a time and asking whether we can lower it.

That approach has added up to real savings. That far exceed the cost of our annual plan.

The Money Context You Should Know

My husband and I both came into our marriage with debt that had snowballed from our previous marriages and divorces. We've been self-employed or in variable commission-based income for most of our time together. I had no idea what a high-yield savings account was until four years ago.

So we were not rolling into this plan with vast savings, and only increasing awareness of true financial literacy and wealth building strategies.

We set a goal to buy our first home together. Increased our credit scores, better debt to income ratios, and down payment buffer. We did that!

Now the work is decreasing expenses, tackling remaining debt, and building savings to handle our income fluctuations.

For the first time, that work actually feels clear and on track.

I used to avoid opening credit card statements during our slower months and just hope it would all even out over time. That avoidance was its own kind of tax—on my mental health, on our financial decisions, on my ability to feel like a capable adult managing her own life.

Monarch Money didn't fix everything. But it gave me a place to look instead of a reason to look away.

What I'm Still Working On (Features I Haven't Fully Used Yet)

Here's where I'll be honest with you: there are features I know exist and haven't fully used yet.

Monarch has a way to plan and budget for irregular expenses—the kind of things that don't happen every month but you know are coming. Now that we've been in our home for a while and have a pattern of when things come up (powerwashing in the fall, quarterly pest control, buying my contacts in bulk every six months) I want to get those built into the system so they stop feeling like surprises. That's on my list.

I also want to dig deeper into Monarch's debt payoff tracking features. Knowing an actual target date for when we could be free of student loans, medical debt, and consumer debt would feel genuinely motivating. That's a project I'm planning to tackle in the next few months and I'll document how it goes here.

Who Monarch Money Is NOT For (likely...)

If you are a single person with a set paycheck, one checking account, one savings account, and no debt, Monarch might be more bells and whistles than you actually need to track expenses and budget. A simpler free tool might serve you just as well.

But if you are managing fluctuating income, multiple accounts between you and a partner, financial goals you're working toward, debt you want to pay down strategically, or irregular expenses you want to plan for—Monarch has a lot to work with.

You can start with just the basics and build from there as you get more confident. That's exactly what I did.

Is $99 a Year Worth It?

Yes. Here's how I think about it: I have saved hundreds of dollars a month by being more on top of our finances, lowering expenses, and cancelling subscriptions I'd forgotten about.

The $99 annual fee has been more than earned back just from the Apple family storage plan catch alone, honestly.

But the bigger value is harder to put a number on. It's the hours I'm not spending piecing together our financial picture from ten different apps.

It's the anxiety I'm not carrying because I don't know what's coming.

It's having a system I actually maintain instead of one I abandoned by February.

This year I'm also planning to get serious about the debt payoff features, and the faster we pay off debt, the more we save in interest.

That math alone makes the $99 a rounding error.

GET 50% OFF YOUR FIRST YEAR ON THE CORE PLAN

New users can get 50% off the Core Plan annual subscription using my referral link, and entering code: MONARCHVIP at time of enrolling.

This is the same plan I've been using for the past two years. The discount applies to your first year and is available through web checkout only, not the mobile app. There is also a 7-day free trial so you can explore before committing.

What to Do in Your First Week

If you've tried budgeting apps before and given up (maybe even Mint before it shut down) here's what I'd suggest to actually get traction this time:

• Sit down and get all of your accounts synced in—both you and your partner if applicable. Yes, this takes a little time upfront. Do it anyway.

• Set up your budget, even loosely. You can refine it later. Just get categories in place.

• Go through a few weeks of transactions and categorize them. This is how the software learns your patterns and how you start to see where your money is actually going.

• Schedule your first money meeting—even if it's just 20 minutes—and review what you see.

I genuinely think that having a money coach walk me through the setup in those first weeks made a difference for me—the accountability meant I didn't procrastinate. You might not have a coach.

But committing to that first week of setup is the whole game. Anything that saves you time and money is worth trying. If spreadsheets hurt your head or you won't stay consistent with them, this is way better than anything else I've tried.

What It Actually Feels Like

I want to end with this, because I think it's the part that matters most for the kind of people who find their way to this blog.

Monarch Money has helped me feel more in control. Knowing that I can log in on my phone or my laptop and actually check something—a specific expense, where we stand against our budget, what's coming up—has helped me build better habits that are much healthier around money.

I have more peace of mind. A better sense of where we are going.

I used to avoid opening credit card statements during our slower months and just hope it would all be okay.

Now I can tell you where our money is being guided, what months we will be growing our savings, and what irregular expenses are coming up.

I feel more like a CFO of our personal life. And for someone who felt like she missed the conversation everyone else had about how to manage money—that feeling is everything.

Been thinking about jumping in to Monarch Money?

Check it off the list.

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