I tracked our family's budget on Mint for years, and I was a little worried when I learned Inuit would close mint.com down. What would happen to all of my work? The history of our transactions? Where would I manage our budget? How would I be able to keep myself honest about spending trends? How would I know top-line info for taxes?I have been delighted by the way Monarch Money has picked up the Mint baton and made it possible for me to feel confident with our family finances.Beyond matching some key features of Mint, the software has a few things I really love:1) Transaction rules with lots of flexibilityOne of the things I hate about tracking money is the manual task of assigning transaction categories. Mint could automate this a little, but Monarch has taken it to another level. I love being able to automatically change the category of a charge based on multiple variables (including "contain" operators vs. just "matches" operators) including the text in the merchant field, amount of the charge, and more. It makes it possible for most of my transactions to be automatically categorized correctly every time.2) "Needs Review" flagsThis sorting mechanism makes it really simple to review anything that come in that doesn't fit a current rule, or to flag certain types of transactions (like "ATM & Cash") for further categorization or manual splitting. The extra nice part is that you can assign transactions for review by different people. So, if another family member needs to review something and categorize it, you can assign that.3) Mint-specific Migration toolsMonarch made moving 10+ years of Mint data over to their tool manageable. I can't say it was done in a few moments but it was straightforward and I have confidence that I got the history moved with consistent categories and matching accounts. Any team that can make that possible must be able to do good UI/UX work and have a solid software team.One big difference between Mint vs. Monarch: Monarch costs money. Paying for Monarch is not a dealbreaker for me as Mint was free, but full of ads. They were annoying and got in the way of basic tasks. I also knew that my financial info was being used to serve ads, but never really impressed me with the personalization (For example, I was always being told I could pay down our student debt even after it was all paid off). By paying for Monarch I not only don't have ads, I also have more assurance that it's a tool with longevity. After all, if they want me to keep paying for the service, it better be secure, improve, and respond to my customer needs vs. advertiser whims.
Claim your business profile now and gain access to all features and respond to customer reviews.
