One problem I see with many of the people I coach who are struggling financially is that they do not monitor their spending. If you ask these people how they track their spending, the answer is typically that they keep a mental tab on where their money goes. I hope it’s obvious to you all that this is not a great system for managing your money. I can’t count the number of times I’ve helped people find subscriptions or accounts they thought were cancelled and have been charging them for years without their knowledge. If this has happened to you I hope this gives you some form comfort.
So what is the best practice for managing your finances effectively? There are two main camps: maintaining spreadsheets where you can log all your transactions, or through a management app. I personally prefer the latter simply because I want my finances to be easy. You can typically have more control over a spreadsheet because you can customize it to do almost anything you want whereas an app is built the way the developers intended for most audiences. If you have a very complicated financial portfolio, or if the majority of your transactions are cash, spreadsheets may be the best fit for you.
If you mainly use digital transactions like debit and credit cards, and you want easy management of your money, then apps are surely the way to go. Most apps allow you to securely link your bank and investment accounts and the app tracks all the details. These apps make it easy to monitor transactions, set budgets and goals, and to trend progress. All of these are very helpful and make managing your money a breeze, which is in my opinion the most important part. The more challenging it is to track your money, the more likely you are to stop and revert to old ways.
Many people ask me which app is my favorite. There are many options out there and I have tried virtually all of them. Every Dollar, Monarch, Rocket Money, Quicken, YNAB, Honeydue, Good Budget, the list goes on. After trying most I have come to like Monarch the most. A lot of the apps have the same features so it really comes down to a few key details:
- Ease of Integration – I found Monarch does the best job connecting to my various accounts and gives me the least headaches. Several of the apps have difficulty connecting to some institutions, especially when two factor authentication is enabled.
- Developer Support: I have found the developers behind Monarch are very responsive. You get regular emails that outline enhancements they make to the app. If you have issues you can submit a request and they respond very quickly.
- Interface – I really like the user interface in both the mobile app and desktop version. Some of the other apps had unintuitive interfaces that were clunky to use. I find everything intuitive in Monarch and it makes it easy to navigate the app.
- Ease of Sharing – Monarch is very easy to integrate as a family. You can invite others to your household budget which helps with transparency, which is a crucial part of maintaining a household budget. You can also assign transactions for review by another user. For example, if you don’t recognize a transaction you can flag for your spouse to review.
After Mint was discontinued Monarch offered some generous promotions to join their platform. If you are interested in trying Monarch risk-free, you can use my referral link for an extended 30 day trial. I will note, this is an affiliate link so I do get a credit for those who sign up using this link. Even without a referral, I would wholeheartedly recommend Monarch to anyone looking for a quality budgeting app.
