My husband and I had quit paying attention to our finances. We had just moved between states and everything in our new city was more expensive. We had two tuition payments for a Montessori school and a higher mortgage.
Then, I would tap into the finances and panic. I would tell him we needed to get our spending under control and we also needed to make more money. But we really didn’t spend frivolously. Life with 2 children and another on the way was expensive.
I desperately needed to feel like I wasn’t the only one looking at our spending - or thinking about it. My husband doesn’t have the same feelings about money as I do. He has always felt like it’ll work out. But I needed him to carry some of this mental load.
At the time, we were using Mint to track our spending, but it abruptly went out of business. I set out to find something to replace it and stumbled across Monarch. It looked easy to use, unlike what my experience was with YNAB. And the best part was that you could have multiple users in the same account, which wasn’t possible with Mint.
This was 3 years ago and we are still using it. We’ve been able to see where our money is going every month and annually. We can also see how much the cost of living has risen since we started using it. Our grocery spend is exponentially higher and gas, too.
And the best part is that I’m not the only one looking. We each look at it weekly. We can see if we need to cancel subscriptions we don’t use. We can see how much we’re saving each month. And now with a massive (and unexpected) home renovation, we can track that, too.
The user experience is great, links up with all of our accounts including our investments, mortgage, car loan, credit cards, and even Venmo.
I can’t recommend it enough for anyone trying to track their spending and income. You can use my link to get 50% off your first year!