In March 2024, Intuit sunset its free budgeting app, Mint, by rolling it into Credit Karma. However, they did not maintain all of Mint’s best features, leaving thousands of people like me looking for a replacement. I tried several and finally landed on Monarch, it offers all of my favorite features of Mint, plus new exciting options to make budgeting a breeze.
Content
- Why I Loved Mint
- Total Customization
- Variety of Views
- Collaborative Budgeting
- Comparing Monarch to Other Mint Replacements
Why I Loved Mint
I started using Mint upon the recommendation of my financial coach. Unlike several other financial management tools I’d heard of, Mint was free to use, making it an attractive option, as I was looking for ways to cut back on my expenses. After just a few months of using the app, though, I fell in love with several of its features.
- User-Friendly Interface: Mint’s intuitive and easy-to-navigate interface made it easily accessible. Thanks to its user-friendly interface, I quickly learned the app’s ins and outs.
- All-in-One Financial Overview: Mint let me link all my financial accounts, including my bank accounts, credit cards, loans, and investments, so I could quickly see everything at a glance and how it fit within my financial goals.
- Customizable Budgets: with Mint, I could create and customize budgets for all my spending categories, including groceries, childcare, and travel. Mint would track spending against these budgets and alert me if I was close to overspending.
- Automatic Transaction Categorization: Mint automatically categorized transactions, and I could program rules for recurring transactions, like utility bills or rent payments. This feature saved time and provided instant insights into my spending habits.
- Zero-Based Budgeting: although Mint was not a pure envelope-budgeting app, it did support zero-based budgeting so that I could account for every dollar I earned each month, even if a portion of that money went into savings.
When I started looking for a Mint replacement, I wanted the best budgeting app that mimicked my favorite features in Mint. I soon discovered that Monarch includes everything I desired and more.
Total Customization
When it comes to customizations within a user-friendly interface, Monarch is by far the best budgeting app for the job. After a couple of weeks, I learned just how much I could customize the app to fit my needs, and after several months of using it, I still haven’t fully utilized its potential.
With the Monarch app, you can add any number of accounts. I added my checking accounts, high-yield savings, health savings accounts, credit cards, and loans. Doing so gives me an instant snapshot of my net worth and available funds at any time. Furthermore, having all of this information in the app makes it easy for me to utilize the Goal Setting feature and see my progress monthly.
I love the customization options within the budget categories. You can add as many budget line items as you want, allowing users to break down items into bite-size pieces or leave them in larger chunks.
Personally, I take full advantage of the budget groups and then include categories within them. For example, I have a budget group for Health and Wellness. Within this group, I have categories for Physical Health, Mental Health, Medications, Self-Care, and Pet Care. This allows me to track spending for all of my health needs and keep tabs on how much I spend on less necessary things like massages versus visits to my therapist.
Finally, I can change categories at any time or change the budget allocations based on the month or time of year, meaning I don’t need to budget money into the “Christmas Shopping” category during the first six months of the year but can slowly build it up starting in January. Then, if I set the budget for that category to roll over, I can wait to spend funds until I’m ready to shop but still know exactly how much has accumulated. This is ideal for annual expenses, like property taxes, and categories where spending may fluctuate seasonally, such as clothing.
Variety of Views
Like Mint, the Monarch app includes an account overview where you can see all of your accounts at a glance. This dashboard makes it easy to compare incoming and outgoing funds and shows your assets vs. liabilities, total net worth, and more. You can also view each individual account at any time, seeing the total balances without logging into multiple accounts to get this data.
However, you don’t simply have to use the dashboard or overview. You can also view your monthly budget, which breaks down your income and expenses into categories. This view even has a neat little bar for each category, so you can see how much you should have spent at this point in the month compared to where you are. This is ideal for things like groceries, fuel, and “fun money,” so that you don’t overspend in the first part of the month.
Finally, you can also view everything based on transactions. Each transaction, whether money is incoming or outgoing, is visible by day. You can use this view to correctly categorize individual line items or verify your transactions with your physical receipts (if that’s your bag of chips).
Collaborative Budgeting
Finances are a hot topic for many couples, but it shouldn’t be. Monarch helps make it easy for partners to be transparent about money by sharing as much or as little as you want within the app. All I had to do was send an email invite to my girlfriend, and she was prompted to create her username and password. This means couples can be on the same page about spending habits from the get-go, whether living together or not.
Furthermore, since I regularly meet with a financial coach, I wanted to have a way to share my data with her. Monarch’s Advisor program lets you share your data with a registered financial planner but limits what they can view. This access also gets revoked every 60 days unless you renew it, giving you peace of mind if you need to switch to a new financial planner.
Comparing Monarch to Other Mint Replacements
As someone who regularly reviews tech products and apps, I didn’t just settle for the first Mint replacement I tested. I tried several apps besides Monarch to ensure I picked the best budget app for my financial planning and tracking. I then compared the Monarch app to popular options, notably Copilot and YNAB.
Monarch App vs. Copilot
Monarch and Copilot share similarities in how they display spending, but I found several issues I couldn’t get past with Copilot. For instance, the app is only supported on Apple devices now, meaning my partner couldn’t access it on her Windows PC, nor could I access it on my Android phone.
Also, Copilot only tracked spending. It did not account for income as Monarch does, meaning I had to maintain a separate spreadsheet to categorize and account for my monthly income from my full-time job and freelance gigs that pay through apps like Wise. This meant Copilot could never warn me when I was at risk of overspending.
For these reasons, I dropped Copilot after just a couple of months.
Monarch App vs. YNAB
I also considered YNAB as a Mint replacement due to its overwhelming popularity. However, I quickly identified problems I could not cope with within the YNAB app.
My primary issue with YNAB is how rigid it is. Unlike Monarch, you cannot customize the app, as YNAB is based on its unique approach to budgeting. While this may work for some, I already had an established budgeting system with Mint and wanted to transfer that to a new app, a concept that was impossible in YNAB.
Furthermore, YNAB primarily focuses on day-to-day cash flow, not tracking debt paydowns, investment building, or savings. Since part of my reason for budgeting involved paying off debts and building my savings, I preferred Monarch’s capabilities.
Although initially sad to see Mint go, I am glad I found such an incredible Mint alternative with the Monarch app. Money management apps have helped me transform my personal finance journey, like Notion has transformed another Make Tech Easier writer’s life.
Image credit: DepositPhotos. All screenshots by Megan Glosson.
Megan Glosson –
Staff Writer
Megan Glosson is a freelance technology writer based in Nashville, TN. She has extensive experience working with everything from printers to smart home systems. Megan has created thousands of articles for online publications and company blogs, including How-To Geek, Clean Email, and Review Geek. In addition to her freelance work, Megan is the Senior Content Manager for a digital marketing agency. When she’s not writing, you will probably find Megan playing board games with her partner and two children or swimming in the pool. You can check out Megan’s entire portfolio on her website, https://www.meganglosson.com/.
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