Best Budgeting App?

I see a lot of YNAB supporters. Has anyone had Monarch and YNAB experience so they can compare?

I had been using Monarch for the past year at the $49 per year promo rate but as it came up for renewal I've just switched over to Origin. Origin currently has a $1 for the first year promo and then it goes up to $99 per year after that (the same as Monarch). So far I've actually enjoyed features within Origin around budgeting and some of the same features that Monarch has as well to easily see all of my bank accounts and credit card accounts in a single view. Origin also has AI capabilities to ask questions if that's of interest to you. I use Empower for my net worth tracking as well and haven't hooked up my Vanguard account to Origin but it looks like there are more features available in that regard in addition to budgeting.

Our family has been YNAB users for 10 years. The FI progress, goal realization, and knowing where our money goes now and in the future has more than outweighed the annual subscription.

Direct linking and importing makes a huge difference. I can immediately check transactions and put them in their categories, and see how things are progressing for the month and in the future.

Have you broken down what you want your tool to accomplish for you? That may help you evaluate what could be the better step-up - YNAB, Monarch, etc.

I’m a huge fan of YNAB

I've been using Monarch for a year and LOVE it! Well worth the price (which is reduced Year 1). It's saved me hundreds just from catching false credit card charges ($200 Prime Business - huh?) that I otherwise might have overlooked. I still use Excel for tracking quarterly net worth, but Monarch has been far superior for organizing all the other budgeting.

I really enjoy using Monach Money and Projection Lab.

Another plug for YNAB! It's important to know, though, that trying YNAB entails both their methodology (zero-based budgeting, AKA "Give every dollar a job") and their software. The software was built in a way to enable users to live by the methodology, so it will only "click" for you if you buy into the methodology itself.

Once you get over the learning curve, it's an incredible approach to money, and works really, really well with FI-minded people. You get a clear sense for what it costs to be you, which is a key input for FI-related calculations and forecasting.

I also pair YNAB with ProjectionLab for the long-term planning, and there is a user-built integration between the two that updates account balances in ProjectionLab based on data in YNAB.

Happy to share more anytime!

Budgeting specifically - I use "The Budgeting App". You have to enter every transaction but I like that part. I'm just happy to have moved out of the Google Notes on my phone where I had to do all the math myself. It's very easy to use and visually very helpful because each category will be red or green depending on how much of your allotment you've spent in it and where you are at in the month. So I know if I need to calm down or I've still got plenty of leeway.

I'll leave another vote for Monarch! We've used it for 2 years and while there's many features I love, my favorite is that it syncs all mine and my husbands' accounts in one place (8 bank accounts, 5 investment accounts, 9 credit cards...)

We can each have our own users in the same "household", and they've recently added a feature where you can tag the "owner" of each account to view combined or separate net worth. (It also shows real time change in our investment accounts and includes our Zillow home value estimate in net worth!)

It makes reviewing/logging every expense from all our different accounts truly painless. That means I'm way more likely to actually regularly look at my budget. That alone is worth $100/year to me.

If people are interested, here's a referral link for 50% off the first year:

You're invited to join Monarch with 50% off your first year.

YNAB 10000%. I’ve been using it for 6 or 7 years both for myself and my business. You can drill down and find anything you need about your finances by running reports. You can also get a grasp of how much you’re actually spending on all the different categories of your life. Plus they’re an awesome company from what I can tell.

Within Fidelity (where most should be investing), desktop version: "Full View" is free and it pulls in data from external accounts you connect.

Likewise, your bank or other financial institution might already be able to do the same thing for you - don't forget to check.

For decades, I've used Quicken Deluxe to pull in every transaction.

BUT (and it's a BIG BUT)... in reality, our household got to FI/FIRE 5 years ago NEVER budgeting (anti-budgeting). Just setup systems and automations that took care of "paying future self first" and friction-free, kept separate accounts for Emergency Funds and Sinking Funds, and then just spent within the "Spending" account. Know that spending more than needed for things that don't light you up takes away from FI or other things that WOULD light you up.

The best budget would just have 2 Categories: Income or Expense.

Maybe next-best would expand Expense into just "Mandatory" (unchangeable) and "Discretionary" (you get to choose/influence).... and all you need to keep an eye on is that Discretionary line.

Control what you can control, don't mind the rest.

I used the free EveryDollar App from 2017-2025. Now I pay for it. Dave must not realize it, however, you can link all of your credit cards to the app and it will track your spending. I virtually do not have to input ANYTHING manually anymore. The purchases show up in the app within 48 hours and I just categorize them accordingly. This means that no purchases slip between the cracks and my wife is officially off the hook to input purchases.

Since I have started "Velocity Banking" I do not use my bank account for anything except the Mortgage and utility bills. Everything goes on credit cards and the purchases are synced to EveryDollar automatically.

Some brokerage accounts will let you add and track "other" or "external" assets which can be tracked ticker symbols or arbitrarily valued. I have found that due to my frugal by default tendencies, it is enough for me to simply track approximate values of HSA, IRA, Roth etc in this way with no line-item tracking at all.

Side note: I'm in the school of thought that says not to bother including your home or car in your net worth unless you would actually sell them to raise cash in a pinch. If you are in the market to trade up, that's a separate calculation.

Wish I had seen this one sooner. Got Quicken yesterday. Working on set up but not sure it’s got everything we need with 2 rentals, lots of investment accounts, a cleaning biz and I’m putting my mom as a biz since I take care of her and her finances.

Time to go watch some YouTube… 😹

I've used ynab in the past, but switch to monarch. I've been very happy with it.

I've been using Actual Budget for a while now. It doesn't support (at least not for US accounts) auto-importing of transactions from your financial accounts, but that's my preference as I don't want to be giving access to them to third parties.

It's a very good option for anyone who wants everything financial kept purely local (there's an offline desktop app, or if you're familiar with self-hosting you can run your own instance on a home server).

Your Finances — made simple | Actual Budget

Another vote for YNAB for me. I love the community and the control it has given me. I know others talk about Monarch and I am curious but also loyal to YNAB. It's working awesome for our family so I am sticking with it!

if someone finds something better than Empower, please let me know. It must be free and with account sync capabilities.

I've been using YNAB since 2015 and love it...I use the YNAB4 (Classic) version still, so it doesn't cost anything for me. YNAB was the initial driving force for me to become free from debt and gain control of my money, and I do appreciate the zero based budget approach. I'm intrigued by Monarch and heard great things as well. YNAB has been a full community though and in the past had forums and challenges that helped support this financial freedom lifestyle. I am loving that ChooseFI is now stepping into this role more.

I’ll put another plug in for YNAB! I’ve used it since 2023 and I love it. I love obsessively tracking every dollar. When I first started using it, I interacted with it every day. Now that I’ve gotten the hang of budgeting better, I interact with it more like every 2 weeks. But it’s so helpful to see where my money should be allocated to. You get 34 days free so it’s worth trying out for sure!

I've been using EveryDollar (free version) since 2020. If you want to hook it up to your bank, that's the paid version. But I've found it easy to use and has helped me reach FIRE this year!

I used YNAB for over 10 years and it was life changing. I highly recommend it! Really helped me build good habits and feel where my money was going. It is a straight up budgeting app.

For no other reason than it was just time for a change, I signed up for Monarch. It’s a totally different mindset than YNAB and took me time to wrap my head around, but I like the focus on cash flow rather than following a strict budget. It has tons of additional features and is a really nice user experience.

Costs for both are similar.

I’ve tried YNAB twice but personally found its system confusing and stressful. It was causing me too much anxiety to have to add in every cent spent and the setup felt negative framed to me personally. I switched to monarch six month ago and am much happier. Same functionality in a much more intuitive way. Great visuals of spend and very easy tracking. If you don’t log expenses for a week, instead of breaking the system, monarch will tag very smartly and keep the system going. By far my favorite app so far

Zach, I’ve used YNAB for a little over two years and am a big fan. I used to create my own spreadsheets, and not only does YNAB do everything I wanted much better than I could have in Excel, but the app is slick and sharing a budget with my wife is really easy. It is a paid app, but I have no doubt that the mindfulness it’s brought to our spending has paid for itself many times over. Last I saw you can do a 34-day free trial, so no harm to just trying it out!