Why I Stopped Using Monarch Money (And What I Built Instead)

When Mint shut down in March 2024, I started looking for a replacement. The recommendation I kept seeing was Monarch Money. It had been built by Val Agostino — Mint's first product manager — someone who understood exactly what Mint got wrong and had years to build something better. The reviews were strong. The personal finance subreddits were full of people who'd made the switch and didn't look back.

I signed up expecting the money anxiety to stop.

It didn't. And figuring out why took longer than I expected — because the app wasn't broken. It was doing exactly what it was designed to do. The problem was that what it was designed to do didn't match what I actually needed.

I want to be honest here, because I think it matters: Monarch is genuinely good at what it does.

The interface is clean and modern. Plaid syncing works reliably. You can track net worth over time, monitor investment performance, set up detailed budget categories with rollover support, split transactions between partners, and see a comprehensive picture of where your money went each month. When Mint shut down, Monarch absorbed a large wave of displaced users — and most of them stayed, which tells you something.

If you want a comprehensive financial dashboard — one that shows you investments, net worth trends, spending breakdowns, and budget analytics in a single place — Monarch delivers that better than anything else I've seen at its price point ($95/year as of 2026).

I'm not here to talk you out of it. My experience with Monarch says more about what I needed than about what the app got wrong.

Here's what would happen when I opened Monarch to check in on our spending:

I'd land on the dashboard and see a lot of things. A net worth graph trending upward. A cash flow chart. Budget progress bars across a dozen categories. Investment account balances. Bill reminders. Spending trends with breakdowns by category, subcategory, and merchant. It was all accurate. It was all organized.

And I'd close the app feeling more unsettled than when I opened it.

The problem wasn't the data. The problem was that I had one question — are we okay this month? — and the app returned twelve pieces of information, none of which was a direct answer to that question. Our net worth was trending up. Our investment accounts looked fine. The grocery budget category showed we were over, but the dining category had room, and I wasn't sure how to reconcile those. The cash flow chart suggested we'd had a good month, but I couldn't tell if that was because we'd been careful or because some recurring expenses hadn't hit yet.

I'd been trying to fix the anxiety with more information. It wasn't working.

This same pattern had happened with Mint before it shut down. Mint tracked everything — spending, net worth, credit score, investments, bill reminders, even credit card offers. The information was technically there. The answer to "are we okay?" was buried in it somewhere. But I couldn't find it on demand, and not being able to find it made everything worse.

My wife and I kept coming back to the same question: are we okay this month?

Not "what is our net worth?" Not "how are our investments performing?" Not "what's our cash flow trend over the last six months?" Just: have we spent too much? Do we have room for anything unexpected? Will we end the month having saved something, or not?

Monarch can technically answer this. There's a budget section that tracks spending against monthly allocations. But getting to a clear answer required navigating to the right section, understanding how rollover budgets worked, and cross-referencing a few different numbers. It required work. And when answering a simple question requires work, you stop asking it.

We'd go several days without checking in. Then we'd open the app, feel overwhelmed by what had piled up, and close it without a clear answer. The anxiety would spike instead of settling. Then we'd go another few days without opening it.

I've since talked to enough people who felt the same way to know this isn't unusual. The apps that are most powerful for power users are often the ones that feel most intimidating to everyone else — not because the users are doing something wrong, but because the tool is built for a different job.

The thing that changed our relationship with money wasn't a better dashboard. It was reducing the dashboard to one number.

Total spent this month: $X. Left in budget: $Y.

That's it. That's the whole thing.

When that number is right in front of you — not buried behind net worth charts, investment balances, and multi-category budget breakdowns — you can actually use it. You stop dreading the check-in because the check-in takes thirty seconds and ends with a clear answer. You start doing it more often, because each time you leave with information you can act on rather than questions you can't answer.

The positive reinforcement also matters more than I expected. When you stay under budget and see that you saved something this month, that feedback lands differently when it's the main thing you see — not the fourth metric down in a dashboard section you have to scroll to find.

Anxiety about money is often less about the money itself than about not knowing. Clear numbers stop the spiral. Buried numbers — even correct, accurate, well-organized buried numbers — can start it.

I'm a developer. After months of searching for what I needed and not finding it, I built it.

BBBudget is built around one idea: spending-first budgeting. Connect your accounts via Plaid, set a monthly budget, tag your transactions (fast — not like combing through a credit card statement line by line), and see one thing front and center: how much is left this month.

My wife and I share the same view. When she tags a grocery run, I see it immediately. When I tag a dinner out, she sees it. There's no "my spending" versus "your spending" — just one shared picture. Couples finances require both people to have the same information at the same time, and that has to be built in from the start, not tacked on as an invite feature.

I also built it as a PWA — a progressive web app — so it works on any browser, any device, without a separate native download. Add it to your home screen and it works like a native app.

BBBudget is $5–8/month. Monarch is $95/year. The price difference reflects the scope difference: BBBudget doesn't do investment tracking, net worth dashboards, cash flow projections, or rollover budgets. If you need those things, this is not the right tool. But if you just need to know where your money went and how much is left, you shouldn't be paying for a financial planning platform to find out.

I want to be clear: I'm not saying Mint and Monarch are bad apps. They're not. They work well for a lot of people. They just didn't work for me and my wife — not because of any flaw in the apps, but because our question was narrower than what they were built to answer.

Monarch Money is probably the right choice if you:

• Want a comprehensive financial platform in a single app
• Track investments and want visibility into net worth trends
• Use or want detailed rollover budgets across many spending categories
• Need robust reporting and don't mind a learning curve to get there
• Are willing to pay $95/year for a full-featured financial dashboard

BBBudget is probably the right choice if you:

• Feel overwhelmed by detailed financial dashboards
• Want a fast, clear answer to "how much is left this month?"
• Manage finances as a couple and want a shared real-time view without setup friction
• Don't need investment tracking and want a simpler, cheaper tool ($5–8/month)
• Came from Mint and want something focused on spending, not financial planning

Both apps sync via Plaid. Both work for couples. The meaningful difference is what each puts front and center. Monarch shows you your complete financial picture. BBBudget shows you your monthly spending balance.

Neither is universally better. They're for different people with different questions.

If you tried Monarch and felt like the app was impressive but not quite answering the question you actually had — that's the gap BBBudget was built for.

Try BBBudget free →