I switched to Monarch from YNAB a few months ago because I'd been using YNAB for years and wanted something a little less involved. I'm really loving it. Thanks for building it!
I should say a lot of it comes down to the theory of the budgeting system, not the software itself. Monarch is a more traditional cashflow based system, as opposed to the cash system that YNAB uses. You're budgeting your income in a given month in Monarch, vs. budgeting only money you actually have in YNAB. In general the way you're encouraged to set up your budget is different. YNAB and the YNAB community seems to trend toward creating very granular catergories, and every single transaction has to be viewed and approved. In monarch, you start with a set of default categories that are fairly broad, and they encourage you to use these as they seem to have done a pretty good job at designing filters that automatically classify transactions into those categories. You can still add your custom categories though. Transactions get automatically put in categories and you don't need to review them except for certain circumstances where Monarch decides it can't confidentially categorizes them. Some things get improperly categorized sometimes but this isn't that big of a deal because your categories in Monarch are likely broader than they would be in YNAB, and it's also not like YNAB where the total of your budget represents money you literally have on hand so if the numbers don't line up perfectly it's not the end of the world. In the end Monarch isn't super different from more traditional budgeting apps like mint or rocketmoney, it's just the best executed.
I still think YNAB is invaluable for people that have to really tightly manage money to make sure they have enough cash on hand at the end of the month to pay rent, for example. But now that I'm in a position where I have a little more cushion, I've grown tired of the constant queue of transactions to approve and the general micromanagement in YNAB
I think you and I are pretty similar. I started using when I was in college and overdrafting on my account was a real risk, so tracking every dollar made sense. Now I'm at the point where I'm fine with transactions being automatically categorized so I can focus on the bigger picture and longer term goals. So at first it felt like Monarch would be great.
I just can't wrap my head around the Goals feature. I've noticed the following:
1. Monarch expects specific accounts to be used for specific Goals, for example, a savings account for a vacation fund.
2. A transaction can only be associated with a goal if it is from the account attached to the goal.
I actually completely agree with Monarch on this. If you're using a savings account for your vacation fund and you buy plane tickets with checking, you should have to transfer money to match. In YNAB you don't have to. I choose to regularly create transfers so my account balances match the category balance in YNAB, but YNAB doesn't require me to.
However, this completely breaks down with:
3. Some account types don't support transactions. Retirement accounts show your portfolio but not transactions.
So if I have a Goal to contribute $100 to an IRA every month, and I debit $100 from my checking to transfer it to the IRA, it's impossible to mark this Goal as complete because there is no corresponding credit of $100 in the IRA. The balance of the portfolio increases but that doesn't matter.
I use YNAB, and I totally agree that broad categories are preferable. It's really easy to proliferate categories, but rarely do I find the granularity useful in hindsight
