This article explains how to use the default categories in Monarch's budget plan, including Credit Card Payments, Transfer, and Loan Payment. The document also provides instructions for creating a custom category for credit card payments if the card cannot be linked to Monarch.
Your budget plan includes default categories that you may not yet know how to use within your own personal budgeting. These categories are:
- Credit Card Payment
- Transfer
- Loan Payment
We want you to fully understand each of these categories so that you can best organize your finances.
Credit Card Payment
- This category is excluded from your budget plan and spending. It can be used to categorize credit card payments where the credit card may not be linked to Monarch or is a manual account.
Transfer
- This category is excluded from your budget plan and spending. It is automatically used when categorizing payments made to credit card accounts so it does not “double count” expenses. This is also used for moving money between various accounts like checking, savings, etc.
Loan Payment
- This category is included in your budget plan and spending. This can be used to categorize paying off balances such as student or personal loans, etc.
Monarch already tracks your individual credit card charges in real-time throughout the month and categorizes them as expenses. Both credit card payments and transfers are categorized under the Transfer group, which is excluded from your budget and transactions. This is because the money is simply moving between accounts and not coming in or going out.
This may differ from how you typically think of a credit card bill, which is usually seen as an expense. However, since Monarch already tracks each individual credit card charge as an expense, counting the card payment as an expense as well would result in "double counting" expenses.
Credit card payments will show as 2 transactions, the amount credited to pay off the card and the amount debited from the account used to pay the credit card.
If you can't connect your credit card to Monarch you may wish to change this set up. You can create a custom category to create a "Credit Card" category and track it as an expense. This means you won't have insight into the individual charges on each credit card payment but can account for monthly payments.