FinTech News
Budgeting App Monarch Introduces Monarch Plus Product Tier
A popular budgeting and personal finance app is introducing a new service tier with additional features.
About Monarch Plus:
Today, Monarch announced the launch of its new premium product called Monarch Plus. This new tier is meant to provide greater financial planning tools, including forecasting and other future-centric features.
With Monarch Plus, customers will be able to explore different money scenarios and paths, seeing how today’s spending may affect future money goals. For example, Monarch can create a model showing how saving now may help members shave years off their retirement goal age. These models are created using account data that users already have linked to the app.
This new Plus tier also offers tools for business owners, including the ability to track business finances and rental properties. That means that users can now have all of their personal finances and business finances in one place, which can be helpful for tax time.
Members can also take advantage of more detailed asset allocation details, as well as investment gains/losses. Lastly, Monarch Plus currently offers one free will from the digital estate planning platform Trust & Will. However, this perk is described as being for “early” Monarch Plus subscribers.
Of course, these new features come in addition to everything already offered with the Monarch Core plan.
For new members, an annual subscription to Monarch Plus will be $299 per year, with no monthly option at this time. However, existing Monarch members can currently claim a 7-day free trial and get $100 off their first year of Monarch Plus if they choose to upgrade. The Monarch Core subscription continues to cost $99.99 per year or $14.99 per month.
What They’re Saying:
Announcing the new Plus option, Monarch co-founder and CEO Val Agostino stated, “Monarch members have consistently expressed an interest in forecasting tools that can better inform major financial decisions. Monarch Plus enables them to take everything already connected in Monarch and extend it even further to model the future.”
Agostino added, “It’s a living financial forecast that moves as your life does, so you’re able to compare different scenarios and make decisions with confidence.”
My Thoughts:
I have mixed feelings about this new Monarch tier. On the one hand, I understand that these apps do need ways to monetize in order to be sustainable. Yet, I do partially resent the idea of creating features but locking behind an even higher paywall rather than just bettering the existing features. Then again, I suppose it’s good that this now gives those interested in the Plus features the option to upgrade, whereas adding these tools to the Core plan might lead to a price hike for that tier.
In any case, as a Monarch subscriber who still really needs to explore the app in detail, I am now also interested to see what these Monarch Plus features are all about. Hopefully I can do both at once with a week-long trial.
By the way, if you are interested in Monarch, you can get 50% your first year of a Core plan using my referral link. Oddly, though, this discount is not currently available for the Plus plan.
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