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When a $5,000 vacation hits your credit card, your monthly Restaurants average jumps from $400 to $5,400 and Rocket Money's projected savings goes negative for the next several months. Without an ignore feature, your budget tools become useless for normal months because the math is dominated by the outlier. Rocket Money's two ignore modes — Ignore from Budgets and Ignore from Everything — exist to handle exactly this. This guide walks through both, when to pick which, and how to find ignored transactions later.

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Verified workflow (from Rocket Money Help Center)

  1. Open Rocket Money (mobile or web).
  2. Tap the transaction you want to ignore.
  3. Tap the Ignore row.
  4. To view ignored transactions: go to the Spending tab, scroll to the bottom, tap the Ignored box.

Ignored transactions remain in spending reports but are excluded from budgeted spending. You can also create transaction rules to auto-ignore by amount or description.

Source: Rocket Money Help Center — verified May 2026

What's in this guide

The two ignore modes — what each one does

Rocket Money offers two distinct ignore modes, with different effects on your reporting:

Ignore from Budgets. Per the Help Center: "This will keep the transaction in your spending report but will ignore it from your budgeted spending."

What this means: the transaction still appears in your overall Spending view (and in transaction history), but it's excluded from the budget category math. Your Restaurants budget category still shows the average month's spending; this one big anomaly doesn't distort it.

Ignore from Everything. Per the Help Center: "This will ignore the transaction from all budget, spending and other reports. The transaction will still show up in your Transactions tab."

What this means: the transaction effectively disappears from any analytical view. Spending charts don't include it, budget math doesn't include it, reports don't include it. The transaction record stays in your Transactions tab as a historical line item, but it's invisible everywhere else.

The difference matters: Ignore from Budgets says "this happened, but it's not a typical month's spending — show me the typical pattern." Ignore from Everything says "this didn't happen for analytical purposes — make it go away."

How to ignore a transaction (mobile)

Per Rocket Money's Help Center, mobile flow:

  1. Navigate to the Transactions tab.
  2. Tap on the transaction you wish to ignore.
  3. Select the Ignore option.
  4. Choose:
  5. Ignore from Budgets, or
  6. Ignore from Everything.
  7. Tap Apply to 1 transaction to confirm. (If you've selected multiple transactions, the button updates to reflect the count.)

Mobile ignore is available to all users (free tier included) for individual transactions.

How to ignore transactions (desktop, Premium)

Per the Help Center, desktop website ignore is Premium-only:

  1. Navigate to the Transactions tab.
  2. Click the box to the left of the transaction(s) — you can select multiple at once.
  3. Select Ignore from the options.
  4. Choose Ignore from Budgets or Ignore from Everything.
  5. Confirm with Apply to N transactions.

The desktop website's strength here is bulk operation — you can select 10 transactions at once and ignore them all in one action. Mobile is one-at-a-time. If you have a backlog of transactions to clean up, Premium + desktop is meaningfully faster than mobile.

How to find ignored transactions later

Per the Help Center: "In the mobile app or on web, go to your Spending tab and scroll to the bottom of the screen. Tap on the Ignored box and you'll be able to see those transactions."

Steps:

  1. Open the Spending tab.
  2. Scroll to the bottom of the screen.
  3. Tap the Ignored box.
  4. The list of ignored transactions appears, with the ignore mode visible.

You can un-ignore a transaction by tapping it and removing the Ignore status, then choosing a real category. The transaction goes back to counting in your budget calculations.

When to ignore vs delete vs categorize as Transfer

Three different tools that can each remove a transaction from your budget calculations. Choose based on intent:

Ignore from Budgets. Real spending you want to keep visible but exclude from budget averages. Big planned purchases (car, vacation, wedding ring) where you've saved separately and don't want it counted against your monthly Restaurants or Travel limits.

Ignore from Everything. Transactions that aren't real for budget purposes — duplicates, refunds-then-rebuys you want to net to zero, transactions that were posted then disputed away.

Categorize as Transfer. Money moved between your accounts. Transfers don't count as spending in any view by design; they don't need to be ignored, just correctly categorized.

Categorize as Reimbursement. Money you got back from a friend, employer, or other party for an expense you covered. The Reimbursement category handles the netting.

Delete (manual transactions only). Per How to Add Transactions Manually, you can delete transactions you manually added. Auto-imported transactions can't be deleted — only ignored.

Quick decision tree:

  • Real spending, but anomalous → Ignore from Budgets.
  • Not real spending (transfer, reimbursement) → Categorize as Transfer or Reimbursement, not Ignore.
  • Duplicate or analytical noise → Ignore from Everything (or fix the duplicate — see Troubleshooting Duplicate Transactions).
  • Manually-entered transaction added in error → Delete (Premium).

Common scenarios — pick the right ignore mode

A field guide to which mode fits which scenario:

Big planned purchase (car, vacation, appliance). → Ignore from Budgets. You did spend the money; you just don't want it skewing the typical month.

Charge that was refunded shortly after (you bought, then returned). → Either: pair the original charge and the refund (the math nets to zero), or Ignore from Everything for both. The refund-tracking workflow is in How to Track Refunds in Rocket Money.

Duplicate transaction. → Ignore from Everything (after confirming it's a duplicate). See Troubleshooting Duplicate Transactions in Rocket Money.

Charity donation that's tax-deductible. → Don't Ignore. Categorize as Tax-Deductible to track for year-end. See expense tracking.

Reimbursement from your roommate for shared utilities. → Don't Ignore. Categorize as Reimbursement. See Working with Reimbursements & Shared Bills in Rocket Money.

Transfer from checking to savings. → Don't Ignore. Categorize as Transfer.

Pension contribution that comes out of paycheck. → Either: Ignore from Everything (if your linked income is net-of-pension), or count as Income with the contribution as a separate Investments category (if you want to track gross income).

One-off bonus or unusual income. → Ignore from Budgets if it would inflate your "monthly income" calc unrealistically; otherwise count it as Income.

Cash withdrawals (you took $200 out of the ATM). → Often Ignore from Everything, since the actual spending happens later in cash and the withdrawal isn't itself the transaction. Pair with manual cash transaction entries (Premium) or accept the gap.

Cleaning up many transactions at once? Premium adds desktop-website bulk ignore — select 10 transactions, ignore them all at once. Much faster than tapping through them on a phone.

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How this compares to YNAB and Monarch

The two-mode ignore concept is one of Rocket Money's more thoughtful design choices:

Rocket Money. Two distinct ignore modes (Budgets vs Everything). Mobile-individual, desktop-bulk (Premium). Straightforward UX. The cleanest of the four for the "anomaly that's still real spending" scenario.

YNAB. No direct equivalent of "Ignore from Budgets." YNAB users handle large outlier purchases by funding them in a dedicated category (the "True Expenses" pattern) — a more disciplined approach but more setup work. To exclude a transaction entirely, YNAB has a "Hide" feature on accounts but transaction-level hiding is less common.

Empower. Functional ignore with less granularity. One mode rather than two.

Monarch. Hide transactions feature with similar effect to Rocket Money's Ignore from Everything. No separate equivalent for Ignore from Budgets — Monarch's approach is to use category exclusions or rules instead.

For users who frequently want to flag big planned purchases without losing spending visibility, Rocket Money's Ignore from Budgets is the cleanest implementation among the four.

Try Rocket Money Free tier identifies recurring charges, helps you spot subscriptions to cancel, and includes bill negotiation (available to all users — Rocket Money charges a 35-60% success fee on first-year savings only when negotiation succeeds). Premium ($7-$14/month sliding scale) adds Smart Savings, Concierge cancellation help, real-time sync, and detailed credit-score reporting. Try Rocket Money →

FAQ

Will an ignored transaction still show up in transaction history? Yes — both ignore modes keep the transaction in the Transactions tab. Only the analytics treatment differs.

Can I bulk-ignore on mobile? No — mobile is one-at-a-time. Bulk ignore is desktop-Premium.

What if I change my mind and want to un-ignore? Find the transaction (in the Ignored section of Spending, or in Transactions search), tap it, and re-categorize to a real category. The ignore is removed.

Will ignoring affect my tax-deductible flag? Probably not what you want. If a transaction is both tax-deductible and an anomaly, the right move is to categorize it as Tax-Deductible (not ignore). Tax tracking and budget exclusion are separate concerns.

Will Rocket Money detect a recurring subscription I've ignored? Yes — subscription detection runs independently of ignore. An ignored subscription transaction is still detected and shows in the Recurring tab. If you want to remove it from subscription tracking too, that's a separate flow in Recurring.

Are ignored transactions exported when I export? Generally yes — the export includes all transactions. The Ignore status is a metadata flag, not a deletion. See How to Export Transactions From Rocket Money.

Can I create a rule that auto-ignores future transactions? Yes. Transaction Rules can target a category (Ignored) for matching transactions. See How to Create Transaction Rules in Rocket Money.

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Not financial, legal, or tax advice. We earn a commission if you sign up for Rocket Money through a link on this page; the price is the same. Every claim is verified against Rocket Money's official Help Center documentation and the December 12, 2025 Content Affiliate Talking Points where applicable.