How to Set Financial Goals in Monarch Money (2026 Verified Guide to Goals 3.0)

Monarch's Goals 3.0 is the second-best feature in the app (after the Sankey diagram, in my opinion). It's the difference between "I should save more" and "I'm putting $400 into the Emergency Fund this month, and I'm 38% to my $15,000 target — projected to hit it in March 2027."

Three goal types, each with their own logic. Here's the verified walkthrough.

The fast answer

To create a goal in Monarch:

1. Go to Goals in the left navigation.
2. Click + Add goal.
3. Pick the type: Save Up, Pay Down, or Investment.
4. Set the target amount and target date.
5. Link to the relevant accounts (the goal pulls live balance from linked accounts).
6. Set a monthly contribution amount.
7. Save.

Each goal then shows progress as a percentage, projected hit date, and recommended monthly contribution to stay on track.

What's new in Goals 3.0

Monarch shipped Goals 3.0 in 2025. Per the official announcement: "Monarch has completely reimagined how Goals work to make saving and paying down debt simpler, smarter, and more accurate. Goals 3.0 is more than just a visual refresh — it's a new foundation for managing your financial priorities in one place."

The three goal types in 3.0:

• Save Up Goals — for accumulating money toward a specific target (emergency fund, vacation, down payment, big purchase)
• Pay Down Goals — for paying off debt (credit cards, car loans, student loans, mortgages) with payoff scenarios
• Investment Goals — for tracking long-term investment targets (retirement, college fund) with built-in growth assumptions

The headline change from earlier Goal versions is growth-rate modeling. Per Monarch's documentation: "Savings goals in Monarch now factor in expected investment growth and interest when calculating your progress, projections, and recommended contributions. With growth rates, long-term goals like retirement or education savings reflect what your money is actually doing — not only what you're directly contributing."

This matters because your Roth IRA isn't growing at $0/year — it's growing at whatever your investments earn. Goals 3.0 accounts for that, so you don't have to manually adjust your contribution targets every quarter.

Save Up Goals — verified setup

Save Up goals are dedicated "buckets" for savings targets. They're the most common goal type and the easiest to set up.

How to create one:

1. Go to Goals in the left nav
2. Click + Add goal
3. Select Save Up
4. Enter the goal name (e.g., "Emergency Fund")
5. Set the target amount (e.g., $15,000)
6. Set the target date (e.g., January 2027)
7. Pick funding accounts — which accounts hold (or will hold) money toward this goal
8. Review the default growth rate Monarch suggests
9. Set a monthly contribution (Monarch will recommend one based on the gap)
10. Save

Default growth rates (per Monarch's documentation):

• Checking accounts: 0% (no interest assumed)
• Savings accounts: 3% (typical HYSA range)
• Investment accounts: 7% (long-term equity-heavy assumption)

You can override the default for any goal — e.g., if your HYSA is paying 4.5%, edit the growth rate to 4.5% and Monarch's projections update.

The progress display shows:

• Current balance across linked accounts
• Percentage to goal
• Projected hit date based on contribution rate + growth
• "On track" / "Behind" / "Ahead" status

Pay Down Goals — verified setup

Pay Down goals work in reverse — instead of accumulating to a target, you're reducing a debt balance to zero.

Per Monarch's documentation: "Debt paydown in Monarch helps you track and accelerate your journey toward being debt-free — all from one dashboard. It brings together your loans, credit cards, and other debt accounts into a clear, visual payoff plan, and even allows you to experiment with different pay off scenarios to see how much you can save."

How to create one:

1. Go to Goals → + Add goal
2. Select Pay Down
3. Pick the debt account(s) to track
4. Set the target payoff date
5. Choose your monthly payment amount (Monarch shows minimum + above-minimum options)
6. Optionally model different payoff scenarios — e.g., "What if I add $100/month?"
7. Save

The interesting feature here is the scenario modeling. You can see in real time how adding $50, $100, or $200/month above the minimum changes your payoff date and total interest paid. For credit card debt at 24% APR, the difference between minimum-payment-only and an extra $100/month is often years and thousands of dollars in interest. Monarch makes that math visible.

What Pay Down doesn't do:

• It doesn't recommend the avalanche or snowball method automatically — you decide which debt to attack first
• It doesn't actually move money — you still make payments through your bank or directly to the creditor
• It doesn't account for variable-rate changes — if your credit card APR changes, you'll need to re-create the goal with new assumptions

Investment Goals — verified setup

Investment goals track long-term investment targets like retirement or a college fund. They're similar to Save Up Goals but use higher default growth rates and assume monthly contributions over years/decades.

Common use cases:

• Retirement target (e.g., $1.5M by age 60)
• College fund (e.g., $200K by 2040 for a current 5-year-old)
• Specific portfolio milestones (e.g., $500K invested by age 45)

The setup is the same as Save Up, with the key difference that the growth rate defaults to 7% (representing long-term equity returns net of inflation, roughly).

Step 1: Pick which goals to create first

Most users overdo it on goals — set up 8 of them, lose track, abandon all of them. The pragmatic approach:

For most households, start with 2-3 goals:

1. Emergency Fund (Save Up, $X = 3-6 months of expenses, link to your savings account)
2. One Pay Down goal for your highest-interest debt (credit card or personal loan)
3. One Investment goal for retirement (link to your 401(k) and IRA accounts)

That's enough to focus attention without overwhelming the dashboard. Add more goals later as the first ones progress.

Step 2: Link the right accounts to each goal

Per Monarch's documentation: "You can use any cash, asset, or investment account to contribute to, withdraw from, or spend from Goals. You can also use credit card accounts to spend from funds you've already saved in your goals."

The "linked accounts" choice matters because it's how Monarch knows the goal's current balance:

• Emergency Fund → Link the specific savings account holding the money
• Vacation → Link the savings sub-account or sinking fund
• Down Payment → Link the high-yield savings or brokerage holding the funds
• Roth IRA goal → Link the Roth IRA account itself
• Credit Card Pay Down → Link the credit card account (Monarch shows the balance shrinking)

If you don't have a dedicated account for a goal, you have two choices:

1. Open a sub-account at your bank (most banks let you create unlimited savings sub-accounts for free)
2. Use a virtual / partial allocation — assign part of your main savings account to the goal

The first option is cleaner; the second works fine for tracking but requires manual discipline.

Step 3: Move funds in and out of goals

Per Monarch's documentation: "You can use any cash, asset, or investment account to contribute to, withdraw from, or spend from Goals."

This is more nuanced than older goal versions allowed. The mechanics:

• Contributing — When you transfer money into a linked account, the goal's balance updates. No additional in-app action required.
• Withdrawing — Same in reverse: transferring money out of a linked account reduces the goal balance.
• Spending from a goal — When you spend money tagged as part of a goal (e.g., booking the vacation the Vacation Fund was for), Monarch can mark the goal as completed or partially spent.

To explicitly mark a goal as complete:

1. Open the goal
2. Click ... (three-dot menu)
3. Select Mark as completed or Spend from goal

The "spend from goal" option is useful for goals tied to a specific purchase — once you book the vacation or buy the down payment, the goal is "done" even though the destination account drops.

Step 4: Adjust contribution amounts as life changes

Goals aren't set-and-forget. Life happens — bonus income, job changes, unexpected expenses. Adjust contribution amounts as needed:

1. Open the goal
2. Click Edit or the gear icon
3. Update the monthly contribution amount
4. Optionally update the target date if the new contribution implies a different finish

Monarch will show the impact on the projected hit date as you adjust. If you've fallen behind on a goal, you'll see one of two recommendations:

• "Increase contributions by $X/month to stay on track"
• "Push the target date out by Y months"

Both are valid responses. The right answer depends on which is more flexible — your budget or your timeline.

Goals + Budget: how they play together

Goals and the Budget tab interact via your linked accounts:

• Money you contribute to a goal shows up in your Budget as a savings line item (if you've set a Savings category budget)
• Money you withdraw from a goal shows up as income (or as cash flow neutral, depending on how you've configured it)

For most users, the cleanest mental model:

• Treat each monthly goal contribution like a budgeted "expense" line in your monthly cash flow
• When you spend from the goal (vacation booking, etc.), categorize the spending as the goal's purpose, not as the original income

This keeps the math (income = expenses + savings) consistent across both views.

Goal types we'd recommend by life stage

Early career (20s-30s, building base): - Emergency Fund: 3 months of expenses - One Pay Down (highest interest debt — usually credit card) - One Investment (Roth IRA, $7K/year max)

Mid career (30s-40s, optimizing): - Emergency Fund: 6 months of expenses - Multiple Pay Down (auto loan, student loans) - Investment (401(k) + Roth IRA + brokerage) - Sinking funds (vacation, home repair, holiday)

Pre-retirement (50s+, accumulating): - Emergency Fund: 6-12 months - Investment (catch-up contributions) - Specific retirement target tied to projected expenses - Possibly a separate health/medical reserve

Couples / households: - Use Shared Views so both partners see the same goals - Joint goals (down payment, vacation) get linked to joint accounts - Individual goals (separate retirement) stay personal

How Monarch's goals compare

Monarch's Goals 3.0 is the most flexible in this category — the combination of multiple goal types + growth modeling + payoff scenarios is unique. Empower's goal modeling is also solid but is investment-only and doesn't integrate with day-to-day budgeting.

Common questions

Can I have multiple Save Up goals at once?

Yes — and most users do. There's no limit; we've seen users with 8-10 simultaneous goals (emergency, vacation, holiday, home repair, etc.). The dashboard shows all of them with their respective progress bars.

What happens if I miss a month of contributions?

The projected hit date moves out. Monarch surfaces this as a "you're behind" indicator. No penalty beyond timeline impact.

Can I share a goal with my partner?

Yes — goals linked to joint accounts are visible to both partners under Shared Views. Both can contribute, edit, and mark as completed.

Do investment goals account for taxes?

Not directly. The growth rate is pre-tax. If you're modeling a taxable account with significant capital gains liability, factor that in by lowering the assumed growth rate (e.g., 5% net of taxes instead of 7% gross).

Can I export goal data?

Goal balances and history don't export to CSV (only transaction data does). If you need a record of goal progress, screenshot the Goals dashboard periodically.

What if my goal completes early?

Monarch lets you mark the goal as completed manually or automatically detects when the linked account hits the target. Completed goals stay visible in the Goals dashboard but are de-emphasized.

Do I need separate accounts for each goal?

Not strictly — one savings account can hold money for multiple goals (the linked-account balance gets allocated proportionally). But separate sub-accounts at your bank are cleaner if your bank supports them (most do, free).

Can I contribute to a goal manually if my income is irregular?

Yes — the monthly contribution amount is a target, not a requirement. You can over-contribute in good months, under-contribute in tight months, and Monarch's projected hit date adjusts in real time.

Related reading:

• Monarch Money Review 2026
• Is Monarch Money Worth It?
• How to Connect Bank Accounts to Monarch
• How to Create a Budget in Monarch
• How to Share Finances With a Partner in Monarch
• How to Track Expenses in Monarch
• Monarch vs YNAB
• Best Budgeting Apps for Couples in 2026

Not financial, legal, or tax advice. We earn a commission if you sign up for Monarch through a link on this page; the price is the same. Every step verified against Monarch's official Help Center documentation as of May 7, 2026.