Ramit Sethi has partnered with Monarch for his Money for Couples podcast, where he helps couples manage money together. His Conscious Spending Plan (CSP) organizes take-home pay into Fixed Costs, Investments, Savings, and Guilt-Free Spending. The partnership with Monarch gives couples a deeper view of their finances in these areas than ever before by helping them see how they are actually spending money.

To learn more about the Conscious Spending Plan, check out Ramit’s Conscious Spending Basics guide.

This article will help you set up Monarch using Ramit’s recommended structure.

Table of Contents

• Getting started
• How the Conscious Spending Plan maps to Monarch
• Set up the Conscious Spending Plan in an existing account
• Review your transactions, budget, and percentages
• Frequently asked questions

Getting started

New to Monarch?

Sign up here through Ramit's custom Monarch link, and Monarch will automatically set up your categories, groups, and goals to reflect the four buckets in Ramit’s Conscious Spending Plan—plus you’ll receive 50% off your first year of Core. Then skip ahead to Review your transactions, budget, and percentages.

Already have a Monarch account?

Follow the steps below to set up the plan manually. 

Note: Adding Ramit's code after you’ve already signed up won’t change your categories or goals.

How the Conscious Spending Plan maps to Monarch

The Conscious Spending Plan (CSP) uses these four areas and suggested percentages of take-home pay:

Remember, the recommended percentages are guidelines, not requirements.

In Monarch, you’ll use category groups to plan for Ramit's Fixed Costs and Guilt-Free Spending buckets. You’ll use goals to track Savings and Investments. Your percentages will be measured against the income in your Net Income group, which you’ll set up below.

Set up the Conscious Spending Plan in an existing account

If you already have Monarch's default categories with transaction history attached, you'll rename and reorganize them to match the CSP format.

Choose your budget type

To set up the Conscious Spending Plan in Monarch, you must use the Category Budget system. If you skip this step, the groups you create won't produce a CSP-style budget.

1. Go to Settings > Budget.
2. Choose Category Budget.

Rename your income group

1. Go to Settings > Categories.
2. In the Income section, select Edit on the Income group.
3. Rename the group to Net Income.

Keep all your income categories in this group so your full take-home pay is counted.

Create your expense groups

1. While still in Settings > Categories, find the Expenses section and select Create Group.
2. Name the group Fixed Costs and select Save.
3. Repeat these steps to create another group called Guilt-Free Spending.

Move and rename your categories

1. While still in Settings > Categories, select a category.
2. Update the Name (and Icon, if you’d like), then change the Group based on the tables below (to move, you can either select from the drop-down menu or drag and drop the category).
3. Select Save.

Fixed Costs

Guilt-Free Spending

Organize your remaining categories

Note: Leave the Transfers group as-is. Transfers move money between accounts, so they should not be included in Fixed Costs or Guilt-Free Spending.

Ramit's plan combines some categories that Monarch lists individually. Choose one of these options for the remaining categories:

• Keep them: Move them into either Fixed Costs or Guilt-Free Spending. Your percentages will be the same because Monarch calculates them at the group level, but you'll have a more detailed category breakdown.

• Remove them: For an exact match to the plan, open the category and select Disable or Delete. If Monarch asks where to reassign its transactions and rules, choose the appropriate category.

  For example:

  • Water, Garbage, and Internet & Cable can be folded into Utilities
  • Gas, Auto Maintenance, Parking & Tolls, Public Transit, and Taxi & Ride Shares can be folded into Transportation
  • Coffee Shops can be folded into Dining Out
  • Student Loans can be folded into Debt Payments
  • Personal and Pets can be folded into Other or Shopping

If you're not sure where to put them, ask yourself: is this a must-pay? Put it in Fixed Costs. Is it a choice? Put it in Guilt-Free Spending.

Delete empty category groups

Once the remaining default groups are empty, you can delete them.

Set up Investments and Savings with goals

Investments and Savings live in Goals, not in your budget categories. Select Goals in the sidebar, then from the Save up tab, select Add goal, and create these six goals:

• Savings: Emergency Fund, Vacations, Gifts, Other Savings
• Investments: Taxable Brokerage, Roth IRA (if applicable)

A target amount is optional, but adding one lets Monarch show your progress toward each goal. You can also connect a goal to the account where that money lives so your progress updates automatically. 

For more information on goals, including detailed setup instructions, see Using Save Up Goals.

Review your transactions, budget, and percentages

Review your recent transactions

Your percentages are only as accurate as your transaction categories, so we recommend reviewing the last few months of entries from the Transactions tab to ensure they’re categorized correctly.

Tips:

• You can recategorize transactions in bulk. Select Edit multiple, choose the transactions you want to change, then select Edit and choose the correct category.
• Create rules as you go. When you change a transaction's category, Monarch may offer to create a rule. For merchants you'll see again, create the rule and apply it to existing transactions to update all past transactions from that merchant at once.

Review your budget and percentages

Next, check your Budget tab to make sure your planned amounts are right. Once you've entered your budget for the month—including your income categories—Monarch can show you how your plan compares with Ramit's CSP targets.

From the budget page, you can hover over the budgeted amount for Fixed Costs, Guilt-Free Spending, or your Goals total. Monarch displays “X% of budgeted income” so you can check each area against the recommended ranges:

• Fixed Costs: 50–60%
• Guilt-Free Spending: 20–35%
• Investments and Savings combined: 15–20%

A few notes:

• This is a percentage of your budgeted income, so be sure your Net Income categories are accurate or the math will look off.
• The percentage appears on groups, not on individual categories.

Note: This hover is available on the web app only.

Frequently asked questions

Will renaming a default category change how Monarch categorizes my transactions?

No. Monarch still recognizes the category behind the scenes, so automatic categorization keeps working. You can also create rules to make sure transactions use the correct category.

Will I lose any transaction history?

No. Renaming or moving categories won’t delete your transactions. If you disable or delete a category that has existing transactions, Monarch will ask where to reassign its transactions and rules.

Does my partner need to complete these steps too?

No. Category setup is shared across your household, so only one household member needs to make these changes.

Do I have to use these exact names?

No. You can choose different names, but using the names in this article will make it easier to compare your setup with Ramit’s plan.