To effectively "start over" with your financial data in Monarch Money, particularly regarding your historical account balances and net worth tracking, you'll need to utilize the data management settings within the application.
Resetting Your Financial History by Deleting Balance Snapshots
"Starting over" in a financial tracking app often implies wiping past financial trends, historical balances, or erroneous entries to begin with a clean slate. Monarch Money provides a direct way to achieve this by allowing you to delete historical balance snapshots for your connected accounts. This action effectively resets your historical view without necessarily requiring you to delete every single transaction.
Step-by-Step Guide to Deleting Account History
Follow these precise steps within the Monarch Money application to set a new starting point for your financial data:
- Navigate to Settings: Open Monarch Money and find the Settings option, typically located in the left-hand navigation menu.
- Select Data: Within the Settings menu, click on the Data section. This area manages your account information and historical records.
- Locate Deletion Option: Scroll down until you find the section specifically titled "Delete synced account balance snapshots."
- Choose Your Start Date: Underneath the prompt "Delete account balance history before...", you will find a date selector. Pick the specific date from which you wish your data to effectively begin. All balance snapshots recorded prior to this chosen date will be permanently removed.
This action specifically cleans up historical balance data, providing you with a fresh starting point for tracking your net worth and individual account trends from your desired date forward.
Understanding the Impact of Deleting Balance History
It's crucial to understand what this action accomplishes and what it does not, to ensure it aligns with your definition of "starting over."
What this action does:
- Resets Historical Balances: All historical balance snapshots for your synced accounts prior to your chosen date will be permanently deleted. This means your net worth graph and individual account balance graphs will start fresh from that date, providing a new baseline.
- Provides a Clean Slate for Trends: By removing old balance data, you can begin tracking your financial progress and trends from a specific point in time, free from any past inconsistencies or data you no longer wish to see reflected in your historical overview.
What this action does not do (unless manually performed separately):
- Delete Individual Transactions: This feature specifically targets balance snapshots. Individual transactions from before your chosen date may still exist in your account ledger. To fully "start over" by removing all past transactions, you would generally need to manually delete specific accounts and their associated transactions, or delete transactions individually, which is a separate, more extensive process.
- Disconnect Linked Accounts: Your existing bank, credit card, and investment account connections remain active. You do not need to re-link them after deleting balance history.
- Remove Budgets or Goals: Existing budgets, financial goals, or custom categories are generally unaffected by this action unless they heavily rely on historical balance data for their calculations or tracking.
When to Consider Resetting Your Data
There are several practical scenarios where deleting balance history can be beneficial:
- Fresh Start: You've recently migrated to Monarch Money from another financial tool and want to ensure a perfectly clean start without importing or seeing old data inconsistencies.
- Correcting Errors: If you've encountered significant errors in past data entries, account balances, or categorizations that are too cumbersome to correct individually, a clean slate from a specific date can be more efficient.
- Specific Life Events: You want to track your financial progress from a particular life event, such as a new job, marriage, or debt payoff, forward.
- Performance Improvement: For some users, reducing the amount of historical data Monarch Money needs to process might improve load times or overall application performance.
Summary of Action
To summarize the primary method for "starting over" by resetting your historical financial view:
| Action for "Starting Over" | Location | Primary Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Delete Balance History | Settings > Data | Resets historical account balance snapshots |
By following these steps, you can effectively reset your historical financial overview in Monarch Money, establishing a new starting point for tracking your progress.
