I'm a CPA — and I still couldn't find the right tool for my own money.
I've always been meticulous about my money — for years, with spreadsheets. I tried the popular apps (Quicken, and Mint before Intuit shut it down), but they left me with an incomplete picture: none are built on real, double-entry accounting the way a business's books are. That accounting matters just as much for your money as it does for any business — it just belongs in the background, working quietly so you can focus on the outcome, not the input. So, being a CPA, I ran my personal finances in QuickBooks. It worked — but it was far more than I needed, at a price that kept climbing. Monarch was good, not great. Nothing quite fit.
“I wanted a tool the rest of us could actually use — the accuracy of real accounting, in plain English.”
The gap? I can bend QuickBooks to my will because I'm an accountant — most people can't, and shouldn't have to. I also learned that bank feeds made me lazy: the software moved so fast I stopped paying attention to my own money. So Marked Money has no feeds and no APIs — it keeps you engaged, protects your privacy, and spares you the broken-connection headaches. (Prefer a shortcut? You can still import.)
I'm an educator at heart — I'd rather teach you to fish. Everything is in plain English, with the accountant's view one switch away when you want it. It's the tool I always wanted: accurate, private, low-cost, and simple enough for anyone — yet solid enough that even accountants would be proud to use it.