I wrote about the demise of Mint a couple of years ago, after Intuit killed it to force users to buy TurboTax or whatever bullshit system they want to charge for. We used it for several years off and on to get on top of our finances, with limited success, but that was mainly because we hadn’t set it up correctly. Recently we engaged the services of a financial planner to get on top of our retirement, and through the process of filling out his intake checklist and our initial meeting we realized we had several major blank spots in our spending. We left that meeting with some homework—mainly, figuring out what is going into those blank spots.

After doing some very basic searching, I was pointed at a service called Monarch through some glowing reviews. Basically, it’s a paid online version of Mint, and from all I’ve seen so far, I’d wager the key brains from Mint went out on their own and re-created that service. I signed up for a trial, started plugging my accounts in, and within about 20 mintes had a rough picture of my accounts and those I share with Jen; after she adds hers in we’ll have a much clearer picture of what’s going in and what’s coming out. I’m glad this exists—I was not looking forward to going through my statements line by line.

Renie gave us her old Apple Watch when I was up there a few weeks ago, as she upgraded to the newest and latest. She figured Finn might like one, but we decided (based on our daughter’s spotty record with expensive electronics) that we should hold off. So I decided I’d swap Renie’s Series 4 for my Series 3. What her watch adds are a bunch of biometric features the Series 3 didn’t have, like comprehensive sleep data and better heart and health monitoring. I’ve been wearing it pretty regularly since I came back, and it’s given me some insights into how much good sleep I’m getting (not as much as I need) and where my heart rate (still lower than a snake’s belly) and exercise numbers (definitely not as good as they should be) are. So I cut my nightly beer out this week to see if that helps with my sleep, and even though it’s getting colder in the mornings, I’m re-committing to walking Hazel as much as possible. Thanks Ren!