Three Interesting Things: Monarch Money, Stacking Donations, Marking Texts as Unread

June 12, 2025 / in Business Recommendations, How To, Information Technology / by Jason Terry

Hello friends! It’s time for three more interesting things that are on my mind lately. I got a lot of positive feedback for the post I did last week, so I am going to continue this format for a couple more to see how this goes. Your feedback is much appreciated… if you like these, please let me know.

1) Monarch Money

I used to use Mint to track all of our account values and our net worth. A year or two ago, Intuit bought Mint. They proceeded to basically destroy Mint and I had to find a new solution.

After a bit of research, I found Monarch Money. Monarch Money is currently $99/year… but it is an EXCELLENT tool for tracking all your accounts. It works with even more financial institutions than Mint used to. We have checking and savings accounts at three different banks, multiple credit cards across various companies, a Schwab account, a 401K account at my wife’s employer, 2 cars, a house, iBonds through TreasuryDirect.com and more.

All of this stuff is tracked in Monarch Money. And it all rolls up into a nice net worth number that you can track over time. You can also get alerts for all kinds of things like typical upcoming bills, recurring charge alerts and more. It is an excellent one-stop-shop for keeping an eye on all your financial data. You can sign up for a free trial to see if it will work well for you. I love this software!

2) Stacking Charitable Donations

If you are in the position where you are donating a sizeable amount of money to charity every year, this may be an important idea for you to adopt. Let’s start with the basics.

In 2024, the Standard Deduction for someone claiming Married Filing Jointly is $29,200. And let’s also say that you are donating $25,000 to charity annually. There are a few things you can itemize to get your deductions above $29,200, but a lot of people end up taking the Standard Deduction. Unfortunately, in this situation, you are not getting a tax break for being generous and supporting charities.

But what happens if you decide to SAVE that $25,000 in 2025 (don’t give it to charity just yet.) Let’s assume you used to write a check every month for about $2,000 to charity… instead, put that in a savings account. That money will sit in the account, hopefully earning some interest. And every month the account will grow by $2,000 as you continue to save.

In January of 2026, your savings account has about $26,000 in it… or 13 months of $2,000 per month. You write your charity a check for $25,000 in January. And then you continue to save that $2,000/month until you get to December of 2026. And you write ANOTHER check for $25,000 to your charity. Do you see what has happened here? The charity is still getting the same amount roughly annually… but you are “Stacking” your charitable contributions that used to happen over TWO years into a single year. And now, your charitable contribution is $50,000… well above the Standard Deduction.

Adopting this idea of “Stacking” charitable contributions could end up saving you thousands of dollars in taxes every second year that you stack your giving. If you like this idea, be sure to talk to your accountant about making it happen properly!

Want to learn more? Go here for a deeper dive on the topic.

3) Marking Text Messages as Unread

Funny story. I was recently complaining to a group of people that one of the most frustrating things to me related to information technology is that you can’t mark text messages as unread. I began to show them the problem… and then realized that NOW YOU CAN! So here are instructions on how to do this on iOS and Android… If you already knew this, you are awesome. If you didn’t, it may blow your mind like it did mine!

On iPhone (iOS 16 and later):

• Open the Messages app: Launch the Messages app on your iPhone.
• Select the conversation: Tap on the conversation you want to mark as unread.
• Swipe right: Swipe right on the conversation in the Messages list.
• Tap “Unread”: Tap on the “Unread” option that appears. Alternatively, you can long-press the conversation and select “Mark as Unread”.
• Check for the blue dot: You should see a blue dot appear next to the conversation in the list, indicating it’s unread.
• If this isn’t clear, here is the support doc on Apple.com for more info.

On Android:

• Open the Chat app or Gmail: Open the Chat app or Gmail app on your Android device.
• Navigate to Chat: Tap “Chat” at the bottom of the screen if you are in the Gmail app.
• Select the conversation: In your conversation list, tap and hold the conversation you want to mark as unread.
• Tap “Mark as Unread”: Tap “Mark as unread” from the menu that appears.
• Check for the dot: You’ll see a dot next to the conversation in the list when it’s marked as unread.
• If this isn’t clear, here is the support doc on Google.com for more info.

That’s a Wrap!

Well, there you go. I hope one of these three things was new to you and helpful. And I hope you are having a great week. Be safe out there!