Monetary sanctions, also known as legal financial obligations (LFOs), are a highly consequential yet underexplored element of the criminal legal system. LFOs consist of fines, fees, costs, restitution, surcharges, and other financial penalties that are imposed on individuals when they encounter the criminal legal system. Drawing on data from a multimethod study of eight U.S. states, the project addresses gaps in literature and advance knowledge of monetary sanctions across a number of sociological, criminological, legal, and policy domains. This article represents a culmination of five years of work in California, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Texas, and Washington State. The project demonstrates how scholars sharing insights and conceptual frames can develop research agendas that collectively engage all team members in primary data collection and analysis to provide a broad and detailed understanding of an important social system and the accompanying dynamics.