Classic budgeting with Mvelopes Personal

by Guest on July 26, 2009

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This article is provided by Jason Price who writes for One Money Design. Jason is a Money Map Coach and has a passion to see people prosper, become debt free, and experience financial freedom.

Budgeting with Mvelopes Personal

Users of personal finance software know there are key features you can’t live without when it comes to automating the management of your personal finances. While the needs of everyone differ and finding the right product is important for your situation, Mvelopes Personal offers some features that put it in the top tier. They seem to do it right by offering some classic styles of budgeting on an electronic platform.

Mvelopes personal budgeting.png

4 notable features of Mvelopes Personal:

1. Envelopes Budgeting: Envelopes budgeting has been around a long time. In short, the premise is to use cash envelopes to manage your money. You simply create an envelope for every major budget category and deposit cash into it according to your written plan. You use the cash to make purchases and when the cash is gone you’re done spending.

Mvelopes has taken a manual process as described above and automated it. With Mvelopes you set up electronic envelopes to manage your cash flow. As expenses are recorded, the amount is deducted from the virtual envelope giving you a quick way to see the balance of each budget category. As you watch the balances while you spend, you’re much less likely to overspend and in some cases save money.

2. Transfer between envelopes: As with a cash envelope, you might have money left over in a budget category and need to spend more in another area. With Mvelopes you can electronically transfer money from one envelope to another keeping your budget in balance. For example, let’s say you have under spent $30 on groceries for the month. You could easily allocate the extra money to cover the need for more gasoline, or to savings.

3. Income allocation: With cash envelopes you withdrawal money from the bank after your paycheck is deposited and insert the proper amount into each of your physical envelopes. The equivalent is provided with Mvelopes by allowing you to set up funding plans which enable you to determine how you want to allocate money for your paychecks. Once you receive your deposit transaction into Mvelopes you choose your funding plan which deposits your money into each virtual envelope.

4. Drag and drop: Once transactions are downloaded from your financial institution, you can drag and drop them to an expense envelope, or to your income cash pool for funding. This feature saves quite a bit of time for assigning transactions to their respective budget category or envelope.

There are many features of Mvelopes, but these four features seem to provide a lot of help in enhancing personal money management.

Personally, I don’t think I could live without using personal finance software. Some people choose to reconcile their checkbooks and maintain a budget manually; there is nothing wrong with this. Software can provide efficiency and exactness that is sometimes hard to get with a manual approach, but at the end of the day people should choose the approach that works best for them.

Do you have any experience (good or bad) working with Mvelopes?

Note from Bob: I don’t currently use Mvelopes for my budgeting, but I agree with Jason and can attest that it is a great product. If you are interested in trying it out, they have a 30-day free trial available to new users.

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Classic budgeting with Mvelopes Personal | The Wealthy Soul: July 26, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Guest Post at Christian PF | One Money Design: July 27, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Money Hacks Carnival #76 – The Fun Money Facts Edition | Mortgage Info Today Blog: August 4, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Mvelopes Review | One Money Design: September 2, 2009 at 7:36 pm

{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }

Luke July 27, 2009 at 7:10 am: You should also check out NeoBudget (www.neobudget.com). It also does envelope-based budgeting, but is a lot more affordable at just $2.50 per month.
Jason @ One Money Design July 27, 2009 at 10:41 am: Luke, thanks for your comment. I will definitely check out NeoBudget. I have an interest in personal finance software in general and hope to write future posts about some of these products and how they can help people. I’m also open to trying new products for my own personal use. Thanks again.
Craig July 27, 2009 at 1:37 pm: Full Disclosure: Example description of the tool. It’s a great resource. I would like to introduce you to BudgetPulse.com another personal budgeting software. Strictly budgeting focus and also a manual budgeting software. Users input their transactions or can import their financial banks statements in minutes. Very simple to use for anyone of all ages including students and is international compatible. Feel free to contact me with any questions.

Craig Kessler
Marketing Director at BudgetPulse
craig@budgetpulse.com
Travis July 28, 2009 at 9:07 am: I’ve been using Mvelopes for 7 or 8 months now, and I really like it. I do think it’s a bit expensive because you can find other similar software for free. But, I enjoy the interface and everything it’s able to do. I would recommend it to others, plus if you sign up for 2 years you can get it for about $6 a month, and that’s not too bad.
Jason @ One Money Design July 28, 2009 at 2:28 pm: Travis,

Thanks for your feedback. You make a good point on the $6 per month deal (2 year subscription). Again, I really like it because it supports good budgeting practices.

I’m appreciative of the comments from all because I’ve learned about a few other products worth exploring. Again, I’m hoping to bring more light on the subject of personal finance software so people can find the product that best suits their needs and supports them in wise money management.
Andrew Feil July 29, 2009 at 12:03 pm: The one thing I did not like about Mvelopes is the cost. It was a great software program, but I can do what it can do for free. My wife and I moved to using Mint.com and doing real cash envelopes for the things we need to control like groceries, home, entertainment, personal blow money, etc.
John Gosch October 12, 2009 at 12:35 am: I am looking for a budgeting program that can help me and my family get on track. I am down to 2 programs; Mvelopes and YNAB. One thing I really like about both is all the amazing comments about envelope budgeting and how well it works. The biggest difference between the two is that one is an on-line software, and the other only runs on your computer. I like being able to access my finances at anytime, anywhere, so I am heavily leaning towards Mvelope, BUT…I can’t stop thinking about all the terrible comments about how horrible their customer service is. Should this stop me, or is the programs easy enough that I shouldn’t have to worry too much about customer service anyway? Help me, I want to get something soon!
Thanks!
Jason @ One Money Design October 12, 2009 at 7:17 am: John, I haven’t had any interaction with their customer service. Mvelopes has a pretty good help forum, guide and tutorials. I learned enough from those resources to use the product just fine.
andy October 25, 2009 at 12:40 am: I have used Mveplopes for over a year now and found their online support to be fine. I also like that they are still looking to add features and solict user feed back.