My wife and I use the envelope budgeting system and it has worked well EXCEPT my wife struggles with the physical management of the envelopes at times. At first, she would run errands with our toddler and would take the required envelopes with her (eg, Groceries, Kid Needs, Personal Spending). Managing a busy toddler and the envelopes at the checkout has proven overwhelming at times.
To help solve that, she bought a wallet/pouch with labeled dividers. Before leaving the house, she would load each divider with cash from the associated envelope. The dividers are closely spaced so on several occasions, money was spent from, or returned to, the wrong divider in the wallet, completely messing up the monthly budget.
Our latest idea is to use an envelope budgeting app and use the debit card. In theory, all my wife has to do is look at her phone to see what she can spend, then swipe the debit card. I run a spreadsheet and watch our bank account like a hawk so this could work well. We have tried using the envelope budgeting app Spendee but there is a sync-ing problem between what I see on my phone versus hers for the same envelope (my phone will show a positive balance, hers will show a negative for the same envelope; not reliable, not good). I'm trying out other apps but I haven't found one that I like yet. Many require you to link your bank account for the app to work (I don't want that - OpSec), require a monthly subscription fee (trying to keep it to free, or minimal cost), or are full blown household budgeting solutions (I already have the spreadsheet). We're just looking to track cash in and out of the digital envelopes that reflect changes in the bank account.
What we could do is have separate Spendee accounts where I track certain envelopes and she tracks certain others, so there is no sync-ing to worry about. But if there is an app that seems to work well and you would recommend, I'd like to hear about it. If this topic is better for the Tech forum, please let me know...
Thanks!
Budgeting apps on the phone?
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