On his way to a New Year’s Eve party in Connecticut on December 31, 2006, Rick stopped to help a friend get his pickup truck out of the snow. Several volunteers pitched in, parking their own automobiles behind the trapped truck. Rick was pushing from behind when the truck unexpectedly lurched free of the snow bank, jumped backwards and pinned him between two vehicles, crushing his leg. He had seven breaks from the knee down and a compression injury that put him in the hospital for 19 days.

The next several months were a nightmare, says Cindy, Rick’s wife. “Our regular insurance company was refusing to pay beyond four days in the hospital; we didn’t know whether we’d be faced with huge medical bills,” she explains. “It was just awful. He was in excruciating pain; I was exhausted going back and forth to the hospital, and I spent hours on the phone to advocate for him.” Rick, a teacher, spent the next five months in a wheelchair, and wasn’t able to return to work until the following September.

During the ordeal, Cindy discovered Mvelopes. “I cannot tell you how helpful it was to spend time learning about Mvelopes and setting up a spending plan,” she recalls. “It actually helped take my mind off things that were beyond my control and focus on things that I could control.”

Back in 2003, the Rick and Cindy built a second home on a lake in a nearby state, where they plan to retire in a decade. As a result “something was always coming due – the taxes, the insurance, or the boat needed to be serviced,” Cindy explains. “Those things I would forget to budget for. We’d get a stack of mail full of bills, and it felt like a burden.”

Mvelopes helped Rick and Cindy identify the expenses that regularly fell through the cracks and set aside money for them in advance, making her finances feel like a clean, well-lighted space. “If my kitchen’s a mess before I start to make dinner, I can’t function, I have to clean it up first -- and that’s how I felt about our finances,” she says. “Mvelopes made my life easier in a mental way as well as a practical way. Also the visual part -- being able to look at those envelopes and see what I had left to spend gave us a sense of freedom. I know I always have the money and that burden is just gone.”

Cindy and Rick also wanted to take advantage of credit card rewards, but were concerned that if they charged everything to the card, they might not have enough money at the end of the month to pay it off in full – because those forgotten bills would pop up and need to be paid. “After I found Mvelopes, I could use my credit card for everything, rack up frequent flyer miles, and have plenty of money at end of month to pay the card off,” she says. With their rewards, the couple has flown for free to Florida, to see old friends in Ohio, and to a college bowl game to see their favorite team play.

Mvelopes also helped their family address some tricky cash flow issues, because the school system pays them in June for the entire summer, and they don’t get another paycheck until September. (Cindy works as a school nurse.)

“In June you have a bunch of money, and it’s hard not to just blow through it,” she explains. “It’s stressful; one year I thought we were getting paid the last week in August. The mortgage was due September 1, but it turned out we weren’t getting paid until September 4. I had to rob Peter to pay Paul because I didn’t account for the pay periods correctly.”

Mvelopes has made cash flow simple, Cindy says. “I fund my Mvelopes to the max to (pay for all the bills) that would come in July, August and the first week of September,” she explains. “I know when I go back to school and get my September paycheck, I’ll be ahead of game because I padded the envelopes with a little extra. We have plenty of money to pay the bills, whereas most of my friends are asking, ‘when are we getting paid?’”

Cindy says she often tries to get family and friends to try the Mvelopes system. “The other day I was sitting with friends and explaining how last year, the price of propane had gone down. Because I set aside the same amount in my fuel envelope month after month, I have money left over,” she says. “If the price of fuel goes up this year it won’t hurt me. My friends are all staring at me like, ‘how do you do this?’ It’s great because now we’re truly ahead of the game.”

Earlier this year the Rick and Cindy refinanced, combined a home equity loan into their mortgage, taking out a 15-year fixed rate loan at 4.8 percent. With the help of Mvelopes, they are paying an extra $500 a month toward the loan and expect to have it paid off in just nine years. “Our goal is to have the mortgage done in ten years when we retire, and we have no other debt,” she says.

With a greater sense of clarity about where their money is going, “we’re being more conscious about frivolous spending and making wiser choices,” says Cindy. For example, they increased their contributions to a cause they are passionate about, the Royal Family Kids Camp for abused and neglected children, where they volunteer one week a month in the summer. Cindy helps out as a nurse and Rick does woodworking with the kids, building games for the camp’s carnival day.

“The kids get the week of their life -- it’s a fabulous program,” she says. “I used to think about how we could afford to pay for the materials for the games. This year I just kept adding money to my donation envelope, so we knew we could help out and make a difference for the kids.”

As for those looming medical bills, they were finally paid in a settlement with one of the auto insurers involved in the accident, although Rick had to hire an attorney, and the effort took two years. But Cindy focuses on the positive.

“Rick had a wonderful physician and got great care. We had tremendous support from friends and family, who came over to prepare Rick’s lunch and kept him company while I was at work,” she recalls. “Our two sons and two daughters-in-laws were just wonderful, pitching in every way they could. We were very fortunate; he healed beautifully, and that’s amazing in itself. He could have lost his leg. I feel really blessed.”