Rich, a high school teacher, and his wife Jodi, a photographer, have six children, ages 9 to three months. That means time and money are at a premium. “It goes down directly to our value system and what’s important to us,” says Rich. “As a teacher, I knew I wasn’t ever going to have a major surplus of money. It was important to my wife and I that she stays home with the kids. In order for that to happen, we had to be deliberate about counting pennies and managing money in the best way we can.”

Rich started out using an Excel spreadsheet. “It was such a time-consuming process -- three to four hours a month maintaining, categorizing and allocating funds,” he recalls. “With the Excel spreadsheet, it would be a pain to change the budget at any given time, because everything on the sheet would change.”

Rich switched to Mvelopes more than four years ago. “A big part of it is the automation,” he says. “It much easier to reallocate, redistribute, and move our money around so it accurately reflects what we believe we’re called to do with it. I’m in the habit of checking it daily, so it is seamless with my life, and my financial picture is always there at my fingertips.”

Tracking the budget now occupies just a few minutes a week, says Rich. “Finances become something you have access to at any time from any place – so I don’t have to worry about it or waste a Saturday morning working on it.” Because he knows exactly how much is in their checking account and how much is allocated for spending, Rich can easily divert any additional funds into an interest-bearing account.

In addition, Rich says Mvelopes saved him additional hours and big headaches by alerting him to a fraudulent transaction as soon as it happened. “Someone had gotten access to my Paypal account and made a $2,800 transfer,” says Rich. “We don’t live paycheck to paycheck, but a $2,800 debit on anybody’s checking can cause serious problems. I immediately called Paypal and they marked it as fraudulent and reversed the funds right away. Mvelopes paid for itself right then and there. I didn’t have to spend hours on the phone cleaning up a mess of bounced checks and broken transactions and overdraft charges.”

Rich also utilizes online bill pay, which he says gives him greater control over the bills. “I like using the online bill pay system much better than setting up automated payments through whatever company we’re dealing with,” he explains. For instance, one service company went through a renewal process and its email went to Rich’s spam box; the company stopped debiting his account, so he unknowingly missed a payment and was charged fees.

Rich says he recently redid his budget to be more aggressive at making additional mortgage payments, shaving eight years off his 30-year loan. “I can’t emphasize how great it is not to be controlled by your finances,” he says. “I just don’t have to think about it that much. When we had our last baby, we were in the hospital and then so busy I didn’t (log on) for three weeks. It was amazing how quickly so many transactions snowballed. It really made me thankful to have a system I can maintain in five minutes and be done with it.”