After over four years of trying using Microsoft Money, I gave up. It always seemed my cash flow projections for the next 90 days were great at the beginning of a month, but whenever I reviewed the previous month, I discovered that spending had not kept in line with the forecasts. After ditching Microsoft Money in May, I tried my own tracking system with an Excel spreadsheet for a few months, but even though my projections were always realistic, we still were not living within a budget, and extra debt payments and savings deposits were not happening.

My husband and I have some goals. We want to have a year's worth of expenses in our savings account. We have seen family members and friends go through unexpected layoffs, and we'd like to avoid the stress it has brought to their lives. We would like to pay off our van and our mortgage quickly. We also want to make some home repairs and improvements without going into debt. Plus, we want to really start putting money away for retirement (so far, we are only putting 1% into the 401-K). We thought we were doing pretty well at putting money in our savings account, but after setting up Mvelopes, our eyes were suddenly opened!

When we had to allocate money to our Money For Credit Card envelope, we saw that in order to pay it off in full, as we do each month, the funds would have to come out of our emergency savings account, which had about two months of emergency funds in it. We had overspent on our vacation in July, so there was well over a month's worth of expenses on the credit card. If we continued spending the way we had been, we would not be able to pay it off in full if my husband were suddenly unemployed. We were spending money that we didn't really have yet, and the savings account balance was giving us a false sense of security, making us think we had a two-month reserve set up. We set up our spending plan in Mvelopes so that we could only spend the money we actually had, rather than the money we thought we would have next month. We didn't know how we would do it the first month. We knew we would have to pinch pennies to keep it in line. But we did it! If the money wasn't in the envelope, we didn't spend it. We got creative in our meal planning. We ate out of our pantry more, and actually didn't have any moldy leftovers in the refrigerator the whole month. We had school shopping to do for four kids. Instead of buying new clothes and shoes, I shopped at garage sales and thrift stores, and the kids didn't even mind! I even recycled school supplies that were still in good condition from last year, rather than buying new, and I spent $50 less than last year, even though I had one more child in school this year.

In the first two weeks of our trial period, we saved at least the cost of a two-year membership. So, after our trial period was over, we subscribed for a two-year membership with Mvelopes! Unfortunately, we forgot to set up an envelope for that, and had to use the grocery envelope the next month when it got charged to our credit card (more creative meal planning), but now, we have that envelope set up, as well as many others that allow us to plan for our periodic bills, like license plate tabs, holiday gifts, and home maintenance. This has really made us prioritize where our money is spent, plus, it is so easy to keep track of it all online, and my husband has been faithfully recording his purchases, which he has never done before! He loves that he has his own special envelope that he can choose to spend at his own discretion each month or save up for something big another month. He says he never had motivation to not spend extra money, as he figured if he didn't spend money on what he wanted, it would get spent on something else if there was "extra" at the end of the month. Now he knows that there is money there for his use that can't be eaten up by other expenses.

After only two months of using Mvelopes, we actually have a month's worth of expenses in our emergency savings envelope (that isn't earmarked for paying off the credit card), plus money designated for home and car repairs, Christmas presents, our next vacation, and even periodic expenses. My husband is more in touch with our finances, and I am finding the system much more convenient than any other method, as well.

Thank you Mvelopes, for getting us on track financially!

My wife and I have been using an "envelope" budgeting system for over 16 years (ever since we got married). We've been committed to this form of budget because it really works and has greatly reduced the stress over finances in our marriage.

However, we used to spend hours each month trying to manually enter all our transactions into a spreadsheet we created, and then we still had to reconcile our checkbook on top of that.

In May of 2006, we decided to try the Mvelopes online service. We were a little reluctant to give up our tried-and-true spreadsheet, but agreed to test the system while maintaining our spreadsheet as a back-up. After a couple months of testing, we saw how much easier the Mveleopes system was. Although it did cost money, we had so much better visibility into our finances that it was easy to find extra money in the budget to pay the fee (we decided to pay quarterly).

After nearly nine months of using Mvelopes, we'll never go back to the old system again. My wife used to dread the question "Is the budget up to date?" Now we spend a few minutes each day and are always caught up. Mvelopes has not only improved our finances, but it has removed a significant amount of unnecessary stress from our lives.