Simple turns this on it's head. Instead of looking back at transactions and how much money has already left, this looks forward. I have house and car payments due on the first, utilities due later in the month, kids college accounts, Internet, car registration due once a year, garbage due quarterly, insurance due every 6 months.
I get paid twice a month. The day after I get paid a job at Simple runs that takes a share of all the above expenses from my account, moves those funds into "envelopes", and gives me a main account view of the money I have left over after my expenses are accounted for. So in the middle of the month I have half my rent and car moved off for 2 weeks in the future.
I guess a similar notion would be to just add all these up, or maybe keep a spreadsheet of them, and have it give me a number to transfer into a secondary account every paycheck, and pay bills off of that.
But the Simple expense view is great, I can see what expenses have already come out (because they are empty), which haven't been paid yet (they are fully funded, according to the progress bar), etc...
In fact, their "categorize transactions" I've found to basically be useless. Aside: Part of this is their system, which has never seemed to be able to learn some transactions. Part of it is that you just can't track Amazon spend (is this Home Improvement, Groceries, books, etc...).
I get paid twice a month. The day after I get paid a job at Simple runs that takes a share of all the above expenses from my account, moves those funds into "envelopes", and gives me a main account view of the money I have left over after my expenses are accounted for. So in the middle of the month I have half my rent and car moved off for 2 weeks in the future.
I guess a similar notion would be to just add all these up, or maybe keep a spreadsheet of them, and have it give me a number to transfer into a secondary account every paycheck, and pay bills off of that.
But the Simple expense view is great, I can see what expenses have already come out (because they are empty), which haven't been paid yet (they are fully funded, according to the progress bar), etc...
In fact, their "categorize transactions" I've found to basically be useless. Aside: Part of this is their system, which has never seemed to be able to learn some transactions. Part of it is that you just can't track Amazon spend (is this Home Improvement, Groceries, books, etc...).