Single Mom Personal Finance (PF) Review Tuesday – Mvelopes

Today I am starting the 30-day trial of Mvelopes, a personal finance management system. I’d heard about this online program several years ago and I investigated it but I did not make the commitment to the program. The system is based on the envelop system, a simple idea of managing your money using envelope.

The basic idea is to separate your money each pay day into envelopes for everything you have spend. When the money is gone out of the envelope you do not spend until it is refilled at the next pay day.

Links to Your Bank Account
Mvelopes is the online concept of this program. The thing is they have taken it a step further by linking to your bank and credit card companies, automating bill payment, and calculating your net worth. There is also mobile account access, the highest security encryption available, and a secure server.

Account Set-up
The first step is to set up your bank account information. They have over 14,000 institutions to choose from so you should have no problem finding your bank. If your bank isn’t listed you can set up an offline account.

Accessing your bank account is similar to going through your bank’s secure server. It is not so easy to access your account and there are several levels of security including the password and secret answer. It took some time for me to access my online accounts, but I was happy that the system is so secure.

The Spending Plan
The next step is setting up your spending plan. This is the core of Mvelopes. Knowing what you want to spend your money on based on obligations and need (and a few wants) is very important to maintaining your finances.

Funding the Envelopes
After setting up your spending account you move on to funding your envelopes. To fund your envelopes assign a certain dollar amount to the pre-set expenses. You can add more and delete the ones you don’t need. During the month you have to option of moving money around to fund certain envelopes. You will always have a running total of your money.

Optional Automatic Bill Pay
You have the option to set up automatic bill payment as the last step. When you set up your accounts you can elect to have money transferred for bill payment automatically. You won’t have to worry about if the bill was paid, running to the post office for stamps, or being late again.

The basic structure of the system is simple and you have an at-a-glance view of all activities on the screen. I will try to keep you up to date on how I am doing with the system. Hopefully you will give it a try as well.

The Investment
The last thing I will mention is there is a subscription fee for using this system. The quarterly fee is $40 and there is a yearly and 2-year subscription available. If you are like me and want to get a handle on your money, need to see how things are happening, and like the idea of having everything contained in one place this may be the system for you.

There are other systems available that I will be reviewing in the future that range from free to very expensive. The point is to try things out to see what works for you. I am a firm believer of the “try, try again” mindset. You will never know how things will work out until you give it a try. If it doesn’t work for you, then move on to something else. Nothing was lost in the process, but you gained much wisdom and know what will and will not work for you.