Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background.

How can we get a hold of our finances again, with much less time to spend on accounting and budgeting, due to the arrival of our child?
Good question, very well asked! The key here is that you need to find a solution that works for you two without an overt amount of effort.  So in a sense it is somewhat behavior driven, but it is also technology driven.   My wife and I use spreadsheets for both checking account management and budgeting.  A key time saver is that we have a template sheet that gets copied and pasted, then modified for the current month.  Typically 90% of the stuff is the same and each month requires very little modification.  This is one of my problems with EveryDollar.  I have to enter everything each and every month. We also have separate checking accounts and responsibility for different areas of the family expenses.  Doing this risks that we act as roommates, but we both clearly understand the money in one persons account equally belongs to the other and during hard times had to make up for shortfalls on the part of the other. Also we use cash for groceries, eating out, and other day to day expenses.  So we don't have a great need to track expenses or enter transactions. That is what works for us, and it takes us very little time to manage our money.  The budget meeting normally lasts less than a half hour and that includes goal tracking. We kind of live by the 80/20 principle.  We don't see a value in tracking where every dime went.  We see more value in setting and meeting larger financial goals like contributing X amount to retirement and things of that nature.  If we overspent a bit at Walgreens who cares provided the larger goals are meant and we do not incur debt.