Multi-Account Budgeting Tools/Accounts/Services
IngDirect has this concept of sub accounts inside a main account - that might be perfect for what you are looking for. To clarify, you basically have one physical account with logical sub account groupings. "I sort of do this with credit cards. I actually have 4 AMEX cards that I've accumulated over the years. Certain types of expenses go on each card (""General expenses"", recurring bills, car-related and business-related) I use AMEX because they have pretty rich iPhone/Android applications to access your accounts and a rich set of alerts. So if we exceed our budget for gas, we get an email about it. Do whatever works for you, but you need to avoid the temptation to over-complicate." Have you looked at mint? Their budgeting feature can track spending against your budget categories across your checking and credit card accounts. Not the same as the envelope system -- so if you need the built-in limitation that this provides, it may not work for you. But it is a low-effort, automatic system that does the tracking for you if you have your spending mostly under control. I know of websites that do this, but I don't know of banks that do. Is there any reason you want to do this at a bank rather than use a service?  My main concern with using a bank for this would be the risk of overdraft fees
I have also tried Mvelopes in the past, and my experiences match yours. I currently use the desktop version of YNAB:You Need a Budget (YNAB 4), and I like it much better.  Where we failed after a while with Mvelopes, we are succeeding with YNAB, and have been now for the last 3.5 years. I don't want this to sound like a commercial for YNAB (I will give important caveats about YNAB later), but here is why I believe we have done better now with YNAB than before with Mvelopes.  I hope that these reasons will be useful to you when you are evaluating your next options. As you said, we also found Mvelopes' interface to be slow and glitchy.  YNAB 4 is a desktop app (with synching capabilities) that we found to be much quicker and easier to work with than Mvelopes' Flash-based interface.  (That was 4 years ago; hopefully Mvelopes has redone their interface since then.)   We also struggled with Mvelopes' connection with our banks.  With YNAB 4, there is no connection to the bank: everything has to be entered manually.  I initially thought this might be worse, but for us it has been better.  I can either enter transactions as they happen on the mobile app, or I can hold on to receipts and enter them every day or two in the evening, categorizing as I go.  We always have an up-to-date picture of our finances, and we don't have to mess with trying to match up downloaded transactions that have been screwed up, duplicated, or are missing. We aren't really using YNAB much differently than we were using Mvelopes, but we have learned a few tricks that I think have contributed to our success.  One of the things we do differently is that I don't obsess about the cash accounts too much.  Cash accounts, for us, are the hardest to keep track of, because most of our cash transactions don't have a receipt: we are paying a friend or family member for something, or leaving a tip, or something like that which we forget about when it comes time to enter into the software.  As a result, the cash account balances get off.  I periodically enter a correcting transaction to get the balances right, and have a budget category specifically for this that we have to put money in for these unknown transactions.  Fortunately for us, our cash spending is a small percent of our total spending (we usually pay with a credit card) so this bit of untracked spending isn't that big of a concern. With YNAB, the current month's budget is right in front of you as soon as you open up the app, which makes it easy to adjust your budget during the month, if necessary.  With Mvelopes (at least how their app worked 4 years ago), the budget was somewhat hidden after you funded your budget categories, and it was a bit of a pain to move money around between categories.  The ability to adjust your budget in the middle of the month is crucial; if you don't do that, you'll get frustrated the first time you find that you don't have enough money in a category for something you need.  YNAB makes it very easy to move money around inside your budget. That having been said, you need to be aware that the current version of YNAB is not a desktop application but a web-based app.  YNAB 4, the old desktop version which we have been using, is officially unsupported as of the end of 2016.  However, I see that it is still available for sale, if you are interested in it, the YNAB4 help site is still up, and the mobile app you would need to work with it on your phone (called YNAB Classic) is still in the app store.   As I said, the current YNAB is now a web app, complete with automatic downloading of transactions from your bank.  I have no experience with it (other than playing around with it a little), and so I can't tell you how quick the interface is or how well the auto-downloading of transactions works. As an alternative, another web-based solution is EveryDollar, from Dave Ramsey's company.  (I have never tried it.)  The advantage of this one is that it is free if you choose not to link it to your banks; the automatic downloading of transactions is a paid feature. I wrote an answer a couple of years ago in which I describe two different approaches that budgeting software packages tend to take.  I'm not familiar with Buxfer, so I don't know which approach it takes, but perhaps that answer will help you evaluate all of your software options. On the behavior side of things, besides the relaxing of the cash accounting I mentioned above, we also involve my wife a little less in the budgeting process than we used to.  (This is by her choice!)  I am the one who enters all the transactions into the software (she hands me all her receipts), I reconcile the accounts at the end of the month, and I set the budget for the next month.  We have been doing this long enough now that she knows what the budget is, and we only need to discuss it if we want to do something different with the budget than we have been doing in the past.  She has the YNAB app on her phone and can see where we are at with all of our budget categories. In the related Should I have separate savings accounts for various savings goals? I discovered the open source Budgeter courtesy of Richard Donkin. Budgeter accomplishes my aim with a minimum of fuss, and I have found it to be quite usable despite the author's self deprecating comments to the contrary. The chart below was built in about 10 minutes, half the time it's taken to write this post. Budgeter doesn't feature handy abilities like CSV/OFX importing or scheduled transactions, which would mean a fair bit of work for bringing in historical data, and it's expressly not designed for accounting or bookkeeping. However for the focussed application of tracking savings across multiple bucket categories and accounts I think it well worth evaluating. "They have forever to collect a balance from you.  Furthermore they can add whatever penalties and fees they wish to increase that balance.  Worst of all, they don't have to remind you or send you bills or any other notification.  You owed it when you left the office.  (There very well could be local laws that require notifications, but that isn't really the issue here.) That dentist has every right to deny you service until you settle the account.  Forever. The statute of limitations on collecting that debt via court: http://www.bankrate.com/finance/savings/when-does-your-debt-expire.aspx Which covers the rules on HOW LONG they have to collect the debt.  Owing the money is one thing, but the rules and tools that you creditor has to collect the debt are another.  You are probably worried about them suing you. But if you don't pay the debt (or settle in some way), that dentist can refuse to provide services to you, even if they write off the debt. Ways you can be punished by your dentist for not paying the bill are: Depending on your jurisdiction and/or type of debt, they typically only report it on your credit (if they are reporting at all) for 7 years.  Even if you pay and settle the account, it will still be reported on your credit report for 7 years.  The difference is how it is reported.  They can report that ""user133466 is a super reliable person who always pays debts on time"".  They can say ""user133466 is a flake who pays, but takes a while to pay"".  Or they can say ""user133466 is a bad person to provide services before collecting money, because user133466 don't pay bills"". Other people considering lending you money are going to read these opinions and decide accordingly if they want to deal with you or not. And they can say that for 7 years.  The idea of credit reporting is that you settle up as soon as possible and get your credit report to reflect the truth. One popular way to collect a debt to is to sue you for it.  There, each state has a different time period on how long a creditor has to sue you for a debt. http://www.bankrate.com/finance/credit-cards/state-statutes-of-limitations-for-old-debts-1.aspx If you pay part of the debt, that will often reset the clock on the statute of limitations, so be sure any partial or negotiated settlements state very clearly, in writing, that payment is considered payment in full on the debt.  Then you keep that record forever. There are other interesting points in the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.  See Debt collectors calling? Know your rights.  They can only contact you in certain ways, they must respond to you in certain ways, and they have limits on what they can say, who they can say it to, and when they can say it.  There are protections from mean or vicious bill collectors, but that doesn't sound like who you are dealing with.  I don't know that the FDCPA is a tool you need to use in this case. You should negotiate your debt and try your best to settle up.  From your post, both parties dropped the ball, and both parties should give a little.  You should pay no or minor late fees, and the doctor should report your credit positively when you do so.  If you both made honest mistakes, they both parties should acknowledge that and be fair, and not defensive. This is not legal advice.  But you owe the debt, so you should settle up.  I don't think it is fair for you to not pay because they didn't mail you a paper.  However I also do not think it is fair for the doctor to run up fees and not remind you of the bill. Finally, you didn't bring up insurance or many other details.  Those details can change the answer." "&gt; I spent 2+ years building a business that now brings me ""passive income""  There is a distinction between putting a lot of hours into building a semi autonomous business and having your Accountant and Tax Lawyer find legal loopholes so you can avoid millions of dollars of debt again and again.  I'm not sure where you disagree with me. Do you not believe it is preferable that people earn a living by providing a product or service of value, rather than manipulating financial tools and laws?  What would become of an economy if 50% of a population decided  they didn't like working and so took up speculating stock prices full time?  Yes, it is ""smart"" to abuse every existing loophole, but it is not ethical and it is certainly not sustainable without being to the detriment of others. I prefer a system where people have integrity and where manipulating others is looked down upon, rather than admired." I  found that  an application already exists which does virtually everything I want to do with a reasonable interface.  Its called My Personal Index.  It has allowed me  to look at my asset allocation all in one place. I'll have to enter: The features which solve my problems above include:  Note - This is related to an earlier post I made regarding dollar cost averaging and determining rate of returns.   (I finally got off my duff and did something about it) You might check out Thrive. They're almost a carbon copy of Mint from the last I checked, but with some additional and (I think) more useful metrics. For instance, they seemed to help more to plan for future expenses in addition to keeping tabs on individual budgets the way Mint does. Everything is automated in the same way as Mint, though I'm not sure their breadth is as far-reaching now since Mint was bought out by Intuit. Nevertheless, whenever I've had a question on Thrive, I shoot it to the devs and I get a very personal and courteous response within the day. So it depends on what you're looking for: Mint can almost guarantee any US bank will be accessible through their site, however Thrive will work much harder to gain your favor. I had to implement a simplistic double-entry accounting system, and compiled a list of resources. Some of them are more helpful than others, but I'll share them all with you. Hope this helps! Simplifying accounting principles for computer scientists: http://martin.kleppmann.com/2011/03/07/accounting-for-computer-scientists.html See this excellent article on how Debits and Credits work: http://accountinginfo.com/study/je/je-01.htm See this article for an example Chart of Accounts with lots of helpful descriptions: http://www.netmba.com/accounting/fin/accounts/chart/ Excellent PDF by Martin Fowler on Accounting Patterns using an event-drive system: http://www.martinfowler.com/apsupp/accounting.pdf Additional useful resources by Martin Fowler: http://martinfowler.com/articles.html#ap Ideas on using Domain-Driven-Design (DDD): https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5482929/how-to-use-object-oriented-programming-with-hibernate Double Entry Accounting in Relational Databases: http://homepages.tcp.co.uk/~m-wigley/gc_wp_ded.html Double Entry Accounting in Rails: http://www.cuppadev.co.uk/dev/double-entry-accounting-in-rails/ Joda-Money: http://joda-money.sourceforge.net/ Joda-Money Notes: http://joda-money.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/joda-money/JodaMoney/trunk/Notes.txt?revision=75&view=markup Blog entry with good comments: http://www.jroller.com/scolebourne/entry/joda_money Related Blog Entry: http://www.jroller.com/scolebourne/entry/serialization_shared_delegates JMoney: http://jmoney.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page JMoney QIF Plugin: http://jmoney.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Qif_plug-in Ledger on GitHub: https://github.com/jwiegley/ledger/tree/master/src/ Implementing Money class in Java: http://www.objectivelogic.com/resources/Java%20and%20Monetary%20Data/Java%20and%20Monetary%20Data.pdf  Martin Fowler's implementation in Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture page 489, View partial content in Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=FyWZt5DdvFkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Patterns+of+Enterprise+Application+Architecture&source=bl&ots=eEFp4xYydA&sig=96x5ER64m5ryiLnWOgGMKgAsDnw&hl=en&ei=Kr_wTP6UFJCynweEpajyCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q&f=false XML based API for an accounting service, might get some ideas from it: http://www.objacct.com/Platform.aspx It sounds like you're mixing a simple checkbook register with double-entry bookkeeping. Do you need a double-entry level of rigor? Otherwise, why not have two columns, one for income (like a paycheck) and one for expenses (like paying a cable bill)?  Then add up both columns and then take the difference of the sums to get your increase or decrease for the time period. If you want to break up income and expenses further, then you can do that too.