How do I Budget? (where are the envelopes of $) ?

[SallyJames]

Hi!

I have used mint for 2-3 months.

Overall I like it a lot. I certainly have more information than I did before about my spending.

But there is one area that is just not working out for me: Budgeting.

This bugs me, because the #1 reason I am using mint is to help manage spending.

I find that Mint does a great job of telling me how much I already spent. But it does nothing (that I can see) to help me control what I actually spend today (or this week).

A friend turned me on to http://www.mvelopes.com. It looks like what I am after.

I really like mint and want to stick with it. But it simply is not tackling my forward looking spending management.

What am I missing?

Thanks!

[mburdsall]

I agree that Mint is missing a lot for managing the budget. They do not even have the ability to set up budgets for income catagories or the ability to compare performance to previous periods.

[thablaze]

i agree.

no budgeting and Microsoft money does not download to mac...

what to do?

[mburdsall]

I think we will continue to work with Mint by providing our feedback and hope that the product continues to evelove in the direction that you would like. Mint is one of the best online sites today. It is in Mint's interest for the product to continue to evolve and to add features that hte market requires.

Ithink that they have made a great first version of the product and I hope that they continue improve. Sites like Mint are offering more features but lack the easy to use front end that Mint has.

[janie_super@yahoo.com]

i have my budget layed out and when i get my paycheck, i transfer various "envelopes" of money into savings and categorize these transfers as if they were spent. this is how i deal with expenses that happen every 3 months. when i have to pay that bill, i will pay it from the money in savings, but exclude that transaction from mint because its already been accounted for.