Your grandparents may have used the envelope method by distributing their money into real paper envelopes marked with the name of the expense; i.e., electricity, food, rent, etc. When a bill was due, the money was in the envelope to pay it. It was a simple but effective way to ensure that their bills were paid and that they lived within their means.

With Budget you can create virtual envelopes for your expenses and set aside your money into those envelopes. When the mortgage bill needs to be paid, you will record the check from the "Mortgage" envelope. If you receive a claim reimbursement from your health insurance, you will make a deposit into the "Medical" envelope. When you get paid, you will distribute the money to your envelopes to fill them up again. You can even set up an allocation plan so each paycheck can be automatically distributed to your envelopes.

All your envelopes and their balances are always on the main screen -- A glance tells you if you have enough money to pay the bills. It's a lot easier than opening up real envelopes to see what's inside!

Use Budget to manage your real world checking, savings, or even credit card accounts at the same time as you're managing your expense envelopes. You Balance your account, print checks, and view your checkbook register. When you get paid you will manually distribute the income to your envelopes.

The real power of Budget is the ability to set up your budget plan in advance. You define your expenses and preallocate future income deposits directly to your envelopes. When you get paid you simply enter the pay and Budget does the rest. You will find it easy to stick to your budget when you pay your budget first.

Pay rules to prioritize your income, reminders, To Do's, QIF file import and export, and many more.

Want to teach your child, teen, college student, or grad how to manage money and stay out of debt? Use a program that is visual, fun and more interesting than a boring spread sheet with a bunch of numbers. They'll learn to set aside money BEFORE they spend it. Check out the tutorials to see how.

Just want to track expense money without managing your realworld account? You may want to simply replace those physical envelopes you may be using.

Just want to use Budget for standard account management to record transactions and balance your checking account without creating expense envelopes?