Our cash envelopes have title like “WalMart, Meijer, Costco, Perrigo (bargain drug store), dogs, going out (datenight once a month if we’re lucky) gas,” and a few other expenses that come up once a year, like dues and taxes on land we own in Missouri, campground dues, etc.

It took time to write out everything we normally get, where we get it from, and then we were able to figure out how much money we needed to get these items at a particular store. We tried to think of everything we could. We do NOT have envelopes (which we should) for clothing or medical. We DO have one for Christmas and birthday this year, so we simply will not spend what we don’t have.

Then the bills one, starts with church and charity, electric bill, our credit cards and al other monthly expenses, including what we put in a separate savings account for house insurance and property taxes that we pay once a year. On the spreadsheet is the name of what’s being paid, the due date, the amount due, the amount I paid, the pay period it’s coming out of, and then the check number. GREAT for tax records too.

Oh, and Doug and I each get an allowance (not much!) per month that we can spend on whatever we want.

Sounds complicated, but once you get it set up it’s easy-breezy!
Kerri

I use yodlee (moneycenter). You can log in all your banking, credit card, and investments in and it keeps them up to date for you. It does a really good job of labeling your transactions appropriately, plus you can set up custom rules so things that you use repeatedly like kroger gas will always come up in the gas category.

The reason I mention it is b/c you can “tag” transaction with keywords. So if you type in “gas” in the search bar, it will limit to only those tagged as gas & so on.