Excellent Envelope Method Software

Ive used Moneywell since about version 1.5 and have been very pleased with it. I used to use Quicken, but I got tired of the lack of support for the Macintosh platform and the finagling I had to do in order to apply the envelope budgeting method.

Moneywell has perfectly implemented the envelope method and has been very easy for me to use. I also use the iPhone app on my wifes phone and on mine and dont have any real trouble keeping them synchronized with our master document on our Mac. This feature works smoothly and reliably in the 2.x versions.

I really like the improvements introduced in version 2.1. The graph of a buckets running total helps me see if there are any changes in our trends which may require either spending and/or budgeting adjustments. The event-based budgeting idea (introduced in 2.0) was a stroke of genius because it really helps me break down what expenses are aggregated in a bucket.

I only have two issues:
1. I think that the investment transaction support is insufficient. Multiple transactions for the same ticker creates duplicate securities in the securities list and Im not sure why (long term vs. short term holdings?). Also the Portfolio view seems only to add securities transactions and not subtract security sales, e.g. buy 10 shares of XYZ and sell 5 shares of XYZ lists 10+5 shares of XYZ, not 10-5 shares. I would also like the current security price to automatically retrieved in order to indicate its up-to-date value.
2. I like being able to copy transactions from the transaction list directly into a spreadsheet. However, I think this functionality should be extended to bucket transfers as well.

Overall, this is excellent software. I highly recommend it. I will be a long term customer. Kudos to the developers.

mrclary about MoneyWell