Sunday, July 22, 2007

Mvelopes First Look

I wrote before about Mvelopes.com, online budgeting software that uses the envelope budgeting concept.

I signed up for the free trial to see if it looked like I could easily switch over from Quicken. Doing envelope budgeting in Quicken is possible, but you have to jump through a number of hoops. And envelope budgeting is the absolute best way to manage your money, so I'd love to have a system that supported it directly.

Initially, Mvelopes looked great. I hit a snag when I tried to hook it up with my online banking account. Mvelopes will automatically pull recent transactions from online accounts, and it worked fine for my credit card and PayPal accounts. But it couldn't get into my online banking, because of security questions the bank forced you to answer.

I contacted Mvelopes support, and they submitted a trouble ticket. That ticket has been automatically escalated several times, and still no sign of a solution.

It's too bad. From what I saw of the software, it worked exactly the way I wanted it to work. I suppose I could use it by manually entering my banking transactions, since I have to do that in Quicken anyway, but I'd hate to start doing that and then have to adjust somehow when they get the automatic import working.

So, Mvelopes looks good, but I haven't been able to give it a good workout yet.

2 comments:

Stacy said...

Just thought I would stop by and say hey!
I read your blog on the role playing games! SOUNDS FUN!
Who says we can't be like kids into our 30's? It's a great stress reducer I am sure!

Check out my new blog, and check your email. I sent you a great GPT website that pays every day at midnight EST.

The email I sent you is worded a little funny because it says you just talked about it, and it was me that had just blogged about it.lol

Anyhoo, Have a great day, and let me know what you think about the site!

~Stacy~

Jay said...

Glad you found the blog. Roleplaying is a great time, and I plan on being a kid for as long as possible!

Thanks for the email, too.