Budget - 6.2.1

I really like this program a lot, find it easy to use, like its proactive capacity to budget, and most importantly Budget has helped me to get out of debt after some lean graduate school years. I would recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone.

At the same time, Budget looks like a program from the days of my Commodore Amiga, with an interface that in previous versions looked out-of-date and now with this new version just looks inexcusably bad. To go from an already poor-looking interface to one that is even worse, while other possibilities for working with personal finance are abounding, is really unfortunate.

All of these are purely aesthetic concerns, and have nothing to do with the nuts and bolts of this great program, but am I alone here in wishing that Budget would just pay someone who understands design elegance to give the whole thing a facelift? It looks like a joke, and I hope that the developers will take aesthetics more seriously in the future, because underneath the hood lies something really worthwhile.

I've had this software for a few years, but I've used it daily for about the last four months.

I can't speak highly enough about how well this software does what it's designed to do. There were a few kinks for me learning how to handle my weekly pays, but the tech support was fast and got me going again quickly.

Basically, this software replicates the 'Envelope System' your grandmother (and at least one Syndicated Radio Personality) recommends, but instead of using cash envelopes, you use virtual software 'envelopes'. You can set up where to allocate your money for each paycheck ahead of time. If your pay varies, you must allocate every dollar before it will populate you envelopes - just as you would for an all-cash system. A 'catch-all' envelope called 'Available' is where any money you don't want to allocate (yet) will go.

You can customize your envelopes with logos and colors, and movement of money between envelopes is quite simple. Envelopes have histories so you can double-check whether you paid bills from your envelopes yet.

Once the iPhone version comes out, it will sync with the Mac version and it'll be just like having your envelopes with you - you'll be able to document purchases from your envelopes on-the-fly. Currently, I save my receipts and document them at the end of every day.

I've tried a few budgeting/money management programs and was looking for something that was simple enough, yet could do what I needed. I originally checked this one out because I liked the interface and the setup wizard. Actually, it turned out to be quite a bit more complicated than I thought, but that was mostly due to a very erratic income, which was tough to make work within the context of the program. Stuck with it though, printed out a lot of the help manual and, most helpfully to myself, made dummy accounts to practice on and observe how the program handled transactions. The demo, which times out after a certain number of transactions, ran out on me, but I took a chance and purchased the program. Glad I did, because it has made budgeting a lot easier as I have adjusted it to my needs.
I found the income/pay aspect of it the most confusing at first because there are several options for inputting it. But without a regular paycheck, I ultimately settled on a simple deposit approach, whereas the setup wizard takes a regular (or irregular) pay approach and tries to allocate it among the things you buy every month. Personally, I found this confusing and have opted for a simple deposit/transfer/spend approach. But given that, it works fine. The support was very helpful, too.

Budget offers many levels of use to its users. Beginners can simply use it as they would the physical envelope system, while more advanced users can assign portions of their weekly, by-weekly, or monthly pay to be dispersed to the appropriate categories at the assigned pay periods. (Frankly, I don't understand the previous poster's comment that it is "too hard to use" - it's much easier than the other software I have tried.) I have used this software for more than two years and it has proven invaluable, especially considering the inexpensive price tag. Using Budget I can quickly balanced my monthly account statement of over 50 transactions, often in less than one minute. Ron and Kyle have always responded promptly when I have had a question or comment. You can road test this program for free, and if you buy it and don't like it, they have a 60 day money-back guarantee for this program.

This is a nice one. After a preliminary period with help (hours) I got the hang of it. What I found was a program that really helps you, as it's name implies, to build a good budget and then see how every transaction affects it, in real-time.

Main problems with my tight budget are suddenly appearing new expenses. Budget helps me quickly revise my budget by letting me see in one glance where there's some slack (or where i just have to do with less) and quickly finance appearing emergencies. And well. To me – heaven sent.

There are some things like handling cash which could be better implemented or some eye-candy matters. Over-all it seems everything I need is there.