Envelope budgeting: Does Quicken allow for negative balances (across months)?

williampeck1958

I did Mvelopes for 14 years, it was good for me. Then I started a new system, which I've been using for 7 months. It's ok but the main thing I don't like is it does not allow for negative balances (to go forward to the new month).

I will admit I got lazy with Mvelopes, basically I kept spending and running negative balances in envelopes. And I got lazy with CC spending (in regards to reconciling each month).

Main think I want to know is about negative envelopes. And could you point me to videos or articles that explain the concept / principles of Quicken? This is just for home use, me and my wife.

Thank you.

Rocket J Squirrel

Quicken for Windows has no concept of envelopes. It has a feature called Savings Goals which might be similar enough to envelopes to fulfill the need.

Quicken is based on accounts, which correspond to real world bank, credit, investment, etc. accounts. An account can have a negative balance. Credit card accounts almost always do, for example.

Savings goals are pseudo-accounts which represent the desire to save up enough money to achieve a goal. If you want to envision physical envelopes, each time you put money in the envelope, you would transfer it from a real world account into the savings goal account in Quicken.

williampeck1958

I did search on this forum for "negative envelopes" and nothing jumped up.

Jon

Mac or Windows? Quicken Mac doesn't support envelope budgeting; I don't know if Quicken for Windows does.

williampeck1958

didn't think it would be different … but it's Windows for me. Why would it act differently?

This is for personal financial management (budgeting)

Rocket J Squirrel

Quicken for Windows has no concept of envelopes. It has a feature called Savings Goals which might be similar enough to envelopes to fulfill the need.

Quicken is based on accounts, which correspond to real world bank, credit, investment, etc. accounts. An account can have a negative balance. Credit card accounts almost always do, for example.

Savings goals are pseudo-accounts which represent the desire to save up enough money to achieve a goal. If you want to envision physical envelopes, each time you put money in the envelope, you would transfer it from a real world account into the savings goal account in Quicken.

williampeck1958

@Rocket J Squirrel Thank you.

Mvelopes and YNAB are roughly similar. I liked Mvelopes with the negative envelopes but YNAB doesn't allow it. I've only been using YNAB for 6 months but to me it's a maintenance time-suck.

I guess the real question is do you recommended it for personal budgeting, given my experience.

Thank you.

Rocket J Squirrel

To be honest, I can't recommend Quicken for budgeting because I've never used that Quicken feature. Nor have I used savings goals. Both features might be great or terrible for all I know. I was just pointing them out as possibilities for you.

One thing that Quicken offers is a 30 day money-back satisfaction guarantee. You must buy the product, but you can get a refund if you decide not to use it within 30 days.

UKR

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