Several weeks ago, I wrote about the start of my 30-day trial of Mvelopes. Many people have expressed interest in seeing how things go, because they’ve been curious about the service themselves. While I’m preparing a full-on review of my experience for the end of the month, here’s a rundown of how things are going so far:
This post contains outdated information. For the latest, jump directly to my 2012 Mvelopes review.
The Best Things So Far
- Good customer service: I’ve had one issue so far with not being able to connect to my bank (turns out it was something I did), but it was swiftly resolved with an online chat rep.
- Easy to use: The learning curve on this program is outstanding, and I was able to learn all the features in the first day without a problem.
- Pretty fun: I never expected budgeting to be this much fun, but funding the envelopes is now one of my favorite things to do. I make a point to do it together with my wife, so that we both know exactly what’s going on.
- “Sweep” feature: Allows quick transfers from and to a large number of envelopes at once. Great for a mid-month budget adjustment.
- Savings goals: It’s easy to set up an unlimited number of envelopes for any savings goals you may have, and decide how much to fund for each every time you get paid.
- Report features: Pretty extensive and nicely designed, and the ability to export in a variety of formats, including PDF.
Biggest Issues So Far
- Performance issues: The online service lags for someone who is used to getting things instantly after a click. Seeing the little “processing” pop-up took a little bit of getting used to. I understand that Finicity is continuing to work on performance issues.
- Transfers are funky: I was a little confused when trying to input a transfer against my account, but finally got the hang of it.
- Bank updates lag: I noticed that my Quicken software receives updates much earlier in the day than Mvelopes. Neither one receives updates until transactions clear (particularly long on the weekends), but that was to be expected. I fix this by inputting transactions as I make them into my “pending transactions.” This accounts for the money in the envelope before things are synced with the banks.
Stay tuned for the full review of Mvelopes coming later this month!
Elsewhere Today
- Check out the carnival at Green Panda Treehouse – Carnival of Personal Finance#196: Music Edition
Fiscal Fizzle 