Mvelopes Personal is a tool being used by thousands to successfully implement envelope budgeting principles on a daily basis. In Money for Life, when Tom met with Ryan and Christine, he introduced them to a computer and Internet-based system that automated the envelope budgeting process. This was very important to them because of the complexities associated with managing finances in today’s world. As society becomes less dependent on traditional forms of payment and more focused on cashless spending processes, it is important to utilize a tool that will allow you to create a context for decision-making by appropriately incorporating all types of spending from all types of financial accounts.

Mvelopes Personal will allow you to successfully implement the envelope concepts outlined in this book. As you begin using the system, it will assist you with defining your initial spending plan, automatically track all of your transactions, automatically update your envelope spending account balances, and allow you to make timely and appropriate adjustments.

Brief excerpts from the book–Money for Life–pointing out benefits of envelope budgeting are outlined below, along with related features from the Mvelopes Personal system.

Money for Life : Easily Create a Budget
Ryan and Christine Richardson met with Tom Maxwell, a certified financial planner, after realizing that they needed help managing their finances. Tom has been working with individuals and families, for more than thirty years, to plan their financial futures. Like so many others, Ryan and Christine realized they couldn't overcome all their challenges on their own.Tom challenged them to get their spending in control and pay off their debts. Only then would they be able to successfully work towards improving their financial future.Tom provided Ryan and Christine with the Mvelopes Personal, online budgeting system to help them accomplish these goals.

Mvelopes Personal : Easily Create a Budget
Mvelopes Personal allows you to simply and easily define your monthly income and then set up spending accounts–or envelopes–to which you allocate that income.When you receive a paycheck,Mvelopes splits the amount between the various spending envelopes based on your previously programmed allocations. Spending categories are completely up to you and can be changed at any time.You can create as many envelopes as you need, and you can group them under category headings as you see fit. Additionally, you can create envelopes for periodic expenses, such as vacations, car registration fees, or an emergency fund, and set aside money today for your future spending requirements.

Money for Life : Mange Your Spending with Anytime, Anywhere Access to Your Budget
The challenge many of us face with overspending , is not realizing we are doing it until it is too late. As seen in Money for Life, Ryan and Christine were no different. They looked at their income and thought that they should have enough money to be living comfortably. Instead they found they were getting deeper into debt. They realized they were overspending each month by close to $600 and hadn't even known that they were doing it. By gaining access to their budget and spending on a daily basis from anywhere, Ryan and Christine were able to start living within their income. for the first time in many years they felt in control of their financial future.

Mvelopes Personal : Manage Your Spending with Anytime, Anywhere Access to Your Budget
A real advantage to Mvelopes Personal is that it is an online budgeting system, which means you are not tied to your home computer.You and your spouse can have anytime, anywhere access to your budget through Mvelopes’ secure online service. This means both of you can be looking at your daily spending activity at the same time—at work, at home, on the road, or anywhere you have Internet access.As with Ryan and Christine, when both of you stay involved in the budgeting process, you can count on being successful. Mvelopes allows you to securely and easily access your information from anywhere, providing you with the ability to make informed spending decisions.

Mvelopes Personal : Easily Track all of your Spending
Mvelopes retrieves all your spending and deposit transactions on a daily basis, automatically, from your bank, credit union, or credit card company, bringing all your transactions into one place.

The interaction you have with each transaction makes managing your spending easy. Each transaction is assigned to an envelope where the expense is deducted from the income that you allocated to that envelope. You will be able to see your balance and know exactly how much you have left to spend in each envelope spending account.By always knowing exactly how much you have left to spend, you can make better spending decisions.

Money for Life : Recover up to 20 Percent of Your Income from Hidden Spending
By closely tracking all of their spending, ryan and christine like so many Mvelopes users, have been able to reduce their spending each month. this has enabled them to put those extra funds towards debt reduction, savings, and investments. The funds saved are often funds that are lost in hidden spending... little cash purchases that add up, like the little duck hat that Ryan and Christine's daughter wanted at the zoo. Or take for example Ryan's extra golf game each month that he was able to cut out once he realized how much it added up to. Ryan prioritized his spending in order to remain within their income. Whatever the spending scenario is, once all the transactions are seen, spending can often be drastically reduced.

Mvelopes Personal : Recover up to 20 Percent of Your Income from Hidden Spending
By knowing where your money is going using Mvelopes' unique approach to spending management, you will be able to recover between 10 and 20 percent of your income from hidden spending. Over the course of a year, based on a $40,000 salary, that's an extra $4,000 you could put to better use, such as debt reduction, savings, or investments. All those little purchases can add up to more than you realize! With better tracking and forecasting, you can recover that money.

Mvelopes Personal : Effectively Manage Credit Card Spending Without Adding Additional Debt
In today’s society, credit cards are often used as an income source instead of a convenient spending method. Consequently, there is often no income available at the end of the month to pay off the debt. Mvelopes manages credit card purchasing by automatically moving allocated funds from your spending envelopes to a credit card repayment envelope every time you use your card.Here’s how it works:When you use your credit card to pay for dinner at a local restaurant, that transaction is received into Mvelopes and assigned to your ‘Dining Out’ envelope.That amount is then deducted
from the ‘Dining Out’ envelope and placed into your ‘Credit Card Repayment’ envelope

Money for Life : Quickly Eliminate Debt
After reducing their spending, Ryan and Christine were able to see how applying the debt roll-down principle would aid them in accelerating the reduction of their debts. Once their spending was in control, they could prioritize their debts and increase their payment on the first debt to pay it off more quickly. That payment amount would then roll down to the next debt payment. The Richardson's could finally see the end of their debt and the felling of being in control of their finances once again, was a major accomplishment.

Mvelopes Personal : Quickly Eliminate Debt
Mvelopes uses have found that by managing their spending closely, they are able to eliminate overspending and even save extra money each month. In many cases, there will be money left in several of your discretionary envelopes at the end of the month. By sweeping those extra amounts into current debt payments, you can quickly eliminate your debt. If you have more than one debt, when that first debt is paid in full, you can roll that whole payment amount plus the extra into your next priority debt on the list. Once you are debt-free, you can roll those former debt payments into savings and investments to provide a more financially stable future for yourself and your family.

Money for Life : Manage Your Complete Portfolio
With Mvelopes and Mportfolio, Ryan and Christine were not only able to manage their day-to-day finances, they were also able to more easily manage their investments. Mportfolio enabled Ryan and Christine to both check the status of their stocks, 401k, IRA and other mutual fund accounts that Tom had helped them set up.They were well on their way to a stable financial future for themselves and their children.

Mvelopes Personal : Manage Your Complete Portfolio
Track all of your investments from Mportfolio so that you can see the big picture from one summary page.As an integral part of your Mvelopes personal budgeting system, you can customize Mportfolio to access and track all of your investment accounts such as IRAs, 401k, and mutual funds.This summary page allows you to see your complete financial picture in one quick snapshot, rather than surfing around to several
different sites to see the balances in all your varying accounts. Should you want to make changes to an account, you can simply click on that account to access the screen where you can make the appropriate adjustments.

Money for Life : Generate Clear Informative Reports
Mvelopes Personal allowed Ryan and Christine to view their financial standing and budget status in numerous different ways.The report functions enabled them to look at each month, the whole year, or even just a period of days.When they would go to meet with Tom it was easy to just print out a few status reports and have a complete picture to discuss with Tom.

Mvelopes Personal : Generate Clear Informative Reports
With Mvelopes Personal, you can generate any number of reports that will help you see where you are financially. These reports make everything easier, from doing your taxes, to planning a special event, or even just reviewing your financial status. Reports can be generated in numerous ways:

• Search for transactions by payee or date
• Review transactions or envelope registers for a certain, day, week, or month
• Calculate what portion of your expenses are in a particular category
• Compare income allocation against actual expenses for any envelope category, by day, week, month, and year
• View the current status of your envelopes and accounts with the monthly allocation, balance, and current spending

Money for Life : Receive Unlimited Customer Support and Budget Coaching
In addition to the help and guidance that Ryan and Christine were able to get from Tom, they also relied on the Mvelopes Personal customer support team to answer any questions they had about the budgeting system. The web site and newsletters also were a valuable resource for Ryan and Christine to find tips on everything from budget categories, saving strategies, and credit information. This system really helped Ryan and Christine establish spending habits that will last.

Money for Life : Receive Unlimited Customer Support and Budget Coaching
Included with your Mvelopes online service is unlimited telephone support and coaching, as well as access to our message boards, FAQs, tutorials, and email support. Users also receive a monthly, online newsletter with tips for using the Mvelopes system and other useful financial fitness suggestions.

In Summary
For additional information about Mvelopes visit www.mvelopes.com.