Mvelopes / Review

Mvelopes is personal budgeting & personal spending plan software that uses the old fashioned envelope budgeting from the 1950's. It's a system of saving a portion of your paycheck or other income to pay bills while keeping on a budget   Each spending category uses the envelope set up for each expense.

The differences between mvelopes and other personal budgeting software such as Quicken or MS Money is instead of covering all areas of finance, Mvelopes is more budget-focused.

• Mvelopes is an online service as opposed to a software download to your computer and is a subscription based service instead of a one-time fee.
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• Mvelopes' Best Features

Mvelopes won't overload you with unnecessary features that you pay for but won't be using. That's the real beauty of this software. 

Complete Online Financial & Spending Management

• Access and manage your spending plan anytime, anywhere
  
• Easily set up a spending plan using envelope spending accounts that are tied to your monthly income
  
• Uncover hidden spending
  
• Always know how much you have left to spend in each envelope and know how long it has to last
  
• Easily look ahead and set aside money in advance of spending requirements
  
• Save money for unexpected expenses, including emergencies
  
• View all your transactions and balance information in one place
  
• Successfully track and manage credit card spending without increasing debt 
  
• Automatic Transaction Retrieval

Get all your transactions from each of your online banks and credit cards, and see them all in one place

• Quickly view all new transactions each time you log in
  
• Never worry about manually tracking or entering your expenses again
  
• Link an unlimited number of accounts from any of the thousands of supported financial institutions
  
• Full Featured Online Bill Pay

Make payments to any company or individual

• Up to 15 payments/month including postage (save up to $6.00 in postage)
  
• Save time and avoid late fees and never miss a payment again
  
• Easily set up automatic and recurring payments or transfers
  
• Receive, view and pay your bills all online
  
• Net Worth Tracking

Track IRAs, 401(k), stocks, mutual funds, and even your mortgage and auto loans

Access and manage your spending plan from the mall, the grocery store or anywhere you make spending decisions

Unlimited Live Customer Support

Unlimited LIVE customer support and product coaching via chat, email or telephone

What About Mvelopes Security?

You don't have to worry about the security and confidentiality of your personal and financial information. All your data is protected through electronic encryption, and is provided to you over the securest Internet connection.  

Mvelopes Personal has a four-layer security plan in place:

- Transmission Encryption
- Storage Encryption
- Physical Security
- Access Security

The information you provide, such as usernames and password, are encrypted using 128-bit encryption. All encrypted data is held in an offsite guarded data center. They have a 3rd party auditor that tests the internal and external security on a quarterly basis.

For troubleshooting purposes only, Mvelopes Product Support agents are able to see your account status and the individual transactions under your Mvelopes Personal username, they cannot see your Financial Institutions credentials.

A username and password are required to access the Mvelopes online service. After entering a username or password incorrectly three times, access to an account is blocked.

You are responsible for protecting the secrecy of your password in accordance with the terms contained in the Mvelopes Online Service Agreement. It's recommended that you not store secure pages in your cache or leave your computer unattended while you are logged in to Mvelopes online service or while shopping the In2M Web site.

The Post office vs. Mvelopes Scenario

The postal service delivers information between individuals and their financial institutions every day.  Using Mvelopes does the same thing and using a much more secure method. 

The security concerns of your personal financial information being handled by the post office are too many to list, however, the postal service does an excellent job nonetheless.

But with Mvelopes you minimize your risk because the transactions are encrypted in numerous ways, and monitored religiously. No system is fail proof, but Mvelopes has gone to great lengths to ensure the most up-to-date technology is being used to protect your data.

I have only great respect and admiration for the post office, but if the mail carrier drops your bank statement or other financial information by mistake your information is vulnerable. If your mail box is broken into, your bank, credit card or other financial information has just been compromised. You can not protect against this type of theft, and cannot guarantee that it will not happen.

With Mvelopes you are much more secure than any method you or I could come up with apart from personally handling each transaction ourselves. In fact, even then, we could be mugged on the way to our financial institution and thus be vulnerable again, and the even police won't guarantee that will never happen.

Mvelopes Cost Comparison

How much do you really pay using Quicken or MS Money? Often there are many hidden costs to using these applications. Compare Mvelopes Personal on a monthly basis to what you would pay for a competing budget program.

¹ Cost based on 2006 Premium editions of Quicken and Money after manufacturer rebates/discounts. Original prices are $79.99 for Quicken and $79.95 for Money. Mvelopes cost based on two year prepaid plan.
² Assumes user has accounts (checking, savings, credit card, etc.) with two financial institutions. Cost based on monthly service fees charged by Wells Fargo Bank ($3.00) and CitiBank ($2.95 for select areas) for transaction downloads to Quicken or Money.
³ Money figure is based on MSN Bill Pay. Money also offers option to use user's financial institution's bill pay - Wells Fargo charges $6.95 for its Money-compatible bill pay service.
⁴ Cost based on two customer support calls per year. Quicken offers free support during installation, with a $24.95 charge per call after installation. Money offers unlimited free support during first three months after purchase, with a $35.00 charge per instance (call, email or chat) after first 3 months and a $245.00 charge for "Advanced Issues."

Yearly and Quarterly breakdown:

Compare Mvelopes to MS Money

Compare Mvelopes to Quicken

In Summary

The Mvelopes Personal budget program really works, and you pay a flat monthly fee. There are no hidden costs. The competing applications do not offer a solution that really works, and it costs up to twice as much. Get started today and see why so many users rely on Mvelopes Personal to manage their money.

The Mvelopes Personal Budgeting System Really does work.  Why not visit the Mvelopes personal website and check it out for yourself.