Uncategorized – Page 6 – JonMarc Grodi

Aug 05

Review: MoneyWell – Virtual Envelope Budgeting Software

By JonMarc Grodi | Uncategorized | One Comment

Mac-users! I started an email of kudos to NoThirst Software and ended up writing much more than I expected. NoThirst is the developer of MoneyWell, a really great piece of financial software for Mac that I just recently discovered and now am really pumped about.

I have tried a lot of different pieces of financial software but MoneyWell is a little different. MoneyWell keeps track of two levels of information. First, your real life bank accounts and transactions and second, both the money you have planned to allocate to different areas as well as the money you have already allocated. Instead of the traditional envelopes, you allocate money to virtual “buckets”. As your “real life” transactions are automatically downloaded from your bank (or entered manually for cash accounts or banks without direct downloads), you assign them to your income or expense buckets.

It’s a little hard to describe in print, but I would encourage anyone (using a mac) who is looking to effectively budget – whether the goal is to pay off debt, save for the future, or whatever – to check out MoneyWell and watch a few of their videos: http://nothirst.com/moneywell/. It is a great piece of software that succeeds where other brands of personal finance software fail – ease of use, simplicity, practical functionality, and more.

Since I was writing to praise the developers about the elements I liked, I decided to share the email below in case the program might be of use to you.

I just wanted to email and thank you for MoneyWell!

My wife and I went through Dave Ramsey’s “Financial Peace University” last year which led us to change our financial plans and begin working to pay off debt and prepare ourselves for the future.

We have done rather well since then, BUT struggled with the budgeting. One of the reasons for this was that while we liked the envelope idea, it was hard to manage when we had multiple bank accounts, cash, irregular sources of income etc etc. Keeping everything straight was a bit of a mess.

I have tried a number of personal finance programs over the past few years. I have spent hours upon hours with programs like Quicken and iBank being continually frustrated by bugs in the system, a lack of adequate or understandable tutorials/documentation, but most fundamentally I found that these programs treat budgeting as an afterthought. They are focused almost exclusively on a retroactive approach to finances: looking back and figuring out what happened! This was completely useless for the envelope system and to the approach we were trying to take to our finances. I kept trying to make the programs work proactively – spending the money on paper first – but again was frustrated at how poorly the budgeting tools worked out.

I also tried simpler programs like Mint.com. While I enjoyed mint and tried for a while to make it work, the limitations on the tools were too great and made realistic, proactive budgeting continue to be too difficult.

What struck me about MoneyWell when I first discovered it and began watching the videos (aside from the pleasant surprise that there WERE a collection of helpful videos) was that the whole software seemed to be designed around the responsible financial ideas that I had been learning and trying to implement. Spending money on paper first, avoiding debt, regarding “savings” to be your emergency fund, rather than part of your available cash, etc – even much of the language of the videos seemed to reflect the values I was working towards.

Whereas I had spent hours upon hours upon hours trying to setup complicated programs like Quicken or iBank function to help us budget, plan, payoff debt, and save, I was able to watch the tutorial videos, setup my accounts, setup my buckets, and breathe a sigh of relief all in one evening. In fact, I kept excitedly returning to the program expecting there to be more work to do, but there was not! Finally, I could put the personal finance software aside and go back to my life.

Among the many strengths of the software – easy to set up, good looking, speedy, intuitive, etc – there were a couple areas that stood out.

First, one of the difficulties in starting any kind of financial program is that it is a little like stepping onto a speeding treadmill. My paychecks are half gone for the month, some bills have been paid but not all, the budget I made at the beginning of the months is already fatally ruined… How now do I effectively “hit the ground” running with a new personal finance software? With MoneyWell, I was able to easily setup the start date and levels for my buckets and “ta-da”: I am set to go. I was so taken aback by the ease of this process.

Secondly, the idea of the two levels of your finances as noted in the videos – the real life accounts, transactions, etc as well as the virtual level of your buckets and money flows – is very helpful and well implemented so as to keep your focus on the virtual level, or in other words YOUR BUDGET. This is always the difficulty! It is one thing to setup a budget and envelopes, but if you have money in two different checking accounts, some in your envelopes, and some irregular income coming in, it is very, very difficult to keep your eyes on the budget (rather than the account balances themselves) and at the same time ensure that the numbers in your budget are still correct. MoneyWell keeps our eyes on the plan while at the same time making it easy and effective to ensure that the plan is staying consistent with reality.

After trying for months and months to setup a budget and envelopes that worked for us (and always ending up spending it all), we now have money set aside in 15+ envelopes for expenses that are coming up and we were thus able to make a higher payment toward our debt this month.

Thanks for a wonderful product and keep up the good work!

Blessings,

JonMarc, Teresa, and baby Dominic (due to be born next week)

Please let me know if you have any questions about my experience with MoneyWell.

If you know me, you know I get really excited about things. In fact, I’m thinking about writing more about software, businesses, charities, services, and products that I have found to be worthwhile. We need to reward good work!

Mar 18

Ends and Means – Ethics refresher

By JonMarc Grodi | Uncategorized | One Comment

Many situations in which I have found myself over the past couple years have made me revisit what I thought I knew about ethics..

Ethics and morals, like many of the most important things in our lives, often become taken for granted to the point that we forget some of there most important points.

This is especially important for us to remember today given the situations facing the church. With clerical scandal constantly revisited on the news and the overall decline of morality and culture even within members of the Church itself, what might we reiterate about ethics and morality that might shed some light?

Sometimes the most necessary information to revisit is that which seems obvious. What I would like to revisit is the fact that ends do not justify means.

Good ends, well intentioned ends, wishfully thought out ends, seemingly attractive end, never, EVER justify evil means.

Point made. What is the relevance?

Here’s the thing: This concept seems obvious and basic and unquestioned, but like many such concepts, it is only easy until you are faced with a situation involving lofty ends but questionable means.

One of the most commonplace and easy traps to fall into involve the way we interact with people we live with, work with, or are close to in some way.

When we care about people we naturally want to help them be better. With this end in mind, what so often happens? We yell, nag, criticize, put down, write off, marginalize, or in some other way try to produce this good “end” by poor means.

We know we should be kinder, more patient, gentler, or all in all more loving, but these are hard to do. In fact, not only is it hard to help others be better in a loving fashion, but oftentimes we are trying to enact change in others that we are unwilling or unable to as yet enact in ourselves.

It comes down to this: its easy to be concerned with these lofty ends, but much harder to perform good means.

But here is the real kicker: Those lofty ends are worthless if you sink to evil means to get them. God may work good from them, but that’s His business. You on the other hand have sinned, and this is not changed by the fact that God can bring fruit from even the darkness of sin.

This is the reality of our moral lives. The goodness or badness of any given action is never dependent on the outcome of the action. This is a good thing too because nomatter how good of an action we perform or bad, we can’t control the outcome. Our best efforts can seem to produce disaster, and our worst sins can, by grace, be made to flower. We are not morally responsible for the good or evil results of our actions, but only the goodness or badness of the actions themselves.

Again, when reminded that “ends never justify means” many will say “well, duh!”. But unfortunately if we were honest and prayerful about it, we all know examples of lying, cheating, gossip, disobedience, and other vices, many are our own, that have been justified or ignored because some rosy “end” held us in thrall.

Just as we are called to give and not count the costs, we must never let the ends of our actions distract us from the rightness or wrongness of the actions themselves.

Think about it and leave your comments below. God Bless.