An Odd Way To Manage A Budget Visually On Your Mac, But It Works

Intuit’s Quicken may reign supreme among Mac users as the go-to money management app, but the company’s history of ignoring Mac users has lead to plenty of competition.

At the low end of the scale is an inexpensive multi-platform budgeting app for Mac, Windows PCs, and Linux which uses the old fashioned envelope method to view your budget on a single screen.

Budget At A Glance

What I like about BudgetView is the relative simplicity. The aforementioned envelope method dates back about 100 years when employees were paid in cash.

Instead of using a checking account, many people would simply divvy up their hard earned cash into envelopes marked to pay for specific bills.

Rent, food, utilities, car payment, insurance, and so on, would each have an envelope stuffed with the appropriate amount of cash.

BudgetView is a digital version of the envelope method, but without digital envelopes. Create a list of expenses and assign an amount to each.

Then, use BudgetView to subtract the expenses from the month income, and you get a one screen view of how you’re doing financially, including a list of expenses.

BudgetView graphs income and expenses, lists the fixed expenses, displays the monthly variables, including how much is allocated for savings.

Click on a month tab at the top to display each month’s financial numbers. Click ahead to see future projected financial status.

The time honored use of red for over budget makes it easy to glance at the screen and see totals, or individual items.

BudgetView can import data from many bank websites, but setting up each account doesn’t take but a few minutes. Fixed expenses are carried over, month-to-month.

The app won’t manage your stock portfolio or pay your bills (envelopes are not included), but it does track expenses and income, and gives you a quick and easy way to see how much month is left over at the end of your money.

From Appletown

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