query: Online tool to connect to my bank account and tell me what I spend in different categories?

positive: "I'm not convinced this is completely possible without additional data.  I'm categorizing my purchases now, and I keep running into things like ""was this hardware store purchase for home repair, hobby tools and supplies, cookware, ..."" Ditto for department stores, ditto for cash purchases which appear only as an ATM withdrawal. Sometimes I remember, sometimes I guess, sometimes I just give up. In the end, this budget tracking isn't critical for me so that's good enough. If you really want accuracy, though, I think you are stuck with keeping all your receipts, of taking notes, so you can resolve these gaps."

positive: I use Banktivity.  It's very much not free, but it automatically downloads all my bank and credit card activity and has excellent reporting options.

negative: "What I've found works best when working on my personal budget is to track my income and spending two different ways: bank accounts and budget categories. Here is what I mean: When I deposit my paycheck, I do two things with it: It goes into my checking account, so the balance of my checking account goes up by the amount of my paycheck. I also ""deposit"" the money from my checking account into my various budget category balances.  This is separate from my bank account balances.  Some of my paycheck money goes into my groceries category, some goes into clothing, some into car fuel, entertainment, mortgage, phone, etc.  Some goes into longer range bills that only happen once or twice a year, such as car insurance, life insurance, property tax, etc.  Some goes into savings goals of ours, such as car replacement, vacation, furniture, etc. Every dollar that we have in a bank account or in cash in our wallets is also accounted for in a budget category.  If you add up the balances of our bank accounts and cash, and you add up the balances of our budget categories, they add up to the same number. When we make a purchase, this also gets accounted for twice: The appropriate bank account (or cash wallet) balance gets reduced by the purchase amount. The appropriate budget category gets reduced by the purchase amount. In this way, we don't really need to worry about having separate bank accounts for different purposes.  We don't need to put our savings goal money in a separate bank account from our grocery money, if we don't want to.  The budget category accounting keeps track of how much money is allocated to each purpose.   Now, the budget category amounts are not spent yet; the money in them is still in our bank account, and we can move money around in the categories, if we change our mind on how to allocate them.  For example, if we don't spend all of our gas money for the month, we can either keep that money in the gas category, or we can move it to a different category, such as the car replacement category or the vacation category.  If the phone bill is more than we expect, we can move money around from a different category to cover it. Now, back to your question: We allocate some money from each paycheck into our furniture category.  But the money is not really spent until we actually buy some furniture.  When we do, the furniture category balance and bank account balance both go down by the amount of the purchase. All of this can be kept track of on the computer in a spreadsheet.  However, it's not easy to keep track of so many categories and bank balances.  An easier solution is custom budgeting software designed for this purpose.  I use and recommend YNAB."

negative: "What you are describing sounds a lot like the way we handle our household budget.  This is possible, but quite difficult to do with an Excel spreadsheet.  It is much easier to do with dedicated budgeting software designed for this purpose. When choosing personal budgeting software, I've found that the available packages fall in two broad categories: Some packages take what I would call a proactive approach: You enter in your bank account balances, and assign your money into spending categories.  When you deposit your paycheck, you do the same thing: you add this money to your spending categories.  Then when you spend money, you assign it to a spending category, and the software keeps track of your category balances.  At any time, you can see both your bank balances and your spending category balances.  If you need to spend money in a category that doesn't have any more money, you'll need to move money from a different category into that one.  This approach is sometimes called the envelope system, because it resembles a digital version of putting your cash into different envelopes with different purposes.  A few examples of software in this category are You Need a Budget (YNAB), Mvelopes, and EveryDollar. Other packages take more of a reactive approach: You don't bother assigning a job to the money already in your bank account.  Instead, you just enter your monthly income and put together a spending plan.  As you spend money, you assign the transactions to a spending category, and at the end of the month, you can see what you actually spent vs. what your plan was, and try to adjust your next budget accordingly.  Software that takes this approach includes Quicken and Mint.com. I use and recommend the proactive approach, and it sounds from your question like this is the approach that you are looking for.  I've used several different budgeting software packages, and my personal recommendation is for YNAB, the software that we currently use.  I don't want this post to sound too much like a commercial, but I believe it will do everything you are looking for.   One of the great things about the proactive approach, in my opinion, is how credit card accounts are handled.  Since your spending category balances only include real money actually sitting in an account (not projected income for the month), when you spend money out of a category with your credit card, the software deducts the money from the spending category immediately, as it is already spent.  The credit card balance goes negative.  When the credit card bill comes and you pay it, this is handled in the software as an account transfer from your checking account to your credit card account.  The money in the checking account is already set aside for the purpose of paying your credit card bill. Dedicated budgeting software generally has a reconcile feature that makes verifying your bank statements very easy.  You just enter the date of your bank statement and the balance, and then the software shows you a list of the transactions that fall in those dates.  You can check each one against the transactions on the statement, editing the ones that aren't right and adding any that are missing from the software.  After everything checks out, the software marks the transactions as verified, so you can easily see what has cleared and what hasn't. Let me give you an example to clarify, in response to your comment.  This example is specific to YNAB, but other software using the same approach would work in a similar way. Let's say that you have a checking account and a credit card account.  Your checking account, named CHECKING, has $2,000 in it currently.  Your credit card currently has nothing charged on it, because you've just paid your bill and haven't used it yet this billing period.  YNAB reports the balance of your credit card account (we'll call this account CREDITCARD), as $0. Every dollar in CHECKING is assigned to a category.  For example, you've got $200 in ""groceries"", $100 in ""fast food"", $300 in ""rent"", $50 in ""phone"", $500 in ""emergency fund"", etc.  If you add up the balance of all of your categories, you'll get $2,000. Let's say that you've written a check to the grocery store for $100.  When you enter this in YNAB, you tell it the name of the store, the account that you paid with (CHECKING), and the category that the expense belongs to (groceries).  The ""groceries"" category balance will go down from $200 to $100, and the CHECKING account balance will go down from $2,000 to $1,900. Now, let's say that you've spent $10 on fast food with your credit card.  When you enter this in YNAB, you tell it the name of the restaurant, the account that you paid with (CREDITCARD), and the category that the expense belongs to (fast food).  YNAB will lower the ""fast food"" category balance from $100 to $90, and your CREDITCARD account balance will go from $0 to $-10. At this point, if you add up all the category balances, you'll get $1,890.  And if you add up your account balances, you'll also get $1,890, because CHECKING has $1,900 and CREDITCARD has $-10.  If you get your checking account bank statement at this time, the account balance of $1,900 should match the statement and you'll see the payment to the grocery store, assuming the check has cleared.  And if the credit card bill comes now, you'll see the fast food purchase and the balance of $-10. When you write a check to pay this credit card bill, you enter this in YNAB as an account transfer of $10 from CHECKING to CREDITCARD.  This transfer does not affect any of your category balances; they remain the same.  But now your CHECKING account balance is down to $1,890, and CREDITCARD is back to $0. This works just as well whether you have one checking account and one credit card, or 2 checking accounts, 2 savings accounts, and 3 credit cards.  When you want to spend some money, you look at your category balance.  If there is money in there, then the money is available to spend somewhere in one of your accounts.  Then you pick an account you want to pay with, and, looking at the account balance, if there isn't enough money in that account to pay it, you just need to move some money from another account into that one, or pick a different account.  When you pay for an expense with a credit card, the money gets deducted from the category balances immediately, and is no longer available to spend on something else."

negative: "I live in Canada and have a BMO mastercard. I called them and asked them and their answer was ""of course!"". I have put thousands of dollars on my mastercard from my bank account to pay for rare, large purchases. The money I put on appears differently on my online mastercard account though.  EX:  account balance: $6,000.00 CR  available credit: $3,000.00  This confused me at first, but when I called and asked them, they said my available credit doesn't  change (ie: how much BMO lends me), but when I add my available credit + what I've put on my card (my account balance, which is CR (meaning my balance has a surplus of money)), then my spending limit is $9,000.00 So, I don't increase my ""credit"" limit, but I do increase my spending limit. It just comes down to terminology. I assume it is like this for other credit cards, but I would recommend calling and asking, just to be on the safe side. Heath"

negative: I've been budgeting with MS Money since 2004 and was pretty disappointed to hear it's being discontinued. Budgeting is actually a stress-relieving hobby for me, and I can be a bit of a control-freak when it comes to finances, so I decided to start early looking for a replacement rather than waiting until MS Money can no longer download transactions. Here are the pros and cons of the ones I've tried (updated 10/2010): You Need A Budget Pro (YNAB) - Based on the old envelopes system, YNAB has you allot money from each paycheck to a specific budget category (envelope). It encourages you to live on last money's income, and if you have trouble with overspending, that can be a great plan. Personally, I'm a big believer in the envelope concept, so that's the biggest pro I found. Also, it's a downloaded software, so once I've bought it (for about $50) it's mine, without forced upgrades as far as I've seen. The big con for me was that it does not automatically download transactions. I would have to sign on to each institution's website and manually download to the program. Also, coming from Money, I'm used to having features that YNAB doesn't offer, like the ability to store information about my accounts. Overall, it's forward-thinking and a good budgeting system, but will take some extra time to download transactions and isn't really a comprehensive management tool for all my financial needs. You can try it out with their free trial. Mint - This is a free online program. The free part was a major pro. It also looks pretty, if that's important to you. Updating is automatic, once you've got it all set up, so that's a pro. Mint's budgeting tools are so-so. Basically, you choose a category and tell it your limit. It yells at you (by text or email) when you cross the line, but doesn't seem to offer any other incentive to stay on budget.  When I first looked at Mint, it did not connect with my credit union, but it currently connects to all my banks and all but one of my student loan institutions.  Another recent improvement is that Mint now allows you to manually add transactions, including pending checks and cash transactions.  The cons for me are that it does not give me a good end-of-the-month report, doesn't allow me to enter details of my paychecks, and doesn't give me any cash-flow forecasting. Overall, Mint is a good casual, retrospective, free online tool, but doesn't allow for much planning ahead. Mvelopes - Here's another online option, but this one is subscription-based. Again, we find the old envelopes system, which I think is smart, so that's a pro for me. It's online, so it downloads transactions automatically, but also allows you to manually add transactions, so another pro. The big con on this one is the cost. Depending on how you far ahead you choose to pay (quarterly, yearly or biannually), you're paying $7.60 to $12 per month. They do offer a free trial for 14 days (plus another 14 days offered when you try to cancel). Another con is that they don't provide meaningful reports. Overall, a good concept, but not worth the cost for me. Quicken - I hadn't tried Quicken earlier because they don't offer a free trial, but after the last few fell short, I landed with Quicken 2009. Pro for Quicken, as an MS Money user is that it is remarkably similar in format and options. The registers and reports are nearly identical. One frustration I'd had with Money was that it was ridiculously slow at start-up, and after a year or so of entering data, Quicken is dragging. Con for Quicken, again as an MS Money user, is that it's budgeting is not as detailed as I would like.  Also, it does not download transactions smoothly now that my banks all ask security questions as part of sign-in.  I have to sign in to my bank's website and manually download.  Quicken 2011 is out now, but I haven't tried it yet.  Hopefully they've solved the problem of security questions.  Quicken 2011 promises an improved cash-flow forecast, which sounds promising, and was a feature of MS Money that I have very much missed.  Haven't decided yet if it's worth the $50 to upgrade to 2011.

negative: IBAN is enough within SEPA and it should be so for your bank as well. Tell them to join our decade, or change bank. I received bank transfers from other continents to my SEPA account in the past and I don't remember ever needing to say more than my IBAN and BIC. Banks can ask all sorts of useless information, but if your bank doesn't have a standard (online) form for the operation then it probably means you're going to spend a lot.

negative: As a merchant I can tell you that the only thing the bank gets from me.  Is the total amount and a category for my business.  No detail, not ever.

negative: The key to understanding where your money is going is to budget.  Rather than tracking your spending after the fact, budgeting lets you decide up front what you want to spend your money on.  This can be done with cash envelopes, on paper, or on Excel spreadsheets; however, in my opinion, the best, most flexible, and easiest way to do this is with budgeting software designed for this purpose. As I explained in another answer, when it comes to personal budgeting software, there are two different approaches: those in which you decide what to spend your money on before it is spent, and those that simply show you how your money was spent after it is gone.  I recommend the first approach.  Software designed to do this include YNAB, Mvelopes, and EveryDollar. My personal favorite is YNAB.  You'll find lots of help, video tutorials, and even online classes with a live teacher on YNAB's website.   Using one of these packages will help you manage spending, whether it is done electronically or with cash.  When you pay for something with a credit card, you enter your purchase into the software, and the software adjusts your budget as if the money is already spent, even if you haven't technically paid for the purchase yet. As far as strategy goes, here is what I recommend:  Get started on one of these, and set up your budget right away.  Assign a category to every dollar in your account.  Don't worry if it is not perfect.  If you find later on that you don't have enough money in one of your categories, you can move money from another category if you need to.  As you work with it, you'll get better at knowing how much money you need in each category. My other recommendation is this: Don't wait until the end of the month to download your transactions from the bank and fit everything into categories.  Instead, enter your spending transactions into the software manually, every day, as you spend.  This will do two things: first, you'll have the latest, up-to-date picture of where your accounts are in your software without having to guess.  Second, it will help you stay on top of your spending.  You'll be able to see early on if you are overspending in a particular category.  YNAB has a mobile app that I use quite a bit, but if I don't get a chance to enter a purchase right when I spend it, I make sure to keep a receipt, and enter the transaction in that evening.  It only takes a couple of minutes a day, and I always know how I stand financially.

negative: "I don't think credit cards support depositing money into to begin with. Anyone could deposit money to a Credit Card acccount.  All they need is your bank's name, Visa/Mastercard, and 16 digit number.  It is done through the ""Pay Bills / Make Payments"" function in online banking.  So tell me, what does it mean that PayPal will transfer the money to my VISA card You can use the new balance for spending via Credit Card, the effect is same as making a payment from your chequing account to credit card account.  Will it simply just get transferred to my bank account by the local bank after that Some banks would refund the excess amount from your Credit Card to your Chequing Account after a while, but most don't. People keep credit balance on credit card to make a purchaes larger than credit limit. For example, if your credit limit is $1000, balance is $0, and you made $500 payment to the credit card, you can make a purchase of $1500 without asking for credit limit increase."

negative: "I live in the UK so it's a little different but generally you'd have one account (a current account) which would have a Visa/MasterCard debit card associated before working and any high street bank (don't know what the US equivalent would be, but big banks such as HSBC/Santander) will offer you a savings account which pays a v small amount of interest as well as bonds as all sorts. From what I know most people have their salary paid into their current account (which would be the spending account with a card associated) and would transfer a set amount to a savings account. Personally, I have a current account and a few different saving accounts (which do not have cards associated). One savings account has incoming transfers/money received and I can use online banking to transfer that to my current account ""instantly"" (at least I've done it standing at ATM's and the money is there seconds later - but again this is the UK, not US). This way, my primary current account never has more than £10-15 in it, whenever I know I need money I'll transfer it from the instant access account. This has saved me before when I've been called by my bank for transactions a few £100 each which would have been authorised I kept all my money in my current account. If you don't have money (and dont have an overdraft!) what are they meant to do with it? The other savings account I had setup so that I could not transfer money out without going into a branch with ID/etc, less to stop someone stealing my money and more to be physically unable to waste money on a Friday if I don't arrive at the bank before 4/5PM, so saves a lot of time. US banking is a nightmare, I don't imagine any of this will translate well and I think if you had your salary paid into your savings on a Friday and missed the bank with no online banking facilities/transfers that aren't instant you'd be in a lot of trouble. If the whole ""current + instant access savings account"" thing doesn't work to well, I'm sure a credit/charge (!!!) card will work instead of a separate current account. Spend everything on that (within reason and what you can pay back/afford to pay stupid interest on) on a card with a 0% purchase rate and pay it back using an account you're paid into but is never used for expenses, some credit cards might even reward you for this type of thing but again, credit can be dangerous. A older retired relative of mine has all of his money in one account, refuses a debit card from the bank every time he is offered (he has a card, but it isn't a visa/mastercard, it's purely used for authentication in branch) and keeps that in a safe indoors! Spends everything he needs on his credit card and writes them a sort of cheque (goes into the bank with ID and signs it) for the full balance when his statement arrives. No online banking! No chance of him getting key logged any time soon. tldr; the idea of separating the accounts your money goes in (salary wise) and goes out (spending) isn't a bad idea. that is if wire transfers don't take 3-5 days where you are aha."

negative: "I've been using YNAB4 for the last few years, and I like it so much that I haven't switched to the web version (new YNAB) yet.  However, I have played around with the web version a little, and here is what I have discovered. Despite the different look of the credit card account and the lengthy dissertation on the credit card differences in the Transition Guide, credit cards are handled almost exactly the same in the new YNAB as they were in YNAB4. You enter credit card spending transactions in the same way as YNAB4.  When you enter a transaction, money is pulled out of the budget category you select.  The only difference is that in YNAB4, this money was considered ""gone.""  Now, that money moves from your budget category into the new credit card category. When it comes time to pay the credit card bill, you also enter this transaction in the same way as before.  It is entered as a transfer of money from your checking account to your credit card account.  The only difference here is that with new YNAB, the funds are deducted from your credit card category.  This is handled automatically, so you don't have to think about it if you don't want to.   If you always pay your credit card bill in full, you never have to budget money manually into the credit card category.  The money will already be there from when you entered the credit card spending transactions.  The only time you would manually budget money into the credit card spending category is if you have old credit card debt that you are trying to pay off. A quick example, in pictures: I start out with $10,000 in my checking account, and no credit card debt:  I've got all $10,000 in my ""Fun Money"" category:  Now, I spend $100 at the Store:  You can see that, just like in YNAB4, the credit card account is now in the red $100, and the checking account balance has not changed. In the categories, my Fun Money category is down $100 to $9,900, just like it would be in YNAB4.  The only difference is that there is now $100 in the new Credit Card Payments category.  When it is time to pay the bill, I enter an account transfer, just like in YNAB4:  Note that the Credit Card balance is back to $0, and the Checking Account balance is now down to $9,900. The Credit Card Payment budget category is now magically back to $0:  The above example starts with a zero balance on the credit card.  However, most people will have a non-zero balance on their credit card when they first start a budget.  In YNAB4, when you added a credit card with a (negative) balance, the debt was shown in a budget category called ""Pre-YNAB Debt.""  You then added money to this budget category until it went to zero, and then you didn't need this budget category anymore. With new YNAB, credit card balances are not shown in budget categories.  If you add a credit card account with a balance, the debt is not shown in the budget categories.  To pay off this debt, you can fund the Credit Card Payments category.  After this existing balance amount is paid off, you won't need to fund the Credit Card Payments category anymore as long as you properly assign each new credit card purchase to a funded budget category."

negative: "Many of my friends turn to me for financial advice, and here's what I always tell them because it's super effective for me... 1) I opened an online bank account with Scottrade for which I did not request a card or checks. I set up direct deposit straight to that account. It would be a complicated pain to take money out of that savings. The only time I did so was to buy my house (which was the purpose of the savings) and it involved a wire-transfer and printing of the form to fill out and faxing it in, etc. I have continued to use the account to save for my second house. I basically completely forget that the account is even there or that I am ""missing"" a large chunk of my money. 2) It is VERY important to actually budget for spending money to continue to spend on impulse items. Basically allow yourself to spend money on yourself but in a controlled way. Decide a specific amount that you want to put in a separate account that is just for you to spend to your hearts content and have it direct deposit. I find, (and Dave Ramsey also encourages this) that when I know how much money I am going to blow, I feel much more in control and it causes me to not get carried away and blow more than I realized. Take this a step further... Decide specifically what you want to buy for yourself, and label the account accordingly. For example, I decided back in March that I wanted to buy an Xbox One for when Star Wars Battlefront comes out this November. I calculated exactly how much money I would need at that time, figured how many paychecks I would receive until then, and did the math to determine exactly how much I need to direct deposit into an account JUST for saving to buy the Xbox and game. I use CapFed, and I can actually rename the account as it is displayed, so I called it ""Xbox fund"". Seeing that title, a reminder of what I really want"" encourages me to not touch it. What is your goal behind wanting to save money better? What are you saving for? Label your account accordingly so you don't just see it as money, but as progress."

negative: No, because of regulations Paypal is different in India to most countries and you cannot actually spend paypal balance. You will need to verify your PAN number and connect a bank account, although this should be very quick

negative: The two are closely related. A budget is a detailed plan for how to spend. Expense tracking is a tool to analyze your previous spending performance. Creating a plan for how to spend your money without any record of your previous spending--is an empty promise to yourself that you will never follow up on. Did I stay within my budget? Doesn't matter, I didn't track the spending anyway. Even if you do plan to track your performance, if you have not previously done so, you won't have a good basis for how much to expect in each category.  Most people have a general idea of how much they have spent and many budgets are formed based on that general intuition, but they are often surprised when they track how every penny is spent and look at the totals from month to month and over years. By actually seeing how much has been spent it's easier to pick the big financial drains and target them for reduction, if your desire is more savings, for example. I know people who keep a close eye on what they spend each month, but they don't allocate money in categories for the next month. They don't perform as well on reducing spending, but they often don't care. They feel like they make enough and they save enough, so why worry? I also know people who create an unrealistic budget each month because they haven't done a good job tracking their previous spending. They know what the monthly bills are, but they don't account well for variable or cyclical expenses  like repairs, Christmas, etc. Both tools are essential for maximizing your own personal finance.

negative: Personally, I keep two regular checking accounts at different banks.  One gets a direct deposit totaling the sum of my regular monthly bills and a prorated provision for longer term regular bills like semi-annual car insurance premiums.  I leave a buffer in the account to account for the odd expensive electrical bill or rate increase or whatever.  One gets a direct deposit of the rest which I then allocate to savings and spending. It makes sense to me to separate off regular planned expenses (rent/mortgage, utility bills, insurance premiums) from spending money because it lets me put the basics of my life on autopilot.  An added benefit is I have a failover checking account in the event something happens to one of them.  I don't keep significant amounts of money in either account and don't give transfer access to the savings accounts that store the bulk of my money.  I wear a tinfoil hat when it comes to automatic bank transfers and account access... It doesn't make sense to me to keep deposits separate from spending, it makes less sense to me to spend off of a savings account.

negative: Well the idea of 'good practice' is subjective so obviously there won't be an objectively correct answer. I suspect that whatever article you read was making this recommendation as a budgeting tool to physically isolate your reserve of cash from your spending account(s) as a means to keep spending in check. This is a common idea that I've heard often enough, though I don't think I am alone in believing that it's unnecessary except in the case of a habitual spender who cannot be trusted to stay within a budget.  I suppose there is a very small argument to be made about security where if you use a bank account for daily spending and that account is somehow compromised, the short-term damage is limited. In the end, I would argue that if you're in control of spending and budgeting, have a single source of income that is from regular employment, and you use a credit card for most of your daily spending, there's no compelling reason to have more than one bank account.  Some people have a checking and savings account simply for the psychological effect of separating their money, some couples have 3-4 accounts for income, personal spending, and savings, other people have separate accounts for business/self-employment funds, and a few people like having many accounts that act as hard limits for spending in different categories. Of course, the other submitted answer is correct in noting that the more accounts that you have, the more you are opening yourself up to accounting issues if funds don't transfer the way you expect them to (assuming you're emptying the accounts often). Some banks are more lenient with this, however, and may offer you the option to freely 'overdraft' by pulling funding from another pre-designated account that you also hold at the same bank.

negative: In my opinion, separating your money into separate accounts is a matter of personal preference. I can only think of two main reasons why people might suggest separating your bank accounts in this way: security and accounting. The security reasoning might go something like this: My employer has access to my bank account, because he direct deposits my salary into my account.  I don't want my employer to have access to all my money, so I'll have a separate account that my employer has access to, and once the salary is deposited, I can move that money into my real account. The fault in this reasoning is that a direct deposit setup doesn't really give your employer withdrawal access to your account, and your employer doesn't have any reason to pull money out of your account after he has paid you.  If fraud is going to happen, it much more likely to happen in the account that you are doing your spending out of. The other reason might be accounting.  Perhaps you have several bank accounts, and you use the different accounts to separate your money for different purposes.  For example, you might have a checking account that you do most of your monthly spending out of, you might have a savings account that you use to store your emergency fund, and you have more savings accounts to keep track of how much you have saved toward your next car, or your vacation, or your Christmas fund, or whatever.  After you get your salary deposited, you can move some into your spending account and some into your various savings accounts for different purposes. Instead of having many bank accounts, I find it easier to do my budgeting/accounting on my own, not relying on the bank accounts to tell me how much money I have allocated to each purpose.  I only have one checking account where my income goes; my own records keep track of how much money in that account is set aside for each purpose.  When the checking account balance gets too large, I move a chunk of it over to my one savings account, which earns a little more interest than the checking account does.  I can always move money back into my checking account if I need to spend it for some reason, and the amount of money in each of the two accounts is not directly related to the purpose of the money. In summary, I don't see a good reason for this type of general recommendation.

negative: Aside from the averages mentioned by Jahlapenoez, it may also be useful to group depositors into different categories based on account size and transaction history (# of deposits, # of withdrawals, size of each, etc.) then track how those numbers change on whatever time periods you need to capture. Analysts can use that to see what's going on with outliers as well and assign profitability metrics for the different groupings.  It really helps to have the data structured in a way that allows analysts to ask these questions and retrieve them easily. So the data discovery process will be helped or hindered a lot by the maturity of the bank's data warehouse as well as the tools used for data analysis.

negative: "My wife and I are paid every two weeks. I go on line see the exact deposit, add it to register, and see what checks cleared. In effect, I reconcile twice per month, and the statement can't be different that what their system tells me. Since the online site shows ""last statement balance"" I feel there's no need to bother with the paper, nothing left to reconcile."

negative: Global Trade Connect provides tools and a platform for connecting buyers across the world with maximum suppliers. You can get information about different buyers and customers by visiting Buyers directory through online and offline resources. If you list in our directory, then you will have every option to know their contact details and address details with the help of your registration. For more information you can visit our website globaltradeconnect.com.

negative: "•Have you had any problems with bills not being paid? NO •If you had issues, were they addressed satisfactorily? Answer: A big issue that blindsided me:  With my bank, the funds come out of my account right away, but the actual payment is done through a third-party service. On my bank's online site it appears that the payment has been made, but that does not necessarily mean that the intended recipient has cashed it.  Looking online at my credit union's site is useless, because all I can tell is that the payment has been sent. The only way to verify payment is to contact the intended recipient.  Or I may telephone the online bill pay representative at my bank/credit union, who has access to the third party service. If I do nothing, after 90 days, the check is void, at which time the third party service notifies the bank/credit union and the funds will eventually end up back in my account.  I learned this today, after a third-party paper check to a health care provider was returned to me via mail by the recipient (because insurance had already paid and I did not owe them anything). The money was in the hands of the third-party service, not in my account, nor that of my credit union nor the recipient. At first my credit union told me that I would have to contact the third-party service myself and work it out. I said ""NO WAY"" and the credit union did get the money back into account the same day. This is a sweet deal for the third party, who has my money interest-free anywhere from a few days to three months. And risk-free as well, because the money goes directly from my account to the third party service."

negative: I have also tried Mvelopes in the past, and my experiences match yours. I currently use the desktop version of YNAB:You Need a Budget (YNAB 4), and I like it much better.  Where we failed after a while with Mvelopes, we are succeeding with YNAB, and have been now for the last 3.5 years. I don't want this to sound like a commercial for YNAB (I will give important caveats about YNAB later), but here is why I believe we have done better now with YNAB than before with Mvelopes.  I hope that these reasons will be useful to you when you are evaluating your next options. As you said, we also found Mvelopes' interface to be slow and glitchy.  YNAB 4 is a desktop app (with synching capabilities) that we found to be much quicker and easier to work with than Mvelopes' Flash-based interface.  (That was 4 years ago; hopefully Mvelopes has redone their interface since then.)   We also struggled with Mvelopes' connection with our banks.  With YNAB 4, there is no connection to the bank: everything has to be entered manually.  I initially thought this might be worse, but for us it has been better.  I can either enter transactions as they happen on the mobile app, or I can hold on to receipts and enter them every day or two in the evening, categorizing as I go.  We always have an up-to-date picture of our finances, and we don't have to mess with trying to match up downloaded transactions that have been screwed up, duplicated, or are missing. We aren't really using YNAB much differently than we were using Mvelopes, but we have learned a few tricks that I think have contributed to our success.  One of the things we do differently is that I don't obsess about the cash accounts too much.  Cash accounts, for us, are the hardest to keep track of, because most of our cash transactions don't have a receipt: we are paying a friend or family member for something, or leaving a tip, or something like that which we forget about when it comes time to enter into the software.  As a result, the cash account balances get off.  I periodically enter a correcting transaction to get the balances right, and have a budget category specifically for this that we have to put money in for these unknown transactions.  Fortunately for us, our cash spending is a small percent of our total spending (we usually pay with a credit card) so this bit of untracked spending isn't that big of a concern. With YNAB, the current month's budget is right in front of you as soon as you open up the app, which makes it easy to adjust your budget during the month, if necessary.  With Mvelopes (at least how their app worked 4 years ago), the budget was somewhat hidden after you funded your budget categories, and it was a bit of a pain to move money around between categories.  The ability to adjust your budget in the middle of the month is crucial; if you don't do that, you'll get frustrated the first time you find that you don't have enough money in a category for something you need.  YNAB makes it very easy to move money around inside your budget. That having been said, you need to be aware that the current version of YNAB is not a desktop application but a web-based app.  YNAB 4, the old desktop version which we have been using, is officially unsupported as of the end of 2016.  However, I see that it is still available for sale, if you are interested in it, the YNAB4 help site is still up, and the mobile app you would need to work with it on your phone (called YNAB Classic) is still in the app store.   As I said, the current YNAB is now a web app, complete with automatic downloading of transactions from your bank.  I have no experience with it (other than playing around with it a little), and so I can't tell you how quick the interface is or how well the auto-downloading of transactions works. As an alternative, another web-based solution is EveryDollar, from Dave Ramsey's company.  (I have never tried it.)  The advantage of this one is that it is free if you choose not to link it to your banks; the automatic downloading of transactions is a paid feature. I wrote an answer a couple of years ago in which I describe two different approaches that budgeting software packages tend to take.  I'm not familiar with Buxfer, so I don't know which approach it takes, but perhaps that answer will help you evaluate all of your software options. On the behavior side of things, besides the relaxing of the cash accounting I mentioned above, we also involve my wife a little less in the budgeting process than we used to.  (This is by her choice!)  I am the one who enters all the transactions into the software (she hands me all her receipts), I reconcile the accounts at the end of the month, and I set the budget for the next month.  We have been doing this long enough now that she knows what the budget is, and we only need to discuss it if we want to do something different with the budget than we have been doing in the past.  She has the YNAB app on her phone and can see where we are at with all of our budget categories.

negative: My wife and I use a digital form of the envelope system. We call it a budget; we record how much we want to allocate each month to spend--for each category of expense--in a spread sheet. Why use prepaid cards? Why not open a bunch of bank accounts and use debit cards from each if you want to separate the money? You could also keep a ledger for each account that you spend from on a smart phone or even in a physical ledger.  The reason for the envelope method is that it psychologically hurts some people to physically part with cash. Once you digitize it in some factor, you lose what is the primary touted benefit, and it's no longer the envelope system. The secondary benefit that--once the budget for one category is gone, it's gone--is only as good as the discipline you have to not rob cash from another envelope; why is this any easier than the discipline of not debiting beyond the bottom of the ledger? So a budget IS a digital version of the envelope system; once the physical cash is removed from the equation, it's definitely not the envelope system. Sorry for the contrarian take on this question, but I've never been a fan of the envelope system for many of the reasons you have described. I guess I'm too young for the cash psychology to work for me.

negative: "There are a lot of good answers, but I will share my experience.  First, a savings account needs to be for savings. If your in the US you have ""Regulation D"" to deal with and that will bite you on the rear if you go over those limits. Specially easy to do if your purchasing from a savings account.  Next having an ""Income"" account and a ""Spending"" account can be a very good tool to build a nest egg. So for example you get $1500 into your income account and then move $1000 to your spending account then budget based on that $1000. This is an amazing thing to do, so long as you have the discipline to never transfer that extra $500, and pretend your broke when you run out of the $1000.  That being said there is no reason that you can't do that in one account. It's all preference. My wife and I use YNAB (an envelope budgeting system) to do just that. We don't need the separate accounts. We are no more likely to ""not spend"" in one account then we are to ""not spend"" in two accounts. It's all just self discipline and what you need to do.  This does lead to the situation we call YNAB broke. It's when we have to start choosing between  ""going hungry"" or getting that new DVD, even though our bank account has $5,000 in it.  It's even harder when you choose ""go hungry"" and have to follow through with it, even though you have enough to buy a used car in your bank account.  But rather it's ""YNAB broke"" or your spending account is empty and your income account it full, the result is the same. It's up to ""you"" to have the self discipline not to spend. Rather that's in one account or two makes little difference."

negative: very simple.  RBI has stopped connecting Indian Bank's to Paypal, for deposit or withdrawal. You need to use a third party website (Online wallet etc) to send whatever money you have in the Paypal account.  Connect your Bank account with the third party website, and withdraw the money

negative: If so, it seems to me that this system is rather error prone. By that I mean I could easily forget to make a wire some day and be charged interests while I actually have more than enough money on the check account to pay the debt. I have my back account (i.e. chequing account) and VISA account at/from the same bank (which, in my case, is the Royal Bank of Canada). I asked my bank to set up an automatic transfer, so that they automatically pay off my whole VISA balance every month, on time, by taking the money from my bank account. In that way I am never late paying the VISA so I never pay interest charges. IOW I use the VISA like a debit card; the difference is that it's accepted at some places where a debit card isn't (e.g. online, and for car rentals), and that the money is deducted from my bank account at the end of the month instead of immediately.

negative: Idk if I would ask on reddit, personal finance will tell you the only way is joint bank accounts and relationship advice will tell you to break up. Personally I will always want my own bank account, with a joint account for a mortgage or utilities. I think it depends on if you are both financially savvy, if one of you aren't you might want to have a joint account to keep an eye on spending.  I think this site give you a good pro/con: https://www.thebalance.com/should-you-have-joint-or-separate-bank-accounts-1289664

negative: A technique that is working pretty well for me: Hide the money from myself: I have two bank accounts at different banks. Let's call them A and B. I asked my employer to send my salary into account A. Furthermore I have configured an automatic transfer of money from account A to account B on the first of each month.  I only use account B for all my expenses (rent, credit card, food, etc) and I check its statement quite often. Since the monthly transfer is only 80% of my salary I save money each month in account A. I don't have a credit card attached to the savings account and I almost never look at its statement. Since that money is out of sight, I do not think much about it and I do not think that I could spend it. I know it is a cheap trick, but it works pretty well for me.

negative: "And please tell me what is my agenda? By alluding banks are ponzi schemes? I never made that claim.  I just saw a similarity. I was asking if the similar idea of taking money from investors and returning it (just like a ponzi scheme), but the similarity ends there apparently. In the background one is using future investors as payouts; the other uses fractional reserve banking to reinvest.  To me it seems like the latter just seems ""smart"" but idk.  That was my agenda. Finding out if my latter idea was possible and/or why its [not] a ponzi schem e and how does it differ.  I think I got the answer w the accounting equation but getting to that point was like trial by fire apparently."

negative: Having been in exactly this position (not in a debt hole, built a budget to get a better view of what spending is), I can say what the greatest gift it brings is: it's a decision tool. When you are spending out of only one account, you often make decisions based on the total money in the account. “Should we go out for dinner? Can I make this impulse purchase?” This is terrible, because many, if not all, of those dollars are already intended for certain future expenses like groceries, bills, etc. You can't see how many of those dollars are discretionary. A budget is like having many accounts. Instead of looking at your real account(s) to make spending decisions, you look at your budget lines. You to want impulse buy a gadget — do you have money remaining in a relevant budget line? If yes, the decision is yours, if no, the budget is telling you that you don't have dollars for that.* Similarly for more prosaic purchases — you want to splurge on some non-staple groceries to make a fancy dinner or try out a new recipe, and the budget line for Groceries will tell you if you can do that. Instead of looking at (e.g.) $6000 in a chequing account, you're looking at $600 (assigned) − $146.86 (spend) = $453.14 (available) in a monthly groceries budget line. Just like you can now see where your money has been going, by maintaining and using your budget lines, and having every single dollar you spend go through the budget (to show your totally assigned, total spent, and total remaining), you can continue to see where your money is going in near real-time. You're no longer looking at bills and statements to figure out what's going on and plan, you're looking at money flows and future intentions, as you should be. This approach to budgeting has completely changed our finances. So that's what a budget is for: real-time spending decision-making control over your money, which for us has translated into a lovely mix of painless austerity in spending categories where austerity is smart, and guilt-free spending in more indulgent categories because we have already determined exactly how much we can afford and wish to spend. * A budget line with insufficient funds doesn't actually take the decision entirely away from you though. If a budget line doesn't have funds to spare for a given purchase, you can still make the purchase — but now you're also making the decision to go and revise your budget, taking dollars away from other budget lines to adjust the line you've overspent, to keep the budget accurate.

negative: I have no idea what the traditional accounting way of dealing with this might be; but does your accounts package has the concept of subaccounts within a bank account?  If so, to me it would make sense that when a cheque is written, you move money in the accounts package from the bank account to a subaccount named 'Cheques Written'; then when it is cashed, move money from that subaccount to the supplier.  Then from a reporting perspective, when you want a report that will correspond to your actual bank statement, run a report that includes the subacconut; when you want a report that tells you how much you have available to spend, rune  a report that excludes the subaccount.

negative: Do you plan a monthly budget at the beginning of each month?  This might seem counter-intuitive, but hear me out. Doing a budget is, of course, critically important for those who struggle with having enough money to last the month.  Having this written spending plan allows people struggling with finances to control their spending and funnel money into debt reduction or saving goals.  However, budgeting can also help those with the opposite problem. There are some, like you perhaps, that have enough income and live frugally enough that they don't have to budget.  Their money comes in, and they spend so little that the bank account grows automatically.  It sounds like a good problem to have, but your finances are still out of control, just in a different way.  Perhaps you are underspending simply because you don't know if you will have enough money to last or not. By making a spending plan, you set aside money each month for various categories in three broad areas: Since you have plenty of money coming in, generously fund these spending categories.  As long as you have money in the categories when you go to the store, you can feel comfortable splurging a little, because you know that your other categories are funded and the money is there to pay those other bills.  Create other categories, such as technology or home improvement, and when you need an app or have a home improvement project, you can confidently spend this money, as it has already been allocated for those purposes. If you are new to budgeting, software such as YNAB can make it much easier.

negative: "If it makes you feel any better, I now bank with a credit union. These WF assholes called me one day to tell me that someone had tried to withdraw $500 from my account and that I needed to sign up for a more secure account, of course with a $16 monthly charge. So I did what anybody would do... went to the bank and ask questions right? After I got there and mention the problem they told me that nothing was wrong with my account, that no transactions were attempted and even if they did attempt them and were canceled they would still show up but they didn't. Few minutes later I got another call from that guy and he was telling me that the problem was taken care of and that I didn't need to go to the bank. After that I was just suspicious. Basically what it came down to was that somebody was trying to set me up for accounts that I didn't ask for just so he can get promoted at my expense. They gave me a opportunity to report him but I didn't because I knew him personally, he was one of my ""friends"" and at the time he had two kids. I didn't want him to lose his job. I told him that what he did was completely fucked up and that you don't do that to people outside of WF. That same day I withdrew all my money. I still remember cutting the conversation short after WF tried to convince me all kinds of ways not to do that. I been with a Credit Union about 3 years now and so far so good."