Looking For A Way to Keep Track of Your Finances?

I was single for many years and kept track of my money by looking at my bank account and just having an idea of how much I was spending on food and living expenses. Seemed to work pretty well for me, but when I got married and we started having children, this didn't work at all.  My husband would ask how much we had to spend for something and honestly I couldn't answer him, so we decided to set up a budget.  This has been a huge lifesaver in knowing how much we have to spend for each category, so we don't overspend.  No credit card debt pleaseeeee. We don't totally use credit cards, but we also don't do everything with the envelope system. It is kind of a mixed system. First of all, we read through the Larry Burkett book, The Family Budget Workbook and made up our budget the best we could based on the advice and worksheets given.  We did have some questions though, so we also sat down with some one who could give us free advice about budgeting from our church, which clarified a lot of things we weren't quite sure about.  We were documenting our budget through paper, but felt like something was missing, so I tried out www.mint.com. This can be used on the computer and as an app on your phone and tablet for FREE!.  This was very helpful for a while because it connects to all of your bank accounts/credit card accounts/loans, so that you can automatically keep track of your transactions. Set up the budget and watched as transactions went through.  This is very helpful if you keep up with your budget everyday though. Otherwise you have to back track and make sure that each transaction was labeled correctly to the right budget category. If you can keep this going, I highly recommend it because it keeps track of everything for you. Well, I will have to admit that I fell behind though and got frustrated with trying to track. I was months behind and some transactions weren't labeled automatically, so I kind of gave up. :( I also noticed that it wasn't completely accurate to $0 because it won't keep track of the cents. Only rounds up or down to the nearest dollar. I realized all I wanted to know was what was remaining in each category, like Overtime money, so I started digging around for another free app and came across www.everydollar.com.  You can pay extra for this site to automatically transfer transactions, but I decided to just enter a transaction every time I spent some money on food etc. I do have to make sure I keep up with this each day, but if I accidentally don't, I am able to go back and enter in the receipts I missed very easily.  I like that this program has you put in a budget down to $0 and also lets you add up everything using both dollars and cents, so that it is accurate. Each month it reminds you to set up a budget and is very easy to enter data and readable lay out. It is a computerized envelop system. You enter what is planned and can also very easily see what it spent and what is remaining. So you don't actually have to use any paper envelopes or take money out. We are doing paper envelopes though for some of the categories that build up like going out to eat, car maintenance, house maintenance, and cash fund. The program has funds set up for this though to make it easier and so you don't have to go to the bank. This has really helped us with our budget and I hope you can find a suggestion here that may help you. What are some budget ideas or programs you have used that have helped you stay on track? Part of sticking to a budget is accountability, so ask your spouse to check with you each night if you have entered everything, so you don't get behind.