I wanted to check with the community to see which is better for handling multiple bank spending accounts. Is it better to create a set of envelopes for each bank account or should we just have one set of envelopes that all bank accounts pull from? Example, let say I have a debit card for each bank and I use bank “A” for gas so I would have a corresponding gas envelope for bank “A”. However, a few times i have to use bank “B” debit card to get gas from a place that doesn’t accept bank “A” card. Should I have a corresponding gas envelope for bank “B” to reflect the balance in bank “B”?
Personally I use one set of envelopes for all my accounts. The key thing for me when doing this is to ensure my total envelope balance equals my total account balance. Since envelopes and accounts are independent but represent the same money you can easily make a mistake in allocating money to envelopes. This can happensl when setting up your envelopes. GB shows the total of all your envelopes and all your accounts, so just keep on eye on that.
There are definitely different philosophies so someone else may chime in here also.
I agree–One envelope per “function” works best for me, even though the funds may come out of any of several sources. Since you can’t allocate money from a certain account to a certain envelope, I find that it’s more difficult to try to force accounts and envelopes into the same area rather than let them stand independently of one another.
That said, I do have envelopes whose sole purpose is to manage the money in a single account–for example, a “short term savings” envelope that exactly matches my “short term savings” account. I do that so the money won’t show up in Unallocated, but I never use it for my day-to-day expenses.
I agree with Tiffany! I also have some specialty Envelopes for savings that I do “link” with an Account. But it’s much easier to link one Envelope to an Account for savings purposes since those Envelopes/Accounts don’t get much action anyway. But it is a lot more tricky to try and link multiple sets of Envelopes to specific Accounts.