How to Manage Apple Card

When I make a purchase to buy groceries using my Apple Card, what is the best way to manage this?

if I spend 28.00 on groceries, my Apple Card shows -28.00
Should I create an Apple Card envelope and transfer the 28.00 to groceries which will show a -28.00 in the Apple card envelope?

I used other software in the past that would transfer the money spent to a credit card envelope that would be used to payoff the credit card balance. I like this as it puts aside money to be used to pay off the purchase.

Hope this makes sense.

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It depends in part on whether you carry a balance on the Apple card. If you don’t, then create the Apple account as a Credit Card that gets paid off every month. This will allow you to pay for groceries out of your Grocery envelope and will increase the debt you owe Apple by the same amount, essentially covering that expense for each month. If you stay within your budgets for your envelopes, it will balance out with the payment due at the end of the month.
If instead you carry a balance on Apple, and have the card set to “Working to Pay Off”, then you’ll need an alternative since you can’t assign a debt cost to an envelope. Having a debt account means you should already have a debt envelope to hold the month’s budgeted payment, and you can transfer money from the Grocery envelope to the Apple Card envelope to reflect the increased payment you hope to make after you input your “Add Interest, Fee or New Charge” transaction to the revolving balance. Again, that’s assuming that you’re paying off an old balance slowly but paying off all of your new charges as they come, rather than adding to your debt.
Either way, if you allocate your available money into envelopes with “Fill” instructions then that money will be there to make the payments.
Personally I like the fact that the Apple card closes on the last day of the month because it aligns so nicely with my budget! :slight_smile:
I hope this is what you were looking for; if I’ve misunderstood the question please just let me know!

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Thanks for the reply. I have it set to pay off every month.

I use one checking account to pay my bills.
When I buy groceries for 28.00 and use my Apple Card, what is the best way to keep money allocated to pay off the card each month?

Should I create another envelope called Apple Card Debt and move money from unallocated to it?
This would require me to do an account transfer and envelope transfer each month.

I think I am over thinking this.
Maybe just pay the balance each month.
Just want to make sure I do not overspend and come up short at month end to pay the apple card.

Yep, you’re overthinking it!
Remember that Envelopes and Accounts represent the same money, but from different perspectives.
For example, let’s say you have 1,000 in your Checking account. If all of your envelopes are empty, you’ll have 1,000 Unallocated ready to be distributed. Now you put 100 into each of ten envelopes. Your Checking account balance hasn’t changed, but your Unallocated balance is now 0–great, every dollar has an “assignment”. When you spend from an envelope on your Apple Card, your available funds go down even though your checking account doesn’t change. At the end of the month if you’ve spend exactly the amount in each envelope, and put all of it on the Apple Card, your Checking account will still have a balance of 1,000, your Apple Card will have an amount due of 1,000 and you’ll break even. If you’ve put half on the card and paid cash for the other half, you’ll have 500 due to Apple and 500 left in Checking you can use to pay that bill.
Does that help?

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Yes, thanks for explaining it so well.
So the trick is to make sure I do not overspend in any of the envelopes.
I budget from one checking account only.

so if I put 100.00 in groceries and spend 120.00, I have to make sure I have the 20.00 available in another to cover the overspending.

Exactly—and you can easily transfer money from one envelope to another when those things come up. Or you may choose to leave some money in Unallocated so you can top off envelopes that are overdrawn with an extra, one-off Fill.

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Couldn’t have explained that better myself!

Here is a link that talks about handling credit cards, that I was trying to do in GB.
But I don’t think GB handles it this way.

Aspire

That seems pretty in line with how GB manages cards that are paid off monthly. The money leaves the budgeted envelope and increases the debt in the credit card account. You’ll see that the money has been spent from the envelope and that’s it’s due to the CC in that account, but your bank accounts will be accurate since you haven’t paid the bills yet. Your cumulative available funds in the Accounts tab will reflect the amount due on the card as well. For example, the “Checking, Savings and Cash” amount may be 5,000, the “Credit Cards” (only the paid-monthly ones) may be 500, and your revolving debt may be 20,000. The Total will show 4,500, which is the amount you have on hand minus the amount you’ll need to pay on the monthly cards. Revolving debt isn’t figured into that calculation because it’s not money you’ll be spending in each budget cycle. It IS a little different for cards carrying a balance, but you said you’re not doing that for Apple.

I like the fact that if I spend 50.00 on groceries using Apple Card, it subtracts 50.00 from groceries, but allocates 50.00 in a special envelope created when the credit card was created. This sets aside the 50.00 that I need to have to pay the card.

if I do this is GB, 50.00 is subtracted from groceries, and if I move 50.00 from groceries to unallocated to reserve for future payment, the envelope balance is now -100.00 instead of -50.00

In GB, I have to remember to have 50.00 in an envelope to pay my credit card
I am totally confused on how to handle it in GB.

Oh, you won’t want to do that!
And you don’t need the $50 in an envelope because it’s still in your bank account. You’ll use envelopes almost exclusively for budgeting; the only time you’ll look at your accounts is when you’re reconciling them. If you budgeted $50 for groceries and spent it all on Apple, and tracked your spending accurately, you’ll have that $50 in the Checking account when the Apple card comes due.
You’re right that it won’t be “moved” to another location, but it also won’t be “spent” if it was allocated correctly.
You certainly COULD create another envelope for the Apple card, but instead of “spending” grocery money you’d want to do an Envelope Transfer from “Grocery” to “Money for Apple”. That would accomplish what you’re seeing with your example, with accurate balances in each envelope, but it’s extra work IMHO.
So:
New Transaction > Envelope Transfer > from: Grocery to: Apple Payment. This leaves $50 less in the Grocery envelope but adds the $50 to the Apple Payment envelope.

Ok thanks for your suggestion. Your right, it is more work and I am not in favor of that. lol
I guess I will leave it the way you first suggested it.
As long as I budget correctly, I will have the money to pay down my CC.

That’s the trouble with watching too many youtube videos.

I do it the way Tiffany described since I have a basic account (can’t do a credit card account since limited to 1 account) - it’s really not more work once it is set up, and I can see at a glance in GB what my credit card balance is, as well as knowing where I stand with each envelope. It also lines up with what is in my checking account while that money is in credit card limbo. I call it my “Credit Card Hold” envelope, and it is budgeted at 0 - then when I pay off the credit card, I do an expense against the hold envelope. My understanding is that this works basically the same as having a credit card account under the paid version.

I tried adding a “Apple Card Hold” envelope, but it still not working.

My checking balance is 1098.07
My Apple Card is -32.06
My envelope balance is 1066.01
1066.01 + 32.06 = 1098.07

So my envelope balance does not reflect that I need 32.06 set aside to pay off my Apple Card.
The figures are right, but the visual is lacking.
Again, maybe I am doing this wrong.

I’m not sure I understand. Your envelope balance is equal to your checking account minus your Apple card. If you spend every penny of the 1066.01 in your envelopes, you’ll still have 32.06 left in your checking account to pay your Apple Card. So except for the +/-, this looks correct to me.
Be careful that you’re not trying to use Envelopes and Accounts together; they’re completely independent of one another in terms of viewing your money.
Also be sure that if you have the Apple Card set up as a Credit Card, Paid Monthly that your balance is positive; a negative balance on a credit card reflects an overpayment to the card, or a credit on the account.

I’ve been thinking about this and maybe I understand what you’re doing/saying better now.
You have one envelope for the Apple Card, essentially holding money that you’ll need to use when the bill comes due. It will hold $0 at the beginning of the month because the bill has already been paid and you don’t owe any more.
You have several envelopes for the regular items in your budget.
When you use the Apple Card to pay for items in your regular budget, you do an Envelope Transfer from the “regular” budget envelope (e.g. Groceries) to the Apple Card envelope (which is money you won’t spend until the bill is due).
Ex:
At the beginning of the month it looks like this, money in your envelopes but nothing set aside for the Apple Card because you just paid it off:
Screen Shot 2022-01-14 at 2.11.38 PM
After you buy some groceries, you do an Envelope Transfer (NOT a regular Expense/Credit transaction) and move the money out of the Groceries and into the Apple Card, so it looks like this:


Now you have enough money set aside to pay off the credit card, and your total balance in all your Envelopes, included Unallocated, should match your total Account Balances.

Yes, but will the money in the envelopes add up to match the balance in the checking account? credit card purchase deducted from groceries

I thought I tried it and the envelopes did not add up to my checking.
Will have to try again.

I found out how YNAB does it, but did not know if I could post it.

Your card hold would have a positive amount, not a negative if doing it as an envelope - you still have that money in your account, it is just set aside to pay the bill.

This is not working for me and I see no way to resolve.

Other finance apps do it this way.

groceries is 0
buy groceries for 30.00 using credit card
groceries is -30.00
move 30.00 from unallocated to groceries.
30.00 from groceries is copied to a special envelope for credit card.

so groceries is 0
special credit card is 30.00, showing money set aside to pay off credit card

Help me understand why you’re using an empty envelope? Ideally you would not have any money in the Unallocated envelope after you’ve set up your monthly budget and your spending envelopes will be full.
At the first of the month, you fill up each of your envelopes with the amount of money available to spend. If your budget is $500/mo for groceries, you do a Fill Envelopes instruction on the first and put $500 in it, just as if it were cash in a physical envelope. This should empty out your Unallocated envelope and distribute it among all your budget envelopes.
Now when you spend money, the amount available goes down, and if an envelope ever gets to $0 it means you don’t have any money left. You can take money from another envelope if you need to, but you can’t spend money that isn’t there.
You wanted a way to put money in an envelope that would only be used to pay the Apple Card. That envelope would start off empty after you pay your bill and there’s no balance on the card. That’s why we suggested doing an Envelope Transfer instead of a purchase, to move money from the Grocery envelope to the Apple Card envelope, and that way you can see how much you’ll need to pay. If you think of this exactly like physical cash in physical envelopes, I think it will help make sense.

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