Getting Started

MoneyWell is designed to be very easy to use but may look different if you haven't used an envelope budgeting system in the past. Unlike other personal finance packages, MoneyWell uses a proactive budgeting approach to manage your cash flow. You actually get to see how much money you have left to spend without needing to run a report.

Here are some simple steps to getting started:

1. Create a new document using File > New Document
   
2. Follow the prompts for creating default buckets and accounts
   
3. Click Cash Flow > Set Starting Bucket Balances
   
4. Enter the amount of available money you have to spend today into your income buckets
   
5. Optionally, put money in expense buckets if you have already set aside some of your available cash for expenses
   
6. Click Cash Flow > Modify Spending Plan, set your planned amounts for each bucket and save it
   
7. When you earn money, add deposit transactions to your account and assign them to your income buckets
   
8. Click Cash Flow > Fill Buckets to fill your expense buckets with your income
   
9. When you spent money, add withdrawal transactions to your account and assign them to your expense buckets
   
10. Repeat steps 7 through 9 for every pay period

The idea is to avoid looking at your account balance to see if you have money to spend and to get used to looking at your buckets instead. If you have filled your expense buckets with your available income and you never spend more than you have in a bucket, you'll avoid overspending and will mostly likely find that you can grow your savings. Just don't let your bucket balances go below zero.

If you have credit card or any other unsecured debt, you should create a Debt Repayment bucket and set a planned amount to set aside from your monthly income. The same is true for savings: You want to have a Savings bucket to start building cash reserves to protect yourself against unexpected expenses.