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Budgeting is planning and knowing where your money is and how it is needed. Take a look at your current checkbook register. See the amount at the bottom? Now ask yourself, "How much of that money can I use to buy this new music CD?" To answer that question you need to know how much of that number is needed for all of your financial obligations. Having just one number makes it very difficult to determine how much is for this bill or that bill and how much is left for that new CD.

The best feature of Budget is that it shows you at a single glance where all your money is. You can see how much is there for your mortgage or rent payment, how much is there for your electric bill, and how much is available for that CD.

Budget's main window displays each envelope as a small envelope icon on which is marked the name of the envelope and the amount of money in the envelope. You can display as many envelopes on the main window as you like. You can also group envelopes to make viewing similar envelopes even easier. The best example of that is by grouping your envelopes like Phone, Electric, and Water under a group named "Utilities".

This simple display makes it easy to determine if you are keeping to your budget. Envelopes and accounts that have negative balances are shown in red. This is a very obvious indication that you are over spending in that envelope. Some envelopes may show a high balance indicating that you have allocated too much money to that envelope.

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