Handling payments to accounts that don’t aggregate
Inevitably there are a few credit cards or store accounts that just won’t aggregate with the Mvelopes system. It generally has to do with the way the financial institution handles multi-factor authentication (the way they verify that you are, in fact, you when you log into your account online). It can be a little frustrating yes, but it’s still a pretty easy work around to handle your payments.
So, how do you handle payments to a credit card that isn’t available for aggregation with Mvelopes? There are a couple different ways to do this, but here is my preferred method.
I have one card, a Banana Republic (BR) card that won’t sync up with Mvelopes. I don’t use the account very frequently, but when I do, I simply mentally deduct the amount of my purchase from my clothing envelope. This way I know how much will be left in my clothing envelope after I pay off the BR card. In the event that I have another clothing purchase to make, I now know how much I have left to spend.
When I get home from shopping, I log into Mvelopes Bill Pay and make a payment on my BR card for the amount of my recent purchase. When the bill payment transaction clears (usually just a couple of days), I simply assign the transaction to the Clothing Envelope.
It’s a little bit of a round-about way to handle it, but it works fairly simply and just take a few extra minutes. This way I can still use my card and get the points that go along with my purchases, but I am also sure to pay off my balance in full each time I use the account.
- Jennifer Streiff – Money for Life Coach
[photo courtesy of flickr / CC BY 2.0]
Frank Dissert
08. Sep, 2009
How come free sites like Yodlee can do it? For what mvelopes costs, we should get that functionality. Its the most expensive out there.
Harriet
10. Sep, 2009
Why can’t we download transactions ourselves, like I have done for Quicken or Money.
Also, On my credit card that I can’t aggregate, I just post the transaction manually because right now I have a balance and am not able to pay it off each time.
Chris
10. Sep, 2009
I have a BR credit card as well. Instead of handling the purchases the way you describe I created an offline account for the credit card. After making a purchase, I enter a manual transaction selecting the clothing envelope and the offline account. The transaction immediately clears from pending and properly reflects the clothing envelope balance so there is no need to mentally deduct the amount – this is good for me since I would likely forget. Anyway, the offline account balance goes to negative the amount purchased, as it does for any credit account in the accounts pane. When the payment is due I make the payment and perform an account to account transfer. Again, the offline account part of the transaction automatically clears, leaving only the transaction for the account I paid the credit card from as pending. I match that up when the posted transaction downloads which completes it all nicely.