Truly Simple Envelopes

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About the App

Managing money is stressful for most people, and modern budgeting apps usually make it worse. They connect to your bank, download hundreds of transactions you don't recognize, bombard you with pie charts, and charge you a hefty monthly subscription for the privilege.

Truly Simple Envelopes is the opposite. It’s a digital version of the classic "cash stuffing" envelope method, built to be visually calm, completely manual, and intentionally friction-free. It doesn't link to your bank accounts or automatically pull in data. Instead, it asks you to mindfully put money into digital envelopes, and manually subtract it when you spend.

By stripping away the complexity and focusing entirely on how much money you have left to spend on different priorities, it brings peace of mind back to your finances. There’s an in-app purchase that unlocks an unlimited number of envelopes, but all other features (including iCloud sync) are completely free.

Features

• The Main Wallet: A central bucket for all your unallocated income. Add your paycheck here, then distribute it out.
• Custom Envelopes: Create dedicated envelopes for Groceries, Rent, Vacation, etc., and customize them with beautiful pastel colors and native Apple SF Symbols.
• Fluid Transfers: Easily move money from the Wallet into specific Envelopes, or shuffle funds from one Envelope to another.
• Transaction Ledgers: Every envelope maintains a detailed history of every dollar spent or added, complete with dates, optional notes, and swipe-to-delete corrections.
• Invisible iCloud Sync: Built on Apple's native frameworks, your balances securely and instantly sync across your Mac, iPhone, and iPad in the background.
• Zero Bloat & Absolute Privacy: No ads, no trackers, no forced accounts, and no complex onboarding.

Tips & More Info

• Start small. It's tempting to create an envelope for every little thing, but the method works best when you start with just your 3 or 4 biggest discretionary spending categories (like Groceries, Dining Out, and Fun Money) and grow from there.

• Get into the habit of tallying all of your spending via the app. The psychology of this method relies on scarcity: seeing that your "Coffee" envelope only has $4.50 left before you walk into the café is what changes spending behavior.

• I built this app because the budgeting market is heavily polarized right now. On one end, you have massive, complex behemoths that require a college course to understand and charge massive yearly fees. On the other end, you have the physical "cash stuffing" trend taking over social media because people crave tangible, simple ways to manage their money. I wanted a tool that brought the simplicity of cash stuffing to my Apple devices, without handing over my bank passwords to a third-party data broker.

Privacy Policy

The app does not collect any personal data, does not connect to any outside servers (other than your own personal iCloud for syncing), and contains zero tracking. Your financial data is (and should be) entirely your own.