Are you looking for a great family budget app?
The moment you have kids is the moment that money gains a new significance. It goes from being a tool you can use to make your dreams and aspirations come true, to a tool you use to protect your family and give them opportunities to live their best lives. All of a sudden, it’s not about you anymore.
It’s scary to go from only having to take care of yourselves to knowing your financial decisions will impact your little ones.
The truth is that saving money today is harder than at another time in the past several decades. College tuition prices have outpaced wage increases by nearly 1,000 percent since I was born. This means that parents around the country are scared. You are afraid that they are under-saving. They are worried that they aren’t setting their family up for financial success. And all of this was already happening well before the Coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc on the global economy.
If you are reading this, then the chances are that you know you need to make a change to turn things around or at least get a nudge to help you reach your financial goals. Thankfully, this is precisely what Qube Money can do for your family.
Qube Money Helps Families Budget Better
Today I am going to walk you through what Qube Money is, how it’s perfect for families, and why it works. But first, let’s understand why budgeting is essential and how it has evolved!
Take a step back for a second and picture yourself in a gorgeous industrial kitchen. You’re there with your family and you all given one task to accomplish: you each need to bake a single loaf of bread. All of the ingredients and materials you will need are laid out in front of you. If you succeed, your prize is that your family will always have financial security.
The catch is that you need to decide upfront if you want to be given a recipe with detailed instructions or not. It seems like a no brainer. With the recipe, you’ll all be able to make the perfect loaf. You’ll know the exact quantities of ingredients that you’ll need and the steps you’ll have to follow.
If you don’t request the recipe, will it still be possible for all of you to make a delicious loaf of bread? Of course. In fact, if you are able to succeed without it, you might even impress a few people with your collective baking skills. But if you fail, your family won’t have that financial security.
So do you want to use the recipe or not?
In many ways, a budget is like a recipe. It serves as a blueprint to help you reach your financial goals. Is it possible to reach your financial goals without a budget? Sure! Like it’s possible to make a loaf of bread without a recipe, but the chances are much higher that you will fail without one.
The Evolution of Family Budgeting
Most budgets are created with an individual in mind. They are created to help a single person control their spending and help them allocate their money. However, the reality is that in a family, there could be multiple individuals earning money, and several people spending money.
This means that most budgets are not adequately supporting modern families.
If you ask your parents or grandparents how they budgeted, they’ll probably say, “We spent less money than we made.” If you dig a little deeper, you’ll realize that they likely used a variant of a cash-based budget.
Before the days of credit cards, it was common practice to always carry cash everywhere. This made budgeting easy because you would cash your paycheck and set aside money for savings. Everything else was used for bills and other expenses. Once that cash ran out, there was no way to spend any more money.
Before long, families had a nice amount of money saved up.
This system was so effective that some people still use it today. It’s called the ‘cash envelope method’ of budgeting.
What is the Cash Envelope Method?
The cash envelope method is a tried and tested way of budgeting using cash.
The way it works is that you get several letter-sized envelopes, and you write your spending categories on them. Think of traditional budgeting categories like groceries, restaurants, utilities, clothing, gas, gym memberships, insurance, medical expenses, etc.
At the beginning of the month (or when you get paid), you’ll plan out how you will spend your money, and you’ll stuff the appropriate amount in each envelope.
Related: What is the Cash Envelope System?
Once the money runs out, there’s nothing left to spend — no credit cards to get you into trouble.
Cash works because it creates spending friction. This means it makes it harder to spend money impulsively since you’ll see the name of the category when you open the envelope. It also prevents you from going further into debt.
In many ways, it’s the most extreme form of budgeting and is extremely helpful for someone trying to break destructive financial habits.
However, for most people, paying for everything in cash is not realistic. For one thing, it makes it extremely difficult to track your transactions to see how your money was spent. Cash has a funny way of simply disappearing. This is especially true when you are talking about a family with several spenders.
Qube Money is the Modern Alternative to Cash Envelopes
Let’s face it; it’s impossible to thrive in modern society if you only use cash. No bank will accept a stack of money as a mortgage payment. You can’t make your car payments or medical bill payments in cash.
This means that everyone using the cash envelope method has to use a hybrid of cash and a debit card, which gets messy and confusing. Frankly, it’s also not safe to walk around carrying cash everywhere. Do you want your loved ones to always be carrying around that much cash? I don’t either.
Related: 11 Downsides to Using Cash
Most importantly, it’s not sustainable. At the end of the day, if your budget system isn’t easy to use, then you aren’t going to use it. And a budget that isn’t adhered to 100% of the time is ineffective 100% of the time. It’s the same principle that applies to fitness. Ask any health expert which type of exercise is the most beneficial for your health and you’ll always get the same answer: whatever exercise you’ll stick to.
Qube Money was built with this understanding. Qube Money removes the necessity of having to use cash while maintaining ALL of the benefits.
How Does Qube Money Work
Qube Money replaces those stodgy paper envelopes with modern technology delivered via a mobile family budget app and plastic cards your family will use to spend. In fact, you’ll quickly realize that the system acts more like a banking system than a typical budgeting app.
In Qube Money, you will create “Qubes” that function precisely the way cash envelopes do. Each Qube will represent a spending category. You determine how much money will be loaded into each Qube. To spend, you’ll use the app to open a Qube manually, or your Qube Card won’t work.
By forcing you to open the Qube in the app before spending, Qube forces you to reflect and evaluate your priorities before spending quickly. In a sense, the bank is the budget and vice versa!
With Qube Money, each dollar has a purpose and goal. You are in total control of your money and your spending.
Qubes aren’t only for spending either. You can use them to save for future goals (vacations, cars, special occasions, etc.). This means all of your daily money-management takes place in a single place. No more logging in and out of accounts to check balances.
Qube Money Is The Perfect Family Budget App
No other budget system was built with families at the core of the budget experience. This is what makes it such a great family budget app.
Qube Money was built and run by a team of parents who know and understand the importance of savvy financial management for families.
So what are some features that make Qube Money so unique and perfect for families?
For the first time, parents and children can spend, learn, and share money together. Positive money conversations happen in everyday living. Real-life—the ultimate personal finance education.
To keep the whole family engaged and interested in the budget, Qube has created Kid Cards. These are special spend cards which you can authorize for spending. They are perfect for grandparents, nannies, and babysitters too.
If your kids are old enough to do chores, the app includes the ability to track chores, jobs, hours and payments all in one place. This means your child can have a virtual “bank account” so that they can learn the basics of saving their money. Kids LOVE this.
Kids can also request money in the app, which means you can track it and see how much you are giving them, and how it is being spent. As a parent, you will also have the ability to set permissions. Since you approve every transaction, you can let kids purchase whatever they want, help them save for the future, or somewhere in between. You choose. This is peace of mind you won’t have without Qube Money.
Built with Families and Convenience in Mind
It’s clear that Qube Money is unrivaled when it comes to the best family budget app, but the best part is that it works. Here’s what one long-time customer had to say about their experience: “I have been using this app for about a year now. Was on the pilot program as well. Overall this is such an awesome idea and it’s helped our family budget so much easier. We tried Dave Ramsey’s way using cash but that never worked. Try it out. You won’t be disappointed. We could never actually stick to a budget until this .”
To learn more about why Qube Money is the best family budget app, visit our family site!
