A Goodbudget alternative for people who also run a car
If you're using Goodbudget you've already made the decision most people won't: you type your expenses. Nothing here argues with that. The question is only what happens to the envelope labeled 'Car'.
What Goodbudget is good at
Goodbudget is the digital version of the envelope method, and it commits to it properly: money is divided into envelopes before it's spent, and when an envelope is empty, it's empty. It runs on the web, iPhone and Android, it syncs and shares budgets between people, and there's a free tier that isn't a crippled demo.
It's also honest about manual entry in a market that mostly sells the opposite. That's the same bet FlexiBudget makes, so if you're here, we agree on the hard part already.
Where it stops
A car is an envelope. You can put €200 a month into "Car" and watch it drain, and that's a truthful account of the money and a completely empty account of the vehicle. No odometer readings, so no fuel consumption. No liters or kWh, so no idea what you're paying per unit or whether it's drifting. No service intervals, so nothing tells you the timing belt is due. No cost per kilometer, so no answer to "is this car worth keeping".
Envelopes hold amounts, not rules. The envelope model assumes you know the number in advance. If your income is the same every month that's fine. If it isn't — freelance, commission, seasonal — you end up re-cutting every envelope by hand whenever the total moves.
What FlexiBudget does differently
The car gets a ledger, not an envelope. A refuel records the odometer, the amount, the price per unit, the fuel type and which tank mark you hit, and produces consumption in L/100km, L/km or MPG. Services split parts from labor and drive reminders by distance or date. One vehicle can hold several fuel types, so a plug-in hybrid's gasoline and kWh average separately. Every one of those is also a categorized expense in the budget — typed once, under Vehicle → Fuel, not typed twice.
A budget can be a rule instead of a number. Set housing at 30% of the income actually recorded this period rather than a fixed €600, and the target moves with what you earned. Fixed amounts still work when you want them; the point is you're not forced into one.
It works with no connection, and the dashboard is yours. Data lives on the device, so a refuel logged at a gas station with one bar of signal works, and so does a parking fee three floors underground. And the home screen is a grid you fill from a widget catalog with tabs you name yourself, saved per device — quick-add buttons on the phone, charts on the laptop.
When you should stay with Goodbudget
Two good reasons. If the envelope method itself is what finally made budgeting click for you — the physical discipline of an envelope running dry — that's a specific philosophy Goodbudget is built around and FlexiBudget isn't trying to replicate it.
And if you budget as a household, sharing envelopes with a partner is core to how Goodbudget works. That's a real feature and worth weighing before you move.
Switch if the vehicle-shaped hole is the thing bothering you, or if a fixed envelope has stopped matching a variable income.
Related
More on flexible budgeting and vehicle expense tracking, or compare with YNAB and Lunch Money. Back to all alternatives.