Managing your finances in college is objectively challenging, especially if it’s your first time being financially independent. Luckily, Envel was built with college students in mind, and offers numerous tools to help you manage your money stress-free, so you can make the most of this amazing time in your life!

1. Shared Envelopes

Got roommates? Most of us do at one point or another. And many times, this comes with shared expenses like food, cleaning supplies, and rent and utilities if you live off campus.

With Envel, you can create a Share Envelope (Envelopes are our versions of accounts) and invite as many friends or roomies as you’d like to join! All members can upload funds at any time, and withdraw at the owner’s discretion. We recommend that whoever fronts most of the payments creates (and thus becomes the owner) of the Shared Envelope!

Set it up: on your Envelope Screen, scroll down to ‘Shared Envelopes’ and select ‘Create new.’ On the first screen, choose a name, icon, and color for your Shared Envelope. On your next screen, select which friends to invite! The Envel App will sync with your Contacts if you allow it (you can enable this in your phone’s settings), and if your friends don’t already have Envel, your Invite will send them a link to set one up. Once they are onboarded, they will be added to your Shared Envelope!

2. Goals

Education is expensive. Worth it, undoubtedly, but expensive. With over two thirds of students taking out loans for their education, it’s important to get a handle on managing your money early on.

Envel makes it super easy to save for long term expenses, without ever having to think about it. Beyond student debt, you can create Goals for anything! Your spring break adventure, books for next semester, or even just a fancy dinner out because the dining hall food is overcooked and tasteless.

Set it up: On your Envelope Screen, on the top underneath our logo, swipe right from ‘My Envelopes’ to ‘My Goals’. Select ‘‘Create new’: enter an amount, a due date, and voila! Your Goal will be automatically funded from your Vault (Savings) Envelope on a daily basis, so you never have to worry or stress.

3.  Custom Autonomous Envelopes

Many of the expenses that will come up in college are recurring. Use Envel’s Custom Autonomous Envelopes (note: you must have Autopilot turned on in order to use this feature) to easily save up for recurring costs, without ever having to do any thinking!

For example, you may find yourself consuming tremendous accounts of caffeine just to keep up with all your classes and assignments. That’s okay! You’re definitely not alone, and it takes just seconds to create a Custom Autonomous Envelope.

Set it up: On your Envelope screen, next to ‘Autonomous Envelopes’,  select ‘Create new.’ Select a name (Coffee) an incon (the coffee mug), a color (purple), and an ‘Amount per Income Split,’ or amount that will go into that Envelope each time you get a paycheck or deposit. Select ‘Next’ or ‘Create,’ and if you have other Custom Autonomous Envelopes, select which Envelope gets prioritized by long pressing and dragging your Envelopes. Select ‘Save Envelope Priority,’ and you’re good to go!

4.   Guilt-free Spending & Spending Guidance

Even if you have spare time to work a part time job in college, it’s very hard to know how much money exactly you have left to spare on day-to-day purchases without a full-time income. This can be extremely stressful: you want to treat yourself every now and then, but you are scared these purchases will exacerbate your debt, or make it impossible to buy the $600 textbook you need for Advanced Linear Algebra next semester.

We built our Guilt-free Cash Envelope and Spending Guidance features precisely to save you from these stressful situations! Our Spending Guidance was built to be customized by you, to best fit your particular situation and needs.

Set it up: By default, if you have Autopilot turned on, each time you make a deposit the app will allocate a certain amount of money to your Guilt-free Cash, aka Cash, envelope, so that all of your bills and expenses are covered, you are building your Savings, and you have some an Emergency Fund in the case of unexpected expenses. You don’t need to do anything to set this up! If you turn Autopilot off, all of your deposits will go to your Cash Envelope by default, and you have the option to move them around between different envelopes manually.

To enable Spending Guidance, you must have Autopilot turned on. Click on the Brain icon in the top right hand corner of the app, where you can also turn Autopilot on or off, and swipe right on the switch next to ‘Spending Guidance.’ You will then have the option to choose between a ‘Daily’ or ‘Weekly’ spending amount, and to select one of three different modes: Budget Mode (highly recommended for college students), pretty self explanatory, ‘Spending Mode,’ for when you are on vacation, staying with family for free, or just want to go big, and ‘Comfort Mode,’ when you want something in between the two. Finally, you can opt in or out of a ‘Hard Limit’: if you opt in, all purchases that exceed your Daily or Weekly allotted amount will be declined. If you opt out, the app will pull funds from another Envelope to complete your purchase.

Conclusion

Managing your finances in college may seem intimidating, but there are lots of tools out there to help you, that were built with you in mind! We hope that this article has helped introduce you to Envel’s various features that can help guide your personal finances with minimal time or effort on your part. College is an amazing time to meet new people, expand your knowledge, try new things, and travel to new places. Go out and make the most of it; we’ve got your finances covered!