[bwooceli]

One Excel spreadsheet, four bank accounts (only one of which is "actively managed"):

Protected Checking, Protected Savings, Discretionary Checking, Discretionary Savings

All income and all "regular bills" are aimed at Protected Checking. Every Friday, a fixed (but mutable) amount of weekly "discretionary" money transfers to Discretionary Checking, and a fixed amount goes to Protected Savings.

Discretionary Checking is ALL food, groceries, gas, dining out, random crap. If the I swipe my card, it is discretionary. Protected Checking is ALL bills, utilities, mortgage, etc.

To manage Protected Savings, I use a spreadsheet with 7 columns:

Date, Payee / Source, Category, Sub Category, Amount (all income is positive, all outflow is negative), Balance (=one cell up + amount on this row), Cleared (blank if in the future, "X" for when I reconcile)

I took a few hours about 7 years ago and added ALL expected paychecks (excluding bonus), bills/expenses, and transfers to Discretionary and Protected Savings for the next 5 years to it. So I only spend time reconciling the Protected Checking account - once a month or so I copy the ledger from my bank website and go down the list, checking them off and updating the amounts as needed.

Other than a quick glance for anything unexpected, I don't reconcile/audit the discretionary account.