I miss when I could stick cash in envelopes and write on the flap and same way I labeled shoeboxes of photos and burned backup CDs. The apps all feel busy and hungry for my time, then they crash or change interfaces right when bills hit. What stuck for us was a joint checking just for bills and groceries, fed by auto transfers from each paycheck based on our income ratio. We wrote the numbers on the fridge calendar and kept the categories to two, bills and groceries, because that is what actually needs coordination. Everything else we kept in our own accounts so we did not debate every coffee.
Pitfalls we hit were letting the balances get too tight and chasing pennies with receipts. We fixed that by building a half month buffer in the bills account and picking a single grocery card everyone uses. Once a month we print a one page snapshot from a simple spreadsheet and tuck it with the power bill, which sounds old fashioned but it makes it real. One practical tip if shipping is slow is to ask utilities to shift due dates toward the end of the month so the money has time to arrive after both paychecks.
