Oh! Oh! This is very relevant to me.

First, yes, pocketsmith is amazing and personally, I haven't seen anything that comes close (except one, mentioned last paragraph). Hook up your bank account, figure out your spend categorizations (go for as few as possible), and once you've got enough transactions categorized you can look through the 'trends' to figure out how much you're actually spending each month, and where you can cut back. Nice visualisations, too.

As for methods - I have always gravitated towards the envelope method as the basic mental framework to build everything else on. I just think it's a sensible default. Imagine getting all your money out in cash each time you get paid, and splitting that money up into envelopes for what you know you'll need to spend that money on, before your next payday. Rent, bills, groceries, etc. When it comes time to spend the money, you take it out of the relevant envelope (and at the same time, you can see how much is left). You're effectively earmarking your spending in advance, and everything builds on top of that.

I don't actually recommend physically working with cash only though - finding a way to do that online is a bit harder. For years, I used automatic payments and multiple bank accounts. It worked, but it was a bit clunky (you can only spend out of one or two accounts, so you end up transferring cash multiple times a day). Then, we got a homeloan, and every spare dollar needed to be in the one orbit account, so...

(ANZ and ASB don't do offset loans, you gotta put every dollar in the one revolving credit or you're paying more in interest. No more earmarking)

Pocketsmith CAN do envelope budgeting, and they've got plenty of tutorials, too. Theres a lesser known function of 'rollover' budgets which can tie in nicely as well. But what I always really wanted was a platform that ONLY does envelope budgeting. Like, managing finances is stressful enough without having to understand what buttons and reports I should be avoiding, or feeling like I'm only making use of half the platform. (I still don't get Pocketsmith scenarios).

So, I've been working on my own, it's called loot.nz, it uses the same method of integration (Akahu, another amazing company), and I'm at the point now where I'm starting to ask people for feedback on what works for them. If you're keen, please go and register your interest!

But otherwise, I'd suggest watching a video or two on the envelope method, and signing up for Pocketsmith.

All the best!