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When my wife and I were very aggressively paying off debt we used an envelope system because it made it very easy to know when we reached our spending limits. Back then we were on a VERY tight budget with $5 of spending money each per week.
Today we have a yearly budget meeting and look at our salaries for the year and long, medium, and short range goals. We figure out what we need for those goals. All those saving goals are automated along with our other bills. Our normal monthly spending is done on a credit card that is on auto pay. Mint keeps track of spending by category and we can see if we are over or under budget in different categories although really I don't pay a lot of attention to those. What I pay attention to is at the end of the month if the checking account balance went up or down. Most months it goes up and periodically I move money to savings.
Big unexpected expenses come from the emergency fund (we keep 6-9 months spending) and then we automate savings to refill the account.
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