Noreen Claire Posted April 18, 2016 Share Posted April 18, 2016 I've been using Mint.com for a few years and, while I'm glad that I can tell when the grocery spending is getting out of control, it really isn't doing me much good otherwise. Does anyone here use YNAB, and why do you like/dislike about it? Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abacus2 Posted April 19, 2016 Share Posted April 19, 2016 We have been using YNAB for 7 years. It has made such an amazing difference in our lives. With YNAB we are planning ahead for everything. Over the years, our "emergencies" have become much fewer and farther between because we are planning realistically for our regular and irregular expenses. Of course, I always wish there was more money to go around, but I no longer "lose" money to poor planning and impulse purchases. Sometimes I move money between categories to cover an impulse purchase desire, but I know specifically what money is covering that expense. I love the app that allows DH and me to enter transactions at the point of purchase. It has also helped us be realistic when we receive an "extra" influx of money like a 3rd paycheck month, bonus, or tax refund. In the past we would overestimate the amount of things the extra could cover and overspend. Now we list what we hope to do and sit down together and split that money into categories before we actually spend any of it. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vmsurbat Posted April 19, 2016 Share Posted April 19, 2016 We've used YNAB4 for the last year plus, and it has been great for our finances. YNAB4 (now called Classic Ynab) is ideal for planning and adjusting to real-life expenses, desires, and emergencies. It is based on an envelope-budgeting system--the idea is that you put $ in envelopes (categories in YNAB terms ), for example $500 in groceries, $150 gas, $100 Vacation (to grow over the year), $200 eating out, etc and when the money is gone--you know and need to adjust accordingly (which may be you spend no more (ie. no more eating out) OR you take money from another "envelope" (vacation?) to use. With YNAB, this is all done electronically rather than with literal envelopes. Being forced to account/plan for every dollar means that far fewer dollars end up "evaporating". HOWEVER--when you read (via the web) all the glowing reports of how much people have been helped, know that people have been using a version DIFFERENT than the current web version. The latest product is a complete redo and incorporated many changes and is following a new model of delivery--via the web, as a monthly subscription, and currently a MVP (minimal viable product) which means it is not complete but offered for sale in the hopes of getting useful feedback. Definitely try the 34 day trial and watch the classes (make sure they are for the new YNAB, not the old). You can also visit their forums. Bottom line: Some people love the new version, others don't. Try it and see if it helps you out. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prairie~Phlox Posted April 19, 2016 Share Posted April 19, 2016 We use quicken, but it reallt doesn't matter what you use, it does help to track & know where your money goes. We've tracked our whole married life. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 19, 2016 Share Posted April 19, 2016 I used YNAb (Classic) last year, but I have gone back to my old-fashioned paper notebook method. I have tracked money on paper for many years (probably 15?) and am 100% pro tracking by whatever method. What I didn't like about YNAB: Because it works as "zero budget," i could never figure out how to keep non-specific savings on the books. This part was just too confusing for me. I also was not able to do the "link all your devices" thing. Our internet is limited and I can't allow things to randomly update willy-nilly, using up data. Also, sometimes I get busy or distracted and don't bring my expenses up for several weeks and paper seems to work better in this case than digital. It might just be that I'm not so young and digital methods are not as clear to me as it probably is for younger people. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HomeAgain Posted April 19, 2016 Share Posted April 19, 2016 We thought about it, but I don't like how it connects everything to include the bank, and requires a license each year. And I have a pretty amazing spreadsheet set up that has worked well for us over the past 10 years. Dh and I are considering Office 365 in its place. It will do the same thing for us: keep us on budget, we can connect across devices (even IOS), I can update manually and set our budget timeframe to work for us, and it's a one time expense to keep what we already know works well. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vmsurbat Posted April 19, 2016 Share Posted April 19, 2016 We thought about it, but I don't like how it connects everything to include the bank, and requires a license each year. See, this aspect is part of the new YNAB and didn't exist in the Classic version..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scarlett Posted April 19, 2016 Share Posted April 19, 2016 Dave Ramsey has a new one. Everydollar I think. I used it for a few months but had some of the same problems quill mentioned. I am a pen and paper fracker. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeanM Posted April 19, 2016 Share Posted April 19, 2016 See, this aspect is part of the new YNAB and didn't exist in the Classic version..... This is one of the reasons why I like the "classic" YNAB, and I really don't want to switch to the new YNAB. The other reason is that we purchased the classic YNAB as a one-time expense. I really hate the subscription concept to continually pay for software. I'm looking for a replacement now for classic YNAB... 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desiree77 Posted April 19, 2016 Share Posted April 19, 2016 I'm keeping my classic ynab until it no longer works. We used Microsoft Money before and ynab is so much better. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScoutTN Posted April 19, 2016 Share Posted April 19, 2016 We have YNAB classic and love it. Helps us not to overspend and to save for things so they are not emergencies. With smartphones and immediate entry of transactions, we love it! Ours is not linked to our bank nor does it require a fee. If I were considering it now, I would wait a bit until they get the bugs out of the new version and have all the elements of it actually working. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sammish Posted April 19, 2016 Share Posted April 19, 2016 We've been using YNAB for about 5.5 years now, and I really like it. We'd used Quicken before, and I was really unhappy with the way it handled (or rather didn't handle) budgeting, and setting aside money for stuff. I like that YNAB is easy to use, and fairly visual. Over the years I've adjusted how I keep track of things, and I've moved from having individual categories for every little thing to having categories for the main fixed (more or less) expenses each month (gas, groceries, individual bills, etc.), and then one big category that's just "miscellaneous." That's where our new couch went, and also movie rentals, rather than categories for "furnishings" and "entertainment." That's helped keep things simpler. One thing I dislike is that there isn't an easy way to tag things. I don't necessarily want a separate budgeted category for, say, when DH buys lunch, but I would like to be able to easily tag it, so I can later pull it up and see how much we spent on it. I like the information, but don't need a budget category for it, because I would just go in after the effect and set the budget for how much he spent. Which kind of defeats the purpose :laugh: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaz Posted April 19, 2016 Share Posted April 19, 2016 This is one of the reasons why I like the "classic" YNAB, and I really don't want to switch to the new YNAB. The other reason is that we purchased the classic YNAB as a one-time expense. I really hate the subscription concept to continually pay for software. I'm looking for a replacement now for classic YNAB... Dave Ramsey has a new one. Everydollar I think. I used it for a few months but had some of the same problems quill mentioned. We've been happy with Every Dollar. It's simple so we actually use it and free! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BooksandBoys Posted April 19, 2016 Share Posted April 19, 2016 Disclaimer: I love budgeting, money management, financial planning, and, yes, even doing taxes, but I've been slacking on my typical ways of managing our money (I have a very extensive excel file that I coded years ago that works well when I use it) because our income hasn't been sufficient to cover our high COL area and I've been embarrassed and frustrated and scared. I pulled myself together again at the beginning of the year and have been facing the finances head on. I just completed my free trial of the new YNAB, and I tested Mint.com at the same time. I really like YNAB and decided to try a subscription. I'm still a bit frustrated by some aspects of the software. Namely, the way the software manages credit cards, while perfectly logical from an accounting viewpoint, is very clunky and weird when you first start out because, unless you don't use your cards at all, you will be bringing in balances, even if you pay off every month. Because of this, I'm still not quite balanced.). I didn't like how mint stays logged into my accounts and just does all the work for me. YNAB requires me to interact with my money more, and that's what needs to happen to straighten our budget out. Incidentally, my husband, who has little use for money management by his own admission, prefers mint.com, specifically because it doesn't make him do anything. :-) I really like the budgeting to zero concept in YNAB. This is somewhat different from how I usually budget, which is to plan based on our average income, but then I would find myself forgetting to budget our irregular income when it would arrive, and it would get lost in the shuffle, or trying to budget in that irregular income before it arrived and then receiving less than anticipated. YNAB doesn't allow me to forget or overestimate, which is annoying and awesome. As to Quill's comment about not being able to have non-specific savings, I have created two budget lines that I think address that: I have an "emergency fund" line and a "misc savings" line. Let's be honest, neither have much in then because our finances have been a mess for a while, but the lines are there and I don't have to define them further. When I fill the Emergency Fund, then I'll just prioritize refilling it when we spend out of it (I'm not sure yet which way I'll manage the line. Either transfer money from "emergency fund" to, say, "car repair" in the event of a catastrophic car repair outside our usual budget for repairs, then refill "emergency fund" over the next few months, or just pay the repair our of the budget live "emergency fund," which isn't as pretty for tracking expenses, but is easier. We'll see.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vmsurbat Posted April 20, 2016 Share Posted April 20, 2016 (edited) One thing I dislike is that there isn't an easy way to tag things. I don't necessarily want a separate budgeted category for, say, when DH buys lunch, but I would like to be able to easily tag it, so I can later pull it up and see how much we spent on it. I like the information, but don't need a budget category for it, because I would just go in after the effect and set the budget for how much he spent. Which kind of defeats the purpose :laugh: On the YNAB forums, I read a great tip about using the memo field and search function for tagging. Several ways to go about it, but the idea I use is to designate certain extra characters (@placename---for vacations, #name--for family members, and so forth). Thus I can have a broad vacation category, but use the memo field to find all expenses related to one vacation (eg. @Italy vs. @Summercamp) OR find all transactions related to @Italy from different categories (Restaurant, Gas, Clothes (if I bought clothes while in Italy), etc. Play with it and I think you'll be able to come up with a very workable system using the memo field and search..... HTH, Edited April 20, 2016 by vmsurbat 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sammish Posted April 20, 2016 Share Posted April 20, 2016 On the YNAB forums, I read a great tip about using the memo field and search function for tagging. Several ways to go about it, but the idea I use is to designate certain extra characters (@placename---for vacations, #name--for family members, and so forth). Thus I can have a broad vacation category, but use the memo field to find all expenses related to one vacation (eg. @Italy vs. @Summercamp) OR find all transactions related to @Italy from different categories (Restaurant, Gas, Clothes (if I bought clothes while in Italy), etc. Play with it and I think you'll be able to come up with a very workable system using the memo field and search..... HTH, I think I read that same forum! :) Yeah, I've tried that, but it requires me to remember what my categories are, what, exactly, I tagged them as, and to spell correctly every time. I used to keep a list next to the computer, but ended up stopping because I lost the list, or forgot. I discovered exactly how much I cared about that information: enough to tag it if there was an auto complete or drop down or something, but not enough to type it out by hand and keep a list. :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hypatia. Posted April 20, 2016 Share Posted April 20, 2016 I love YNAB Classic, it has really turned our budgeting around. Seeing how much we have left in each spending category has been the key, instead of just seeing the account balance. Before we would see however much $ in the account and DH would buy a new game, I would order new curriculum (wine & Prime, baby), or we'd pick up some extra things at Costco. Then the automatic bills would come out and we would have "spent" that same amount of money 3 times. Now we can see what it is designated for and that was the key for us. I didn't know about the changes in YNAB to a yearly/web-based system until this thread. That's disappointing, I don't want to switch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abacus2 Posted April 21, 2016 Share Posted April 21, 2016 (edited) We've used YNAB4 for the last year plus, and it has been great for our finances. YNAB4 (now called Classic Ynab) is ideal for planning and adjusting to real-life expenses, desires, and emergencies. It is based on an envelope-budgeting system--the idea is that you put $ in envelopes (categories in YNAB terms ), for example $500 in groceries, $150 gas, $100 Vacation (to grow over the year), $200 eating out, etc and when the money is gone--you know and need to adjust accordingly (which may be you spend no more (ie. no more eating out) OR you take money from another "envelope" (vacation?) to use. With YNAB, this is all done electronically rather than with literal envelopes. Being forced to account/plan for every dollar means that far fewer dollars end up "evaporating". HOWEVER--when you read (via the web) all the glowing reports of how much people have been helped, know that people have been using a version DIFFERENT than the current web version. The latest product is a complete redo and incorporated many changes and is following a new model of delivery--via the web, as a monthly subscription, and currently a MVP (minimal viable product) which means it is not complete but offered for sale in the hopes of getting useful feedback. Definitely try the 34 day trial and watch the classes (make sure they are for the new YNAB, not the old). You can also visit their forums. Bottom line: Some people love the new version, others don't. Try it and see if it helps you out. This is true. A lot of existing users are not switching to the latest version. However, it incorporates budgeting principles similar enough to the previous version that I am sure I would have seen similar results had I started with it. YNAB 4 (Classic) appears to still be available on Steam to purchase if you prefer to try it. Edited April 21, 2016 by abacus2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heartlikealion Posted April 21, 2016 Share Posted April 21, 2016 Do you track your money as you spend with these apps? We just looked at some pie charts provided by our cc website the other day and it was eye opening to see how much more we spent on food one year vs this year (you can compare each month). It broke it up into categories for us based on where we used the card. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BooksandBoys Posted April 21, 2016 Share Posted April 21, 2016 Do you track your money as you spend with these apps? We just looked at some pie charts provided by our cc website the other day and it was eye opening to see how much more we spent on food one year vs this year (you can compare each month). It broke it up into categories for us based on where we used the card. Yes, you record each transaction, assign a category (groceries, gas, fitness) and the source if it (credit card, cash). 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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