YNAB - views

Debtfree2018_2

Good morning all

I have been hearing people on this board raving about YNAB.

What does it do?

Has it changed your life?

Is it safe to use? Hate downloading stuff

Does it access your accounts?


Thank you

Spamtastic

I use YNAB and love it. It's a budgeting tool like the envelope method. You allocate all your money into categories (rent, groceries, fun, etc) then whenever you spend you record the transaction in YNAB and it reduces the balance in the categories you specified. Then when you get paid you allocate your income to the various categories.

In addition to the software, there is a methodology behind it (four rules) which help stick the the budgeting process.

There is a really friendly and helpful forum on their website.

I bought the software directly from their website and it was safe.

Although its a USA company, the software can be set to £ currency.

It hasn't changed my life because I've always been budget focussed and was actually following a similar method with pots/envelopes. If you've never handled money like this I suppose it could transform the way you look at spending/saving.

It doesn't access your accounts, you type all the entries yourself - which actually makes you more in touch with your spending.

It also has a companion app for your smartphone so you can enter transactions on the go.

They do a free trial - its the full working software so give it a go.

speakingofart

It's budgeting software, but I can truly say that it's changed the way I think about money. You set up categories for things you need to budget for, following four rules (give every pound a job, save for a rainy day, roll with the punches, live on last month's income) and then spend from your categories, rather than your bank balance. This means that a) you don't go overdrawn and b) you don't look at your balance and spend money that actually needs to go to a bill.

It's worth downloading the free trial, which lasts 34 days and giving it a go - I found it takes a while to wrap your head around but it's well worth the time and energy. They also have a very good website with forums, webinars etc so it might be worth browsing there as well.

FireWyrm

As you know, it is budgeting software. However, it is also rather more than it appears. On the face of it, it seems quite simple, but really, it provides a powerful method of budgeting that simply works. It is a leap of faith to start with and you will want to continue on checking account balances, but if you can get your head around the idea of trusting categories instead, you will find that your financial life is much improved. In short, after a while, there will be no such thing as an unexpected bill and if there is, you should have sufficient money to cover it. The system teaches you to anticipate issues and make provision for them well ahead of time. Envelope budgeting is actually a pretty old concept, but this software makes it very easy to manage. You can have as many 'envelopes' or categories as you wish.

The price seems steep at £30, but really, it will pay for itself within a few months and you'll wonder how you ever managed without it. Best £30 I ever spent.

asparagus1968

I use "spending tracker" on my phone, the free version, it does all the above. I love it. it also shows you a graph or pie chart of your spending.you can budget daily/weekly/ monthly. add as many "accounts" and categories as you want. you can input repeating amounts to automatic. it's just fab.

kerri_gt

After all the fab reviews about it I was going to download it, then saw it comes with a fee after the trial and didn't. I find something ironic about so called budgeting software that comes with a cost. I'm not saying it isn't great for some people, but I'm quite happy with my excel sheets, virtual pots and pivot tables.

asparagus1968

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/spending-tracker/id548615579?mt=8




this is it!

Debtfree2018_2

Thanks so much everyone! I am already using spreadsheets to track income and spending and debts. However this sounds much easier with the app that you can use straightaway, rather then logging spending once a week. I do think YNAB would make me think aa bit harder on whether I needed something!

FireWyrm

asparagus1968 wrote: »

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/spending-tracker/id548615579?mt=8

this is it!

Yes, but that is a spending tracker. YNAB doesnt track spending except as a sidebar activity. The whole point of YNAB is that you are budgeted in ADVANCE of any planned spending and that all spending becomes, planned. There is no more unplanned purchases because you are supposed to check the categories BEFORE you spend it. At the end of the day, you ought to be going out and spending for a purpose against a predefined category that has money already allocated. You then come back and capture that expense in the register, but it was already planned ahead of time. Spending trackers work after the fact. If you are using YNAB purely as a spending tracker, it wont work very well and you wont be getting the best out of it. YNAB requires a pretty fundamental shift in perspective when it comes to spending your money and that is where the magic lies.

Pixie5740

YNAB doesn't access your bank accounts but you can download your bank statements into YNAB allowing you to reconcile your accounts which I find very useful.

I have YNAB on my laptop and I have it on my phone and it all links together in Dropbox so adding a transaction on one device automatically adds it to the other. This means I can do my main YNABing on my laptop and track transactions whilst I'm out and about on my phone.

I don't find anything ironic about paying for budgeting software. YNAB is a tool that has helped me start budgeting property and keep track of every single penny. I have easily recuperated the initial £30 I paid for YNAB due to improved budgeting.

It just boils down to whatever works for you really.

TurkeyDinner

My wife and I love YNAB. We came across this software when the wheels had fallen off and we were up to our eyes in debt.

It's simple but powerful "4 rules" really hit home and explained budgeting to me in clear terms that I really should have already understood but clearly didn't.

We knew we needed this software and couldn't afford it right away. Just using the trial we "saved" money, based on the fact that we realised that actually this gave a view into our budget that meant we couldn't actually afford this day out or that small takeaway etc...

We had 2 laptops so when the trial on one was about to run out we opened up a 2nd trial. By the end of that we had made a priority to budget to pay for YNAB and had done so.

Along with the free iPhone apps that make checking the budget and recording spending REALLY easy I don't think we could live without this software now!!

By the way we used dropbox and "Shared" the folder so that myself and my wife can all run off the same budget on our pc and mobile phones.

I'm really happy that when 2015 starts we'll be "fully buffered" (YNAB Rule #4)! Despite handling some emergency situations the past year. It's taken us since Jul 2013 and felt like it would never come.

Can't recommend this software highly enough.