YNAB - Is it worth paying for after the free trial?

mindfulgeek

YNAB is a bit of a mind bender at first, I will admit - it has a fairly unique approach.

I get paid on the 25th of the month or thereabouts depending on when the 25th is...I just logged my income for the 25th Jan the other day and set budget amounts for January. I log the money I spend as I spend it (in Jan or in feb, or whenever) and it depletes the budget categories as I go through both months. The thing with YNAB is it doesn't reset based on the date...if there's money in the budget for something in January and it doesn't get spent, it's still there in February, March, whenever - until the money is spent, it stays. So I allocate £90 for my train pass on 25th Jan, and it doesn't get paid out of my account until 5th Feb, and the amount is still sitting in my budget for that to happen. It's what makes YNAB so good for different pay cycles really - I've tried loads of apps before that just reset on the 1st of the month, which works I would guess for very few people. The YNAB site actually has a tutorial session on making YNAB work for different pay cycles - I highly recommend you check it out! That's when I got my lightbulb moment with it.

If you want to see how I set my categories up just let me know and I can send you a screen grab of them.

Hope this helps!

anoncol

There are other apps just as good and free. Such as http://www.moneymanagerex.org