YNAB Alternative?

uncreative

Its all about the mindset. Simply allocate all your available cash to categories, which is your budget. So say you earned £1,000 a month, and you need to allocate it to:

Rent £300
Food £150
Car £100
Debt £200
Bills £150
Save £100
Total £1,000

record your transactions as and when you spend and dont go over the limit in each category. If you spent £160 on food say, you would need to make sure you saved only £90 to balance it out.

Just allocate cash to each category and dont go over the category. Stick to it each month and this will change your life. Say after 6 months your washing machine and tumble drier breaks down. In the above example you will have £600 in savings so no need to get into debt or worry about paying for it.

The PIVOTAL point comes when you have the information to hand that you are about to overspend in a category and take the decision to either not spend, or if you have to then spend less on other categories. Knowing where the spending boundaries are is the thing that is key.

enjoyyourshoes

You could use pen and paper plus 3 'activities'

activity 1. Do an month by month analysis of all your annual, 1/2 and 1/4ly bills (inc SO,DD etc) this may include insurance, car related stuff, professional subs, some energy (we use oil and have caller gas in bottles)
Then calculate how much you need to accrue each month to fund these costs.

activity 2. identify all your monthly costs (inc DD/so etc) may include life insurances, professional subscriptions, utility, TV, mortgage/rent etc. Don't forget to add in the monthly accrual for the 'activity 1 costs'

Activity 3. have a monthly reconciled bank account running balance which deducts all activity 1 & 2 costs from monthly income, savings plans (regular saving etc) and then Every day spend time deducting all your daily spends (cheque, switch, swipe, P@Pump, contactless, CC purchases, cash w/d etc etc) Running balance will identify your remaining balance before next pay day. Your task (if you wish to accept the challenge) is to stay within your income envelope.
At the ned of month transfer the balance to the next monthly account (if you are OD you need to reduce spending) if in black transfer the balance to high interest savings account or similar.

Write in diary when renewals for activity 1 expenditure and other monthly paid contracts come to end, and build in 1 month to renegotiate the next deal (as per MSE)

Can do all this with pen paper, or have excel spreadsheet set uo to reduce the burden of adding and subtracting!

Been doing this since I was 10 years old. Have own home, no debts, savings and investments. No monthly subscriptions to YNAB or annual purchase cost, just a bit of time to do the excel docs.