Budgeting alternative to YNAB

Jules4422

Hi MSE 'ers,

I'm new to the forum so please be kind. 🙂

I've been using the desktop version of You Need A Budget for years now, quite happily. However, the company has decided to stop supporting this version and instead focus on the web version which costs £85 a year.

Does anyone have any recommendations for an alternative? It can be desktop or web version and ideally be free.

Otherwise, tell me about the budgeting tool you use, what are the pros and cons.

Many thanks

Jules

Zero_Sum

MS money for me

newlywed

My ynab cost $85 therefore about £64

Westie983

Jules4422 wrote: »

Hi MSE 'ers,

I'm new to the forum so please be kind. 🙂

I've been using the desktop version of You Need A Budget for years now, quite happily. However, the company has decided to stop supporting this version and instead focus on the web version which costs £85 a year.

Does anyone have any recommendations for an alternative? It can be desktop or web version and ideally be free.

Otherwise, tell me about the budgeting tool you use, what are the pros and cons.

Many thanks

Jules

Carry on using YNAB on the web, without the support

Westie983

Lomcevak

Westie983 wrote: »

Carry on using YNAB on the web, without the support

Westie983

Did you mean desktop, not web? I didn't' think you could log in to the web version unless you subscribe, but i'm within subscription so not certain.

Anyway, for the OP, I'm also a long-time YNAB user (since 2009 or 2010) but finally moved off YNAB4 when OSX Catalina meant it would no longer run on my Mac. I've moved to the web version, which I rather like (after some initial getting used to new constraints like no 'right arrow' or 'budgeted next month') but it is too expensive, especially as you pay for direct import that doesn't work outside the states, so I've also been looking at alternatives.

In part, it depends on how much you want top-notch envelope budgeting. If you do (and I do, really) then as far as I can tell there's nothing as good as YNAB. I've been running Banktivity for a couple of months, which is good but glitchy at times, and although it does envelope budgeting, it's not nearly as smooth an experience as YNAB. And direct import again doesn't work, its broken in the UK and there doesn't seem much urgency to fix it. On the other hand, it's a comprehensive financial suite with excellent reporting, so it does a lot that YNAB doesn't do.

I'm also just starting experimenting with MoneyWiz, which looks ok but doesn't seem to do envelope budgeting (I haven't yet used it enough to be certain). It's also subscription, so not much cheaper than YNAB. However, direct import does work.

Finally, financier.io seems a direct clone of YNAB4 on the web, but i'm not sure how widely used it is, and would be worried that it might disappear one day - if I could run it locally, I probably would.



(as an aside, there's a lot of dislike for nYNAB with long-time YNAB users, but i'm no longer one of them - the main difference is that YNAB3 and YNAB4 let you 'cheat' in various ways, e.g. via carry-over of overspends. That could be useful, e.g. expenses, but could be dangerous. nYNAB forces you to strictly work with what you have, and i've come to see it as a net positive.)

nyermen

Another long timer v4 here. I grandfathered in early so I think i'm paying $45 a year, which is much more palatable when it feels like I'm paying for import that I dont get (that said, I prefer the manual approach anyway).
I have looked, there are options, but they're either too different, or similar but not much saving, etc. Really, the options are those already aired - either "v5" (/nYNAB) or run YNAB in a virtual machine.

Sorry Same boat. But I have to make a decision soon, my v4 is starting to creak.

nyermen

ps. If you do end up accepting the new version, be aware there are some differences. My two biggies...

1) Red arrow forward - I get the point they make here, but i directly net a "buffer" of cash for each month to offset company expenses but I need to track the oustandings (ie. The master category is never negative). I'd like it to allow it to allow rollover under those circumstances. I've looked into the recommended alternatives, none are as easy as v4. And of course on 1st of the month (an arbitrary number for many) when it all goes screwy, you can rebudget the "-" anyway. BUT, this causes issue two...

2) Stealing from the future - I wont explain it, easier to google, but this one has workarounds galore (none adopted officially) and is still an issue a couple of years after being acknowledged.

Most other differences you can deal with if you want (eg. credit cards, just switch to a basic account if you dont want all the v5 fancy handling).

Lomcevak

For what it's worth, those two issues were big concerns for me as well when I moved from YNAB4 to nYNAB, but in practice they've not been much of an issue - I would like a way to reconcile expenses, which the red arrow (unintentionally) did, but otherwise I don't miss it. Stealing from the future is definitely a sign of broken design, but I have a fairly stable budget so it doesn't really affect me much.

My major issues are cost (including paying for direct import when it's US-only), the loss of 'income for next month' - knowing up-front what you had to work with was a very powerful feature, and age of money is no replacement, it changes randomly and tells me nothing useful - and the very limited reporting. I miss multiple months in the budget, but not as much as I expected.

Originally we were told that the new subscription model would enable much more rapid development of new features, but progress is glacial - most of the release notes are very minor tweaks - and basic stuff (like fixing reports and stealing from the future) has been promised for years without anything being done.

DCFC79

Using excel works for me.

Might even jse google sheets so I could use it on my phone as well as desktop version. It works for me, it wont be for everyone.

sausage_time

DCFC79 wrote: »

Using excel works for me.

Might even jse google sheets so I could use it on my phone as well as desktop version.

Excel on Android works really well - scales well to the small screen,

enthusiasticsaver

I use the free version of clear checkbook. I have never used YNAB so cannot comment on how they compare but I operate my budget as follows.

I use zero based budgeting by allocating all of our monthly income on an excel spreadsheet.

A proportion is used for monthly outgoings and I set monthly budgets on clear checkbook which do not roll over and reset the day before our pensions go in. We have four budgets, food, entertainment, diesel, direct debits. I allocate an appropriate amount each month and reconcile on my spreadsheet. We also put a monthly amount for personal spending into both mine and my DHs personal current accounts and that covers clothes, hair and beauty, hobbies, personal entertainment etc. Any surplus or deficit from the four main budgets has to come from a spending envelope or goes into a spending envelope at the end of the month when I reconcile.

Envelopes are essentially savings pots which are held in various accounts, some in current account and some in savings accounts or an investment portfolio. Unlike monthly budgets these do roll over from month to month as they do not tend to be used on a daily basis like the monthly budgets. The envelopes we have are emergency fund (now full), house fund (for home improvements, home insurance and maintenance). car fund (for maintenance and depreciation to allow for replacements), holiday fund and general living expenses ( which we also use for birthdays, Christmas, anything not covered in monthly budgets. Again each month I allocate an amount to the envelopes and reconcile on my spreadsheet.

The spreadsheet runs alongside clear checkbook. So transactions are recorded on the clear checkbook app and any transfers between monthly envelopes are also recorded there. I use a credit card usually for food and diesel so when I reconcile at the end of the month I take the income we have received at the beginning of the month and subtract the amount transferred to envelopes, the monthly outgoings on our four main budget categories, the transfers to our personal accounts and any investment transfers. What is left should be the balance in the current account less the credit card balance. Any surplus or deficit usually comes or goes into the general living expenses envelope. It sounds complicated but really isn't. I can see on clear checkbook at any time how much we have spent that month or previous months on food etc and how much we have in our savings envelopes. The direct debits are all set up automatically and I can reconcile the current account at any time to make sure that what clear checkbook says is the balance is actually the balance when I check my online banking.

The spreadsheet records each monthly reconciliation so I only do that once a month on payday to check what is left is accurate and allocate the money for the following month.