Budgeting with YNAB or Monzo

getmore4less

If you know how to budget, planning what you want to spend your money and MSMoney is still a good choice for a PC user.

Does everything personal finance and once set up is still very good for planning tracking and reporting. 

You have to manually do some things, no instant app on phone updates, but means you have to think about your plans and most stuff can be automated. 

The last version is free and runs on W10.
(they stopped developing because it did everything)

ccdorset

Jlawson118 said:

I signed up for Monzo on the off chance back in August 2019 and I have to say it helped me budget a lot! I was struggling to budget a lot after getting my mortgage at the back end of 2018 and was juggling that and bills for the first time, and being weekly paid made it difficult for me to manage too. 
Monzo's features helped me with this. It allowed me to see what was coming in, what was going out. The main feature which helped me was the ability to open 'pots' and even set certain direct debits to come out of pots. My main bills are around £180 a month, so being paid weekly it allows for me to transfer £45 via standing order into my bills pot each week, and then the remainder can go towards other things. When my payments come out, these come out of that bills pot

Thanks for your reply and the details! The Monzo pots are what appealed to me and the spending categories. I struggle more with budgeting expenses that are not paid monthly, such as car maintenance, insurances and gifts etc. I'd like something to help me budget over the year and save up gradually towards each of these kind of items, so the pots sound ideal.

I'll see how I get on with the YNAB trial and then try and make a decision from there!

ccdorset

getmore4less said:

If you know how to budget, planning what you want to spend your money and MSMoney is still a good choice for a PC user.

Does everything personal finance and once set up is still very good for planning tracking and reporting. 

You have to manually do some things, no instant app on phone updates, but means you have to think about your plans and most stuff can be automated. 

The last version is free and runs on W10.
(they stopped developing because it did everything)

Thanks for your reply. I've heard good things about MS Money, sounds like it would be a good alternative for me to look at. Though I use a Mac, so don't think it will be compatible unfortunately. :-(

greensalad

I use both. Monzo budgeting doesn't cut the mustard for me. I don't see it as a budgeting app but a segmenting app. 
YNAB does so much more than Monzo ever could and it's changed my life. I've been 6 years into my DF journey and I'm now months from the end and it's only YNAB that has done that for me.
Personally I budget in YNAB and then reflect that in Monzo so categories = pots on Monzo. But Monzo is only my personal and joint account. It doesn't help with budgeting, saving, goal planning, net worth calculations like YNAB can.

ccdorset

greensalad said:

I use both. Monzo budgeting doesn't cut the mustard for me. I don't see it as a budgeting app but a segmenting app. 
YNAB does so much more than Monzo ever could and it's changed my life. I've been 6 years into my DF journey and I'm now months from the end and it's only YNAB that has done that for me.
Personally I budget in YNAB and then reflect that in Monzo so categories = pots on Monzo. But Monzo is only my personal and joint account. It doesn't help with budgeting, saving, goal planning, net worth calculations like YNAB can.

Thanks for your reply. Well done on your DF journey, that is amazing! I've been reading similar stories of how YNAB has helped people achieve results and it's really encouraging.

It's really interesting you use both YNAB and Monzo, I have signed up for the free trial with YNAB and can see that it will help with a lot more than just using a Monzo account. I'm watching all the Getting Started videos and am gradually getting my head around the concept! I'm sure it will just take me time to get used to it. :-)

getmore4less

I think the key is where you are starting from.
If you know how to budget then you need a tool with good planning/tracking/reporting features that reflects how you manage your accounting.

When I looked at YNAB it was not much good for that when you were planning multiple years ahead already.

Great for those that did not budget but just muddled by a month or two at a time and needed more emphasis on cash flow because they did not have a grasp of the planning basics.

At that time there were also lots of people having to create workarounds for things like multiple income streams

I don't recall the ability to do split transactions(essential for any finance product) where a single entry on an account can be split into multiple categories been a few years so might be there. 

I wanted something that managed accounts they way they worked and spending categories they way they work.

tempus_fugit

getmore4less said:

I don't recall the ability to do split transactions(essential for any finance product) where a single entry on an account can be split into multiple categories been a few years so might be there. 

Yes, it does have that now, although it didn't for quite a while and you had to use the Toolkit for YNAB to have that functionality.

ccdorset

getmore4less said:

I think the key is where you are starting from.
If you know how to budget then you need a tool with good planning/tracking/reporting features that reflects how you manage your accounting.

When I looked at YNAB it was not much good for that when you were planning multiple years ahead already.

Great for those that did not budget but just muddled by a month or two at a time and needed more emphasis on cash flow because they did not have a grasp of the planning basics.

At that time there were also lots of people having to create workarounds for things like multiple income streams

I don't recall the ability to do split transactions(essential for any finance product) where a single entry on an account can be split into multiple categories been a few years so might be there. 

I wanted something that managed accounts they way they worked and spending categories they way they work.

I think unfortunately at the moment I do fall into the category of just muddling through a month or two at a time. Whilst I know what my regular monthly direct debits total for example, I don't really budget and save for non-regular or annual expenses. Perhaps YNAB will help me get to grips with this.

getmore4less

It could,

you need to be looking at least a year ahead planning where you want your money to go. 
Normalising on a year is better than looking at months. 

Then run a cash flow 

greensalad

YNAB can sort of help you plan ahead, but not completely. I do keep a separate spreadsheet for tracking our deposit savings, for example.

But for saving for things that are within your budget it's quite simple. E.g I save each month towards all car expenses including service and MOT next year, and YNAB lets me do that. I also save for holidays, christmas etc through YNAB.

More than happy to share aspects of my YNAB budget if you'd like to see, to get an understanding of what a mature budget looks like (I've used it for 3 years).