They have an opinionated, cult following that seems a bit weird at first, but if you approach the situation with humility and the real need to budget you'll realize YNAB is really good. You want opinionated software when it comes to something like budgeting. You want a system you buy into and has been proven to work, not a system that lets you do anything how you want.
If you tried YNAB before and didn't jive with it, try it again. The new version they released about 6 months ago was a really good update.
It's $5/mo. The software is simple but works. The mobile app is good. The bank syncing is as good as it can be. Realizing how using a credit card for most payments affects your budgeting process is tricky at first, but that's because it's a tricky thing to account for. YNAB make it pretty easy to make credit card payments mesh with your actual budget.
Re: cloud solutions accessing your bank account—the benefits outweigh the risks. Living without a budget is very expensive because it's so easy to spend money on things you don't actually care about instead of things you do care about.
- The benefit of having a budget long-term is probably hundreds of thousands of dollars, and getting the things you want out of having money vs. haphazardly blowing money.
- The risks of a budgeting company screwing up with your cloud data is real, but doesn't outweigh the great benefits.
They have an opinionated, cult following that seems a bit weird at first, but if you approach the situation with humility and the real need to budget you'll realize YNAB is really good. You want opinionated software when it comes to something like budgeting. You want a system you buy into and has been proven to work, not a system that lets you do anything how you want.
If you tried YNAB before and didn't jive with it, try it again. The new version they released about 6 months ago was a really good update.
It's $5/mo. The software is simple but works. The mobile app is good. The bank syncing is as good as it can be. Realizing how using a credit card for most payments affects your budgeting process is tricky at first, but that's because it's a tricky thing to account for. YNAB make it pretty easy to make credit card payments mesh with your actual budget.
The founder wrote a decent book: https://www.amazon.com/You-Need-Budget-Paycheck-Paycheck-ebo...
Re: cloud solutions accessing your bank account—the benefits outweigh the risks. Living without a budget is very expensive because it's so easy to spend money on things you don't actually care about instead of things you do care about.
- The benefit of having a budget long-term is probably hundreds of thousands of dollars, and getting the things you want out of having money vs. haphazardly blowing money. - The risks of a budgeting company screwing up with your cloud data is real, but doesn't outweigh the great benefits.
I've also been tracking this company which is building a pretty slick looking desktop app: https://medium.com/actualbudget http://actualbudget.com/ https://twitter.com/actualbudget