![]() ![]() First, you'll make a plan for your spending, savings, and debt payoff so that you're able to change how you manage money. To get started using the YNAB app, you'll do the following: Once you follow these rules and adjust your money management habits, you'll have better control of your finances and you'll be less stressed. After some time of using You Need a Budget, you'll have a routine in place and you'll always be ahead. This will allow you to get ahead and not live paycheck to paycheck anymore. You can move already allocated money around to make it work. If you overspend, it will be okay - because you've got extra money budgeted elsewhere. This will make it easier for you to recover after making a mistake. That includes buying gifts or paying your real estate taxes, even if they're not monthly expenses. This will allow you to budget accordingly so that you have the money you need to pay for all of your expenses. This is helpful for learning to make fewer impulsive purchases. ![]() This rule will teach you to make sure that you're using all of your money well. Every dollar will be assigned a task, such as rent, savings, groceries, etc. ![]() The app teaches you to put all of your money to use - including using your money for expenses, paying off debt, and saving extra money. While some budgeting apps only show people what they've already spent, You Need a Budget focuses on zero-based budgeting. You Need a Budget, or YNAB, is a popular paid budgeting app. I can mark those as transactions and specify the currency exchange rate / date but after that I have to manually remove the buy from the EUR account.What is You Need a Budget, and how does it work? Same principle for the currency exchange between Revolut CHF (sell to buy EUR -> “-”) and Revolut EUR (incoming EUR “+”). Then I have to manually delete the Revolut incoming transfer in order to have only one “+”. The software then displays the transaction in the Revolut account ("+") where I already had it (as it was present in the imported list). Example: I go to PF and mark the payment towards Revolut ("-") as a transfer (PF->Revolut). Good, the only boring thing is that after importing the transaction list I have to manually get rid of one of the 2 transactions in order to avoid double counting in the account balance. I’ve seen that I can categorize a transaction as “transfer” (between two accounts) in which case it is not considered in the expenses summaries. 3, which is free if you don’t use the online part). To make it faster, for example the >20 transactions that would belong to our “Groceries” bucket, I simply sum them up and add it as a single transaction within the software.Īs I didn’t want a subscription based tool but I don’t have the time to invest to tackle too complex solutions I quickly tried GnuCash and MoneyDance and now I landed to MoneyWiz (v. It also helps me to notice if any ‘joint’ activities were paid from our personal accounts (we have personal accounts for our own spending) and then I transfer the money from the joint account to the private one. I feel the monthly manual transaction entering is nice and makes you re-think all the expenses you had. I don’t use YNAB exactly how it is designed (I don’t care if I am over a budget in a specific month), I simply use it for expense tracking and charting. I don’t do it at the timepoint of transaction as it would be cumbersome in my opinion, I rather take 30-40 min at the end of the month to look through the account statements at our online bank and then fill them into the categories/buckets I’ve created. I’ve been manually inputting transactions in YNAB (4 - the desktop version) for the last 6 years or so for our family. This allows me to immediately enter a transaction after I made it and see how it effected my budget. One reason for choosing this tool over a more advanced solution like beancount is that YNAB comes with an easy to use web-app, android-app, iOS-app (used by my girlfriend) and Apple watch app (also used by my girlfriend). Do note there’s also an automatic import option which can merge imported transactions with your manually imported transactions. However I believe it’s ~90% correct since I went over all the big expenses in the last year and budgeted for them this year.Īt the moment I’m inputting transactions manually which is a bit cumbersome but it does make me more conscious about my spending and how to budget for it. My budget isn’t perfect yet and I’ve probably missed some expense or saving categories. Yesterday I finished my first budget for January and I already feel more in control of my spending and can more easily plan for future bigger expenses like a new (used) car, a holiday or a home improvement project. MP can do I much better job than me explaining what this tool is and why it’s valuable. To track and, more importantly, control my expenses I started using YNAB last month. ![]()
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