You Need A Budget (YNAB) – Personal Finance Software
- Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, (Windows 7 / Vista/ XP / 95, / 98 / 2000 / ME / NT)
Mac OS X (10.4.11 / 10.5.4 / 10.5.5 / 10.6), Linux (Fedora 8 and later / Ubuntu 7.10 and later / OpenSuse 10.3 and later) - Stop living paycheck to paycheck – Get out of debt – Save more money faster
- Benefit from four unique, powerful rules for maximizing control over your money
- Gain financial peace by tracking all of your spending (dining out, groceries, bills) with one simple interface
- Be up and running in just minutes, also save time by importing your bank transactions
- Generate reports, schedule recurring transactions, and GAIN CONTROL.
Praised across the internet as hands-down the “best budgeting software”, You Need A Budget (YNAB) cuts to the chase with your finances. The software focuses you on the foundation of your finances: the Budget. Experience has shown that when your budget is intact, and functioning correctly, everything else takes care of itself (the bills are paid on time, retirement contributions are made, and unnecessary debt is eliminated). The software is built around Four Rules of Cash Flow. These Four Rules w
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(out of 169 reviews)
List Price: $ 69.90
Price: $ 59.95
[wprebay kw="software" num="32" ebcat="all"] [wprebay kw="software" num="33" ebcat="all"]
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Review by Cady for You Need A Budget (YNAB) – Personal Finance Software
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YNAB Rocks! In a truly frightening kind of “I spend that much money on THAT!” way but in a great way because you can see the impact of your daily coffee habit on your car insurance payment 6 months away.
YNAB allows you account for all your annual bills in 1/12 increments and then when they roll around the money is there to pay for them.
The heart of the YNAB system is a “buffer” which is comprised of last months paychecks in order to allow you to save this months paychecks. You can only live on last months money that you have budgeted into categories beforehand. The premise is that you are never broke and will not have to worry about fluctuations in income if you are living on what you have ALREADY earned.
So the buffer is one full months income. So I’m earning May’s income and it is just pouring into my checking and sitting there. Also sitting there is all of April’s income. April’s income is what I’m paying my current bills with. May is accruing. And I’m budgeting for June’s expenses with an eye to leftover April income instead of instantly using Mays.
The way I’m beginning to think of it is: Quicken is a snapshot of yesterday. YNAB is a crystal ball showing me the future.
This is a stand alone piece of software that can download transactions right from your bank so if you use a debit card you don’t need to enter receipts for things. I can also say the tech support is the most amazing I have ever dealt with. I sent in a bug report and within 15 minutes had email waiting for me telling me to delete a particular font and then it worked perfectly.
Two thumbs way up but only if you want to see all the leaks in your money handling.
Review by Ted Wallace for You Need A Budget (YNAB) – Personal Finance Software
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I earn a good living. Yet earlier this year, several months after buying a house and getting settled back into the swing of things I couldn’t escape the notion that my family was living beyond its means.
And we were. And YNAB helped me see it.
I’d previously used Quicken and Microsoft Money in an effort to do budgeting to no real effect. The truth is, Quicken and Money are more about having fancy checkbook registers than they are about helping you identify and conform to a budget. This is where they fail.
YNAB is straightforward and it does one thing, and one thing only — it helps you create and manage a budget. With careful record keeping, you can do the same thing YNAB does with a pen and paper, or with Excel — but the software is simple and easy-to-use and readily imports transactions (without fail) from my banking institutions.
I used to worry that the number in my checking account may not be enough to make everything come together. I can unequivocally state that now… I just don’t care. Because of YNAB, I absolutely know that there’s always money enough for anything that’s going to come along.
YNAB has helped me exercise some discipline and do so without significant data entry or long, tortured sessions at the computer. If you’re looking for something to help you manage your budget this is the software you should get. Ignore the name brands that simply aren’t up to the task.
Review by Michael C. McCormick for You Need A Budget (YNAB) – Personal Finance Software
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If you are like me you have copies of quicken and money on your shelf, plus hours invested in trying to make them work for you all ending in frustration because you didn’t have a working budget…the money still disappeared the same way. Like me you may have taken excel and spent hours developing a custom model. And that sort of worked but took tinkering all the time, but you had given up hope of ever finding anything that worked like you need it to work. That was me and then one day google magic struck and YNAB came to the top of the list, I don’t know what search terms I used, why I hadn’t used them before, but I found a program that sounded simple and just like what I had been trying to create. The 4 rules had sounded like the discipline from one of my professors in school. The fact that it was an application assured me that the tinkering had been done by someone else, and so after searching the forumns and seeing that the owners where even participating; I bought the program.
Well, I have never looked back. This program does everything you need it to do, It allows you to track through the months those major expenses like tuition, property taxes, and insurance, while tracking the small stuff too. The object is gradually build up a buffer so that you are constantly living on last month’s income which is what over financial gurus would have you do they just call it different things. The budget, once setup is very easy to use…Setting it up only requires picking a starting place, naming your budgeting accounts,getting your bank balances entered, and oh yeah, i would recommend reading the quick setup guide at least. Once there you can enter transactions manually or download from your bank accounts or credit cards. Enter paychecks in as much detail as you like or just enter your net, it is not nearly as complicated as other programs I have dealt with in the past.
The best part about this software is that new features are constantly being added. There is a new Features forum on the bulliten board and believe me, the programmer and owner are taking notes. Even in my short time I have seen several things added to the program, with many more on the list to come soon.
This software is worth every penny.
Review by N. Fornario for You Need A Budget (YNAB) – Personal Finance Software
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In the good ole days (when I was younger), you wrote a check and automatically subtracted it from what you had on the spot, and waited for your monthly statement in the mail. Now with ATMs, etc, you loose track, spend more than you make, you just loose track quickly of where your money isn`t going. What YNAB does is take you back to the tried and true method. Meaning you write down everything you buy, everything, gas for the car, cleaning supplies, etc. Yeah, you can do it yourself, maybe if your really good with Excel or Open Office you could build something like this. I’m computer impaired when it comes to doing that. What has it done for me?
You can download your checking statements in Quicken format, and it pulls in all the updates, categories them (food, gas), and does the math.
I was floored I wasted $260 at the gas station alone on junk, not gas. I got that total down to $150, and still got all my beer and smokes, yeah. Last week we spent $174 on groceries, this week, $68 (we checked what we had in the cupboards/fridge this time before going), saved $100.
At the end of the month I expect to have an additional $500 left over, ear marked for a slush fund, and paying for medicines and such. Also, I set aside mad money for my wife to use on herself, not me, or clothes, hygiene, just on stuff of $150.
I’m old, so it was confusing at first to figure out the program, but it works. Bottom line, you won’t make anymore money per payday, but you won’t waste your money, and still “have it all,” plus allot more left over. You won’t be reaching for that credit card as often to bail you out of a heavy month where the car insurance payment from hell comes in, or medical insurance quarterly bill.
To me, it’s worth the $40, chow.
Review by karenj2 for You Need A Budget (YNAB) – Personal Finance Software
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I found this software through a budgeting forum, and tried it out. I wasn’t expecting much – I’ve used an Excel spreadsheet, Quicken & Mvelopes before, and didn’t have much “success” with them. Those programs worked fine, but I needed to BUDGET my finances, not track where I spent my money after the fact. So, I bought this program, and after a bit of reading (there’s a great guide) and surfing their forums for help, I got it figured out! Now, I’ve got my life budgeted – I can spend money on the fun things in life without worrying that I’m taking money away from something important (you know, like mortgage, car loan, etc.) because I saved for it.
Just a FYI – because the program is based off of the common sense “rules” that the developer created, it might take a bit before you have that lightbulb moment… And, the program isn’t designed to let you blissfully automate your spending – you NEED to track your money, and be more aware if you’re going over your budgeted amounts.