#BUDGETING YOU NEED A BUDGET HOW TO#
#BUDGETING YOU NEED A BUDGET PDF#
#BUDGETING YOU NEED A BUDGET SOFTWARE#

Con #3 – Phone App Isn’t Powerful (as much as I would like)Īs I discuss below, the phone app is actually one of the main reasons I chose YNAB over a few other budgeting systems. Kathryn over at Making Your Money Matter has a great article on how she does this. *However, I would like to point out that YNAB can be “hacked” to show you income and separate it out. What you want is something like Personal Capital. If you’re looking for investment tracking, net worth tracking, or a holistic financial package, I would go elsewhere. In fact, it’s terrible for tracking investment accounts and performance. It doesn’t care much about various sources of income or tracking other assets like your house, car, business, and investments. It’s a budgeting app and is hyper-focused on that. Con #2 – Terrible for Holistic Financial Overviewĭue to Con #1, YNAB doesn’t do a good job of showing your overall financial health.

They may introduce more reports in the future, but currently, this is all they have. *It should be noted that YNAB is constantly updating their features and work hard to improve the software. If you’re nerdy and want to drill down deep and analyze the crap out of your finances, the lack of reporting is going to frustrate you to no end.* YNAB doesn’t let you create your own custom reports, have any tax-related reporting, or income reports.

#BUDGETING YOU NEED A BUDGET SOFTWARE#

After using the software for 6 months or more, the average is helpful for understanding your normal spending habits. I’ve found the most helpful column is the “average” for each category. Since YNAB is philosophically focused on planning your expenses, it intentionally avoids income reporting. This is the closest YNAB gets to organizing different income sources. If you’re interested in tracking your net worth, I would recommend Personal Capital. It doesn’t show you categories of assets or liabilities and you can’t drill down into the information. The net worth report is just a simple bar chart that shows assets and liabilities for each month. The other two reports are extremely lacking. This lets you easily see how your spending has changed from one month to the next.Īlthough the spending report is helpful, it’s the only one that is. You can also look at spending over time by switching the view to a bar graph. This feature is helpful to see where your money is going from month to month. You can also change the dates, accounts, and include/exclude specific categories. You can click each category to drill down further and eventually see the individual transactions. It’s a pie chart that shows spending by category and sub-category. The spending report is actually pretty helpful. There are currently three major reports: Spending, Net Worth, and Income vs. YNAB has extremely limited reporting features. This is probably the thing I’m personally most frustrated with. I always like to start with the downsides because it’s the most honest way to write a solid review. Although I’m a huge fan of the software, it has flaws that you should know about. I want you to understand that YNAB isn’t perfect and definitely has some major drawbacks.

Features I specifically looked for and reasons I chose YNAB.

#BUDGETING YOU NEED A BUDGET PDF#

If you want to have a PDF version that you can refer back to, just click the button below. I’ve put together a PDF of the entire article with references for more YNAB resources.

I don’t expect you to read the entire article in one sitting. Lastly, this review is over 9,000 words long. Use the Table of Contents to find the specific sections that will meet your needs. I include a guide for getting started, pitfalls people face with the software, the YNAB philosophy, and a specific checklist for why you shouldn’t use YNAB. This review guide is extremely long and you should use the Table of Contents below to navigate to specific sections. I’ve included the facts about specific features and my own opinions about why you should or shouldn’t use YNAB. In order to try and keep this review as unbiased as possible, I’ve included a review of all the major negative aspects of using YNAB. I cover both the pros and cons and make it very clear that YNAB isn’t for everyone. I’ve been a happy customer for almost a year now and really believe in the product. YNAB doesn’t pay me anything review their product or recommend it. I want you to know that I don’t make a single dime from this article. Discouraged because managing your money just isn’t working.Ticked off at software that won’t do what you need.Frustrated by trying to make a budget work.

#BUDGETING YOU NEED A BUDGET HOW TO#

In this guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know about YNAB, whether or not it’s right for you, how to set it up, and common pitfalls people face when starting YNAB. This is the most comprehensive review of You Need A Budget (YNAB) you’ll find on the web.

Budgeting you need a budget