Love Their Products - Personal Finance Software Reviews Critique

Also, it lets you build up money for certain things like insurance. I have been working with this program for a few weeks. One of the reviewers mentioned the inability to record check numbers. As to that, each transaction has a memo field where you can enter whatever it is that you like, but it seems to me that perhaps that reviewer was one of those that did not know the purpose of this software prior to purchasing.

The paycheck I deposit on November 1 will not be spent until December 1 at the earliest. That means that all of the money I am spending in November is money that I received the month before, in October.

The confusing part is that sometimes not placing an item in a category is the correct thing to do, even though most of the time it’s not. That’s actually caught me a time or two. I’ve been a long-time Quicken user, and have experimented with other options. This is the first program I’ve tried that actually is geared around sticking to a budget. So the buffer is one full month’s income. So I’m earning May’s income and it is just pouring into my checking and sitting there.

This is all stuff that is freely acknowledged by the creator of the software. This software is strictly for creating a budget. However, it is more than just the software, it is an entire budgeting system, so those who attempt to simply dive in will struggle quite a bit. You need to read the entire manual on this software (It is actually a very easy read, unlike most manuals, or accounting articles), after which it all becomes very clear. I read Dave’s book and didn’t take the budgeting part to heart. I then found YNAB and I can’t begin to say how much it has helped us! Quite frankly their budget set-up interface left a lot to be desired, only allowing you to create a general monthly budget. With YNAB, I was up and running within a few minutes, and after playing with all the features to see what it could do, I was fully loaded with a budget and bank transactions within twenty minutes.

This software is nothing more than a logbook, pencil, and calculator. You can also do the same thing with any quality spreadsheet program. It started out as a spending tracker for me. But, tracking where the money goes has led to better budgeting. YNAB fits the bill perfectly. After an intensive couple days setting up and learning the software, we now have a real budget for the first time in our lives.

My wife and I have taken Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University class and we love the envelope budgeting concept, but neither of us liked the idea of carrying around (and probably losing) that kind of cash. We also wanted to be able to build up money for annual or semiannual expenses (Christmas, insurances, etc.), but couldn’t find an easy way to track that money so it would get lumped into general spending most of the time. YNAB the company is one of the most user-focused software companies I’ve ever run across. They’ve provided great support so far, and the forum is another excellent source.

Also YNAB Pro is a ONE TIME EXPENSE with lifetime upgrades - all for less than the cost of an upgrade to Quicken. Dog Food Delivery.