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Comment by codebook | Hacker News Reader

I am not a freelancer, but as a personal finance tool, I am using YNAB (You need a budget). I've been using it for many years from desktop app to current webapp. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for financial app if you are willing to do some manual work (putting every transaction by yourself).

Budget scheme in YNAB is far different than any other financial tool (personal area) in my opinion. And it has helped me a lot to keep me stable financially.

The price ($60 for desktop app, which no longer available, and $7/month) would be big barrier for new comer, though. It is worth to subscribe :)

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Came here to also recommend YNAB (just an enthusiastic customer, in no way affiliated).

I was a little disappointed in the annual fee increase recently but I can say with absolute certainty that YNAB has saved me waaaay more money than the cost of that fee.

Top features for me: 1. Operates like Virtual envelopes - shift your allocations around easily. Totally account agnostic keep your actual money wherever you want while still tracking it for a specific purpose.

2. Goals - Create goals for your categories- virtual envelopes that remind you how much you need to add monthly to get to your target level by the desired date. Great for specific savings projects.

3. Credit cards - I used to just spend on card and feel good that I would always pay my balances in full. Now I first allocate to specific categories and when I spend on a credit card, my allocated money from that category view to a virtual envelope for my credit card. I’m accounting for my current spending now rather than a month from now.

Great mobile app too for iOS.

For item #3, it was awkward to me at first, since it was a little bit different concept in desktop app. But sooner, I realize that it was another aid to let people be aware of credit card spending more precisely.

  if you are willing to do some manual work (putting every transaction by yourself)

So it won't track your bank transactions automatically? If I have to enter transactions manually what's the point of the software? I could do this on paper..

It does support track the bank transactions. but I don't recommend it, since by entering transactions, you will realize how much you'd spend in your budget to the category.

You could do it on paper. and carry it in your pocket all the way. There's no difference in terms of managing transactions. But you could be easily loose the track of your budget in my opinion. YNAB helps you to keep remind the budget. That is the key for me to keep using YNAB.

I don't use YNAB, but instead a homegrown budgeting site for my family, and always recommend entering everything yourself.

The bank account scrapping can take a few days for a transaction to clear, so you never know what your actual spending looks like for that day/week. And, like you said, it forces you to at least recognize spending.

The way I use it - enter transactions manually as they occur and use the import feature to match things up later, ensuring I didn't miss something.

I tried YNAB and it wasn't for me. What I did notice was that the user-community seems to be almost evangelical. I'm not talking about your recommendation but other encounters, including some on Twitter when I mentioned it once.

Is there an organised effort on the part of the YNAB vendor to create a community of ambassadors or do some people just spontaneously love it so much that they can't help but share it with the world?

I think it's latter. I didn't have a budget before using YNAB and it drastically changed my spending and money management habits.

YNAB is a personal finance philosophy. The software that enables that is secondary and could just as easily be a spreadsheet (and v1 was).

There’s a huge education component that YNAB offers of videos, podcasts, and live training sessions. A lot of that material is about how people can change their relationship to money.

For the people it works for, it can be truly life changing to go from living paycheck-to-paycheck to being able to accomplish things with money.

That’s why you see such rabid fans. They’re fans of the lifestyle, and they happen to use the software.

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