I'd be curious if anyone has used this and also used YNAB (and can compare them).
I'd put YNAB along with 1Password (and probably Fastmail) in the class of best single purpose pieces of software that I pay for.
I'd put YNAB along with 1Password (and probably Fastmail) in the class of best single purpose pieces of software that I pay for.
I'm a long-time user of both. YNAB wins hands-down in budgeting and basic usability.
When I got married, we integrated finances. I had been using GnuCash for years by then. Its interface was an immediate non-starter, even though as an application it's more powerful than YNAB (e.g., stocks and retirement planning, mortgage amortization, business expenses, easier splits--at least in my opinion). If it had a better budget and reporting system, I might have been able to swing it--but it didn't and doesn't, and that was that. The other killer feature YNAB offered was a mobile application.
Financial apps have to reduce friction. Interpersonal first (although that's a tall order for software), but also in delivering fast entry and a big-picture view of what you're doing with your money. GnuCash really isn't designed for any of that. And that's honestly fine for what it is, although I wish the database were easier to wrap your head around—it should be possible to build a cleaner and/or web UI around it than it seems to be.
As it is, I'm not really content with YNAB either, but if that's what it takes to get our internal financial reporting in order, it's a lot better than nothing.
> Stop living paycheck-to-paycheck, get out of debt, and save more money.
As for 1Password, given your username I'm assuming you've tried Bitwarden? What is better about 1Password?
I'm not in YNAB's target market either, but the value they provide is useful even if you're not struggling month to month with finances. You get really good control over your money and a much better understanding of how you're spending it and where.
Being really aware of that makes it easier to actually leverage it more because you know exactly what you can put where so you can be closer to zero in your checking account (push more towards investments, etc.).
It also makes it easier to change behavior and know exactly what knobs you can turn with your finances.
Only downside with it is that the auto-import sucks (I suspect because the bank APIs suck). I move all transactions through one credit card and I manually create transactions in YNAB when the card is charged. I use the Apple Card which has really good software so it's easy to notice transactions and make sure things line up.
My username is also from when I was 13 and really excited about linux :-), now mostly on macOS - I haven't really lived up to it.
FWIW, I don't know that having a bank that doesn't play nice with Plaid is a deal-killer. There is a school of thought among many YNAB users that you should not use the auto-import, or even csv/ofx/whatever import, because manually entering transactions takes only a few minutes a day, and gives you much better awareness of your outflows. I can see some merit to that, insofar as tightly controlling your spending is kind of YNAB's whole thing.
I resisted doing this for a long time because I thought it would be awful, but it’s actually easier than dealing with import issues and reconciling later.
Previously I had been using Mint to keep track of my spending, but I never felt in control, it was only useful as a reporting tool of what had already happened.
YNAB is all about giving every dollar a job and setting priorities for your life. It's the envelope system in digital form if you are familiar with that. With Mint and similar systems, I'd just be looking at my pile of cash in my account and thinking "yeah I can easily afford a new gaming PC!".
But I wouldn't be taking into account my 6 month auto insurance bill coming up in 2 months that would require a bunch of cash. YNAB let's me see that easily - it was painful in the beginning as I was "catching up" in all these categories, but now I feel so much more comfortable with my money and how it can be put to good use.
I used it first too and I think it may actually be worse than nothing.
It's both infested with a ton of ads and makes you think you understand where your money is going without really understanding it.
In a nutshell, I would describe the difference as, "GnuCash (and Mint, Quicken, Moneydance, etc) are for monitoring your finances. YNAB is for controlling your spending."
The more mainstream personal finance apps have all sorts of tools for tracking investments and assets and all that good stuff, and a lot of rich reporting functionality. They also generally have some version of budgeting, typically with a fairly straightforward, traditional approach.
YNAB, by contrast, is really just about budgeting. I'd argue that it's not just an application, it's a whole budgeting method that happens to come bundled with an application to help you in implementing it. When you sign up to YNAB, what you're really doing is subscribing to (founder) Jesse Meacham's personal spin on Dave Ramsey's philosophy of money management. You might as well subscribe to his podcast while you're at it. In fact, I'd suggest listening to a few episodes of his podcast before even signing up for the free trial. If you don't like his way of thinking about money, you probably won't get a whole lot out of YNAB, either.
And YNAB really doesn't even try to be anything else. You can stick your 401(k) balance in there, but YNAB's own documentation encourages you not to bother. All you'll get out of it is that it will show up in one of the reports. It only has three reports, by the way, and they're all spartan and minimally customizable.
I would place Lunch Money above YNAB right now. It tracks money in a bit intuitive way, and is easier to use in my opinion.
I’m glad keepass exists, but I’m happy to support polished software in this domain. I like paying for software I think is really good and focuses on a narrow problem.