YNAB OCUKers & 2025 Budgeting!

I wouldn't pay for this but wouldn't make fun of those who do either.
I used to love the (free) MoneyDashboard product before it was canned. It pulled in your spending from all accounts and (mostly) auto categorized it. Really good to track and keep you honest about how much you are spending against desired budget in each category and for monthly spending review with partner. That level of granularity is WAY too time consuming to do manually in a spreadsheet.
If you do choose to pay for something like that, making one additional good spending decision a year like not going for a meal out could pretty much pay for it.
 
EvilRob said:
I wouldn't pay for this but wouldn't make fun of those who do either.
I used to love the (free) MoneyDashboard product before it was canned. It pulled in your spending from all accounts and (mostly) auto categorized it. Really good to track and keep you honest about how much you are spending against desired budget in each category and for monthly spending review with partner. That level of granularity is WAY too time consuming to do manually in a spreadsheet.
If you do choose to pay for something like that, making one additional good spending decision a year like not going for a meal out could pretty much pay for it.
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Ive been doing it daily since 2013 (was really broke). I literally log every transaction manually. It keeps me sane with my spending; and I know every spend in full detail.
 
I've been on YNAB since Aug 2018 - started at £38k in debt, with around £350 a month in interest. One month later I was paying no interest. Two years later I was debt free. Three years later I had £40k in savings - less now because I bought a car, but still haven't paid a penny in interest to a bank (they pay me now), and still have a very healthy savings pot.

It absolutely changed my life. I still buy all the things I wanted to buy, but ynab made sure I questioned how and when I do that. Folk here are correctly saying you can use an excel spreadsheet to budget which is true, but... unless you're an excel whizz, there is less than zero chance you implement it as well as ynab, nor can you integrate it with your banks api or go as granular on goals and savings targets, or have an app. The two are not even comparable.

My wife hated the idea of it at first for some of the same reasons in here "pay money to save money - don't be stupid". She's a total convert right now as without it, we'd still be in debt. It paid for itself for several years during that first month where it highlighted just how much interest we were paying out each month across all of our accounts.

:)
 
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I feel like this thread is full of people who are good at budgeting ******** on someone trying to do it better, and people who don't know what they're doing who need help, and they're getting **** on.

Just telling people they need a spreadsheet or to do better isn't helpful.

I'm good at managing our family finances, but my personal spending is a **** show. I love spending money.
 
I don't need to pay some grifters to hold my hand and tell me how to manage my day to day finances. It may not appear so at times, but I'm an adult and I have an education behind me.
 
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dirtychinchilla said:
I feel like this thread is full of people who are good at budgeting ******** on someone trying to do it better, and people who don't know what they're doing who need help, and they're getting **** on.

Just telling people they need a spreadsheet or to do better isn't helpful.

I'm good at managing our family finances, but my personal spending is a **** show. I love spending money.
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Agreed. I moved to London at 22 in 2006, and had every man and his dog throwing credit cards at me. I had zero financial literacy so you can imagine how that went. I suffered for over a decade, having to work every weekend just to try keep the wolves at bay. People who have never been up to their eyeballs in debt will never understand the crippling effect it has on your life and your mental health, and if something like this helps prevent others from getting in to that situation, then it's a winner for me!

Personally I've tried all manner of saving things over the years, all to varying degrees of success, and also just because I'm quite curious about these things.

I might give this YNAB trial a go and see what happens.

@DHR pls send me your referral code, you may as well get a free month out of it :)
 
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Diddums said:
Agreed. I moved to London at 22 in 2006, and had every man and his dog throwing credit cards at me. I had zero financial literacy so you can imagine how that went. I suffered for over a decade, having to work every weekend just to try keep the wolves at bay. People who have never been up to their eyeballs in debt will never understand the crippling effect it has on your life and your mental health, and if something like this helps prevent others from getting in to that situation, then it's a winner for me!

Personally I've tried all manner of saving things over the years, all to varying degrees of success, and also just because I'm quite curious about these things.

I might give this YNAB trial a go and see what happens.

@DHR pls send me your referral code, you may as well get a free month out of it :)
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Good luck with it, I need to get back on track with it again myself (especially after some news I got this morning :p) don't worry about that referral code chief it's good of you to ask but I'm not promoting anything here, was just interested to find anybody using it on here who may suffer with my love for spending money :cry:
 
Malevolence said:
I don't need to pay some grifters to hold my hand and tell me how to manage my day to day finances. It may not appear so at times, but I'm an adult and I have an education behind me.
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There's no hand holding. It's got quite a steep learning curve for the first few months until it clicks.

I find it odd that you seem angry about a tool that helps people do something that doesn't come naturally to the majority, and does it exceptionally well.
 
Seems similar to Money Dashboard. That used to be free and was really useful to remove a lot of the manual work association with running a budget in Excel since all transactions are pulled in and allocated from your bank. Especially handy with multiple banks/credit cards. Money Dashboard went bust so it seems YNAB is just replacing that with a paid service.
 
dlockers said:
Ive been doing it daily since 2013 (was really broke). I literally log every transaction manually. It keeps me sane with my spending; and I know every spend in full detail.
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Same but I do it once a month when my statement comes out.

My father used to keep every receipt from every purchase then when he got his statement at the end of the month he would sit at the dining table and go through it all as he didn't trust the banks. This was handwritten and pre excel days. I guess that rubbed off on myself too.

We bought a house at 23 and never once slept wondering where money would come from to pay the bills.

My mother on the other hand is a compulsive shopper and was declared bankrupt in the mid 00's. She is 74 now and will never change. She came over Christmas and spent her entire months pension on the high street. I guess seeing that firsthand meant I didn't want to end up like that.
 
Martynt74 said:
Seems similar to Money Dashboard. That used to be free and was really useful to remove a lot of the manual work association with running a budget in Excel since all transactions are pulled in and allocated from your bank. Especially handy with multiple banks/credit cards. Money Dashboard went bust so it seems YNAB is just replacing that with a paid service.
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I never found these services useful though. They told you what you had but you couldn't effectively narrate/append. For example if you had a bunch of holding deposits or pending transactions, you couldn't tell wood through trees. That was my main reason for not finding them suitable.

That and the fact the login mechanism at the time breached all of the banking login rules.
 
dlockers said:
I never found these services useful though. They told you what you had but you couldn't effectively narrate/append. For example if you had a bunch of holding deposits or pending transactions, you couldn't tell wood through trees. That was my main reason for not finding them suitable.

That and the fact the login mechanism at the time breached all of the banking login rules.
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Yeah fair. It was a pain at times. Especially when shifting money to an account not supported as it looked like you'd spent 10's of thousands because you didn't have the offsetting entry. I think you, like me are a bit of a nerd with these things though so having the flexibility of excel makes a lot of sense.

I can see how YNAB would be useful for a lot of people for what isn't much more than the cost of a pint. Sometimes just seeing a bar chart of your spending by category is enough for some people to adjust spending habits. I know my kids for example would never bother downloading statements and manually working through adding narrative, but if it's presented to them automatically it'd help.
 
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adam cool dude said:
Same but I do it once a month when my statement comes out.

My father used to keep every receipt from every purchase then when he got his statement at the end of the month he would sit at the dining table and go through it all as he didn't trust the banks. This was handwritten and pre excel days. I guess that rubbed off on myself...
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I still do, I get a paper statement and keep my receipts manually checking off the transactions. It us overkill but a useful reminder of what you have spent over the month.

Plus why should the banks get away with dropping all their little tasks as if sacking employees and closing branches and ATM's was not enough. Give me a statement to process and work out my food bill, petrol, house running and frivolities too.
 
I’m aware of YNAB through friends and colleagues using it in the past

I get the same functionality from a spreadsheet and a bit of common sense as others have alluded to

I can sort of see why somebody with zero money management skills might like the structure it brings though (and perhaps the “I’m paying for this so I shall follow it” mentality)
 
Hagar said:
I still do, I get a paper statement and keep my receipts manually checking off the transactions. It us overkill but a useful reminder of what you have spent over the month.

Plus why should the banks get away with dropping all their little tasks as if sacking employees and closing branches and ATM's was not enough. Give me a statement to process and work out my food bill, petrol, house running and frivolities too.
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The beauty of these modern budgeting apps is they do all this for you. With the launch of the open banking standard you can now just import all your transactions into the app.
 
dirtychinchilla said:
I feel like this thread is full of people who are good at budgeting ******** on someone trying to do it better, and people who don't know what they're doing who need help, and they're getting **** on.

Just telling people they need a spreadsheet or to do better isn't helpful.

I'm good at managing our family finances, but my personal spending is a **** show. I love spending money.
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Not really.

It's more that learning self control without paying for an app is more valuable a lesson to learn that you can use across your life.

Just because some of us don't jump on the "oh yay, pay for this awesome app" doesn't mean we're dumping on those that want to sort their finances out.
 
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