You Need A Budget (YNAB) - Personal Finance Software
 | Average Customer Rating: Recommend Praised across the internet as hands-down the "best budgeting software", You Need A Budget (YNAB) cuts to the chase with your finances. The software focuses you on the foundation of your finances: the Budget. Experience has shown that when your budget is intact, and functioning correctly, everything else takes care of itself (the bills are paid on time, retirement contributions are made, and unnecessary debt is eliminated). The software… Product details and pricing info |
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165 Reviews for You Need A Budget (YNAB) - Personal Finance Software
- Gets the job done
- I have been using YNAB for a year now. The biggest benefits I have seen are a clearer picture of what we're doing financially and better communication about our spending. The system was easy for me to learn, and my questions were answered quickly. I'm a happy customer.
- 2010-08-24, 1 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- A Great Finance Software and a Great Support Staff
- I recommend this software to anyone who has an honest desire to help themselves reach their financial goals. In short YNAB's approach steps you through critical steps that you need to establish (Rules 1 thru 4) in order to gain the upper hand on expenses and savings. It's not Rocket Science; in fact it's common sense - made easy. Oh and a Support Staff that is deeply embedded into the YNAB Community helping its customers in ways that by far, very far, exceeds any foreign support staff reading from a manual to you over the phone.
Great software, great people great support. - 2010-08-24, 1 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- YNAB - Love it!
- Having used YNAB consistently for several months, I highly recommend it to those who are committed to sticking to a budget and telling their money what to do for them. I used YNAB Pro previously but held off using it consistently because it lacked certain features that were a must have for me in a financial app. Although the reporting could be better, in my opinion, YNAB 3 is a much much better improvement over previous versions. It can also be used on Windows, Linux and Mac so if I switch, I don't have to worry about taking YNAB 3 with me or not. Kudos to the person who thought of that. The one feature about YNAB that I haven't seen in any other financial application is the ability to set your budget and finances to live off of last month's income (aka YNAB Rule #4), thus, creating a protection for yourself. I've actually incorporated the YNAB rules and Dave Ramsey's principles as they both go together. YNAB, however, has Rule #4 which is to get you off of the 'living from paycheck to paycheck' cycle. My wife and I are slowly but surely eliminating our debt and building an Emergency Fund for ourselves. We're also slowly saving up our YNAB buffer. If you're not sure this software will help you, give it the trial period and see what it can do for you.
- 2010-08-24, 1 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- When you finally decide to take control of your finances...
- I've been using some form of financial software for at least 10 years. Using a program like Quicken is fine, but it is best for keep tracking of accounts and for online bill pay. But in the last 5 years this has become quite outdated. Online Bill pay is provided free by most banks now and if you want to just keep track of your account balances, [...] is a great solution.
But if you need to finally get hold of your financial situation, you need a budget. And I've not yet come across a program like YNAB to do just that: Create and maintain a budget. YNAB is totally unique in that sense. It's power is not tracking all of your financial details to the last mundane detail. It's built with the idea of "do one thing and do it well" and that is budgeting. YNAB breaks it down into a process that actually makes sense, unlike trying to budget using a program like Quicken or Money. YNAB is a very slick piece of software that guides you through the process of creating a budget. You do this through simply through setting up your budget based on categories and then allocating all inflows/outflows into these categories. Even if you are not a financial Wiz-Kid, this is pretty painless to do in YNAB. In addition YNAB provides charts & reports to help you work with data on a more interactive level.
And that brings me to my next point and that is with YNAB you aren't just getting a piece of software. You are actually getting an entire philosophy of how to manage a budget. And that is the Magic of YNAB. With most software programs the software is just given to you for you to figure out how to use it. But YNAB provides a system to teach you how to manage your money guided by your budget. This is extremely helpful! One reason I've always had problems creating and maintaining a budget was not really understanding the best approach. YNAB helps by providing that approach. In addition, YNAB provides some of the best support I've ever seen in a software package. Recently they held *free* online webinars to customers on how to use various features from simple concepts to advanced concepts. Now, who has ever seen that??
There aren't too many negatives to YNAB at this point. You currently cannot download (automatically) your transactions from your bank. You can go to your banks web site and do an export and YNAB will then import this data. The reporting and printing is satisfactory, but not a deep part of the program. If you are moving from Quicken/Money, you'll have a sense of missing "bells & whistles" but mostly those really are features that YNAB isn't trying to duplicate. The software seem very robust so far, I've seen no bugs at all, no crashes on my Win7 machine.
If you are ready to take the plunge and get control of your financial well being, I'd strongly suggest you give YNAB a try. Just be sure to realize that YNAB is NOT a checkbook/retirement plan/online bill pay program like Quicken or Money. It is a Budgeting program and philosophy backed by awesome support from the YNAB team and a wonderful community of users. - 2010-08-24, 2 of 2 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Brilliant Budget Software
- YNAB is the real deal. I have been using it since the beginning of the year and it has helped me get my house budget in order. I constantly find myself telling my friends about this program and then have to apologize because it sounds like I am selling AMWAY! With YNAB I can accurately predict how my money is going so that I can save for my holidays. I also know all the details of how our family spends. YNAB has also got an excellent support forum.
- 2010-08-23, 2 of 2 people found this review helpful, Rated:
