You Need A Budget Software – First Glance

Updated:

Hearing the name floated around a few other personal finance blogs and having it personally recommended to me, decided it was time to try You Need A Budget.

As a Quicken user, I’m comfortable with the program’s functions and a little reluctant to switch to something new. Recently I’ve become more frustrated with the program’s budgeting capabilities, and considering the strong recommendation came from another Quicken user, I decided it was worth a try.

There are Four Pillars which You Need A Budget is based on.

  1. Give Every Dollar a Job

  2. Save For a Rainy Day

  3. Roll with the Punches

  4. Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck

For my purposes, I am primarily interested in the tracking, categorization, and analysis of our budget. Still getting into the nuts and bolts of setting it up (uploading accounts, post-dating transactions, & creating categories), I can already tell you it gets two thumbs-up for the flexibility it allows with categorizing transactions.

We’ve already taken care of Rules #2, 3, & 4 – Quicken has given me a headache trying to accomplish that first goal. So you can get an idea of the phrase “Give Every Dollar a Job”, here’s a short video explanation:

While getting started, the feature I’ve been focusing on most isn’t even IN the program – YNAB Support. It’s hard to give a worthwhile review if you don’t fully understand the product, and there is no shortage of resources here to help you gain a “proper” understanding of YNAB.

Above and beyond, the support also includes Live Online Classes. As of right now, I’ve attended 4 in total but would like to get a feel for each of them if time allows. When I thought about each class – that’s a lot of time on their end!

Each month, they host around 18 classes at roughly 1 ½ hour a topic. Over the course of a year, that’s an additional 325 hours of online training they’re providing on the program.

A more in-depth review will follow, but if you’ve heard enough and want to try it out – you can start with a FREE 7-day Trial*

*Great News: NO credit card required! Only an email address.

Leave a Comment