Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
for me, the backwards analysis is more important than looking forward. by being online, mint downloads all my transactions so I can just make sure they are in the proper category and I have valuable info for my analyzing. i schedule the bills monthly and as they come in, i don't really have to worry about money not being there to pay them. if i want to make adjustments, i make those decision based on looking at the history.
For me writing it down (yes -- I use pen and paper) lets me know ahead of time of what's coming up. Most things are monthly -- on the 4th is the phone bill, it's X, on the 10th is the mortgage, it's X, the 15th.... and so on. My writing it down precedes the debit. I tried Mint -- and all my stuff appeared AFTER the debit.
To my way of thinking that's backwards. I need to know what I WILL be spending, not what I spent. I need to close the barn door BEFORE the cows get out.
This is where YNAB kicks butt. You budget at least one month in advance, and you can see if you are under or over budgeting for both individual categories and overall.
for me, the backwards analysis is more important than looking forward. by being online, mint downloads all my transactions so I can just make sure they are in the proper category and I have valuable info for my analyzing. i schedule the bills monthly and as they come in, i don't really have to worry about money not being there to pay them. if i want to make adjustments, i make those decision based on looking at the history.
And I can see this, too, since I no longer have to worry about money. Back when we really needed to watch every penny, we used a pay the bill in increments to a savings account and then took the money from that savings to pay the bill. At that time it made sense to know before hand.
Possibly you're talking about two different purposes. Someone who has to watch their money closely, this can help make sure they do not bounce any checks. Secondly, someone who sets up a budget to live by that allocates a certain amount for groceries, entertainment, eating out, clothing, etc. and wants to force themselves into adhering to this budget in order to live on specified budget and save an adequate amount of money each month say for retirement, it can prove useful. If you don't need such a mechanism to stay within a fixed monthly budget, then looking back is fine too. But looking back, may not classify it as a desired budget to live within unless you examine it monthly and try and make adjustments the following month to stay within that budget should you go over.
I have 1 budget set in mint. that is my wife & daughters' discretionary spending budget. I still think this is better with mint because the transactions download right into the program and I categorize them and they reduce the remained of the budget automatically.
One area that neither Mint nor YNAB helps me with is long term planning. I'd love a piece of software that can know about all of my assets and debts and run a lot of "what-if" scenarios as far as extra payments and what not.
I have had You Need a Budget and upgrades/new versions on my computer(s) since it first came out, but I just haven't taken the time to use it.
I do it on paper instead. I have a monthly calendar and as bills come in, I write the creditor and amount owed on the due date on the calendar. The main point of YNAB is to pay this month's bills with last month's money, and I pretty much do that anyway. I look at my calendar at the beginning of the month and pay all the bills I have written in for the month. Yeah, that means I pay them before the due date, but that way it's done and I don't have to think about bills until the next month. In the meantime, we are accumulating this month's paychecks for next month's bills and the only money being spent is for food and day to day expenses.
As the head of a household with lots of things going on financially (and I do the taxes at the end of the year) I prefer Quicken because it allows us old school folks to reconcile the checkbook at the end of the month. I have yet to find another program that reconciles accounts, including Mint and many others. I also use Turbo Tax so Quicken plays nicely there too.
My daughter who just went away to college tried YNAB and Goodbudget. She ended up sticking with Goodbudget in the end. From what I saw online you set a budget for everything and at the beginning of the month there are slider bars for each category and they turn green as you enter expenses for those categories. When the entire bar is green you are out of money for the onth for that category. But she likes it because she can track her spending and see how much she has left. Also unlike Mint which she found to be "too much, too many choices" you do not have to enter any account information into Goodbudget. I will say though, now that she has been on her own for over a year, she has recently resorted to Mom's tried and true envelope method. She found on Goodbudget if she was out of grocery money budget, then she would just tally the extra groceries into a category where funds were still unused. Hmmmm...then that category ran short by the end of the month too. So it just depends on how honest you are with yourself. Now she has an envelope for each category (groceries, dog, gas, discretionary spending, etc)...her dog has daycare needs when she goes on field work and needs heartworm meds where she lives...she withdraws the cash for each envelope once per month when she gets paid on the 1st. And when the cash is gone, it's gone. She leaves the grocery and gas money at home when she is going out with friends to socialize so she is not tempted to "borrow." And of course the dog fund just stays in her desk drawer unless they are going to daycare or the vet's for meds. So for right now the envelopes are working better than anything electronic for her. Again, the envelopes are only going to work as long as you stay honest with the expense category.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
