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| You Need A Budget Pro - Personal Finance Software Program | 
 enlarge | From: You Need A Budget
Category: Software
Buy New: $49.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  67 reviews
Sales Rank: 378
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows 2000, Windows Xp
Media: CD-ROM
Model: 1.2.6
UPC: 793573437488
ASIN: B000QO76HU
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 YNAB is Great! May 25, 2007
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
I have been using YNAB Pro for two months now and I really enjoy using it! I have tried several budgeting software programs and there was always something that didn't work quite right for me. I have used an online budgeting program for a few years now and while it was not perfect and I hated paying the fees, I thought I'd never find anything better. Then I decided to give YNAB a try and so far I find YNAB to meet all my needs in a budgeting program.
All you need May 24, 2007
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
This software is great! Before YNAB, I was keeping track of catagorical spending on my own spreadsheet. It was OK, but YNAB its the nail on the head. It has cut my money management time in half. I know exactley where my money goes (catagories) and why (memos). I actually know how much interest I make a month.
It simplifies your finances while giving you more information. It's perfect.
This software also comes with a great community of budgeters who are good with their money and can help you be the same way.
Great software May 16, 2007
63 out of 64 found this review helpful
YNAB Rocks! In a truly frightening kind of "I spend that much money on THAT!" way but in a great way because you can see the impact of your daily coffee habit on your car insurance payment 6 months away.
YNAB allows you account for all your annual bills in 1/12 increments and then when they roll around the money is there to pay for them.
The heart of the YNAB system is a "buffer" which is comprised of last months paychecks in order to allow you to save this months paychecks. You can only live on last months money that you have budgeted into categories beforehand. The premise is that you are never broke and will not have to worry about fluctuations in income if you are living on what you have ALREADY earned.
So the buffer is one full months income. So I'm earning May's income and it is just pouring into my checking and sitting there. Also sitting there is all of April's income. April's income is what I'm paying my current bills with. May is accruing. And I'm budgeting for June's expenses with an eye to leftover April income instead of instantly using Mays.
The way I'm beginning to think of it is: Quicken is a snapshot of yesterday. YNAB is a crystal ball showing me the future.
This is a stand alone piece of software that can download transactions right from your bank so if you use a debit card you don't need to enter receipts for things. I can also say the tech support is the most amazing I have ever dealt with. I sent in a bug report and within 15 minutes had email waiting for me telling me to delete a particular font and then it worked perfectly.
Two thumbs way up but only if you want to see all the leaks in your money handling.
The Last Budget Software You Will Ever Buy May 16, 2007
29 out of 30 found this review helpful
If you are like me you have copies of quicken and money on your shelf, plus hours invested in trying to make them work for you all ending in frustration because you didn't have a working budget...the money still disappeared the same way. Like me you may have taken excel and spent hours developing a custom model. And that sort of worked but took tinkering all the time, but you had given up hope of ever finding anything that worked like you need it to work. That was me and then one day google magic struck and YNAB came to the top of the list, I don't know what search terms I used, why I hadn't used them before, but I found a program that sounded simple and just like what I had been trying to create. The 4 rules had sounded like the discipline from one of my professors in school. The fact that it was an application assured me that the tinkering had been done by someone else, and so after searching the forumns and seeing that the owners where even participating; I bought the program.
Well, I have never looked back. This program does everything you need it to do, It allows you to track through the months those major expenses like tuition, property taxes, and insurance, while tracking the small stuff too. The object is gradually build up a buffer so that you are constantly living on last month's income which is what over financial gurus would have you do they just call it different things. The budget, once setup is very easy to use...Setting it up only requires picking a starting place, naming your budgeting accounts,getting your bank balances entered, and oh yeah, i would recommend reading the quick setup guide at least. Once there you can enter transactions manually or download from your bank accounts or credit cards. Enter paychecks in as much detail as you like or just enter your net, it is not nearly as complicated as other programs I have dealt with in the past.
The best part about this software is that new features are constantly being added. There is a new Features forum on the bulliten board and believe me, the programmer and owner are taking notes. Even in my short time I have seen several things added to the program, with many more on the list to come soon.
This software is worth every penny.
Finally, software that helps me stick to my budget May 16, 2007
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
I've been a long-time Quicken user, and have experimented with other options. This is the first program I've tried that actually is geared around sticking to a budget. (In Quicken, I just see what I've spent after the fact, and it doesn't carry month-to-month very easily.)
YNAB has a great approach and is straight-forward and very useable. You only budget the money you actually have, instead of (as with Quicken) guessing how much you're going to spend and then comparing those totals with what you think your income will be. I used to try to budget out a whole year in Quicken, but with YNAB, I just budget out each month as I go (being sure to include things like $100/month for that $300 payment that only comes due once a quarter).
I especially like that when I over-spend, that category isn't penalized for the next month -- it just comes out of the "available" pool, making it easy to decide which categories will have a little less available that month.
This is a very cut-down version of what I like about the software, which is pretty much everything. The developers are extremely responsive to users in the support forums, as are other uses -- great help to those just starting out.
The only draw-back is that the software currently does not track account balances (the ideal state being that you live off last month's income rather than paycheck-to-paycheck), but from what's been said in the forums, it sounds like this will be added in the near future.
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