YNAB

Most budget programs are set it and forget it. Which is the problem: once you set it, you forget it and you drift away from your spending plan. The beauty of YNAB is that it is flexible and dynamic, and allows you to adjust your spending plan as you need to. I found the program itself is well designed, reliable, and easy to use. The only issues I’ve had were with banks making it hard to set up connectivity. But YNAB did a good job of communicating how they were working to resolve the issues. In the beginning it does take a few hours to set up categories and get banks connected, mainly because it is so customizable, but once it is set up it is virtually effortless to maintain. Do watch the tutorials first on how to set it up. But then I spend 1 to 3 minutes each morning reviewing the previous days expenditures, and maybe 10 minutes a month reconciling my accounts. It shows monthly and quarterly reports so I can see trends over time. The only tricky bit is understanding how YNAB budgets your credit card purchases. That is not intuitive the way the rest of the program is. But they produce tutorials that explain it well. The web platform is easiest to use for setting up your categories, and for reconciliation. But the phone app is essential for quickly checking your remaining budgets on the go, especially as you get close to your next payday. I highly recommend it for those who want to be in charge of their spending habits.

UPDATE: Thank you for your thoughtful response. Despite my frustrations, I still think this app is great. The customer service is fabulous, too. I’ve had several issues that needed resolving over the years, and the folks at YNAB have always been responsive and helpful! I do have one more item to suggest. On the budget/plan page, would it be possible to move the items in the top corners back to their original places? (3 dots menu to the upper left corner, editing plan/views to the upper right corner?) For the sake of muscle memory. I keep hitting the wrong button when trying to update categories lol. ———————————— ORIGINAL REVIEW: Venting some frustration here…I have absolutely enjoyed using this app since finding it in 2021, but for heaven’s sake can you please slow down with the user interface updates?! It feels that lately, as soon as we get used to a new design things change. Still a great tool, just frustrated with the constant design updates. The app is starting to feel visually cluttered. Not a fan of the new Home Screen. Is there an option to disable? Would prefer to open app and immediately see the budget. Red notifications now on home button, only shows “cover overspending” at top of budget, have to toggle to Home Screen to see “new transactions” would prefer to see all those at a glance on top of budget screen. Floating add transaction button adds visual clutter to the screen, looked much more clean at the bottom in the center where it used to be.

The app/methodology/paradigm(s) have really revolutionized the way I approach my own finances and i cannot recommend it enough from that regard as a service & function. I have budgeted myself for well over a decade and have done alright, but always felt there was some missing piece or rather a “hole” that seemed to be getting in my way. This app/way of tagging and budgeting really helped me see in a very adult way, the ways in which I was failing to connect some financial dots and keep myself from doing as well as I should have been; it made sense after I really pressed myself to drop my bad thinking that I had developed to try and work around the natural holes in a standard budget logic. Having said all of that, I find myself using my iPad Pro to access the web client, as the app itself is so kiddy and limited that it makes it actually harder to digest the information presented and make the most sense of it. So much information but it’s all so “big” that you can’t see the big picture, almost simply because the text and forms are so LARGE. Really the app could be and needs to be as feature-rich and dense as the web app; basically take the web app and adapt it to be touch targets and color coded like the app is. It could be so much BETTER than the web interface with all the screen real estate on the iPad and the easy entry and basic structure they have in place for it already. I really look forward to the iPad app “growing up.”