I’ve officially been using You Need a Budget as a paid subscriber for one year. Yes, I said paid. But why would I want to pay for a website when I am trying to get my finances together?
I asked that a year ago. At the time, my partner and I were trying to recover from some long-running financial issues. We had no savings, and a good bit of student loan and credit card debt. Adding yet another monthly payment ($11.99) didn’t seem like the greatest idea. At this point, I can’t even remember why I decided to just go with it. Call it an investment?
What is You Need a Budget?
You Need a Budget is a comprehensive budget app that helps you give a job to every single cent that comes into your accounts. This is called zero-based budgeting. You Need a Budget pushes you to give a job to every single penny, and have nothing unaccounted. This helps hold you accountable, and most importantly, look forward at what you can spend, rather than backwards at what you already spent.
You Need a Budget gives each spending category its own account. For example, you allocate $150 to groceries, $75 to dining out and $50 to fun. As you spend out of a given category, You Need a Budget deducts the amount from the account. In the negative? Then you shift that amount from a category with funds to make up the difference.
Finally, when your overall funds are replenished by a paycheck, and it’s time to allocate funds again, you can see the amounts you spent out of each category, and adjust accordingly.
You Need a Budget also allows you to link debt accounts, such as auto-loans and credit cards to help track your progress in paying them down and off and budgeting accordingly.
READ MORE: You Need a Budget, How to Budget a Credit Card
Overall, The Investment into YNAB Paid Off
The fact that I’m still paying and actively using it every day should tell you that I’m a satisfied customer. And I plan to continue through 2021.
Most importantly, the platform helped me save money. As in, I went from zero savings to having both a healthy savings account and an investment account. That said, it does require a lot of work and a bit of a learning curve. Here’s what I’ve learned over the last year using You Need A Budget:
No budget platform will be worth your while if you don’t set your own personal goals
I staggered mine: establish a $1000 emergency savings account, then combine paying off debt with saving and investing in the stock market. Long term, I’d like to buy a house.
How you set your goals will have to do with your unique situation. If you have debt, most recommended methods start with establishing an emergency fund first, then going after debt. You could go with the debt snowball or debt avalanche methods or customize your own method.
I customized mine because right after I started saving, the stock market crashed. This presented an incredible opportunity for me, since I was still employed. My investments have paid off, and helped pay down my debt, along with my regular payments. Now that 2021 seems to be stabilizing, I’ll probably go with the snowball method moving forward.
YNAB has a steep initial learning curve
The You Need A Budget platform requires a strict accounting of every single cent under its jurisdiction. This can get confusing if you have multiple accounts that you use, such as secondary checking, savings and credit cards. My balances and “to be budgeted” figure always seemed to be off. I could not wrap my head around the accounting. So I unlinked everything but my checking account and auto loan.
I could probably figure this problem out if I went through the many help guides provided by You Need A Budget. But I was not a fan of the fact that they wanted me to give every cent in my savings account a “job” when I was just saving in general, with no clear goal.
Once I simplified my view though, I got rolling with my budget. Yes, every cent needs to be accounted for. This initially takes a good bit of thought when it comes to categorizing your purchases, because you have the freedom to categorize as broadly or as narrowly as you want. For example, you can budget each individual bill, or you can combine them into a category (such as streaming, transportation, utilities, etc.).
Then, as you go, the platform helps you calculate the average amount spent for each category. This helps you set a more accurate budget moving forward. One year later, I can confidently say that my budgets are pretty accurate.
Set a category for stuff you forgot to budget for
In my view this is called “stuff I forgot to budget for.” This is for unexpected expenses, or a good place to draw funds when you accidentally go over budget in another category. Due to fluctuations in some areas (like groceries, household expenses, utilities), you aren’t always going to set a correct budget amount at the start of the month. Better to draw from this fund than steal from another.
Then at the end of the month, feel free to throw what’s left into your debt or savings! Speaking of which…
Use the app to help with your debt snowball or avalanche
A great way to help with your debt snowball or avalanche is to take anything left out of any category at the end of the month and apply it to your debt! Even if you don’t have your debt accounts linked, create budget categories for them. At the start of the month, budget their minimum payments, then add on anything extra you plan to pay. Then at the end of the month, move leftovers from other categories into the one you want to pay off first.
You Need A Budget, Summary
- Sign up and pay the $11.99 per month
- Set your own personal goals
- Learn how to use the platform, and understand that it has a learning curve
- Set your budget and goals accordingly
- Use the power to pay off your debts and then save for other goals
You Need A Budget can help you do all of these things!
Disclaimer: I am a genuine paid customer of You Need A Budget; I have no affiliate links, nor have I never received anything from the company for this review.
