In the past year something clicked inside my head and helped me to realize that I needed to be WAY more organized with our family’s finances. Because I am a big researcher, I set out to learn all I could learn from others who have forged the way before me and then I would determine how and what to apply to our situation. One day I happened to be reading a post somewhere (I honestly don’t remember much about what the post was even about let alone where it was) and it must have been an intriguing post because I kept scrolling down and I read several of the comments readers had posted below the original post. One person commented something like, “It sounds like you need YNAB.” This intrigued me. What was this mystical “YNAB”? I had to know more.
So I did what anyone in this generation does: I Googled it. Actually, I’m sure I used Swagbucks, but you get the idea. YNAB, it turned out, is an online budgeting app. YNAB is short for “You Need a Budget.” Boy, were they right! I mean, I have been writing down our expected expenses and our expected income for years. I had the forecasting side of things down pretty good. I’d even gone through our bank account and figured up averages for most of our recurring bills. But this was the extent of all I did and it just wasn’t bringing peace and/or prosperity to our financial situation (sound familiar to anyone else?). Fortunately, YNAB offers a 34-day free trial and AMAZING educational resources. I signed up right away for my free trial and then I signed up for almost every single online class they offered—they were all live sessions and FREE! I watched live demonstrations on how to use the software, how to stop living paycheck-to-paycheck, how to save money on groceries, etc. I felt empowered and excited. I was off to a great start. Then we went on vacation. I completely dropped the ball. I didn’t log in to YNAB for the whole two weeks of vacation and before I knew it, my free trial had expired and I wasn’t totally sure yet if I needed the software. After all, I had returned Quicken software to Costco a few months prior because it just wasn’t what I was looking for. Fortunately, YNAB’s customer service is so great that they sent me an email at about that time asking me how things were going. I replied and told them that I’d dropped the ball and missed two weeks of my free trial while we were on vacation. They promptly replied to my email and told me that I’d probably want to establish a “Fresh Start” on my budget instead of trying to play catch up for the missed two weeks. They explained to me how to do this and then they gave me an extension on my free trial! I was sold! Since then, I have been faithfully using YNAB and feeling fantastic peace. I love that it focuses on allocating my money as soon as I get it. I am a natural spender, so this idea of spending my money by putting it into categories really works for me.
What makes YNAB different? Why does it work? YNAB is designed to allow you to allocate your money as you receive it and then to track your spending to make sure you do not overspend in a category. It is a beautiful thing. Here is a fantastic, short explanation:
YNAB is a free app in the iTunes store and in Google Play. Now my husband and I can log on to YNAB from our phones wherever we are and see exactly what we have left in each of our spending categories. For example, if I am at the grocery store and I really want to buy ice cream (I’m not the only one who is strongly tempted by ice cream, am I?), I can look at our grocery category and see if we have enough money in our “grocery” category. If we don’t, it is easy for me to think, “OK, I’d rather feed my kids for the rest of the month than indulge on unnecessary ice cream.” Before, I would have checked our bank account and seen that we still had money there, then justified it in my mind like, “We should be OK, it’s just one quart of ice cream. It won’t make or break us, but it will sure taste good.”– Am I the only one?– Anyhow, it has really helped me to keep our money working for us instead of looking back and wondering where it went.
Joe Biden is attributed with the quote,
“Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value.”
The first time I read that quote, it made me stop and think. I understood this principle in relation to time and I have worked very hard to list my top priorities each day and focus my time on them. I wanted to make sure I was doing similar prioritizing with my money. For example, I wanted to be sure we had enough money to buy everything our three school-aged kids would need for going back to school (anyone else spending hundreds of dollars on school supplies every August?!), but before YNAB I didn’t have it together enough to really make that happen without debt, stress, and worry. Now we have it as a spending category with a goal to have a certain amount in that category by August. We set money aside that would probably have been spent on excess quarts of ice cream or random things we really didn’t need. Now when school supplies come back to the seasonal aisles of department stores and our tax-free weekend is on the horizon, I will be ready and it won’t cause a major hiccup in our day-to-day lives. I am so relieved!
I understand the idea of budgeting isn’t for everyone. The way I’d tried budgeting in the past was just not working. I can’t recommend YNAB enough. I hope you don’t mind that I am sharing this info with you: we are friends now, after all.
Though I have been recommending YNAB for over a year, they just started a new referral program. The links to YNAB I have shared with you here are a part of that referral program and if you sign up using my referral link, you and I will receive a month of YNAB–for free (that means in addition to your 34-day trial!). Even if you don’t use my link, though, I highly recommend this life-changing piece of software. It’s worth every penny to me and my family!
Small world! I actually work for YNAB!
One more reason why I love it! Yay for YNAB!!