6 Ways YNAB Has Helped Us Organize Our Spending
Some say budgeting sucks, others say budgeting rocks. It is worth noting that for most people, sticking to a budget is without a doubt, far easier said than done.
A report by CNBC shows that consumers overspend by $7,400 a year with most of this income splurges going into online shopping, grocery shopping and subscription services.
For many of us that hate budgeting do so because:
a. We don’t know where to start: Budgeting can be intimidating for most of us due to inexperience. You scratch your head while asking yourself questions like, which budgeting method should I use? Should I use a template or buy budgeting software? Which budgeting tool should I go for? What spending categories should I include? Eventually, you say to yourself: Screw this! I hate math.
b. We are living in Ignorance: A budget takes into account all current income and expenses and without it, no one knows where the money is going or how much is spent. Then something big happens and we are forced to retreat to our cubicle of accountability and desperation, cutting our spending and punching numbers trying to figure out what went wrong, where it went wrong. You should have appointed your knight in shining armour to do your paperwork. Now there’s no one to protect you.
c. We don’t like being held accountable: Let’s be honest. No one likes to be told what to do every time they indulged in a little shopping frenzy.
And what do we do instead? We buy the latest iPhone or the 20th Nike sneakers we saw the commercial for on TV. At the end of the month, we end up drowning in debt due to overspending on things we don’t need or even have the money to spend. The credit card has earned a reputation for consumer debts, with the average credit card debt per household reaching $7,027 in 2020.
Remember, debt is a real ice queen with no remorse. She’s on a mission to destroy all that has no direction with their finances.
However, the best way to slay the ice queen and win the war is by crafting and following a budget plan to achieve financial security. A simple budgeting tool like YNAB will help to keep your spending in check.
Here’s how YNAB helped some dreamers to organize their spending and achieve their financial goals:
1. Prioritize Important Expenses:
It took me a few months to get the hang of it, but once I understood it completely, YNAB reshaped how I deal with my finances. Especially in the early days when my income was tight, it allowed me to prioritize important spendings and cut down on the rest.
Shortly after I noticed I no longer checked my bank account balance, I just consulted my YNAB budget.
Later on, when my business improved, YNAB helped me allocate funds aside for savings and investments, which paid off tremendously in the long run.
Calvin West, YNABer since 2014.
2. Create a New Spending Habit:
I started using YNAB last year when I realized that my spending habits were impacting my business’ finances and it has helped me eliminate a lot of wasteful dailies, weekly and monthly purchases.
I started by making a list of everything I paid for each month and then connected my main spending account so YNAB could do the accounting for me. My goal was to establish and stick to new spending habits over time. Particular to eliminate what I would call ‘burnt money,’ or spending habit I was deriving little-to-no benefit from it.
Kasper Langmann, YNABer since 2020.
3. Establish and Maintain our Business and Family’s Finances:
I’m a bit of an odd bird when it comes to money management- I truly enjoyed it from a very young age. I was an early entrepreneur- always coming up (read: driving my parents nuts). With ideas of bake sales, lemonade stands, items I could sell, and eventually babysitting and various childcare opportunities. So by the time I was about 12, my mom knew I needed to learn how to manage the money I wanted to make- so she gave me an old computer and put Quicken software on it and taught me how to use it. And I did- I tracked my earning and spending for many years using Quicken.
I was still using Quicken when I got married at 22, but of course, doing the finances for two people was quickly more complicated than for one, and I needed something more user friendly and intuitive- and then I learned about
YNAB! So about ten years ago, I started using YNAB for our family’s finance. And a lot of the finances for my small business as well.
Since that time, we’ve continued to use YNAB (and get the new and improved versions as they came out). And as a result, we’ve saved thousands of dollars!
I love YNAB’s flexibility. The freedom to create different categories and modify them as needed has served us well, as our goals changed over the years. It’s an envelope system made digital, so it’s easy to roll with the punches and move money around to serve our needs best. And I LOVE that I’m not just tracking where the money went- I’m telling it where to go. That alone has saved us so much money because it’s so clear how much money we have and where it’s going.
The simplicity of the app is also a huge plus because I’m not bothered with a lot of extra functions that aren’t relevant or helpful in creating and maintaining a family budget. It’s straightforward and easy to use, with highly intuitive features. So I’m not spending a lot of time learning how to find or perform several functions with the program. As a result, it only takes me about 15 minutes a week most weeks to get everything up to date, even if I haven’t touched it the rest of the week!
The ability to sync with our phones has also helped us stay current on what money is available and avoid overspending. The app memorizes so much that it only takes a few minutes to enter transactions on the go, perfect for a busy mom like me!
I’m a huge fan of YNAB and tell anyone I can how easy it is and how much it changed our lives for the better as a family. YNAB has helped us organize our spending and save more money- and live better as a result!
YNAB’s detailed breakdown and categorization options have helped me to see my hidden expenses. I was spending hundreds of dollars per month on subscription services I hardly used, food that I wasn’t eating, payments on a vehicle I hardly drove, and storage space that I created at my house. I was spending more than $1000 every month and observed zero benefits from it. YNAB made it all painfully clear to me.
Stephanie Iraggi, YNABer since 2010.
4. Track My Monthly Charges and Expenses:
I’ve been using YNAB for a little over a year now. I use it to create a budget for my daily/monthly expenses and my huge yearly expenses. I have my credit cards hooked up to the app so that I am tracking those charges too. That way, I can earn points without going into debt again. (I became consumer debt-free in June of 2020!) I have buckets for each yearly expense, even YNAB, which is $83. I budget $7/month to that bucket number $83 doesn’t sneak up on me. The same goes for my Amazon membership and credit card annual charges. I also have a set amount that I send to savings and investments each month. Making it automatic makes it so easy to do!
Niki Ferguson, YNABer since 2020.
5. Save Enough To Pay Off My Debts:
The *YNAB app* or *You Need a Budget *is one of the most useful apps on my mobile. This personal finance app has taught me how to follow YNAB’s rules: Give every dollar a job, embrace your expenses, Roll with the punches and Age your money. Using this, I learned how to create a balanced budget to avoid overspending and save enough money to pay off my debts.
Michael Hamelburger, YNABer since 2010.
6. Helps To Keep Track of Our Spending:
We have been using YNAB for over five years. I love how easy it is to track our spending. We use the YNAB system… we spent a few months saving extra money to get a month ahead of our spending, so we have all the money in the bank for the upcoming month. On the 1st of the month, we assign budget amounts for every category and try to get the budget down to zero. It’s securely connected to our bank account, so every few days, I quickly login, and there are all the recent transactions pulled directly from our bank account. One of my favourite things is that YNAB remembers which categories go with which places. It recognizes a Walmart transaction is for the grocery budget and a Shell station for gas. I have to click for approval for each transaction, which I prefer because it forces me to pay attention to all the spending. Plus, if YNAB shows the wrong category, I can simply change it. Tracking our spending has helped us see when we need to adjust our budget, and it’s helped my husband and me stay on the same page when it comes to handling money.
Renee Cook, YNABer since 2015
