---
title: Personal finance software: chucking Mint for YNAB
date: 2012-01-09
topics: finance
---

A cousin recently put me on to [You Need A
Budget](http://www.youneedabudget.com/)—a personal finance software package. I
just spent some time this weekend setting it up with my wife. Maybe we’re still
in the ‘honeymoon phase’ of budgeting, but it feels really good to be on top of
our finances and to have a *flexible* plan for our spending.

YNAB feels refreshingly like a “Quicken Rebooted” would feel. After a couple of
years trying “finances in the cloud” a-la-[Mint](https://www.mint.com/),
returning to using a traditional program that just runs on your own computer
feels like the right thing to do. I once again have control of my own financial
data, and will never have to worry about potential security breaches at
unregulated third-party services like Mint.

YNAB insists that you manage your transactions the Old Way: by entering them
yourself. The fact that this feels very *right* was/is quite a surprise to me,
but when it “clicked,” it felt like it had been a long time coming. When I
signed up for Mint, the automatic behind-the-scenes importing of all my
transactions seemed like a brilliant way to streamline things, but it turned out
to have some fatal downsides. Mint’s connection with my bank was always spotty,
and their automatic categorization of my spending was never more than about
60-70% accurate. This meant I had to go in and regularly sift through all my
spending, making sure each transaction was properly categorized—a process even
more unpleasant and tedious than just entering them myself. It wasn’t long
before I stopped using it altogether. So when I read this on YNAB’s website, it
jived *a lot*:

> We do not directly connect with your bank, log in with your username and
> password, and download transactions for you. That kills awareness and promotes
> a “set it and forget it” mentality that lets you not revisit your budget for
> months, leaving you right back where you started. We’ll import downloaded
> transactions (OFX, QFX, QIF) to make sure you’ve captured every transaction,
> but bank importation should not be the primary means of entering data into
> YNAB. (Use your phone and record it as the transaction happens, or make
> entering receipts a 5-minute daily ritual. Your money will thank you for it.
> Promise.)

But the biggest difference between YNAB and the Mint approach is that while Mint
is geared towards passive capture of past spending, YNAB’s workflow puts
planning future spending at the center. I won’t dive into that here, but you
should know that this approach is what will make even using finance software
worth your while. If you are familiar with the increasingly-popular [envelope
system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Envelope_system) of budgeting, or with
financial planning evangelists like Dave Ramsey, YNAB will fit right in with
those paradigms and help you implement them.

## Coming down from the cloud

YNAB’s non-cloud approach means you won’t have completely seamless access to
your main financial data store from any browser or from your iPhone. When you
think about it, that actually might not be a problem. Do you really need that
kind of access? Financial planning isn’t one of those things that inherently
benefits from being decentralized.

YNAB tries to strike a middle course by supplying iPhone and Android apps that
let you record transactions on the go for easy syncing later. I haven’t yet
tried these apps out; I’m not yet sure whether it’s even worth the added
complexity for me personally. I can just as easily keep receipts or type
transactions into a note app on my phone.

Ideally, a YNAB mobile app would allow automatic background syncing between two
phones, so that my wife and I would have quick, seamless access to where our
budgets are at, but YNAB’s app isn’t there yet. But in my view, it all goes back
to a focus on *planning* rather than *capture*. If my wife and I actually have a
plan in place for our monthly spending, we pretty much know going into the day
where our money is going to go, and up-to-the-minute syncing becomes much less
important. Again, I wonder if this is one of those situations where automatic
syncing—an inherent “feature” of the cloud approach—would actually be
counterproductive in this field, by allowing you to take the easy road and
*react* to spending events, rather than relying on proactive planning.

*NB: I’m not an affiliate of YNAB in any way, nor am I being compensated in any
way for this overview.*

•comment[#:author "Devony" #:date "January 09, 2012" #:link "https://www.blogger.com/profile/13750373958965356599"]{
This is a fantastic overview. Thanks for doing such a thorough job! Also, we
should probably send your cousin a t-shirt or something…
}

•comment[#:author "Bob" #:date "January 09, 2012" #:link "https://www.blogger.com/profile/05892684959472842360"]{
You can actually get the ‘cloud’ like support by just storing your main YNAB
file in an online file syncing service, like Dropbox, or Microsoft’s Skydrive.
I’ve been doing that for a couple of years and it’s really convenient having
access to my file on both the home and work computers
}

•comment[#:author "Joel A." #:date "January 10, 2012" #:link "https://www.blogger.com/profile/13646393468637062885"]{
Ah, excellent point Bob. That would allow use of the software on two
desktop/laptops, as long as you’re careful about not opening the same file on
two machines at the same time. I’d recommend [using some security measures on
YNAB data stored in
DropBox](http://notely.blogspot.com/2012/01/ncryption-and-dropbox-comparing.html)
of course.
}

•comment[#:author "Anti-Axcon" #:date "January 27, 2012" #:link "https://www.blogger.com/profile/14174507367868589557"]{
A personal financial budgeting software is a great thing to use when you care
about your money. I used for almost 10 years an excel file for such a thing. I
recently found this website:
[https://www.planthebudget.com](https://www.planthebudget.com) and switched to
it.
}