

It means that you can carry on guilt-free (just with maybe fewer movie tickets in your future if that’s the category you raided for extra grocery money). If you overspend in one category, you can move money from another category to cover it. They encourage users to be flexible with their budgeting. Life happens, and YNAB doesn’t want you to be stressed out when it does. YNAB coaches users to make categories for everything from car breakdowns to holiday gifts to home maintenance so that you never have to worry about where the money will come from – it’s there. It’s why property taxes can be a shock to the system or how we somehow forget the month where 6 of our friends have birthdays until it’s staring us in the face. We, meaning humans in general, are very, very good at remembering our weekly and monthly expenses and then forgetting the rest. You’ll know whether you should get takeout tonight-because you’ll be able to tell if you have money in your “Takeout” fund (or whatever you choose to call it-more on customization later! You make a plan when the money comes in, and then all you have to do is follow the plan. This is basically the envelope system in a nutshell: when money comes in, you give every single dollar a role.Įven if that role is a category called “Things I Forgot to Budget For” (which is totally valid – it’s YOUR budget!). Their entire system is built on 4 key principles: Obviously this system is much more convenient when your envelopes are digital as opposed to the paper kind! You Need a Budget is based on the envelope system-a cash-based system where any incoming money is doled out into labelled envelopes (gas, groceries, rent, etc) so that it’s there when you need it. We’ll look at the pros and cons, and we’ll compare YNAB with Mint, another top-rated budgeting platform.īy the time you’re finished reading, you’ll have an idea of whether YNAB is the budgeting app you’ve been waiting for. In this You Need a Budget review (or YNAB, pronounced why-nab), we’ll walk you through YNAB’s philosophy and features. That feels like a tall order, but with hundreds of thousands of raving fans, it’s possible that YNAB actually delivers. It’s tedious and difficult to maintain and just… it’s a one-way trip to the no fun zone.Īpps like You Need a Budget promise to keep you on track and make budgeting fun-ish. LTCi was SWAMPED with WA residents applying to opt-out of this new plan, and the prices reflect the demand.What’s one guaranteed way to kill a party? Long Term Care Insurance: $1344.44 annually (high cost due to my age and likelihood of me dropping the insurance after opting out of WA's new LTCi tax. Health Insurance: $16.61 (pretax, taken from paycheck)Ĥ01(k): $707.69 (pretax, taken from paycheck)Īfter Tax 401(k): $442.31 (taken from paycheck)Īmazon Prime: $131.02 every other year (my husband and I take turns paying this) Hulu/Disney+: $15.42 in exchange for access to my bestie's Netflix account Mortgage: $1,500 every other month (we pay $1,500 and take turns.)Ĭar Payment: $760 (we each make a payment each month to pay it off faster)Ĭell Phone: Reimbursed by work (and my husband pays the rest)Įlectric: $71(water/sewer is included in our HOA)Ĭlimbing Gym Membership: $82.69 (including tax) I expect ~$2,100 from October-December when my contributions begin) Paycheck Amount (biweekly): $2,338.58 (this is before my HSA contribution kicks in. We met in school, so everything we've built is together, but I'm more frugal than he is and recognize that he would be very unhappy living at my level of frugality.


My husband and I have separate finances, so his savings are separate from mine.
