Should i upgrade to ynab 4

You mentioned YNAB 4 is the past. In this case, the future is worst than the past. YNAB was the first place i heard that and was what motivated me to work towards it. Yes, that would make it show up correctly in the report. The downside, though, is the extra step for each income transaction i. However, since I have to approve the scheduled transactions, maybe I could just do the move whenever I approve them. Those are the funds to budget in that month.

It feels like a lot of effort to keep this going, though. Thanks for the article. I read it recently because I thought it worth checking if after nearly 2 years someone actually thought the new YNAB was any good.

My initial view when it was introduced was that it was done simply to generate more money for the YNAB company. Fast forward 2 years and I maintain my view that the new YNAB: — imposes an onerous cost on users — focuses so much on the cloud that it reduced basic functionality to get there — is a functionally inferior design for users compare to YNAB 4. A workaround means the software design is fundamentally flawed.

If I have to use a workaround I will end up not using the software and not budgeting, and therefore losing money. This is human behaviour when it comes to system design of any kind.

A note on getting transaction info direct from my bank,: — Many people think downloading transactions from your bank is a good thing for budgeting. When you enter all transactions yourself it reinforces you taking personal responsibility for your spending actions and reminds you on every occasion where you are at with your budget.

Reliance on bank downloads is LAZY and makes you lose money. My conclusion 2 years on: YNAB 5 is a massively overpriced, fundamentally flawed system which is missing a number of the main requirements for successful budgeting, whereas YNAB 4 is almost perfect in form and function.

So many people were bailing after months they decided to lock people in at a yearly rate. Just tried switching, after 2 years, still feels like a beta product, like you said, designed to fit the web instead of the other way around. I agree with just about everything you say here. The one thing I do like about YNAB is the simplicity of the user interface, the hints provided and the ability to quickly and easily transfer amounts between categories, but this is cancelled out many time over by the negatives.

I am also not convinced by security provisions and lack of certification from someone like Norton. I would NEVER connect directly to my bank, but still am not happy with my transactions details downloaded from banks separately being uploaded to the cloud just so I can process my own data.

Thankfully there is at least one out there that is looking promising but not yet quite there! Andrew, please inform me, when you will write your own software. Because YNAB has digged a hudge hole and is going to fall into it. Thanks so much for the video on how you handle reimbursements — I was having trouble getting my head around it, and the video made perfect sense.

I am exactly in the same boat as you were a year ago. I am using YNAB 4 since I tried YNAB last year and gave up as certain features were missing or the way they work had changed. I resonate with most of your points. I use it for some anticipated future expenses and also to see how much money ends up in a category over a period of time. My advice: Get fully buffered, work on your emergency fund.

Once the emergency fund is full, then invest more or take nicer vacations or whatever you want jobs for your dollars. Brandon hits the nail on the head. Walling off current income to next month was the most crucial of the rules, and they simply erased it from existence. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Notify me of new comments. Close Menu About. Reddit Share 6. This primarily impacts Mac users upgrading to Mac OS Catalina , however, there appears to be a workaround. Test drive YNAB free for 34 days. Ready to give YNAB a try? If you have any questions, let me know in the comments! Open up your last bank statement and use that data to populate your YNAB screen. You can and should also download your credit card information into YNAB. The process to download and reconcile are exactly the same.

I went to my bank website and downloaded the data. As soon as I clicked on the file, You Need a Budget popped open and asked me if I wanted to upload it. I love it when someone does all the work for me. This preview screen shows me all the transactions that I am about to import. The data flows into my YNAB program. My next step and this is very important is to select a category for each payment.

How you categorize your payments will drive the reports you get and thereby the spending decisions you make. YNAB 3 did not offer reconciliation and that was a problem. Thankfully, 4. This will bring up the following screen and the program walks you through a simple process of reconciling your accounts. I did this and it was much easier than the QuickBooks process and much faster. Like me, the other commenters reported that reconciling was super easy and fast. I would suggest you turn this around.

Consider all you have to gain by reconciling your bank statement and then realize how incredibly valuable this tool is because it will help you get it done so easily.

They provide tutorials, white papers, screen shots and even free classes on almost every facet of the program. These guys are seriously on a mission to help you stop living paycheck to paycheck, get out of debt and save money faster. When you save your data, you can either save it to the cloud using Dropbox or your own hard drive. I wish you could do both.

I am a backup freak because data is so valuable. I am a big believer in multiple backups and this is somewhat cumbersome. Then, save a version to your hard drive. To me, this is silly and makes no sense. I contacted YNAB and asked them to remedy this. YNAB gives you a 34 day trial and a full day money back guarantee too.

No risk to you. I like. If you are YNAB user and thinking about upgrading — stop thinking about it and just do it. The added benefits of reconciliation and cloud synching alone are worth many times your investment. This program is easy and fun unlike Quicken and QuickBooks. Hold off for the time being. Whatever you are doing is working so keep at it. Readers like you could see how we actually budget, and get a peek inside how YNAB really works and how we use it.

Hundreds of you who tried it out back then with a month-long free trialdecided that YNAB 4 would be a good fit for you. I still hear from many of you who became faithful YNABers from my recommendation!

I share the failproof recipe with you. Sorry guys! How sad is that? I love to share practical budgeting tutorials using our actual budget, not just the amounts, but also the tips and tricks that make the budgeting tool itself so nice to use. If that were the case I would have done this 3 years ago. The main thing we missed was the month ahead feature. That money would not be available to budget until the following month. As we were paying off debt, we relied on the month ahead feature to budget every penny down to zero and maximize our debt repayment at the end of each month.

Any new paychecks are treated as above entered as income and budgeted to the special holding category. The sad part about this hack is that there is not a beautiful record left. But it works and keeps us precisely one month ahead.

Everything over our monthly expenses goes to funding our goals currently paying off our mortgage. There are some perks with the new YNAB, like automatic syncing of accounts though we opted to still enter our checking account and credit card manually so we can be aware of our spending and setting goals for categories.

Like any subscription, though, it also has a fee. If you already bought YNAB 4, you can keep using it forever without having to pay for it. You can try the new YNAB and see how it compares, then decide for yourself! As you may have gathered, YNAB is a different from other budgeting methods. If you try that, you will probably not have a good experience. So go grab your free YNAB trial and then sign up for their free classes and learn how to use this powerful, finance-altering tool.

This is, after all, personal finance made public! I feel like the aging would work best if I put the money in for next month, rather than this month if that makes sense. I hate how it treats credit cards. I hate the missing next-month income. I even cried when I tried to explain the problems to my husband. We use them for other reasons, and the cash to pay them is already budgeted to the categories for which the cards are used. The cards are paid in full as soon as the statements are issued.