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1. YNAB BUDGETING FOR RETIREMENT SOFTWARE
2. YNAB BUDGETING FOR RETIREMENT PROFESSIONAL

I’ve joined the ranks of the “true believers” for two reasons:

YNAB BUDGETING FOR RETIREMENT SOFTWARE

In case you aren’t familiar with You Need A Budget (YNAB), it’s a nifty little software package that allows you to track your spending and budget for your future and generally helps you fix your financial problems. While I still think this “big picture” approach is really important, I’ve recently become a convert to the You Need A Budget crowd. One of my favorites is using your bank statement to tell you how much you spend on average each month. If you’re a regular reader, you know that I’ve suggested a few different approaches to mastering your budget. The best predictor of your financial security is how much you know about and control your budget. Let me say that again a little differently. The balance you strike between income and spending is the most important predictor of your financial future there is. (Maybe this is hard to believe, but I see this every day.)

YNAB BUDGETING FOR RETIREMENT PROFESSIONAL

And even though I’m a professional financial advisor and CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ Professional, what you do financially dwarfs the importance of my work. Should anyone ever hack Mint servers, every single one of your financial accounts are vulnerable.I finally broke down and decided to review YNAB, better known to some as You Need A Budget, the premier personal budget software package. Mint does have the benefit of being integrated with every single bank account and company that you have bills with, but with that integration comes an enormous security risk. Mint is built upon the old fashioned concept of making a monthly budget, setting goals, and then beating yourself into submission with guilt as you fail every month. So when comparing YNAB vs Mint, which one wins? In this case, there’s actually a very clear winner. The underlying psychology of YNAB budgeting makes accumulating funds in your bank accounts come naturally.Not having imported due dates for bills forces you to track due dates in another system, so that you assign your available funds to the most critical bills first.YNAB helps you build savings in different categories of your budget, and promotes pride when you actually accomplish that.Assigning incoming funds to budget categories feels like you’re actually spending that money, which forces you to be more realistic about your spending.It forces you to control spending in your categories (like dining out) so that you don’t have to “steal” money from other categories that are important to you (like saving for a car).What you’ll notice is that the end result of YNAB is this: You’ll actually need to cover this overspending by either assigning more “To be Budgeted” money to it (if you have any left), or reassigning funds from other budgeted categories. If you overspend in a category, you’ll see that in red. This is where YNAB gets very interesting. You’ll need to go down the list of your budget items and assign pieces of those “To be Budgeted” funds to each budget item that is due the soonest. “To be Budgeted” gets loaded with more funds any time you receive a paycheck or any kind of positive cash flow into your bank account. The YNAB approach is that you’ll only plan out your spending as far into the future as you can with the cash you currently have on hand. If you’re expecting to “assign” a monthly amount to each budget item at the start of the month, you’re going to have to relearn everything you’ve ever thought about making a budget. This is especially the case if you’ve always used the old-school monthly budgeting approach. Making a budget in YNAB is going to set your head spinning at first.

Overall, the budgeting interface and process is complicated and time consuming.The bill notification emails from Mint can get annoying if you don’t turn them off.Handling unexpected expenses in Mint is difficult and adds to your financial planning stress.Mint tends to induce a lot of guilt since overspending on budget items is often inevitable.You’ll see which budget items you’ve overspent on each month.You’ll know when your overall spending is getting out of hand before the end of the month.What you’ll notice is that the end result of Mint is this: