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You Need A Budget Pro - Personal Finance Software Program Review (continued)
More User Submitted You Need A Budget Pro - Personal Finance Software Program Reviews
Date: 2008-09-08
Excellent software
This software is excellent! It does a great job of helping you keep up with your budget. Quicken does a horrible job at the budgeting side of things. The latest version also has great performance improvements.
I like the clean interface without all the advertisements that Quicken has embedded in it. YNAB also doesn't force you to upgrade every year or so.
The biggest weakness is in reporting, but that is high on the todo list for the developers.
Date: 2008-09-02
Getting through college debt-free
As a college student on a very tight budget I'm VERY happy with YNAB. The customer service is awesome because it's a smaller company. It has an open-ended, flexible feel that other software doesn't have and is still pretty easy to pick up with the video tutorials. At the same time it has "rules" that help me not live from one week's plasma donation cash to the next :-) Alright I don't actually donate plasma for money, but if I didn't use YNAB I might have too... It was worth it for me, and probably would be for anyone else trying to get through school debt-free and independent.
Date: 2008-08-31
Stress free for the first time!
As others have stated here, I have been a Quicken user for years (since the old "blue screen" days). However, I only used quicken as a checkbook register, and I was never really concerned that much with "budgeting" my money.....that is, until I found myself $30,000 in credit card debt, making minimum payments on everything and finding that I always had too much month left at the end of my money!
Then, in December 2007, my wife lost her job ... I was in a panic; now what would we do? How would we get by? As things turned out, she was entitled to six months severance pay under the terms of a merger agreement when her company was bought out. In addition, she found a new job with a 30% pay increase within two weeks of her severance date.
We both decided that it was time to get our financial house in order. With her severance pay, we paid off half of our credit card debt and put a little money into savings for emergencies. And, with the new job and the pay increase, we had a little breathing room ... but we really needed to do something about budgeting and learning to live within our means.
I tried for two months to make Quicken's budgeting process work for me ... but I never could figure out where or how Quicken arrived at what it spit out at me each month ... I tried creating my own spreadsheets ... but nothing seemed to work for me. Then, I did some "googling" and found You Need A Budget (YNAB). I spent several days on their website reviewing the tutorials and reading user reviews before I forked over the money to buy a copy of the software myself.
I HAVE NEVER LOOKED BACK! I must admit, I had to start over twice with YNAB ... not because the software is difficult to use ... but because I was trying to use it based upon what I knew about budgeting ... you can't do that .. YNAB is designed to work based upon 4 simple rules of budgeting ... once you come to fully understand those 4 rules ... how simple they are and how radically different they are to everything you thought you knew about budgeting ... you have a "light bulb" moment, and after that, you and YNAB Pro become the best of friends!
I sleep much better at night these days, thanks to YNAB Pro! Now, thanks to some hard work, discipline (which NO software can give you), and the financial road map that YNAB has enabled me to keep and to live by, I now have a fully funded buffer! What does that mean? Simply that the bills I pay today are paid with the money I earned last month. The money I earn this month will go to pay my bills for next month. I no longer have to worry about whether a check I've written will get to the bank before my paycheck does! No more late payments, no more late fees!
With the plan I have created using YNAB Pro, I will be credit card debt free by March 2010, but I'll go on using YNAB Pro long after that! And, even if YNAB Pro decided tomorrow to charge an annual upgrade fee (which they don't), I'd pay it anyway! The software is just that good and has become just that important in my life. And, the community on the YNAB website forums are the friendliest and most encouraging folks you could ever meet ... and they come from all walks of life and from almost every part of the world!
I still use Quicken, and some day, I may give it up! But, I won't part with my YNAB Pro software. My only regret is that I didn't have YNAB Pro 20 years ago! If I had, I'd be sitting on a pile of money right now!
YNAB Pro does one thing, and it does it better than anything else I could find on the web: it helps me plan where I am going to spend my money! But make no mistake: that plan is only as good as your willingness and commitment to live within your means and to make that plan work!
I've made YNAB Pro a partner in my efforts to become debt free and financially independent. While I have a way to go yet, I just cannot express in words the sense of freedom and the level of stress reduction I have come to enjoy in my life in the six short months I have been using the software. It was the BEST money I have ever spent!
Date: 2008-08-30
YNAB has helped me to get a handle on my finances for the first time in my life.
You Need A Budget (YNAB Pro) is an exceptional program and life tool. I am not one to bother reviewing programs, books or whatever on the net. I normally don't bother, but this is really something special.
I have been struggling with my finances for my whole life, really. I just never learned how to deal with and manage (budget and follow a budget) money. I have always just spent all that I had and more, going into very deep debt over time.
YNAB is the easiest tool for budgeting that I have see or could dream of. It actually makes budgeting fun! Honestly, I have been one to poo poo budgeting as a waste of time. I never thought that it made sense to waste time creating a budget when there was no way to guess what I would spend. (Please don't laugh at my naivety! You may be just as bad!) Now I am using YNAB Pro on my laptop and a couple of Apps on my iPhone to keep track of my spending and savings. I am flat out loving it. Really. You have no idea how strange it is that I am saying these things. I mean we are talking $49 here for a tool that is far more effective than Quicken in useability and forward budgeting. Also, Jesse has excellent teachings on how to live on last months earnings.
Go to the site to read more or just buy it and find out more. It's certainly the best value I have found for a very long time.
Oh yea: If you have an iPhone they are working on a Mac version of YNAB Pro and then they are talking about making an iPhone Application for YNAB!! Yeeha. I look forward to it!
Mark
Date: 2008-08-29
The Methodology Alone Works Wonders
The methodology alone saved me from having to live paycheck to paycheck. It took literally all of the financial stress away, knowing I was always a month ahead of my income. I guess this isn't so much about the software, rather about how the software teaches you to manage your money in a whole new, more effective way.
You Need A Budget Pro - Personal Finance Software Program Reviews Page: 4 of 10 Prev<< 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next>>
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