YNAB simply means You Need a Budget. It is an online app that makes use of modern technology to help you come up with ways to create a uniquely designed budget.
As the name decodes, it’s an app that’s primarily built for budgeting like TrueBill App. It’s also a great tool to track your expenses and improve your personal finance skill. On average, YNAB helps to save $600 within the first two months of using it, and over $6,000 within the first year of use.
Savvy App Features
Debt Paydown—these are the teachings and tools you can use to keep your debt in check.
Bank Synching—it easily links all your bank account in the app
Goal Tracking—its purpose is to help you set and track goals and come up with ways to help achieve them faster.
On the Go—with this feature, you can have real-time access to your financial data. This makes it easy to share your data, and know exactly what you’ve done with your finances over-time.
Personal Support—YNAB has a support team that can be reached 24/7 via in-app live chat and email.
Pros and Cons of YNAB
Pros of YNAB
- The app will teach you how to create an effective budget. It reminds me of a zero-based budget.
- As said earlier, it features a support team that’s always available to answer your queries.
- You can access a 34-day trial to acclimatize yourself to the platform.
- Financial experts suggest that you “give every dollar a job,” and YNAB helps you do just that by ensuring that you categorize every dollar before it leaves your wallet.
- Sticking to this app helps you stick to the spending pattern of the previous month.
- The app allows you to monitor your entire transaction on your Kindle, Android, and iPhone. You can regularly check your budget on-the-go.
Cons of YNAB
- A noticeable demerit is that they don’t do automatic transactions, unlike some other apps. To get a download of your transactions, you’ll have to use your online banking platform. However, YNAB imports those transactions.
- Individuals looking for investment support, debt reduction tools, a financial planning tool for retirement, college, or other life events will be disappointed.
- You might experience some lag when you first launch the device for use. This lag may also appear when navigating your way between Account sections, Reports, and Budgets.
How to Use YNAB
Are you currently ruminating about using the cloud-based software but you’re overwhelmed with how to open an account on the platform. This is perfectly common as I’ve regularly heard complaints from would-be users about making the platform work for their budgeting needs. This problem can be easily solved. You just have to understand the software layout.
Starting out
The YNAB app has received a massive upgrade ever since the company released its web-based platform update in 2018. Users no longer have to open their laptops to keep-up with their budget. It can now be done via an Android or iOS device.
You simply need to download the app on your mobile device (Android and iOS). Launch the app and log in to your account to open your budget. If you don’t have an account, then you may simply sign-in to an account the same way you’d do on most apps.
As a newbie to the platform, you’ll need to create your budget to taste. YNAB is pretty straightforward as it was designed with budgeting beginners in mind.
The app has 5 primary sections. They are:
1. Budget
This is the app’s homepage and it is also the place where your budget will be displayed.
You can easily have a glance at what’s your state of finances is here, and have an idea of what’s left to be spent in each budget category.
As you can see in the image below, YNAB has a category for the overspent budget. Anytime it detects that you’ve overspent, it uses Huge Invasive Notifications to detect that there’s a problem with your budget.
Tap the notification, and then the overspent category to reallocate your funds.
2. Accounts
This category is designed to show the accounts that are linked to YNAB. Here, you can see your debt, assets, and net worth.
3. Transactions
This is the “add a new transaction” section on the YNAB app. Due to its purpose, it’s one of the most used buttons on the app.
4. Reports
This is perhaps the least important section as it gives you 2 pieces of information. Your “Net Worth” and “Age of Money.” As shown below, there are not enough transactions added yet so it is unable to give me a true “age of money”. Once you add at least 10 transactions that box should update.
5. Help
Beginners need this section to properly understand the platform, and how to budget. YNAB has a very robust database with loads of helpful and user-friendly documents.
YNAB offers 4 different sections on the help page; watch, read, listen, and support. YNAB is catering to those who want to learn more about financial management and also have a preference of how they learn it. If you are someone who prefers listening to a podcast, you can to listen to some of their best episodes. If you are a big reader, you can dive into some of their popular blog posts to learn more.
How much does YNAB cost?
To use YNAB, you’ll have to part ways with $11.99 monthly. You can also opt for an alternative way of paying $84 annually.
For first-timers, YNAB offers a 34-day free trial. This is to allow you to understand the app and decide if it’s worth the price or not. YNAB is quite costly, and it doesn’t appear that it has a free version which helps offset the costs for those who simply can’t afford it. If that cost is restrictive, you will probably want to see the Savvy review because it has both a free version and it’s premium version is $5.99, so it’s much less cost restrictive.
How secure is the app?
YNAB like most budgeting apps promises to keep personal information of its uses secure and encrypted.
It has a strong policy that is publicly displayed, and it has maintained a good reputation since 2004 that it launched. The company recently included a two-step verification feature to further improve its security. You are able to set up a touch ID to sign in, for a more secure experience.
Are there ads in the app?
The app is ad-free since it consists of in-app purchases that generate revenue for the company. Thankfully, I would expect most apps that cost this much per month to be ad free, considering the company seems to make most of its revenue through the subscription.