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I can't get myself to pay for services like YNAB or mvelopes.com I could see someone wanting to pay for a year or two until they've established the habit of di

I can't get myself to pay for services like YNAB or mvelopes.com I could see someone wanting to pay for a year or two until they've established the habit of disciplined saving. But to perpetually pay a service to present a (useful) facade over your money doesn't seem right if it's not also instilling habits in you that don't depend on software.

drewpc 6y ago
I'm in the same boat. In a world before I found Simple, a spreadsheet with all of my monthly expenses and totals for each account transfer I needed to do was good enough. I can't get myself to see the additional value of mvelopes.com. Simple, however, was a game changer for me. Sad.
- fb42 6y ago
  What’s the main difference between Simple and YNAB? I’m a YNAB user but have never used Simple. You say that you can’t see the extra value of mvelopes (and I assume YNAB) but if you don’t have Simple then why is YNAB not good enough?
  - frankus 6y ago
    I'm not familiar with how YNAB ingests transaction data, but I seem to remember when I looked at it last that at least some transactions have to be logged manually. If you used Simple pretty much exclusively you wouldn't have to manually enter any transactions, although you might occasionally have to categorize things. The obvious exception would be cash transactions, which I don't believe Simple ever tracked in any detail.
    - fb42 6y ago
      It’s all automatic. You do have to approve and categorize transactions though. But the import is automatic if you’re using a major bank.
      - lgregg 6y ago
        not for all major banks, mine (usaa) forces 2fa which broke ynab and made it useable because i don't want to do data entry for every transaction.
        noahtallen 6y ago
        They might have fixed this. They switched to using plaid for external accounts this year, and I was able to add several banks which had 2FA earlier today.
        leovander 6y ago
        I ran into this for alliant. Reach out to YNAB support, they adjust your account supposedly to not use Plaid for instances like MFA being enabled. It wasn't clear if its an all or nothing deal though for all your accounts to use Plaid or not.
        JamesSwift 6y ago
        USAA works fine for me. It just asks you to enter the token during login. EDIT: and I think it migrated to OAuth anyways so no more tokens
        Scoobs 6y ago
        It's been said elsewhere but just in case, they recently started using different import provider(s) and many accounts that were broken before now work great, including MFA ones.
  - 1shooner 6y ago
    I have both, and since adopting YNAB, my Simple budgets have been redundant and abandoned. Simple offered nothing that YNAB doesn;t, other than direct actions on your account (transfers, etc). That was far outweighed by YNAB's ability to manage multiple accounts, in particular their credit card balance & payment management.
kritiko 6y ago
I pay for YNAB. For me it's worth it for their auto-import to take a quick look at my spending across accounts at various institutions and to look at larger trends over time. A lot of folks were annoyed when they went to a subscription model, but I think the visibility they provide really does pay for itself.
- duhi88 6y ago
  I tried it. Auto-import never worked reliably. I asked their customer support for help, and they said I should just do it manually. They seemed like a close alternative, but if I'm doing all this work manually, I might as well use a spread sheet for free.
  - MattGrommes 6y ago
    They've done a bunch of updates to the importing in the last year so it might work better with your institution now. They support Oauth for the bank creds too for those that support it, which is great.
    - krisroadruck 6y ago
      It's still not great. You have to reauth accounts all the time, and I'm constantly getting the little wrench icon telling me they can't pull transactions right now. I've not found a single alternative that will give me a solid overview of all my various accounts as an api that I can build my OWN dashboard off of, otherwise I'd use that. YNAB still gets my money, but reluctantly until then.
      - abdabab 6y ago
        How secure is linking your bank account with YNAB?
        oneearedrabbit 6y ago
        They use Plaid [0] under the hood. As long as you trust it, it's safe. [0] https://plaid.com/ https://plaid.com/
fossuser 6y ago
YNAB is excellent - its design forces people to budget properly. It also lets you track all expenses and let’s you keep lifestyle inflation in check. I’ve found it well worth it (and I’m pretty responsible financially). Mint on the other hand is totally useless.
- cshift 6y ago
  > Mint on the other hand is totally useless. That's hyperbole. Having a bird's eye view of every single account, transaction, investments, net worth, etc. is "totally useless"? No. I use Mint and it works quite well for keeping an eye on your financial life at a glance. I don't need some micro-managey software like YNAB (that I'd have to pay for monthly!) to continually increase my wealth and keep debt in check - here's my tricks: * Pay off credit card in full every month (I have one card that I use for gas, etc.) * Invest 20% into company-matched 401k, my Roth, etc. primarily focused on S&P 500 Index Funds * Save roughly $275/check into a liquid savings account. * I have no car payment (paid of my 2010 Subaru that I got for $9k). * Everything on autopay. * Don't buy stupid nonsense. It's worked well thus far. There's no real "need" to budget - KISS principle wins the day again.
  - asciimike 6y ago
    > That's hyperbole. Having a bird's eye view of every single account, transaction, investments, net worth, etc. is "totally useless"? No. If you can get it to actually connect to things (I have 2FA on most accounts, and since Mint scrapes the sites and stores passwords in plaintext, it doesn't know how to handle this) and tag everything properly (MCC's vary pretty widely). I think that the promise of Mint is great, but in reality it falls apart as soon as you have more than a few accounts, or start using anything that wasn't originally built in (e.g. 2FA). That all said, I follow the same general principles: autopay everything in full, invest money first, live within my means (with certain exceptions that are the "budget").
    - njarboe 6y ago
      I just don't understand giving your banking credentials to a third party. Will your bank even cover fraudulent withdraws if you give your login info to Mint?
chrisherring 6y ago
I've tried YNAB multiple times but would inevitably miss entering a transaction and then it would be a pain reconciling my bank accounts with YNAB. Without tracking the transactions I couldn't accurately use YNAB to determine how much was left in the budget. Having an envelope like system built into a bank would be extremely useful.
rattray 6y ago
I'm pretty certain I've saved more than $86 in my first year of using YNAB for what it's worth. Ymmv of course.

drewpc 6y ago

I'm in the same boat. In a world before I found Simple, a spreadsheet with all of my monthly expenses and totals for each account transfer I needed to do was good enough. I can't get myself to see the additional value of mvelopes.com. Simple, however, was a game changer for me. Sad.

fb42 6y ago
What’s the main difference between Simple and YNAB? I’m a YNAB user but have never used Simple. You say that you can’t see the extra value of mvelopes (and I assume YNAB) but if you don’t have Simple then why is YNAB not good enough?
- frankus 6y ago
  I'm not familiar with how YNAB ingests transaction data, but I seem to remember when I looked at it last that at least some transactions have to be logged manually. If you used Simple pretty much exclusively you wouldn't have to manually enter any transactions, although you might occasionally have to categorize things. The obvious exception would be cash transactions, which I don't believe Simple ever tracked in any detail.
  - fb42 6y ago
    It’s all automatic. You do have to approve and categorize transactions though. But the import is automatic if you’re using a major bank.
    - lgregg 6y ago
      not for all major banks, mine (usaa) forces 2fa which broke ynab and made it useable because i don't want to do data entry for every transaction.
      - noahtallen 6y ago
        They might have fixed this. They switched to using plaid for external accounts this year, and I was able to add several banks which had 2FA earlier today.
      - leovander 6y ago
        I ran into this for alliant. Reach out to YNAB support, they adjust your account supposedly to not use Plaid for instances like MFA being enabled. It wasn't clear if its an all or nothing deal though for all your accounts to use Plaid or not.
      - JamesSwift 6y ago
        USAA works fine for me. It just asks you to enter the token during login. EDIT: and I think it migrated to OAuth anyways so no more tokens
      - Scoobs 6y ago
        It's been said elsewhere but just in case, they recently started using different import provider(s) and many accounts that were broken before now work great, including MFA ones.
- 1shooner 6y ago
  I have both, and since adopting YNAB, my Simple budgets have been redundant and abandoned. Simple offered nothing that YNAB doesn;t, other than direct actions on your account (transfers, etc). That was far outweighed by YNAB's ability to manage multiple accounts, in particular their credit card balance & payment management.

kritiko 6y ago

I pay for YNAB. For me it's worth it for their auto-import to take a quick look at my spending across accounts at various institutions and to look at larger trends over time. A lot of folks were annoyed when they went to a subscription model, but I think the visibility they provide really does pay for itself.

duhi88 6y ago
I tried it. Auto-import never worked reliably. I asked their customer support for help, and they said I should just do it manually. They seemed like a close alternative, but if I'm doing all this work manually, I might as well use a spread sheet for free.
- MattGrommes 6y ago
  They've done a bunch of updates to the importing in the last year so it might work better with your institution now. They support Oauth for the bank creds too for those that support it, which is great.
  - krisroadruck 6y ago
    It's still not great. You have to reauth accounts all the time, and I'm constantly getting the little wrench icon telling me they can't pull transactions right now. I've not found a single alternative that will give me a solid overview of all my various accounts as an api that I can build my OWN dashboard off of, otherwise I'd use that. YNAB still gets my money, but reluctantly until then.
    - abdabab 6y ago
      How secure is linking your bank account with YNAB?
      - oneearedrabbit 6y ago
        They use Plaid [0] under the hood. As long as you trust it, it's safe. [0] https://plaid.com/ https://plaid.com/

fossuser 6y ago

YNAB is excellent - its design forces people to budget properly. It also lets you track all expenses and let’s you keep lifestyle inflation in check. I’ve found it well worth it (and I’m pretty responsible financially). Mint on the other hand is totally useless.

cshift 6y ago
> Mint on the other hand is totally useless. That's hyperbole. Having a bird's eye view of every single account, transaction, investments, net worth, etc. is "totally useless"? No. I use Mint and it works quite well for keeping an eye on your financial life at a glance. I don't need some micro-managey software like YNAB (that I'd have to pay for monthly!) to continually increase my wealth and keep debt in check - here's my tricks: * Pay off credit card in full every month (I have one card that I use for gas, etc.) * Invest 20% into company-matched 401k, my Roth, etc. primarily focused on S&P 500 Index Funds * Save roughly $275/check into a liquid savings account. * I have no car payment (paid of my 2010 Subaru that I got for $9k). * Everything on autopay. * Don't buy stupid nonsense. It's worked well thus far. There's no real "need" to budget - KISS principle wins the day again.
- asciimike 6y ago
  > That's hyperbole. Having a bird's eye view of every single account, transaction, investments, net worth, etc. is "totally useless"? No. If you can get it to actually connect to things (I have 2FA on most accounts, and since Mint scrapes the sites and stores passwords in plaintext, it doesn't know how to handle this) and tag everything properly (MCC's vary pretty widely). I think that the promise of Mint is great, but in reality it falls apart as soon as you have more than a few accounts, or start using anything that wasn't originally built in (e.g. 2FA). That all said, I follow the same general principles: autopay everything in full, invest money first, live within my means (with certain exceptions that are the "budget").
  - njarboe 6y ago
    I just don't understand giving your banking credentials to a third party. Will your bank even cover fraudulent withdraws if you give your login info to Mint?

chrisherring 6y ago

I've tried YNAB multiple times but would inevitably miss entering a transaction and then it would be a pain reconciling my bank accounts with YNAB. Without tracking the transactions I couldn't accurately use YNAB to determine how much was left in the budget. Having an envelope like system built into a bank would be extremely useful.

rattray 6y ago

I'm pretty certain I've saved more than $86 in my first year of using YNAB for what it's worth. Ymmv of course.