People should use what works best for them but I'd like to respond a bit to the YNAB issues you ran into (not to convince you to switch or anything). YNAB with

People should use what works best for them but I'd like to respond a bit to the YNAB issues you ran into (not to convince you to switch or anything). YNAB with Credit Cards was difficult for me, as was envelope-based budgeting (what "give every dollar a job" is called) because I also was used to the typical "set limits on categories and stay within them"-style budgeting (Like Mint, at least Mint way back when it first came out, I haven't touched it in years). YNAB is very different in that it doesn't let you allocate dollars that are not in your bank account. You can't say "$300 for eating out" unless you have $300 in your bank account and YNAB doesn't care that you might have that money available by the time you want to spend it, it forces you to allocate the money you actually have and every time you get paid you allocate it into categories with the long-term goal of getting a month (or months) ahead in your budgeting (not spending the money you made this month on stuff you need in this month). Credit cards were also hard to wrap my head around. In a debit-only world it all made sense but CC's complicated things for me. I really enjoyed Nick True's videos on Youtube, they helped me with this a lot but a simplified way to think about this is: * You put $200 in your "groceries" category (aka envelope) * You go to the store and spend $60 (on eggs I assume?) and pay with your CC * In YNAB-land you will record that transaction (or it will be auto-imported) and you will assign it to the groceries category but since YNAB knows you spent this on a CC (you always record which account the transaction happened on) it essentially takes $60 out of the "Groceries" envelope and moves it to the "Chase Sapphire" (or whatever you name it) envelope. You set aside the money for your CC purchases at time of purchase and then when the CC bill comes due it's paid out of that "envelope". In this way YNAB has become a layer on top of all my finances and I care little about how much money is in any given savings/checking account since YNAB tracks everything. I just make sure there is enough to cover CC payments (there always is) or any big transfers I want to make (like moving money to a HYSA). I've automated as much as I can with YNAB but I do spend 30min-1hr every few weeks (this is not what they recommend, but it works for me) reconciling my accounts. I totally get if people don't want to do that or don't see the value in it. Personally I love knowing where every dollar of mine is and tracking every purchase/transfer.