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I'd be really keen to try this. I'd love some Mint-style automatic money management (see what I've spent where etc. without too much hassle), but there's no saf

by Osmium 11y ago

I'd be really keen to try this. I'd love some Mint-style automatic money management (see what I've spent where etc. without too much hassle), but there's no safe way of using a Mint-style website in the UK that I know of, and I haven't got time to export statements as .csv and manually tag each transaction. The screenshots in the article look exactly on-point. It's amazing to me that existing banks haven't come up with something similar to this themselves. My own bank's app is functional, but only just, and displays no imagination at all.

vosper 11y ago
It's not automatic at all, but I switched from Mint to You Need a Budget (commonly referred to as YNAB) a couple of years ago, and have never looked back. I've found it incredibly useful in managing spending and saving, and very straightfoward once I got the hang of it (they have lots of useful tutorials, too). I think one of the advantages of YNAB is that it's not automatic - I used Mint for ages, and would tend to forget about it because there's so little work to do. The small amount of effort I put in going through transactions in YNAB each week (it doesn't take more than 10 minutes, and it learns the frequent categorisations) really makes me think about where I'm spending money. The only work I have to do is downloading transaction data from my bank each week, which is simple, and has the side-effect of encouraging me to minimise the number of accounts I have open, because it makes managing YNAB simpler. YNAB's not free software, but it is occasionally on sale. Even at full price it's well worth the money, provided that you really want to take control of your spending. It's available on Steam, so you may now be able to get a refund if you don't like it (give it a chance, though - the initial setup is most of the work, ongoing usage is much less).
- Osmium 11y ago
  Thanks for the recommendation, I'll give it a go. I've just downloaded it and a few small details give me pause (non-native UI, inconsistent high DPI resources, okay but not great localisation), but it also looks legitimately useful. Does it learn from past transactions how to assign categories, or do you always have to do that manually?
  - vosper 11y ago
    I think it only auto-suggests categories for an exact match on the transaction details. And you still have to confirm it. This is actually what I want, because (for example) when I go to the Walgreens (a pharmacy) near my work I want to count that against my spending, and when my wife goes to the one near her work it should count against her spending. The only difference that shows up in the transactions from the bank is a number, eg "Walgreens #4567" and "Walgreens #1234". Having figured out which one is which it can now auto-suggest that match. But it won't try to guess what "Walgreens 9999" should be if it hasn't seen that before.

by Osmium 11y ago

vosper 11y ago

It's not automatic at all, but I switched from Mint to You Need a Budget (commonly referred to as YNAB) a couple of years ago, and have never looked back. I've found it incredibly useful in managing spending and saving, and very straightfoward once I got the hang of it (they have lots of useful tutorials, too). I think one of the advantages of YNAB is that it's not automatic - I used Mint for ages, and would tend to forget about it because there's so little work to do. The small amount of effort I put in going through transactions in YNAB each week (it doesn't take more than 10 minutes, and it learns the frequent categorisations) really makes me think about where I'm spending money. The only work I have to do is downloading transaction data from my bank each week, which is simple, and has the side-effect of encouraging me to minimise the number of accounts I have open, because it makes managing YNAB simpler. YNAB's not free software, but it is occasionally on sale. Even at full price it's well worth the money, provided that you really want to take control of your spending. It's available on Steam, so you may now be able to get a refund if you don't like it (give it a chance, though - the initial setup is most of the work, ongoing usage is much less).

Osmium 11y ago
Thanks for the recommendation, I'll give it a go. I've just downloaded it and a few small details give me pause (non-native UI, inconsistent high DPI resources, okay but not great localisation), but it also looks legitimately useful. Does it learn from past transactions how to assign categories, or do you always have to do that manually?
- vosper 11y ago
  I think it only auto-suggests categories for an exact match on the transaction details. And you still have to confirm it. This is actually what I want, because (for example) when I go to the Walgreens (a pharmacy) near my work I want to count that against my spending, and when my wife goes to the one near her work it should count against her spending. The only difference that shows up in the transactions from the bank is a number, eg "Walgreens #4567" and "Walgreens #1234". Having figured out which one is which it can now auto-suggest that match. But it won't try to guess what "Walgreens 9999" should be if it hasn't seen that before.