Tag: ynab

Categories
Editorial

10% off YNAB 4 with my official discount

ynab discount

I’ve been a YNAB user since February 2013 – almost a full year now, and it’s the best thing that ever happened to our money, putting us properly in control of how we spend it, and plan to spend it. Even better, they sent me a discount coupon to share so if you’re about to buy You Need A Budget you’ve come to the right place!

To save $6 off YNAB on their website (equivalent of 10% off) simply click the big blue button below (or click this link) and the saving will be automatically applied to your basket. Easy!

Click here to save 10% at YouNeedABudget.com

ynab discount coupon
Look out for the orange banner at YouNeedABudget.com to confirm your YNAB discount

For full disclosure I should tell you that it’s a referral link so while you save six bucks on YNAB, I get a small commission in return so thank you very much in advance! 🙂

Why we use YNAB

I’m already a massive fan of YNAB so I’d recommend it even without the referral. It’s the only household budgeting app that’s ever really made me feel like I’m in control of our finances, and as a bit of a control freak I can tell you I’d been looking for a long time, so I can’t recommend it highly enough. They’ve even got a lovely little iPhone app that makes keeping up with your expenses a breeze.

I first heard about it in some money forums where existing users were exchanging stories about how it had sorted their finances out. I was looking for something to make personal budgeting easier to manage and ‘The Four Rules of YNAB’ certainly sounded a lot more interesting than the alternatives, so I gave the demo a go. A month later we were hooked – I headed back to the forums to snag my discount and haven’t looked back.

ynab discount
We’ve been using YNAB since February 2013 and love it

It’s probably a little weird to ‘love’ a personal budgeting app but it helped us come up with a budget we understand and can stick to. The biggest change is that when annual subscriptions roll around or unexpected repairs have to be done we’ve got the cash already ferreted away to pay for them, so it’s been well worth the price – especially with the discount!

I want to write a full review of YNAB 4 soon but to be honest if you’re here because you’re undecided the best thing to do is download the demo and give it a go for a month. Then come back here and before you buy click the button for your discount! 😉

Categories
Apple

You Need A Budget for iPhone updated for iOS 7

you need a budget iPhone
The redesign of You Need A Budget for iPhone is clearer and easier to use

you need a budget iPhoneThe excellent You Need A Budget for iPhone (free) (or YNAB to its friends!) just got a hefty redesign for iOS 7, and it’s rather lovely.

The new look is a bit of a departure from the look of the main desktop app (for Mac and PC) but it fits in a lot better with the simpler, almost minimalist look of iOS 7 and actually makes several elements much clearer and easier to manage, especially when entering ‘splits’ or when picking a Payee based on your location. A particularly nice new touch is a pop-up update of the ‘before’ and ‘after’ totals of a budget category when you add a transaction, making it even easier to keep up-to-date with the month’s spending.

As the App Store description page points out, YNAB for iPhone is a companion app for entering transactions on the go and keeping an eye on your running budget totals but it requires the full Mac/PC app to be of any use. It doesn’t have any budget-managing options – though I hear they’re working on a standalone iPad app that will meet that need – but your budget is available to view, however. It syncs over from the desktop via Dropbox and you tap your on-the-go transactions into the app as they occur. Of course, you don’t necessarily need the iPhone app, you could just import a downloaded statement to the desktop app periodically, but I find that makes it harder to keep on top of your budgeting day-to-day.

you need a budget iPhone
The redesign of You Need A Budget for iPhone is clearer and easier to use

So overall a great-looking update with some welcome new features. However, a couple of old features seem to have been lost including the ‘Favourites’ tab for quickly selecting regularly-used Categories and Payees.

According to the developer the autocomplete for Category and location-based Payee ultimately do the same job and for the most part I expect that’s probably the case but for me the Favourites filter was quicker and easier than relying on Autocomplete, narrowing dozens of budget categories down to the four or five I only ever needed on my phone whenever I had to manually enter a category or change the one Autocomplete entered.

They’ve also made a Search function more accessible but I found that tapping to activate it, then typing, then tapping the results was all more faff than using the old Favourites tabBut hey, not the end of the world! 😉

So in summary – a largely welcome update, with a couple of niggles I’ll just have to get used to.

Save 10% on You Need A Budget

You Need A Budget is a fantastic Mac/PC personal budgeting app and I highly recommend you check it out if you’re looking for an intuitive, effective way to manage your household income or even a small business.

If for some reason you’re reading this but you don’t actually have your own copy of YNAB yet, click here to find out how to save 10% on your purchase over at youneedabudget.com!