Great way to plan for rainy days, reign in your runaway bank balances and save for that Volvo.
This is the cheapest I've seen it at, personally, I bought it when it was $20.
There's an iOS companion app too, not sure if that's free now or not, I bought that one for $5.
I've had this recommended by a family member who traditionally was really into quicken.
Hrm,
Cross platform sharing seems to rely on Dropbox.
My girlfriend really likes this and grabbed during the steam sale. Sure it feels daft spending money on budgeting tools, but whatever helps in the long run.
Save for a Volvo?
A neg vote just for that description alone ;-)
Noooooo! :)
I can't stress how great this app is if you want to control your money. Even without thinking, just the act of recording all of your purchases I can almost guarantee that you'll save much more than the $15 in the first month.
The new cloud sync feature works great from IOS and Android as well so perfect if you have multiple people entering into the same budget.
Their tutorials, webinars etc are also free and a great resource.
whats wrong with google web excel? i use that to keep track of my expenses, cant think of a reason to purchase it
Not everyone has the motivation to develop an excel spreadsheet to budget. I wouldn't be :P For someone who isn't big on numbers maybe this graphical interface helps them more?
For one the phone app allows you to record purchase as they happen so you never forget them. It also pre populates most fields based on your location so after a while all you need to do is enter the cost and it automatically knows it was for groceries and purchased at coles for example. Very quick and easy to use.
My wife and I can both enter purchases from our phones (ios and android) and have it populate the desktop app instantly. Much easier than sharing an excel sheet.
It also allows for scheduled payments, so it can auto populate things like your salary or monthly bills etc.
Most importantly they offer webinars that will make you rethink the way and why you budget.
At the end of the day if you're happy with your excel sheet then stick with it. But while it might seem a bit silly to pay for a budgeting app, the knowledge you'll gain from the tools they supply will most likely lead to you saving more than an extra $15. The benefit of easy to use apps that are purposely designed for budgeting is a nice bonus :)
(I should note you can try their app for free if you want)…
^ exactly what stratbargain said.
I swapped over to YNAB the start of this financial year and love it. Great, colourful little interface that's a lot more easy on the eyes than whatever hideous eyesore of a spreadsheet I could ever design.
I used google docs for 4 years but I kept slacking off with the data entry and giving myself reconcilliation nightmares every end of month. (Bear in mind I have the short term memory of a goldfish and most of the time can't even remember the last thing I bought on ozbargain). With YNAB I find I'm a lot more dilligent with logging on and plugging in my expenses every 2nd/3rd night for some reason. It just feels a lot more intuitive and less of a chore than it was on excel.
Love being able to generate spending summaries and pie charts with one or two mouse clicks.
It's just a lot less time spent wrestling with formulas and second guessing what I spent when it comes to excel. For me, the reduced hassle was well worth the $20 I paid in the earlier steam sale.
Not too familiar with steam - if you buy do you get both mac and windows versions? Can you install it on multiple computers? And is this a once off cost or is there ongoing monthly fees?
You can install it on as many MAC/PC's as you own as long as they are for personal/household use.
you would install it via steam and then retrieve your key from within YNAB which can then be used multiple times.
http://www.youneedabudget.com/support/article/install-ynab-o…
Great - thanks for the info!
Budgeting. Yeah as if that's going to happen on OzBargain.
You gotta budget for those bargains somehow…. ;)
I have an OzBargain category in my YNAB budget :)
I contacted YNAB support and they have offered $6 off anyone who wants to purchase their software directly from them (not Steam) via referral link they sent me. Let me know via message if you want it, I am not allowed to post it directly into here.
Sounds like a bargain!
hehe it does…I also didn't want it on Steam cos gaming friends might harass me when I am trying to sort out my finances :P
That's an interesting point. You don't have to have Steam running in order to launch YNAB. Just go to the app properties and then create a shortcut on your desktop and/or pin it to your taskbar and you're set. I think you'll need to launch YNAB like, once, via Steam in order to activate the license.
Am I missing something, YNAB website price is $60. So even with coupon it's $40 more?
Great work! Would have taken this if I didn't already have YNAB. Switching on steam just to get to YNAB is a bit of a pain. Would have preffered to have YNAB as a standalone.
Just a few posts up it says how to retrieve from Steam so you can activate "standalone" YNAB, thus removing the need to start Steam just to start YNAB
I do have it set up that way on another computer, but when I double click the YNAB icon it still starts Steam first before YNAB. Same with other games I have purchased via steam.
Have tried fidgeting with Steam & YNAB's settings a fair bit before giving up. I could be wrong though, I might have missed an obvious setting. Will try looking into it tonight
he means run it once from steam get the key then redeem that key on YNAB's own website to download the standalone file from them
Oh I see! Didn't know it could be done that way. Cheers & thanks!
I use all iterations (iOS, Android, Windows) myself and it's great for cloud syncing your private information to Dropbox services instead of someone else's servers. The only handicap of this is that there is no web access. You will need one of the apps to access your information and can't use a browser like some other budgeting services.
I had no idea Steam did other programs…only been using it for about 9 years.
I LEARNED STUFF TODAY.
When will the learning stop? NEVAR.
Well it hasn't offered them for 9 years, think it came out early this year or late last year.
After buying this program, though I find it annoying you need to use dropbox for cloud sync (I already have a cloud service I like) it seems very well put together especially if you can't be bothered with google docs/excel spreadsheets which seem to require a certain accountant-esque streak.
Looks like a nice interface, but I don't know if I can trust a third part site with my bank and credit card logins even though it's read only?
You trusted OzBargain with your password. It's basically the same thing…
yes, I trusted ozbargain with a password that can't be used anywhere else. Worst case scenario, someone makes 'papagoose' upvote bad deals. Pocketbook does look nice, I tried it out by importing some transactions from a file, but there is no way I trust them to have my bank login details, at least not when they are an unproven startup. Also, YNAB has much more powerful budgeting features
I take it your OzB and bank passwords are the same?
Not me, but I wager that once you know a couple of somebody's passwords you could deduce their other passwords more easily.
Some folks might use a password manager to ensure that doesn't happen.
Won't the people who manage password managers know everyone's passwords? I hope people encrypt their passwords before uploading them willy-nilly :-P
YNAB is great, this is a good deal
Highly recommended software. Been using for months and my financial literacy has improved enormously.
Well if you are an Ozbargainer you probably don't need a software to budget for you. Pocket the 15 bucks.
missed this… :(
does anyone know of any other cheap ways of getting this software?
![[Steam] You Need a Budget 4 (YNAB) 75% off USD$14.99](https://files.ozbargain.com.au/n/60/114660.jpg?h=563e184a)
The Companion App is free now and requires YNAB 4 or above for cloud syncing