YNAB / Mint - Budgeting Your financial life

I can remember the days of Quicken/Quickbooks, that was cumbersome and didn't work with all credit cards and banks, let alone loans at specific banks.

YNAB teaches you to gain total control of your money by budgeting and following simple principles. I read the book a few years ago and used the software but didn't get a good liking to it.

Mint.com pulls all your financial accounts into one place. You can set a budget, track your goals and see where your money is going with proper categorization.

I've been applying YNAB principles to my mint account for over a year now and its been nice to set goals and attach to dates and know how much of whatever i bring in to put away.

Do you budget or plan out everyone one of the dollars you bring in no matter the amount?

 

thats the problem i had with ynab, mint hasn't let me down thus far. with mint you just enter your user login, and it does the rest. quicken owns mint so in my book its safe.

 

ive been using it for almost two years, no issues except the fact when i opened up two more amex savings accounts it didn't sync right away. I had to add my login again and disable the old account in the new login grouping of the accounts. no biggie and now i have a handful of goals set up including my 'Trip to Australia fund'

 

I tried using Mint, but my bank is Citizens, and they don't seem to allow it to sync. I used Pageonce for awhile, but I eventually had the same issue with them syncing with my bank and the rest of my accounts.

I'd love reliable budget software...preferably something that will retroactively go through your transactions and be able to build a report to tell you where all of your money is going, and if you have to manually set a category, it will recognize that category forever (like the gas station I go to EVERY TIME I get gas).

 

Meh. I just use a simple Excel spreadsheet to budget. Been doing it that way for years. I know where all my money goes - I don't need any fancy reports to show me.

 

thats what mint does and its been working flawless for me. im working on getting my alcohol and bars budget lower these days, i could save a lot of money by not going out as much.

 

smh... we had cigars last night at the whiskey bar and had a REALLY good evening.

i still use an excel spreadsheet with tabs per month to do a high level of making sure every dollar has a job to do.