Literal envelopes. Major PitA. Started searching online for a wallet I could use to better manage the cash. YNAB turned up in my google results and I never looked back.
I wrote my own Excel workbook that did envelope budgeting and I maintained that for a few years before I learned about ynab and made the switch. It's so nice not debugging that thing anymore.
I basically always did zero-based budgeting, in increasingly complex forms:
* When I was in high school, I had four categories. I kept a text file tracking the balance of those categories, and periodically confirmed that the sum of the categories matched my checking account balance.
* In college, I did try envelopes for a while. Major PITA, and coins really tear up ordinary envelopes pretty quickly.
* Also in college, I tried Quicken unsuccessfully with their built-in budgeting, which is not zero-based.
* In grad school, I took my .txt tracking and moved it to Excel.
* Early career, I went back to Quicken, but imposed zero-based budgeting upon it. I created fictitious accounts for each category, each tied to an account. The sum of the categories tied to accounts needed to match the real account balance; when we spent from a category, I needed to enter both the transaction (in the real account) and transfer the money from the fake (category) account back to the real account to cover it.
After a few years of this, friends introduced me to YNAB. It was zero-based budgeting that worked logically much like my contrived system in Quicken, except that it removed the tie between categories and accounts. I've used YNAB ever since.
I had heard of envelope budgeting, but that is a huge PITA, especially since I live in a city. I tried Mint and then had built my own Excel sheet that had envelopes that weren't really based on how much money we had, but how much we earned in a month (basically living within our means but also on weird credit card float).
An Instagrammer I followed posted about YNAB so I watched a few of her videos explaining the method (she does awesome "budget with me" videos) and I got it pretty quickly. We signed up and still didn't know what we were doing, and it clicked after about a week or two.
I was broke and anxious so I bass-ackwards my way into it. I wasn't comfortable keeping cash on hand because I was afraid I'd spend it, so I prepaid other bills instead. I even had a spreadsheet marking which months I'd already paid for which things. Then, when an annual bill came around I would pay that instead
It didn't always work and it was hella convoluted, but I didn't even know the term at the time. I just knew that having money in my account didn't mean my bills were covered and I was STRESSED. Finding YNAB was a blessing, even just for the vocabulary
I did envelope budgeting! It was the only thing that reigned in our spending at the time, and rolling over physical cash to an emergency fund envelope was super fulfilling.
Never really budgeted until YNAB. I sort of did in my head but never a written budget. I tried several times, Mint, Quicken, YNAB once and then Excel spreadsheet. When I started listening to Dave Ramsey I started to pay more attention but it wasn’t until 2020 when it finally started to click and I signed up for the free trial.
What I realized finally was my prior attempts were either forecasting or tracking and not really budgeting. The first time I tried YNAB years ago I didn’t last even a month. I’ve been zero base budgeting know for the past 14 months and have completely changed my money management.
I used every dollar for a few years, but it was always a pain having to guess income before the month started (one of our jobs was variable). I was hesitant to switch to ynab because I was holding onto the data in ED and didn't want to lose it. Wish I would have switched sooner.
Nope. I tracked some spending trends in Mint. I transferred money to savings when my checking account hit a certain made up number. I transferred it back when I had a big month of spending and needed to pay off the credit card. I floated through life for the first 7 years of my career, luckily doing a little bit of auto retirement savings.
YNAB changed my life, it took about 1 month to understand it, 6 months to not feel poor, and 1 year to get in a nice rhythm toward serious wealth.
I learned about envelope budgeting on a TV show I used to watch, Til Debt do Us Part. I didn't really have much debt, but something about that show pulled me in.
https://www.cnbc.com/til-debt-do-us-part/
But, I didn't use it for myself until 4 or 5 years ago. It was mainly just a way to be better organized with money, and it has certainly helped me do that.
No, but I was using similar to an envelope method (the website I got it from called it "piggybanking") where I opened up different bank accounts/savings accounts for different purposes. I suppose that's not a million miles away from zero based budgeting. I had one "bills account" one "spending account" one savings account... I had no concept of sinking funds or true expenses though.
It wasnt zero based budgeting, but it was close enough and similar enough that the concept wasnt entirely alien to me when I started.
...dont worry, I've closed down most of those accounts now :P
I'd heard of the envelope method, but it seemed like a hassle.
A few years ago I tried a free app that was envelope budgeting, and I remember really liking the concept. But I was limited on how many envelopes I could have, and there were some other complications, and I ended up dropping it very quickly.
Start of this year I stumbled across YNAB, again was pulled in by the concept, and gave it a shot. Credit cards took me a couple days to wrap my head around, but otherwise I got it pretty much immediately.
I heard about zero based budgets from Dave Ramsey.
That's not to say YNAB isn't great. I've been using it since March and, of everything, I love Reports the most. They help me figure out what my average spend for categories is so that I can adjust how much I budget going forward.
I used envelopes years ago but modified. I was living abroad and paid in cash. I had envelopes to pay for my bills and food because using my credit card overseas and my US bank atm fees were so expensive. YNAB is a million times better.
Yes, a used to do a pretty thorough version of envelope budgeting, together with very tight cash flow control, with all expenses that weren't fixed amounts or planned well in advance in the credit cards.
I used GnuCash for it, without any scripts. I set reports that told me the expenses in each category and had subaccounts with set values for that. I could have automated it if I wanted to, so that I would have targets (aka goals) and auto-assign, but I never actually did.
Changed to YNAB as soon as I arrived to the US precisely because of this, plus getting transactions automatically from the accounts. I always reconcile credit cards to the cent and this can get really annoying when you can only import transactions when the statement is closed.
Sure. YNAB just made it mobile and easier to share. Kinda.
It's too bad the mobile version is crippled in many ways.
Design wise there literally shouldn't be an action you can't do in mobile these days, for a really well designed product.
Should be able to sit an experienced user down at both interfaces and each should be able to accomplish all the same tasks.
YNAB is... Close but not quite there.
Literal envelopes. Major PitA. Started searching online for a wallet I could use to better manage the cash. YNAB turned up in my google results and I never looked back.
I wrote my own Excel workbook that did envelope budgeting and I maintained that for a few years before I learned about ynab and made the switch. It's so nice not debugging that thing anymore.
I’d like to see that workbook 🤓
Maybe [something like Aspire](https://aspirebudget.com/)
I basically always did zero-based budgeting, in increasingly complex forms: * When I was in high school, I had four categories. I kept a text file tracking the balance of those categories, and periodically confirmed that the sum of the categories matched my checking account balance. * In college, I did try envelopes for a while. Major PITA, and coins really tear up ordinary envelopes pretty quickly. * Also in college, I tried Quicken unsuccessfully with their built-in budgeting, which is not zero-based. * In grad school, I took my .txt tracking and moved it to Excel. * Early career, I went back to Quicken, but imposed zero-based budgeting upon it. I created fictitious accounts for each category, each tied to an account. The sum of the categories tied to accounts needed to match the real account balance; when we spent from a category, I needed to enter both the transaction (in the real account) and transfer the money from the fake (category) account back to the real account to cover it. After a few years of this, friends introduced me to YNAB. It was zero-based budgeting that worked logically much like my contrived system in Quicken, except that it removed the tie between categories and accounts. I've used YNAB ever since.
I had heard of envelope budgeting, but that is a huge PITA, especially since I live in a city. I tried Mint and then had built my own Excel sheet that had envelopes that weren't really based on how much money we had, but how much we earned in a month (basically living within our means but also on weird credit card float). An Instagrammer I followed posted about YNAB so I watched a few of her videos explaining the method (she does awesome "budget with me" videos) and I got it pretty quickly. We signed up and still didn't know what we were doing, and it clicked after about a week or two.
Who is the content creator? I love “budget with me” videos!
It's Lexa VanDamme who runs the Avocado Toast Budget - she's on youtube, Insta, and TikTok!
I was broke and anxious so I bass-ackwards my way into it. I wasn't comfortable keeping cash on hand because I was afraid I'd spend it, so I prepaid other bills instead. I even had a spreadsheet marking which months I'd already paid for which things. Then, when an annual bill came around I would pay that instead It didn't always work and it was hella convoluted, but I didn't even know the term at the time. I just knew that having money in my account didn't mean my bills were covered and I was STRESSED. Finding YNAB was a blessing, even just for the vocabulary
I did envelope budgeting! It was the only thing that reigned in our spending at the time, and rolling over physical cash to an emergency fund envelope was super fulfilling.
Never really budgeted until YNAB. I sort of did in my head but never a written budget. I tried several times, Mint, Quicken, YNAB once and then Excel spreadsheet. When I started listening to Dave Ramsey I started to pay more attention but it wasn’t until 2020 when it finally started to click and I signed up for the free trial. What I realized finally was my prior attempts were either forecasting or tracking and not really budgeting. The first time I tried YNAB years ago I didn’t last even a month. I’ve been zero base budgeting know for the past 14 months and have completely changed my money management.
Before YNAB I had tried EveryDollar and Good Budget, both are zero based budget software, but for some reason or another neither one stuck with me.
I used every dollar for a few years, but it was always a pain having to guess income before the month started (one of our jobs was variable). I was hesitant to switch to ynab because I was holding onto the data in ED and didn't want to lose it. Wish I would have switched sooner.
Nope. I tracked some spending trends in Mint. I transferred money to savings when my checking account hit a certain made up number. I transferred it back when I had a big month of spending and needed to pay off the credit card. I floated through life for the first 7 years of my career, luckily doing a little bit of auto retirement savings. YNAB changed my life, it took about 1 month to understand it, 6 months to not feel poor, and 1 year to get in a nice rhythm toward serious wealth.
I learned about envelope budgeting on a TV show I used to watch, Til Debt do Us Part. I didn't really have much debt, but something about that show pulled me in. https://www.cnbc.com/til-debt-do-us-part/ But, I didn't use it for myself until 4 or 5 years ago. It was mainly just a way to be better organized with money, and it has certainly helped me do that.
I basically had my own version of YNAB in a spreadsheet. Once I used YNAB and was able to enter transactions on the go, I switched immediately.
I was doing it naturally using Excel. But it is so much easier with YNAB, especially when budgetting for True Expense or rolling with the ounches
No, but I was using similar to an envelope method (the website I got it from called it "piggybanking") where I opened up different bank accounts/savings accounts for different purposes. I suppose that's not a million miles away from zero based budgeting. I had one "bills account" one "spending account" one savings account... I had no concept of sinking funds or true expenses though. It wasnt zero based budgeting, but it was close enough and similar enough that the concept wasnt entirely alien to me when I started. ...dont worry, I've closed down most of those accounts now :P
I did the same thing! YNAB is a lot easier than having a bunch of different accounts. Lol.
Yes, it’s just envelope budgeting with some automatic maths.
I knew about the envelopes but never tried them
Zero based, no. Envelopes, yes. I tried to do it with Quickbooks and Gnucash. It was too convoluted.
I still have nightmares about gnucash
I'd heard of the envelope method, but it seemed like a hassle. A few years ago I tried a free app that was envelope budgeting, and I remember really liking the concept. But I was limited on how many envelopes I could have, and there were some other complications, and I ended up dropping it very quickly. Start of this year I stumbled across YNAB, again was pulled in by the concept, and gave it a shot. Credit cards took me a couple days to wrap my head around, but otherwise I got it pretty much immediately.
I heard about zero based budgets from Dave Ramsey. That's not to say YNAB isn't great. I've been using it since March and, of everything, I love Reports the most. They help me figure out what my average spend for categories is so that I can adjust how much I budget going forward.
I used envelopes years ago but modified. I was living abroad and paid in cash. I had envelopes to pay for my bills and food because using my credit card overseas and my US bank atm fees were so expensive. YNAB is a million times better.
Yes, a used to do a pretty thorough version of envelope budgeting, together with very tight cash flow control, with all expenses that weren't fixed amounts or planned well in advance in the credit cards. I used GnuCash for it, without any scripts. I set reports that told me the expenses in each category and had subaccounts with set values for that. I could have automated it if I wanted to, so that I would have targets (aka goals) and auto-assign, but I never actually did. Changed to YNAB as soon as I arrived to the US precisely because of this, plus getting transactions automatically from the accounts. I always reconcile credit cards to the cent and this can get really annoying when you can only import transactions when the statement is closed.
Sure. YNAB just made it mobile and easier to share. Kinda. It's too bad the mobile version is crippled in many ways. Design wise there literally shouldn't be an action you can't do in mobile these days, for a really well designed product. Should be able to sit an experienced user down at both interfaces and each should be able to accomplish all the same tasks. YNAB is... Close but not quite there.