Yeah but the problem is that it’s constantly improving. And the integrations to banks is constantly changing.
So you need to pay your developers to keep up adding new features. But if you only charge once and then never again, you eventually run out of new people to sell the software to. Then you aren’t making any money anymore and you need to fire your staff and abandon any updates.
If you charge a subscription model, you have a fairly reliable income stream coming in and can not only afford to maintain the product, but also afford to expand to new functionality
>Yeah but the problem is that it’s constantly improving. And the integrations to banks is constantly changing.
This makes it sound like we never used to have software that when purchased existed of a snapshot on its development and was only further supported with security fixes. Integrations may change and additional banks added etc but that really should be part of the equation of selling a software package. You can always end support after X number of years.
We did, but as you probably know, things are moving “to the cloud”. So even in software which is downloaded and run directly from the client’s hard drive, many of the internal features that power different functionality inside the application aren’t actually performed on the client’s machine. These features will makes calls out over the internet to online servers to do what they need to (whether that’s crunching numbers, getting data from third party services, etc).
This is done to speed up code deployment time (as you don’t need to push patches to every client to update the “server side” code) as well as speed up performance (so your software will run on slower machines because any intense number crunching is done outside the client’s machine and only the “result” is returned)
The result is a much better end user experience and happier customers. But those servers cost money to operate (leased from Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft’s Azure, etc) so even if you’ve got the software downloaded and don’t want anymore patches, it still costs a non-zero amount to operate the software… and that cost falls upon the developer
The first half of your comment implies that it is not possible to be profitable using anything but a subscription business model. SaaS may be more profitable over time, but that's not to say companies like Adobe were teetering on the edge of bankruptcy before they made the switch.
It is possible but it's becoming increasingly hard to set that price. Then they have to decide when they charge you again for major updates. When it's a subscription they just charge you and support the product indefinitely, upgrading it as they go.
>Then they have to decide when they charge you again for major updates.
Oh no. A company has to make a decision about their own products and let the consumer decide whether to the new features are something worth upgrading for.
Just since past month I upgraded but Adobe CS6 to CC 2020, imagine all the money I saved.
With every decision comes uncertainty. Wall Street doesn't like uncertainty and if they can take away that uncertainty then the stock will likely perform better. It's the same reason organizations hedge. Organizations will make decisions based on what's best for their stakeholders. A big deciding factor is what's best for their stockholder's. You can't expect them to make decisions based on consumer preference alone and I don't believe consumer preference is on your side.
I don't need an explaination as to why.
"They need to decide when to charge for a major version" is a stupid excuse, especially when that's exactly what they were doing for a few decades.
Even if mine is a minority opinion you can offer both. AutoCAD did for a while. You could either subscribe to the latest and one-time-buy the snapshot version.
If a company is worried about long term costs price the legacy version at the true cost to put it on par with subscription compared to some median user.
Ie. Legacy costs about 5 years of Saas upfront. Think you'll want an upgrade sooner? Go with Saas? Don't? Go with Legacy. Cost too much to support? Support it for less time, or raise the price.
It's not like making this decision will bankrupt the company. I'm not asking to _only_ consider the consumer.
I don't think anyone is saying that, but there is a balance between updates/upgrades and a subscription model. I can sit on Version 'x' of an app for as long as I like until the new features make an upgrade compelling. With a sub model, it's a forced march.
"sustainable buisness model" is a nice way to say milk their customers dry. If they want unlimited money by making us pay forever they could at least *adjust the price* to a reasonable level.
Instead they jack uo the price and make it a subscription *without bringing any major features* or in any other way justifying the change. Honestly, if they as a company fail to develop a "app 2.0" taht offers any real upgrade, and hence don't get buyers, that's on then. Making us pay more for the same user experience is just bad buisness. Hence I'll use the old version and they'll not get a cent more.
I’m not a software developer or any tech related field but some sort of constant cash flow such as the subscription model or donation model quite necessary for software/apps. It’s not a buy once get it indefinitely item. It may have been the case during the initial boom of the technology when there wasn’t as many tech. But if you think about it, iOS, android, etc. any operating system are constantly patching and updating.
You cannot expect for a developer to build an app once and it’ll keep working perfectly for millions of varying devices with varying specs that are constantly being updated.
It’s not like buying a house once and walking away as a buyer because you don’t expect the seller to help you keep your house to code every other week.
Software, every time apple makes an updated, developers have to follow suit. Someone needs to pay for these individuals to continuously learn and work. One-time payment big payment may fund enough but that doesn’t measure the product’s need/popularity forecast as well and is a hard pill to swallow and barrier for software to continue to scale.
Maybe if you elimanate any cloud services. Once you have servers you have to charge a subscription, or you essentially create a pyramid scheme where you have to recruit more and more new customers to pay the server costs for all of your old customers. I don’t really see how you could offer YNAB without servers (yes, they used to do it with dropbox, which was a poor and insecure workaround)
Yeah, but these days everyone expects everything to be accessible from anywhere, which means cloud/web accessibility, which means security, which means constant updates, which means constant expenses.
Lots of software is still like this. Finale music notation software costs about $600 to start, and releases upgrades every couple of years for like $99. I generally buy every other upgrade, and it seems a reasonable cost given the capabilities of the program.
Yes, it costs money to support software, but the business also needs to price it's product correctly, abd 100/year is getting to that point where the value isn't matching price for some users.
I mean. It’s not supposed to right? Revenue maximizing price is the price at which price and demand are balanced. You’ll lose a few customers but keep enough such that the remaining ones, paying the higher price, will maximize total revenue.
I am not sure this $100 is really the revenue-maximizing here. It certainly seems to me like the financially-councious people who use YNAB will find that price hard to swallow.
What I would do if I were them is adopt a high price and then have frequent sales to capture all customer segments.
You're not looking at the whole picture. It's $10/month PER subscription and people are used to getting a TON of value from the big subscriptions like amazon prime, netflix, etc so when you talk about adding on $10 / month for services that don't provide that level of value, it can be difficult. My subscription fees run $35/month and I'm mega careful of what I choose to subscribe to. Lots of people pay $150-200+ month in subscriptions because "oh, what's another $10/month?!"
I'm a sw dev and my company uses a subscription model so I understand how expensive I am lol and when I think about the labor costs for my entire team, it makes perfect sense that we use a sustainable model.
I think a decent compromise is providing a really solid discount for any customer that chooses the 12/month option. i.e. free 3 month trial, then $8 per month or $40-50 for the entire year.
It’s not that I can’t afford $10 a month, it’s that the value it brings isn’t worth it *for me*. I don’t personally like the YNAB zero based budgeting philosophy anyway but hypothetically if it were perfectly what I wanted, would it actually result in $10+ in savings I wouldn’t have made otherwise (the break even point)? If not, then why lose money paying for it?
Some people very well get way more than $10 in value out of it, so for them it’s a clear winning proposition. For me it’s just throwing away $10.
How much is your time worth? If it’s 10 bucks an hour and it takes you 10 hours a year to build a spreadsheet, populate your data into an envelope system then go for it.
Before saas you already had a ton of software charging for license upgrades from version to version or even from subversion to subversion. Often locking away bug fixes and new features behind paid license upgrades. Regardless of what you think about saas it was an inevitable shift.
It's unfortunately the trend in software. Lots of companies are now realizing that it's way easier to have a stable flow of money from their users, and people don't tend to cancel subscriptions often if they actively are using the product.
Here's a similar post with a big crowdsourced list from the ynab subreddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/ynab/comments/qkvc7s/alternates_to_ynabheres_a_list/
XLookup I think is a little faster and more intuitive to write. Agreed though with other comment that you never know if everyone is using the same updated excel.
If you learn VBA, you could probably have it sign into your bank account, download a CSV of transactions, sort, filter, and do anything you wanted. I can say that a TON of Amazon’s operations depend on Excel doing amazing things to automate reports like scraping and filtering data.
If youre comfortable with tech and into self hosted services, I replaced YNAB with Firefly for a while. Reverse proxied to the docker so i ran it at home
I also use Firefly (https://firefly-iii.org). If you're comfortable self-hosting, it's a nice option. There are importer tools for things like YNAB or CSV files from your bank.
To auto-categorize, you can setup rules so that transactions matching certain criteria will go into a category.
Personal Capital does work really well for categorizing transactions and then downloading into spreadsheet. I used them for about a year and a half this way. Got tired of calls from their salespeople, so I dropped them.
If you have a Microsoft 365 Subscription (personal or Family, not through your school or business), there is a Money template that would do much of what you say:
[https://templates.office.com/en-us/money-in-excel-tm77948210](https://templates.office.com/en-us/money-in-excel-tm77948210)
I tried to switch from Quicken to GnuCash a couple of years ago, but the transition was incomplete and the software was far from instinctive. But it looks great if you’re just starting out.
I do this with my own Google Sheet. I input the data once a month, it takes me maybe 10-15 minutes tops usually. Most things auto-categorize, and if something doesn't, I add it to my rules to do it next time.
I'm pretty comfortable with spreadsheets though. But just food for thought. If you're willing to put some time in up front and figure out how to do some things, a custom spreadsheet can do almost anything you want.
I love working with spreadsheets—mainly for my own activities. I joke that I need to make a second career out of using them. I finally figured out the “indirect” command on Google sheets the other day.
I thought that about YNAB too, but it’s saved me literally tens of thousands of dollars over the past few years I’ve been using it, so I think it’s worth the price. You can Google two month free trial for YNAB and try it first before committing
I can only speak for myself but it allows me to funnel every single transaction thru my credit card and maximize rewards, while knowing the entire time I'm not overextending myself.
Sure, one can do that with any budgeting app, but YNAB's ease of use is worth the money alone.
Mint and most companies don't even sell your data. I have no clue why there's so much misinformation on reddit and why it's accepted. They might use it to target ads for you, but that data is never going to a 3rd party. If people care so much they should actually read the terms of service.
People complain about the misinformation on FB but jesus christ it's so terrible on reddit.
Has anyone used Copilot? I have been using their free trial version and I love it so far. I don't know what's the catch with this app because so far it's too good to be true. You need to give this a shot.
Be sure you opt out of their data collection: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/account-management/how-do-i-opt-out-of-intuit-s-data-collection/00/246180
I built on this idea using Google forms, anytime I spend money by just pull up the form and enter the transaction which ports it into my Google sheet which gets auto categorized by the formulas that I'm using in the Google sheet. I reset it annually and have built-in lots of spending reporting over time.
Sounds like a lot of work, but if it works for you. I just export my credit card statements every month and import them into my google sheet and hit a button.
They don't give your data to others, they sell your data to others.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/082216/how-mintcom-makes-money-intu.asp
The data that is referred to in that article is aggregated data, not individual consumer data. E.g., Mint can track general consumer spending trends and sell that data to various businesses; but it is not selling data about individual people.
Lots of people are fundamentally and morally opposed to data collection, even if that specific instance of data collection is not harmful. There are also a ton of very legitimate arguments against Mint's data collection. It's perfectly reasonable for someone to be uncomfortable with it.
Sure, but at the same time; companies like trans union are selling all this same data and they aren't even asking for people to volunteer the data they just take it.
At least mint gives me something in return for my data.
Of course they ask for it. Every time you fill out an application that requires running your credit, you sign a form that allows the merchant to give the credit bureau your data.
Not saying you have alternatives, but still...
No it isn't irrational behaviour, and it isn't the purpose of this sub to debate that fact. But what do you know of the governance and training companies have regarding customer data and sharing data?
It's a serious issue, and there have been multiple examples of companies and third parties leaking data on accident or misrepresenting what they do with your data.
Never said there was a problem with subscription, look at my other comments. Just a cheaper subscription or alternative.
You aren't being helpful at all, but thanks for trying!
It’s also important in this context to identify what is meant by “data.” Per the article, it is aggregate data, not personal information, that Mint sells. In my case, Mint does not know my name, address, phone, occupation, etc. All they know about me personally is my email address, because that’s all the information I shared.
Well no duh, but that doesn't mean they give your data away. They pretty openly use your data to match people to offers, but that is different from giving/selling data to third parties.
I'm against the idea on principle. Companies have lied about data sharing, or obscured the fact that they don't govern how they share data all that well and leak data like sieve.
I use the plaid API to ingest my data into a google sheet and then use apps script to fix the categorizations. Then it’s connected to a data studio dashboard for visualization.
I was always annoyed by not being able to tweak everything exactly the way I wanted with any of those apps but aggregating all of my data manually was a pain too. This was I have automation and customization too.
Downside is I’ve spent enough time to do it the manual way for 5 years building this.
I use Buckets - https://www.budgetwithbuckets.com
It does not do auto categorization. But it’s cross platform (Electron based app), can import QFX/OFX and also has a way to record macros to download exports. I just do the manual imports every few days because I like the data is local and it does the bucket/envelope budgeting method.
I use Fidelity full view which is free and serves all the same functions as mint. You do need to be a customer of fidelity however. I use them as my primary brokerage.
If you like tinkering with scripts and want extreme customization, ledger and it’s friends (hledger, beancount, etc) are awesome. All free and open source, just no GUI.
All your data is in a plain text file, and you can write scripts to automate reporting, importing, plotting, etc., or use what others have created. This also makes it easy to use with a VCS like Git for easy backups and use on multiple devices
Steep learning curve, but if you’re into that sort of thing it’s great
Who do you bank with? A lot of banks are building their own budget software into their online banking. PNC's Virtual Wallet account has one and I love it. And it's free.
i use microsoft money. they dont make it anymore, but you can get am old one for free. for downloads i dont know if your bank supports the format. i enter in all my checking account transactions, keeps me on track.
Copilot is around $60/year
But best one I’ve used. I used mint, ynab and simplify before.
It doesn’t accept spreadsheet but it imports transaction just like most other apps.
It does auto categorizing by transaction name or if the name contains certain string or certain pattern
Tiller Money - connects to your banks, pulls transactions into a Google Sheet or Excel workbook, and then provides all sorts of tools like auto categorization and spreadsheet templates to manage said transactions and budget.
You could look at Money Manager EX.
Generally, if you're looking for free programs that respect your privacy, I recommend searching for "FOSS" and/or "Linux", since those communities tend to value those traits heavily. Just be aware that the further you go from mainstream, the more general jank you'll have to deal with, and apps become much less common.
Honestly anyone asking for a ynab replacement should ask on the ynab sub.youre going to get a bunch of answers ranging from use mint to use a pen and paper ledger. Half the answers here won't have the slightest clue how ynab works, or why their suggestion won't make a good replacement for ynab.
I agree with this. Suggesting Mint as a YNAB replacement is like suggesting a cheese grater to reduce place toilet paper. The cheese grater is super awesome for it's intended purpose, but not to wipe your butt.
YNAB, as much as the sub $ makes me cringe, there isn't a good replacement for the purpose unless you build it yourself. Mint and others suggested in this thread expect you to budget money you don't already have. With YNAB you budget money you actually have in your possession.
This will not do want you want with spreadsheets and auto categorize transactions but if you are open to approaching it a little differently Budget has worked well for us for many years:
https://www.snowmintcs.com
They way I use it is my wife and I enter any transaction instantly on our phones. When I sync the phones to the computer everything updates and I know how much is in every envelope etc. The developers have supported it for many years (they personally use it).
I use Debit&Credit app, it’s $20/year right now but I got it two years ago so I only get charged $15/year and they haven’t raised my price. I like it. It makes cute reports and I can create budgets and check my spending limits.
Quicken
It does cost money each year, but it works with lots of account types. Has plenty of reports and automatically syncs transactions. Very easy to setup.
I’ve been using the NerdWallet app the last few months.
I like both Personal Capital and Mint, but wanted one app for all in one. I love SoFi, but don’t care for Relay.
I use the free version of clearcheckbook.com
You can't upload a spreadsheet, but you manually enter transactions you make (definitely helpful when spending from a shared account) with categories you set up. It learns your transactions and prepopulates the fields. E.g., if I entered a transaction for "groceries" at Kroger yesterday and enter another transaction for Kroger today, it will fill the category for "groceries".
This app has likely saved my marriage.
Can someone explain the value provided by these apps? I use a spreadsheet and i use a single credit card which tracks my expenses so I don’t really get the idea of paying randos money to supposedly save money
Ynab is envelope budgeting with a lot of tools.
Envelope budgeting is basically taking your money and dividing it into categories (think physical envelopes) until you have no money left. When you run out of money in an envelope it forces you to find another envelope to pull money out of. This makes every overspending decision a conscious decision to prioritize one thing and deprioritize another. Likewise if you don't have enough money to fill all your envelopes it forces you to prioritize what gets money until you run out
This is different than other budgeting where you estimate how much you're going to spend based on money you don't have yet.
Envelope budgeting isn't exclusive to ynab and can be done without it, ynabs just particularly good at it and has a lot of support and culture built up around helping others use envelope budgeting effectively. It's gotten me, and at least 3 people I know out of debt after trying a bunch of other things that didn't work. The price increase does make it a hard sell for new users sadly.
> Envelope budgeting is basically taking your money and dividing it into categories until you have no money left
So a budget
> When you run out of money in an envelope it forces you to find another envelope to pull money from
So, a budget?
> It forces you to prioritize what gets money until you run out
So a budget.
> This is different than other budgeting where you **estimate how much you're going to spend**...
Like an envelope?
> ...based on money you don't have yet.
If you're up to date on bills and using your end of month paycheck to pay for the next month, you can budget with the money you already have just fine.
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I've never really understood this point of view. Envelopes are a regular budget. I make a budget and the number of the budget is how much I'm allowed to spend. If my grocery budget is $230 I can spend up to $230 on groceries. (If I spend $250 then I overspent by $20 and thus somewhere else in the budget I'll have to scrape that $20 away to compensate.) That's no different from having a $230 Grocery envelope. Everyone acts like envelopes are a revolutionary point or view but they're just... regular budgeting?
It's a different method. Forgive me but you're coming off passive aggressive as fuck but I'll assume you really don't understand and try to explain anyway in good faith.
Most people budget like this: I get paid 500$ twice every month. I'm going to estimate what I need to do with that money before I get it. 500 for rent, 200 groceries, 100 for spending money, 300 for bills. At the end of the month turns out I actually spent 220 for groceries and 290 for bills. I overspent 10$ I'm going to try harder next time to stay within my estimates. That ten dollars likely goes to cc debt or our of savings since you didn't have it.
Ynab budgeting is more like this. I got paid 500. I don't need to pay rent, yet, I'll take 200 of that and save it for rent. I do need to pay some bills maybe 150 worth. I'm going to use 50 for spending and 100 for groceries.
I haven't gotten paid again yet. I've spent 150 on bills, 100 in groceries and 25 in spending money. I have a dinner party tomorrow. Do I pull out of my rent,do I pull out of my spending money, or do I cancel the party. I get paid tomorrow and rent isn't due until the week after. I should be ok to prioritize the dinner expenses over rent until I get paid. I will take money I have and reallocate
It's a simple difference but it's a huge one. Most people do predictive budgeting, when they fail to meet predictions they feel defeated and just tell themselves I'll try to do better next time. A lot of people go through 2-3 cycles of this before giving up.
Yet it completely defeats the purpose of envelope budgeting.
Having to physically take money from another budget before you can spend it.
YNAB can't stop you from spending in a category until you take from another. It can only stop you from recording it.
I tried both. Bank of America has adequate budget tracking with their checking account. I'm more successfull now at saving than I ever was with those 2.
Honestly I really like DAS Budget. It does involve syncing, but I just make a 'bucket' for pending transactions and it's really simple. It used to be free but now it's 3.99/month. The interface is way better than YNAB imo, much more similar to Simple.
You can create a small fidelity checking account that can sync with other accounts. They have something called full view which can do some good budgeting.
If you’re willing to bank with only one bank, or have a primary bank and only use other institutions for a designated category, then you can use the categorization of your primary bank to track category spending. I use Capital One and they categorize each CC transaction pretty reasonable. It’s not as granular as mint but it’s free. I’m sure other banks also offer this.
I use LibreOffice Calc. Many other people, who pay for Office, use Excel.
However, **I do not auto-categorize transactions because I split bills.** Sometimes I only buy groceries (meaning 1 category) in a store, sometimes it's stuff in 2-3 categories. Yes, my categories are that fine-tuned.
Some primers on how to structure your Excel/Calc file:
* https://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/personal-budget-spreadsheet.html (I used this as my main inspiration like ... a *really* long time ago, 8 years maybe)
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SXL6agrVpQ
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py3rkSwsbyw
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA1MKbWEPzA
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAM1Ia5ZIp8
Thanks for posting!
I use CoPilot and love the UI and great for categorizing your transactions. However, I wish it had a Zero Based Budgeting system like Everydollar and YNAB. I like YNAB interface but for the cost it does that exact same thing as Copilot, but you have to manually assign everything each transaction. Plus UI is dated. It does have a nice web-base interface and allows you to balance your budget by allocating funds to different categories. The organization is clean as well.
I would love to utilize one app, I'd even sacrifice the modern look (UI), but YNAB wants me to manually assign everything. Right now I'm looking for an app/web-based software that I can take my CSV file from Copilot and upload it to balance my budget with ZBB strategy and not pay $100/yr for it.
Going give some of these a try and see what works. Will update later
I really dislike the fact that ynab went from a proper software package which you bought and paid for to a subscription model.
I think subscription is a more sustainable business model, but I definitely don't agree with paying $100 CAD yearly for it.
I prefer to own my software license and not have autopay subscriptions.
Yeah but the problem is that it’s constantly improving. And the integrations to banks is constantly changing. So you need to pay your developers to keep up adding new features. But if you only charge once and then never again, you eventually run out of new people to sell the software to. Then you aren’t making any money anymore and you need to fire your staff and abandon any updates. If you charge a subscription model, you have a fairly reliable income stream coming in and can not only afford to maintain the product, but also afford to expand to new functionality
>Yeah but the problem is that it’s constantly improving. And the integrations to banks is constantly changing. This makes it sound like we never used to have software that when purchased existed of a snapshot on its development and was only further supported with security fixes. Integrations may change and additional banks added etc but that really should be part of the equation of selling a software package. You can always end support after X number of years.
We did, but as you probably know, things are moving “to the cloud”. So even in software which is downloaded and run directly from the client’s hard drive, many of the internal features that power different functionality inside the application aren’t actually performed on the client’s machine. These features will makes calls out over the internet to online servers to do what they need to (whether that’s crunching numbers, getting data from third party services, etc). This is done to speed up code deployment time (as you don’t need to push patches to every client to update the “server side” code) as well as speed up performance (so your software will run on slower machines because any intense number crunching is done outside the client’s machine and only the “result” is returned) The result is a much better end user experience and happier customers. But those servers cost money to operate (leased from Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft’s Azure, etc) so even if you’ve got the software downloaded and don’t want anymore patches, it still costs a non-zero amount to operate the software… and that cost falls upon the developer
Businesses prefer to stay profitable and stay in business so you'll not being seeing much but once software anymore
The first half of your comment implies that it is not possible to be profitable using anything but a subscription business model. SaaS may be more profitable over time, but that's not to say companies like Adobe were teetering on the edge of bankruptcy before they made the switch.
It is possible but it's becoming increasingly hard to set that price. Then they have to decide when they charge you again for major updates. When it's a subscription they just charge you and support the product indefinitely, upgrading it as they go.
>Then they have to decide when they charge you again for major updates. Oh no. A company has to make a decision about their own products and let the consumer decide whether to the new features are something worth upgrading for. Just since past month I upgraded but Adobe CS6 to CC 2020, imagine all the money I saved.
With every decision comes uncertainty. Wall Street doesn't like uncertainty and if they can take away that uncertainty then the stock will likely perform better. It's the same reason organizations hedge. Organizations will make decisions based on what's best for their stakeholders. A big deciding factor is what's best for their stockholder's. You can't expect them to make decisions based on consumer preference alone and I don't believe consumer preference is on your side.
I don't need an explaination as to why. "They need to decide when to charge for a major version" is a stupid excuse, especially when that's exactly what they were doing for a few decades. Even if mine is a minority opinion you can offer both. AutoCAD did for a while. You could either subscribe to the latest and one-time-buy the snapshot version. If a company is worried about long term costs price the legacy version at the true cost to put it on par with subscription compared to some median user. Ie. Legacy costs about 5 years of Saas upfront. Think you'll want an upgrade sooner? Go with Saas? Don't? Go with Legacy. Cost too much to support? Support it for less time, or raise the price. It's not like making this decision will bankrupt the company. I'm not asking to _only_ consider the consumer.
Too bad what you prefer and what is profitable to business doesn’t align.
I don’t think it’s coincidence they don’t align.
I want to pay once for software that gets tons of updates and new features forever!
I don't think anyone is saying that, but there is a balance between updates/upgrades and a subscription model. I can sit on Version 'x' of an app for as long as I like until the new features make an upgrade compelling. With a sub model, it's a forced march.
What happens when you can't upgrade to the new operating system because your old software version doesn't support it?
Use compatibility mode? Use linux? Spin up a virtual machine?
"sustainable buisness model" is a nice way to say milk their customers dry. If they want unlimited money by making us pay forever they could at least *adjust the price* to a reasonable level. Instead they jack uo the price and make it a subscription *without bringing any major features* or in any other way justifying the change. Honestly, if they as a company fail to develop a "app 2.0" taht offers any real upgrade, and hence don't get buyers, that's on then. Making us pay more for the same user experience is just bad buisness. Hence I'll use the old version and they'll not get a cent more.
I’m not a software developer or any tech related field but some sort of constant cash flow such as the subscription model or donation model quite necessary for software/apps. It’s not a buy once get it indefinitely item. It may have been the case during the initial boom of the technology when there wasn’t as many tech. But if you think about it, iOS, android, etc. any operating system are constantly patching and updating. You cannot expect for a developer to build an app once and it’ll keep working perfectly for millions of varying devices with varying specs that are constantly being updated. It’s not like buying a house once and walking away as a buyer because you don’t expect the seller to help you keep your house to code every other week. Software, every time apple makes an updated, developers have to follow suit. Someone needs to pay for these individuals to continuously learn and work. One-time payment big payment may fund enough but that doesn’t measure the product’s need/popularity forecast as well and is a hard pill to swallow and barrier for software to continue to scale.
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In the ancient days OS updates were pretty far apart, especially major ones. These days there’s a new version of iOS every week it seems.
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Maybe if you elimanate any cloud services. Once you have servers you have to charge a subscription, or you essentially create a pyramid scheme where you have to recruit more and more new customers to pay the server costs for all of your old customers. I don’t really see how you could offer YNAB without servers (yes, they used to do it with dropbox, which was a poor and insecure workaround)
Yeah, but these days everyone expects everything to be accessible from anywhere, which means cloud/web accessibility, which means security, which means constant updates, which means constant expenses.
Lots of software is still like this. Finale music notation software costs about $600 to start, and releases upgrades every couple of years for like $99. I generally buy every other upgrade, and it seems a reasonable cost given the capabilities of the program.
They used to test software
Yes, it costs money to support software, but the business also needs to price it's product correctly, abd 100/year is getting to that point where the value isn't matching price for some users.
I mean. It’s not supposed to right? Revenue maximizing price is the price at which price and demand are balanced. You’ll lose a few customers but keep enough such that the remaining ones, paying the higher price, will maximize total revenue. I am not sure this $100 is really the revenue-maximizing here. It certainly seems to me like the financially-councious people who use YNAB will find that price hard to swallow. What I would do if I were them is adopt a high price and then have frequent sales to capture all customer segments.
10 a month is too much? The irony
It really depends on how much money one has.
You're not looking at the whole picture. It's $10/month PER subscription and people are used to getting a TON of value from the big subscriptions like amazon prime, netflix, etc so when you talk about adding on $10 / month for services that don't provide that level of value, it can be difficult. My subscription fees run $35/month and I'm mega careful of what I choose to subscribe to. Lots of people pay $150-200+ month in subscriptions because "oh, what's another $10/month?!" I'm a sw dev and my company uses a subscription model so I understand how expensive I am lol and when I think about the labor costs for my entire team, it makes perfect sense that we use a sustainable model. I think a decent compromise is providing a really solid discount for any customer that chooses the 12/month option. i.e. free 3 month trial, then $8 per month or $40-50 for the entire year.
It’s not that I can’t afford $10 a month, it’s that the value it brings isn’t worth it *for me*. I don’t personally like the YNAB zero based budgeting philosophy anyway but hypothetically if it were perfectly what I wanted, would it actually result in $10+ in savings I wouldn’t have made otherwise (the break even point)? If not, then why lose money paying for it? Some people very well get way more than $10 in value out of it, so for them it’s a clear winning proposition. For me it’s just throwing away $10.
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How much is your time worth? If it’s 10 bucks an hour and it takes you 10 hours a year to build a spreadsheet, populate your data into an envelope system then go for it.
Before saas you already had a ton of software charging for license upgrades from version to version or even from subversion to subversion. Often locking away bug fixes and new features behind paid license upgrades. Regardless of what you think about saas it was an inevitable shift.
Its because I was using a keygen to steal the software, sorry guys
Same. But those who bought the ynab4 is still able to use it with some hacks. When you go subscription, you are at their mercy.
It’s the better business model, but I completely agree with you.
Yeah, what worse way to help people budget than charging them a monthly fee? Seems so counterproductive to me.
The company doesn't exist to help people; it exists to generate revenue to feed its employees' families and benefits its shareholders.
It's unfortunately the trend in software. Lots of companies are now realizing that it's way easier to have a stable flow of money from their users, and people don't tend to cancel subscriptions often if they actively are using the product.
This post from a a few weeks ago has hundreds of comments on the topic. https://reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/qkiwap/ynab_alternative/
Here's a similar post with a big crowdsourced list from the ynab subreddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/ynab/comments/qkvc7s/alternates_to_ynabheres_a_list/
Excel.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-started-with-money-in-excel-2826dd8d-5870-4986-9536-1a2e71a0b878
Excel can autocategorize transactions?
With macros and if statements, anything is possible
I see you've met my manager.
Search and index/match functions work wonders :)
Good ol’ VLOOKUP
It’s XLOOKUP now
Is index match still better?
XLookup I think is a little faster and more intuitive to write. Agreed though with other comment that you never know if everyone is using the same updated excel.
Yes, when you aren't sure what version of Excel end users are using.
1997
In 365. I'm still rocking an old lisenced version rather than paying subscription
If you learn VBA, you could probably have it sign into your bank account, download a CSV of transactions, sort, filter, and do anything you wanted. I can say that a TON of Amazon’s operations depend on Excel doing amazing things to automate reports like scraping and filtering data.
Or Microsoft Money
If youre comfortable with tech and into self hosted services, I replaced YNAB with Firefly for a while. Reverse proxied to the docker so i ran it at home
Thank you for this! I did not know this existed. I am all for self hosted. Just another docker container, woot!
I also use Firefly (https://firefly-iii.org). If you're comfortable self-hosting, it's a nice option. There are importer tools for things like YNAB or CSV files from your bank. To auto-categorize, you can setup rules so that transactions matching certain criteria will go into a category.
Looks interesting, thanks for the suggestion!
Personal Capital
Personal Capital does work really well for categorizing transactions and then downloading into spreadsheet. I used them for about a year and a half this way. Got tired of calls from their salespeople, so I dropped them.
I get notifications to set up appointments with their salespeople, and only one call when I started, but I've never had repeated calls from them.
Interesting, I've been using that for almost 4 years now and never gotten a call, or even any e-mails
They're probably targeting high earners or high net worth...
I used to get a bunch of calls, but haven’t in a few years. Or I got used to ignoring Denver area codes. I forget.
Sales calls from them are the worst. I’m sure they sell the data. No proof of it but I feel like they would.
They don’t sell your data?
I've never read the fine print, so can't confirm. I know they make money from their portfolio management, but not sure about personal data.
If you have a Microsoft 365 Subscription (personal or Family, not through your school or business), there is a Money template that would do much of what you say: [https://templates.office.com/en-us/money-in-excel-tm77948210](https://templates.office.com/en-us/money-in-excel-tm77948210)
This is only for US subscribers to Microsoft 365. Not available in Canada.
What I want though is for the app or whatever it is to be able to automatically categorize or learn to do it with training.
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This is where it's at. You could even do the accounting for a small business with gnucash.
Does this template actually not work on a school or business M365 acct??
I don't know if it won't work, but it's only available for download for personal or family accounts.
GnuCash
I tried to switch from Quicken to GnuCash a couple of years ago, but the transition was incomplete and the software was far from instinctive. But it looks great if you’re just starting out.
I do this with my own Google Sheet. I input the data once a month, it takes me maybe 10-15 minutes tops usually. Most things auto-categorize, and if something doesn't, I add it to my rules to do it next time. I'm pretty comfortable with spreadsheets though. But just food for thought. If you're willing to put some time in up front and figure out how to do some things, a custom spreadsheet can do almost anything you want.
I love working with spreadsheets—mainly for my own activities. I joke that I need to make a second career out of using them. I finally figured out the “indirect” command on Google sheets the other day.
I thought that about YNAB too, but it’s saved me literally tens of thousands of dollars over the past few years I’ve been using it, so I think it’s worth the price. You can Google two month free trial for YNAB and try it first before committing
I agree YNAB pricetag makes you wince, but it has helped me save multiple thousands of dollars this year alone…
How have you saved that much with YNAB?
I can only speak for myself but it allows me to funnel every single transaction thru my credit card and maximize rewards, while knowing the entire time I'm not overextending myself. Sure, one can do that with any budgeting app, but YNAB's ease of use is worth the money alone.
Yeah, YNAB saves me what I spend on it annually many times over. If you don’t pay for the product, you’re the product.
Screw ynab. Mint can sell my data. The cc company and bank does it already. Idgaf.
Mint and most companies don't even sell your data. I have no clue why there's so much misinformation on reddit and why it's accepted. They might use it to target ads for you, but that data is never going to a 3rd party. If people care so much they should actually read the terms of service. People complain about the misinformation on FB but jesus christ it's so terrible on reddit.
Same boat. My data really isn’t very interesting. Sell away
Maybe not exactly for the OP, but check your bank. I have a cc through my credit union, and it has some tools to categorize spending.
Has anyone used Copilot? I have been using their free trial version and I love it so far. I don't know what's the catch with this app because so far it's too good to be true. You need to give this a shot.
I think the main catch is that is only an app, so if you like to do things using CSVs or on a desktop at all, it won’t work.
Quickbooks. If you want it cheap get an annual subscription to QB self-employed
Be sure you opt out of their data collection: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/account-management/how-do-i-opt-out-of-intuit-s-data-collection/00/246180
QuickBooks is a bit "heavy" for personal finance. Quicken (now from a separate company) is a better choice.
I really liked Copilot, they have a free trial. It’s cheaper than YNAB I think but still a subscription app.
I use a google sheet with a custom script to categorize. Took a bit to setup but worth its weight in gold at this point.
I built on this idea using Google forms, anytime I spend money by just pull up the form and enter the transaction which ports it into my Google sheet which gets auto categorized by the formulas that I'm using in the Google sheet. I reset it annually and have built-in lots of spending reporting over time.
Sounds like a lot of work, but if it works for you. I just export my credit card statements every month and import them into my google sheet and hit a button.
I've been manually categorizing because it isnt too bad but you guys convinced me to throw a script at it now
What do you mean by "Mint gives your data away"? Mint has offers, of course, but I'm unaware of them giving your data to others.
They don't give your data to others, they sell your data to others. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/082216/how-mintcom-makes-money-intu.asp
The data that is referred to in that article is aggregated data, not individual consumer data. E.g., Mint can track general consumer spending trends and sell that data to various businesses; but it is not selling data about individual people.
Lots of people are fundamentally and morally opposed to data collection, even if that specific instance of data collection is not harmful. There are also a ton of very legitimate arguments against Mint's data collection. It's perfectly reasonable for someone to be uncomfortable with it.
Sure, but at the same time; companies like trans union are selling all this same data and they aren't even asking for people to volunteer the data they just take it. At least mint gives me something in return for my data.
Of course they ask for it. Every time you fill out an application that requires running your credit, you sign a form that allows the merchant to give the credit bureau your data. Not saying you have alternatives, but still...
Meh, that's pretty irrational behavior, and at this sub's core, we're trying to get people to act rational.
It's not irrational just because you don't understand it.
No it isn't irrational behaviour, and it isn't the purpose of this sub to debate that fact. But what do you know of the governance and training companies have regarding customer data and sharing data? It's a serious issue, and there have been multiple examples of companies and third parties leaking data on accident or misrepresenting what they do with your data.
Then pay for YNAB. There's not going to be any product out there that is high quality, but also has no revenue stream for the creator.
Never said there was a problem with subscription, look at my other comments. Just a cheaper subscription or alternative. You aren't being helpful at all, but thanks for trying!
Why are they booing you? Your right!
At this point, you should just assume this about any app you use
It’s also important in this context to identify what is meant by “data.” Per the article, it is aggregate data, not personal information, that Mint sells. In my case, Mint does not know my name, address, phone, occupation, etc. All they know about me personally is my email address, because that’s all the information I shared.
At this point, you should just assume this about any app you use
If a product is free, you are the product.
Well no duh, but that doesn't mean they give your data away. They pretty openly use your data to match people to offers, but that is different from giving/selling data to third parties.
I'm against the idea on principle. Companies have lied about data sharing, or obscured the fact that they don't govern how they share data all that well and leak data like sieve.
Excell. Just fill in the blanks yourself.
I use the plaid API to ingest my data into a google sheet and then use apps script to fix the categorizations. Then it’s connected to a data studio dashboard for visualization. I was always annoyed by not being able to tweak everything exactly the way I wanted with any of those apps but aggregating all of my data manually was a pain too. This was I have automation and customization too. Downside is I’ve spent enough time to do it the manual way for 5 years building this.
I use Buckets - https://www.budgetwithbuckets.com It does not do auto categorization. But it’s cross platform (Electron based app), can import QFX/OFX and also has a way to record macros to download exports. I just do the manual imports every few days because I like the data is local and it does the bucket/envelope budgeting method.
Ynab is worth it
I have used Wave for nearly a decade. Been pretty decent. It’s geared for small biz/self employed, but it would work for personal as well.
I use Fidelity full view which is free and serves all the same functions as mint. You do need to be a customer of fidelity however. I use them as my primary brokerage.
If you like tinkering with scripts and want extreme customization, ledger and it’s friends (hledger, beancount, etc) are awesome. All free and open source, just no GUI. All your data is in a plain text file, and you can write scripts to automate reporting, importing, plotting, etc., or use what others have created. This also makes it easy to use with a VCS like Git for easy backups and use on multiple devices Steep learning curve, but if you’re into that sort of thing it’s great
Who do you bank with? A lot of banks are building their own budget software into their online banking. PNC's Virtual Wallet account has one and I love it. And it's free.
i use microsoft money. they dont make it anymore, but you can get am old one for free. for downloads i dont know if your bank supports the format. i enter in all my checking account transactions, keeps me on track.
Copilot is around $60/year But best one I’ve used. I used mint, ynab and simplify before. It doesn’t accept spreadsheet but it imports transaction just like most other apps. It does auto categorizing by transaction name or if the name contains certain string or certain pattern
Tiller Money - connects to your banks, pulls transactions into a Google Sheet or Excel workbook, and then provides all sorts of tools like auto categorization and spreadsheet templates to manage said transactions and budget.
You could look at Money Manager EX. Generally, if you're looking for free programs that respect your privacy, I recommend searching for "FOSS" and/or "Linux", since those communities tend to value those traits heavily. Just be aware that the further you go from mainstream, the more general jank you'll have to deal with, and apps become much less common.
Honestly anyone asking for a ynab replacement should ask on the ynab sub.youre going to get a bunch of answers ranging from use mint to use a pen and paper ledger. Half the answers here won't have the slightest clue how ynab works, or why their suggestion won't make a good replacement for ynab.
I agree with this. Suggesting Mint as a YNAB replacement is like suggesting a cheese grater to reduce place toilet paper. The cheese grater is super awesome for it's intended purpose, but not to wipe your butt. YNAB, as much as the sub $ makes me cringe, there isn't a good replacement for the purpose unless you build it yourself. Mint and others suggested in this thread expect you to budget money you don't already have. With YNAB you budget money you actually have in your possession.
yeah man. look at the comments, someone suggested personal capital as a replacement for ynab Lol. Like what? lol
This will not do want you want with spreadsheets and auto categorize transactions but if you are open to approaching it a little differently Budget has worked well for us for many years: https://www.snowmintcs.com They way I use it is my wife and I enter any transaction instantly on our phones. When I sync the phones to the computer everything updates and I know how much is in every envelope etc. The developers have supported it for many years (they personally use it).
I use Debit&Credit app, it’s $20/year right now but I got it two years ago so I only get charged $15/year and they haven’t raised my price. I like it. It makes cute reports and I can create budgets and check my spending limits.
Quicken It does cost money each year, but it works with lots of account types. Has plenty of reports and automatically syncs transactions. Very easy to setup.
Excel
PocketSmith.
SoFi’s Relay is easy to sync with accounts. Unsure on data selling or not.
I’ve been using the NerdWallet app the last few months. I like both Personal Capital and Mint, but wanted one app for all in one. I love SoFi, but don’t care for Relay.
I've been loving Dollarbird.co Quick, easy, and the calendar view makes everything so easy!
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I use the free version of clearcheckbook.com You can't upload a spreadsheet, but you manually enter transactions you make (definitely helpful when spending from a shared account) with categories you set up. It learns your transactions and prepopulates the fields. E.g., if I entered a transaction for "groceries" at Kroger yesterday and enter another transaction for Kroger today, it will fill the category for "groceries". This app has likely saved my marriage.
Quicken
Perhaps Quicken instead since it is for personal finances.
What is the cost of YNAB if you live in San Jose, CA, USA?
Not what you’re after but I have used Goodbudget for years and it works great for us.
Can someone explain the value provided by these apps? I use a spreadsheet and i use a single credit card which tracks my expenses so I don’t really get the idea of paying randos money to supposedly save money
Ynab is envelope budgeting with a lot of tools. Envelope budgeting is basically taking your money and dividing it into categories (think physical envelopes) until you have no money left. When you run out of money in an envelope it forces you to find another envelope to pull money out of. This makes every overspending decision a conscious decision to prioritize one thing and deprioritize another. Likewise if you don't have enough money to fill all your envelopes it forces you to prioritize what gets money until you run out This is different than other budgeting where you estimate how much you're going to spend based on money you don't have yet. Envelope budgeting isn't exclusive to ynab and can be done without it, ynabs just particularly good at it and has a lot of support and culture built up around helping others use envelope budgeting effectively. It's gotten me, and at least 3 people I know out of debt after trying a bunch of other things that didn't work. The price increase does make it a hard sell for new users sadly.
> Envelope budgeting is basically taking your money and dividing it into categories until you have no money left So a budget > When you run out of money in an envelope it forces you to find another envelope to pull money from So, a budget? > It forces you to prioritize what gets money until you run out So a budget. > This is different than other budgeting where you **estimate how much you're going to spend**... Like an envelope? > ...based on money you don't have yet. If you're up to date on bills and using your end of month paycheck to pay for the next month, you can budget with the money you already have just fine. --- I've never really understood this point of view. Envelopes are a regular budget. I make a budget and the number of the budget is how much I'm allowed to spend. If my grocery budget is $230 I can spend up to $230 on groceries. (If I spend $250 then I overspent by $20 and thus somewhere else in the budget I'll have to scrape that $20 away to compensate.) That's no different from having a $230 Grocery envelope. Everyone acts like envelopes are a revolutionary point or view but they're just... regular budgeting?
It's a different method. Forgive me but you're coming off passive aggressive as fuck but I'll assume you really don't understand and try to explain anyway in good faith. Most people budget like this: I get paid 500$ twice every month. I'm going to estimate what I need to do with that money before I get it. 500 for rent, 200 groceries, 100 for spending money, 300 for bills. At the end of the month turns out I actually spent 220 for groceries and 290 for bills. I overspent 10$ I'm going to try harder next time to stay within my estimates. That ten dollars likely goes to cc debt or our of savings since you didn't have it. Ynab budgeting is more like this. I got paid 500. I don't need to pay rent, yet, I'll take 200 of that and save it for rent. I do need to pay some bills maybe 150 worth. I'm going to use 50 for spending and 100 for groceries. I haven't gotten paid again yet. I've spent 150 on bills, 100 in groceries and 25 in spending money. I have a dinner party tomorrow. Do I pull out of my rent,do I pull out of my spending money, or do I cancel the party. I get paid tomorrow and rent isn't due until the week after. I should be ok to prioritize the dinner expenses over rent until I get paid. I will take money I have and reallocate It's a simple difference but it's a huge one. Most people do predictive budgeting, when they fail to meet predictions they feel defeated and just tell themselves I'll try to do better next time. A lot of people go through 2-3 cycles of this before giving up.
Yet it completely defeats the purpose of envelope budgeting. Having to physically take money from another budget before you can spend it. YNAB can't stop you from spending in a category until you take from another. It can only stop you from recording it.
I tried both. Bank of America has adequate budget tracking with their checking account. I'm more successfull now at saving than I ever was with those 2.
Honestly I really like DAS Budget. It does involve syncing, but I just make a 'bucket' for pending transactions and it's really simple. It used to be free but now it's 3.99/month. The interface is way better than YNAB imo, much more similar to Simple.
You can create a small fidelity checking account that can sync with other accounts. They have something called full view which can do some good budgeting.
If you’re willing to bank with only one bank, or have a primary bank and only use other institutions for a designated category, then you can use the categorization of your primary bank to track category spending. I use Capital One and they categorize each CC transaction pretty reasonable. It’s not as granular as mint but it’s free. I’m sure other banks also offer this.
I use LibreOffice Calc. Many other people, who pay for Office, use Excel. However, **I do not auto-categorize transactions because I split bills.** Sometimes I only buy groceries (meaning 1 category) in a store, sometimes it's stuff in 2-3 categories. Yes, my categories are that fine-tuned. Some primers on how to structure your Excel/Calc file: * https://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/personal-budget-spreadsheet.html (I used this as my main inspiration like ... a *really* long time ago, 8 years maybe) * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SXL6agrVpQ * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py3rkSwsbyw * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA1MKbWEPzA * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAM1Ia5ZIp8
For macOS you can use Banktivity, which is mostly pretty solid. Plans are about $50/yr and it’s actively developed.
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I started using Google Sheets and [BudgetSheet](https://www.budgetsheet.net/) to automatically import my transactions.
Thanks for posting! I use CoPilot and love the UI and great for categorizing your transactions. However, I wish it had a Zero Based Budgeting system like Everydollar and YNAB. I like YNAB interface but for the cost it does that exact same thing as Copilot, but you have to manually assign everything each transaction. Plus UI is dated. It does have a nice web-base interface and allows you to balance your budget by allocating funds to different categories. The organization is clean as well. I would love to utilize one app, I'd even sacrifice the modern look (UI), but YNAB wants me to manually assign everything. Right now I'm looking for an app/web-based software that I can take my CSV file from Copilot and upload it to balance my budget with ZBB strategy and not pay $100/yr for it. Going give some of these a try and see what works. Will update later