YNAB is a budgeting and personal finance app to help you save more money and get out of debt to stop living your financial life waiting for your next paycheck to arrive. YNAB stands for You Need a Budget and was created to help you prioritize your money and plan how to spend it to have more cash to buy the things you want.
What Is YNAB?
YNAB is a personal finance and budgeting app that also offers you a method to manage your money and get ahead to stay in control of your financial life. With educational resources available and an easy-to-use mobile app, YNAB is designed to help you become a smarter spender to make the most out of the money you have. People who are currently using the You Need a Budget app claim to have paid off their debts or stop living paycheck to paycheck since starting using the app.
How Does YNAB Work?
YNAB app allows you to create a budget easily and then either connect your credit cards and bank accounts or enter your transactions manually if you don’t want to connect your accounts. The You Need a Budget App, or YNAB app, helps you manage your spending based on the money you have right now, slowly helping you transition to spending the money you earned 30 days ago to start building your savings. Let’s review what happens after you get started with the YNAB app:
Set Up Your Budget
YNAB has a method to help you get started with building your budget. So whether you are new to personal budgeting or have some experience using other apps or spreadsheets, they make it very easy to get started with this in 3 easy steps:
- List your expenses: Add everything you spend money on a monthly basis, for example, groceries, utilities, mortgage payments or credit card statements, and checking account transactions.
- Add ad-hoc costs: Here, you want to identify any expenses that are not monthly, for example, the maintenance of your car or annual medical bills.
- Set aside money for personal entertainment: As part of your personal budget, you want to account for fun stuff, like holidays or eating out.
Your savings goals will be all the money you have available to spend minus your expenses combined that you entered as part of your budget. As you add the actual transactions, either manually or by connecting your accounts, you will then have visibility to the budgeted amounts and the spent amounts to help you stick to your budget.
Control Your Spend
Once you have planned your budget and connected your accounts, the YNAB app will have access to all your expenses plus the money you have available to spend. This is your spending power, so you can start assigning where to spend your dollars, as well as your savings balance. If you have connected your credit card accounts, bank accounts, and other financial accounts, the transactions will come automatically into the YNAB app, or else you will have to enter transactions manually to keep track of your spending and ultimately stick to your budget and meet your financial goals.
YNAB Key Features
The YNAB budgeting app comes equipped with all the features you need to create and stick to your budget. From educational resources to learn more about personal finance and budgeting to security features, YNAB is here to help you get more organized with your money and prioritize how you spend it more smartly.
How To Get Started with the YNAB App
You can start your 34-day free trial to try the app for Android or Apple devices at any time. After the free trial, you can choose a monthly plan for $11.99 per month that you can cancel at any time or pay $84 upfront for the whole year to save a total of $59. After that, you can download the YNAB app from the Apple or Google Play stores.