My Favorite Way to Budget

Alright folks, I want to share something with you! I am indebted to my friend Megan for telling me that her sister-in-law Shanda uses this program because I love it! (no this is not a paid review :)).

  We have been married for almost seven years and throughout those seven years I would say the first two years were my best budgeting years. I had a piece of paper held up with a magnet to our fridge and I would track our spending and budget on that piece of paper. Kids, student loan payments, and life made it harder to track my budget on paper. I tried doing it on the computer, I tried excel sheets, I tried Mint, etc. Fail. If they work for you, that is great. I was always frustrated and I felt like my mind wasn't made for budgeting.
   Anyway, I downloaded the trial version of You Need a Budget (YNAB). I will warn you-- you have to interact with the program almost daily (I usually do it every couple of days if things are busy), but that's what I love! I want to know what is going on with my spending. With Mint I would get a review of my spending after it already happened. How does that help me? Isn't the damage already done?
  I tried a couple of times to do the Dave Ramsey budgeting system, but the thought of cash envelopes terrified me. Mainly because I can't find my keys on a daily basis, so how was I going to never lose a cash envelope? This system is very comparable to Dave's teachings, but it tracks on the debit card.  YNAB uses the same, "give every dollar a job," teaching.
  When I was sick for most of February, Tim picked up take-out more than was budgeted for. But since I was sick in bed I wasn't going to the grocery store, so we transferred money from the grocery budget to the eating out budget. It all evened out in the end and we did not overspend. I love being able to do things like that!
  Tim likes that the program is on, "the cloud," so if he has no leftovers and has to eat out at work, he can get on his iPhone and see how much is left in his lunch category. Or if you have a fancy iPhone and see a cute shirt on sale, you can easily pull out your phone to see how much money is in the clothing category! Great things like that.

  Basically I felt like this program was seriously an answer to prayers. I wanted to feel more confident in the way our money was being spent, saved and budgeted. I thought I would share in case you were in a budgeting rut.

  If you try the program and like it, I love talking about it. I'm still figuring out different aspects of it but have loved everything so far!


*If you decide to try it out and want to purchase it after the trial, here is a link to save you $6 off the purchase price 

http://ynab.refr.cc/X8647J5 And that is the end of me sounding like a complete budget nerd.