YNAB is a waste of money imo. It’s literally just a spreadsheet with a bunch of mumbo jumbo to justify you paying for it while still manually doing all the work.
Except the auto-imports fuck up constantly which means you need to manually reconcile them. And they straight up discourage you from using auto imports in the first place. You’re “supposed” to reconcile all accounts manually in YNAB.
On top of that you have to make sure every transaction is categorized correctly, so there definitely is manual work to do.
Interesting that you run into those issues, I’ve had it for years and handedly had to manual reconcile more than once or twice early on, certainly not in the last few years
Pre-Intuit it was pretty decent, before banks had their own apps and before there was much competition. Once I could use my credit union’s app and it had all the usual features no more need for Mint.
These day-to-day budgeting apps with categories and stuff, it’s great when you’re spending in a similar manner or have specific goals. Once I had a mortgage and bills and stuff, I found the granularity of the information wasn’t as relevant, I kind of know what’s going on intuitively enough. Also you have a lot bigger unscheduled spending, like propane every 2-6 months which is gonna be like $1000 and seasonally dependent, yeah you can work it out per year to know you’re okay, but to have some alert that’s like “YOU WENT OVER YOUR AVERAGE ON BILLS THIS WEEK BY 300%!” is unnecessary. Similar with food, I’m gonna load up on meat and it’s gonna be like YOUR FOOD SPENDING IS OFF THE RAILS. Things like “you spent x more on gas this week” it’s like useless info, “okay I won’t buy gas and go to work then… thanks.” “You spent x more on vices,” sure, but I think people know they’re making a bad decision and it’s just a 2nd validation to “manage” the vice spending.
For useful reporting you can just export your data from your bank/cu and make your own reports. Apps that amalgamate your financial data are still useful but then you’re in to legit financial planning territory which is sort of a separate category of apps.
Good. Mint sucks. Fuck Intuit.
Use Lunch Money or YNAB.
$100/yr or $15/mo? Wtf
YNAB is a waste of money imo. It’s literally just a spreadsheet with a bunch of mumbo jumbo to justify you paying for it while still manually doing all the work.
The only work you manually have to do is approve transactions that have been auto imported for you - and that’s absolutely a feature, not a bug
Except the auto-imports fuck up constantly which means you need to manually reconcile them. And they straight up discourage you from using auto imports in the first place. You’re “supposed” to reconcile all accounts manually in YNAB.
On top of that you have to make sure every transaction is categorized correctly, so there definitely is manual work to do.
It’s a spreadsheet with a cult, nothing more.
Interesting that you run into those issues, I’ve had it for years and handedly had to manual reconcile more than once or twice early on, certainly not in the last few years
Good news is, no one is making you use it!
Pre-Intuit it was pretty decent, before banks had their own apps and before there was much competition. Once I could use my credit union’s app and it had all the usual features no more need for Mint.
These day-to-day budgeting apps with categories and stuff, it’s great when you’re spending in a similar manner or have specific goals. Once I had a mortgage and bills and stuff, I found the granularity of the information wasn’t as relevant, I kind of know what’s going on intuitively enough. Also you have a lot bigger unscheduled spending, like propane every 2-6 months which is gonna be like $1000 and seasonally dependent, yeah you can work it out per year to know you’re okay, but to have some alert that’s like “YOU WENT OVER YOUR AVERAGE ON BILLS THIS WEEK BY 300%!” is unnecessary. Similar with food, I’m gonna load up on meat and it’s gonna be like YOUR FOOD SPENDING IS OFF THE RAILS. Things like “you spent x more on gas this week” it’s like useless info, “okay I won’t buy gas and go to work then… thanks.” “You spent x more on vices,” sure, but I think people know they’re making a bad decision and it’s just a 2nd validation to “manage” the vice spending.
For useful reporting you can just export your data from your bank/cu and make your own reports. Apps that amalgamate your financial data are still useful but then you’re in to legit financial planning territory which is sort of a separate category of apps.
Thanks for the recs. Do either work especially well with securities?
Personal Capital or whatever they rebranded to has been generally stable since I left mint a few years ago.