I would recommend giving it a shot and posting on the ynab forums if you have questions. The boards there are very helpful and will spell everything out for you if you need it. Often times ynab requires a different way of thinking about budgeting and planning, so be flexible and open, and give it a true effort (at least a few months) before dismissing it.
Most users feel how you do when they start ynab, and it usually only takes a few months to be hooked and not know how to operate any other way.
To arebelspy, it really can be pretty automated. I'm assuming you spend relatively little money, and most of your transactions are automated. For me, I sit down once a month at the end of the month to reconcile my accounts to the statement, set my budget for the next month, and enter any of my scheduled transactions for next month into the budget. This takes about ten minutes once per month.
I have their mobile phone app, so transactions are entered at the point of sale. 20 seconds per transaction. Once you have entered a location, it will automatically fill the account and category for future purchases. Only requiring you to update the amount. Very minimal amount of time if someone has minimal purchases.
If someone does not have a smart phone, they can save their receipts and enter transactions that way. Once a day, or even once a week, you could sit down and enter the transactions with minimal time. Once you start typing the payee, you can autofill the category, memo, and even amount. This could take only a few minutes, probably comparable to what it takes to review mint.
Keep in mind, the more up to date your budget is, the more accurate your budget is. Ynabs major benefit is to allow users to make spending decisions based on their category balances, which are filled with money they already have. Most people spend money in anticipation of their expected income, but don't plan for all their expenses. Most people on this forum are probably not like the vast majority of people though.
Additionally, one could setup pocket sense to import all your accounts for you. This requires you to enter a PIN number for access and then your transactions are imported. Review as necessary, similar to mint.
Personally, I record transactions at the point of sale to make sure my budget category balances are accurate for spending decisions. Then I have pocket sense import my transactions to make sure I did not miss anything and ultimately reconcile my account. Once per month, I make sure that my balance agrees to what my bank says. (It always does)
I've been using ynab for almost six years now and have seen the impact it had on myself personally. I used to use an approach similar to mint where I just made sure my account had enough funds to cover my expenses that I was incurring on my credit card in the current month and what was due. My approach failed in that I was not anticipating enough into the future.
It's certainly possible if someone has enough income, existing funds, and planning capabilities to use mint and be fine. I could not imagine not using ynab for the forward looking side of things. I would have been in relatively good shape without ynab, however, I think I am in a better position as a result of using ynab.
I agree with gostumpy that the only reason to not like ynab is that one is too lazy to enter their own transactions. Ynab does a much better job about making a budget and plan for the future than any other financial software out there.
