YNAB Users - will you eventually move to new YNAB, or switch to an alternative?

[catccc]

Okay, we all know you can continue using YNAB classic.  It's supported through the end of the year.  After that, you can still use it, it will just be unsupported.  But what about when your phone operating system upgrades and won't play nicely with YNAB classic anymore?  I think it is safe to say while you don't need to switch now, you will not be able to use YNAB classic forever.  So will you cough up the annual fee for the SaaS version?  Use a free alternative?  (Mvelopes, goodbudget, ??)

I have revived my mint account, but this is not a budgeting tool that I can use like YNAB.  I really like the way YNAB budgets.

Any thoughts?

[Greenroller]

I will most likely cough up the $ and stay with YNAB. I  won't be happy about it but the headache of switching vs streamlining what I already have going isn't worth the small fee and headache it will save me.

[wonderfuffin]

I'll be subscribing to nYNA, the money it saves me far exceeds the money I'll have to spent. I'm looking at it as an investment with substantial returns. I know you could use an excel spreadsheet, but YNAB's methodology works so much better for me.

[carozy]

There is no way I will upgrade to the annual subscription based YNAB.

I will use YNAB classic until I can't any more.

Whenever that time comes, I'll switch to Money Manager X, a free open-source money management system which is cross-platform, syncs with your mobile, and user reviews say you can set up like YNAB.

If I'd heard of it before YNAB, I probably would have gone with that (since it's free and open source which I like).  As it was, I never purchased YNAB as I was one of the lucky winners in their online classes.

I do really like YNAB, but it's not worth it to me to pay an annual fee for it when there is a free alternative that does the same thing.  I also like supporting the work of techs who work in open source.

Here is the website with more info: http://www.moneymanagerex.org

[turketron]

At this point I'm planning to use YNAB Classic until I can't. Just because they're only providing support until the end of 2016 doesn't mean the program will cease to function on 1/1/2017. If at some point the Classic version stops working I'll evaluate if the then-current version of nYNAB is worth paying for. In theory one of the benefits of switching to a cloud-based product is that they'll be better able to incrementally improve and add new features- in its current iteration I don't think I'd be willing to pay for it, but who knows what it will look like in a year or two.

[Joel]

I will be using ynab4 until the mobile apps stop working. Once that happens, I will likely have to revert to saving receipts and entering them daily. Before doing that I'm going to evaluate alternatives though. I'm hoping that someone comes up with a competitor that is better.

[ruthiegirl]

I have been using the new YNAB for the past month (free trial period) and I am really in love with it.  I am not yet Mustachain or I have failed at my attempts to grow a stache and the new YNAB  has been a game changer for me. 

Best feature for me -- automatic updates from all of my accounts that reflect immediately in my budget.  This eliminates my tendency to overlook small expenses we rack up on our credit card. 

It may not be useful for everyone, but so far it has been incredibly useful to me and I will pay the $50 a year.  Cheap behavioral therapy for me. 

[smalllife]

$45 a year is worth the spousal engagement of having a working app and an interest/visibility to the budget.  We've already moved over, mostly because I didn't feel like doing double entry.  If it was just me I probably wouldn't have moved, but it's not and I want to keep it that way ;-)

[susanna]

Right now I don't have time to migrate to nYNAB, but this summer I'll look into it. I'm willing to consider it, and see what improvements are made in the next few months. I've been an ecstatic user of YNAB 4 for a couple years. I don't know how I lived without it.

[boxer1014]

I used YNAB for about four years and just switched to another application in January.  Although I love the methodology, I feel like we don't need a budget anymore because over those four years our spending shrunk and we're putting a lot towards savings each month.  I know this wouldn't have happened if we had never found YNAB to begin with, but at this point it feels automatic.  If they hadn't moved to a subscription model I would have continued to use it.  I just didn't want to wait for the desktop version to be sunsetted before finding something else.

We definitely wouldn't be where we are without YNAB, I just can't see paying a subscription fee to use something I can do myself.  And I'm also not crazy about missing functionality in the new version.

[asiljoy]

I used YNAB for about four years and just switched to another application in January.  Although I love the methodology, I feel like we don't need a budget anymore because over those four years our spending shrunk and we're putting a lot towards savings each month.  I know this wouldn't have happened if we had never found YNAB to begin with, but at this point it feels automatic.  If they hadn't moved to a subscription model I would have continued to use it.  I just didn't want to wait for the desktop version to be sunsetted before finding something else.

We definitely wouldn't be where we are without YNAB, I just can't see paying a subscription fee to use something I can do myself.  And I'm also not crazy about missing functionality in the new version.

Do you mind sharing what application you moved to?

[boxer1014]

Do you mind sharing what application you moved to?

We switched to Moneydance.  It has better investment tracking but the budgeting functionality isn't as good as YNAB's.  We're just using reports to make sure we're where we need to be.  It has a calendar where you can setup recurring transactions, visually I like this better than scheduled transactions in YNAB.  The phone app isn't as nice but it does allow you to record spending - I haven't really used it for that, only for checking my account balances.

[FrozenAssets]

At this point I'm planning to use YNAB Classic until I can't. Just because they're only providing support until the end of 2016 doesn't mean the program will cease to function on 1/1/2017. If at some point the Classic version stops working I'll evaluate if the then-current version of nYNAB is worth paying for. In theory one of the benefits of switching to a cloud-based product is that they'll be better able to incrementally improve and add new features- in its current iteration I don't think I'd be willing to pay for it, but who knows what it will look like in a year or two.

Me, too.

[NextTime]

Question.

What does YNAB do that Mint and your own budgeting spreadsheet doesn't?  I see all the great reviews from you guys and wonder what I'm missing.

[GizmoTX]

Mint & spreadsheets only tell you what you've spent, while YNAB lets you decide & adjust before you spend. YNAB lets you completely control categories, while Mint does not, & spreadsheets typically don't capture this unless very complicated or limited. Mint is linked electronically to your accounts; YNAB does not, which I think is safer, yet it supports importing downloaded transactions to replace entering manually. Even if you decide to initially not budget, YNAB gives you excellent check registers that show you cleared & uncleared balances, & easily reports on your income & expense categories. If you choose, it can run on all your computer, smartphone, & tablet devices -- I didn't have this kind of portability with a spreadsheet.

[kidkd]

I actually signed up for the trial a few days ago. nYNAB is ok, there are some differences to how things work versus YNAB 4, but overall it's fine.

However, I'm going to stick with 4 for the time being until they work out the following issues:

• No report functionality
• Can't do a full import from YNAB 4
• A SaaS app is very different from what they were doing prior, I want to give them some time to get the hang of it.
• Possibly due to the point above, their support team seems to be struggling to keep up.

I figure they should have these things taken care of in a year or so. No rush to switch over in the meantime, the only real benefit right now is that it's a web app and you don't need to use Dropbox to store your data.

[carozy]

Does anyone know the difference between YNAB and Money Manager X?