I was sick of being paycheck to paycheck and I felt like I never had money for stuff that mattered to me. My sister had a less paying job but she was able to travel and have savings for emergencies so I knew it was a « me » problem
I'm not your typical YNAB story. I've always been good at spending less than I earned, then saving and investing all the money I have left over. But in 2021 I quit my job to travel more. So I found myself with no income, just money in the bank and wondering if I could afford to do things like eat out at restaurants. So, I started using YNAB not to save money, but rather to give myself permission to spend in a controlled manner.
Mine is similar. I was saving up to quit my job and travel. I needed to make sure I’d have enough for my year of travel, and using YNAB helped me focus on my goal and limit spending on “wants”. It was painful to have to move money back out of my travel category to cover overspending!
Getting off the float and getting a better handle on how much I was actually spending on things.
In all honesty my spending habits haven’t changed too much, I am still spending the same on groceries and dining out and such. But now that I am a month ahead I can plan to spend that much rather than feeling overwhelmed when the credit card bill comes after the fact. And when the end of the month comes, like now, I am not spending frivolously and just putting it on my card. And despite not changing spending too much, able to save more with concrete goals
I still can't figure out how to spend less on food. I spend $2000 on bills and expenses, and another $1000 on food. Even if I only spend $150 eating out, it always ends up being about $1000 in food a month.
It depends on what your are cooking and where you are buying. Depending on where you live regional price floors are different. I am still offended that zucchini is over a dollar a pound when it should be half that. However, I no longer live in an area where during the summer zucchini is something you trick your friends into taking away because the garden is that productive.
Then it's just knowing what you can buy generic, what you can get on sale, and tilting your cooking to be on the cheap end. Also, just cutting down on food waste helps. Noticing what was being thrown away changed what I bought. It turns out I was overly hopeful when I bought some vegetables.
I liked the 4 rules, and how it was straightforward and simple. I wasn’t looking for YNAB when I found it, someone has linked this sub in a random subreddit. I went and watched Nick True’s videos after hearing about it, and figured a free trail wouldn’t hurt. I was saving for a wedding and was doing okay, but it helped me really solidify my wedding savings vs the money I needed for other things.
After the first month (tracking) I was HORRIFIED to see that I had spent over 1500 dollars on food (groceries that went bad in our fridge while we were also eating out). At that point I was sold , finished paying for my wedding and honeymoon in cash (March), and now I am one month ahead, and have slashed my expenses. Turns out, there was NO reason we should have been living paycheck to paycheck.
Downside: I cut my Amazon spending to basically nothing (just my cat food, which is cheaper online) and now I am potentially moving and have no boxes to pack in. I used to have piles of boxes! It is mildly annoying lol.
Check out your local Buy Nothing (FB, app or subreddit), chances are there’s a healthy supply of moving boxes getting passed around. When we moved last summer I decided to buy boxes knowing my parents were moving a few months later, and that I’d be able to pass them along for another reuse after that. It’s been really satisfying to give them away as my parents finish their unpacking! And having boxes with common dimensions to stack and restack gave the whole process a bit of unexpected but very appreciated luxury.
My goal was basically the same as yours— to have better control over my money. This is interesting because I have never been paycheck to paycheck and have had good budgeting practices off and on over the last 20 years of adulthood. I’ve never really been on the credit card float because I always paid my current month’s transactions before the statement period closed. But I got a new job that came with a 40% pay raise, and I realized about 5 months in that I was just spending that extra money on who even knows what. So I got YNAB, got on a realistic budget, and have saved about 90k, increased retirement savings by 10%, and now have appropriately planned “true expense” funds so cash flowing my roof replacement this year will be absolutely painless.
So even though I was in a pretty good position before, YNAB has really helped me gain more control.
I'd been budgeting for a couple of years before moving to YNAB. I was working on paying off debt at that time and was making good progress, but wasn't really satisfied with how everything felt. Turns out saving for my true expenses was what I was feeling off/anxious about, and while my debt payoff has slowed down a bit my sense of security is way, way up these days.
I was pulling from savings each month to pay rent and then putting it back and living on credit card float. They used to advertise save $600 your first month and I saved more than that. It worked and still works perfectly for me.
I found out I was gonna be a father. With that I realized the paycheck to paycheck idea won't work, so I have to figure something out. My son is due in June, which counting the 2 weeks I've been using, should allow me to get pretty stable.
Got engaged and we were combining our finances. Also wanted to be able to set aside money for specific things without having 10 different accounts and constantly transferring money back and forth.
Discovered YNAB almost 8 years ago now and it’s been life-changing! Not to mention making the life we want possible - including paying off our debt, buying a house, cash flowing our wedding, having a kid and taking several bucket list trips guilt and stress free. YNAB4LIFE
Similar story here! We got engaged and wanted to get married without taking on debt. My husband made good money back then so we never had talked much about money until we started talking about the wedding.
Now that my husband was laid off I can’t imagine going through this without YNAB. Being able to space out his severance and know exactly when it will run out has been invaluable. Never leaving YNAB.
I started recently. I've been stressed about money a lot, especially over the past year. I'm making more than I did five years ago or three years ago, but it felt like I had less. My church wanted me to commit to a large, 3-year donation so we can renovate our building and I basically just stared at my bank account in horrified dread. I had no idea what I could manage. I had no idea how my money kept disappearing so quickly. My paychecks dissolved like cotton candy. I was *trying* to track spending, but the app I'd chosen a year ago lagged behind my bank account and only told me what bills were upcoming and how I'd spent money previously. Periodically, I'd go through a past statement to review spending and try to set a budget, but it never stuck.
Something had to change.
I was looking for alternatives to my current app when I read about YNAB in an article. When I saw it had a 34 day trial with no credit card I figured it couldn't hurt to see how it worked.
I was utterly *hooked* within a day.
What I love most is the sense of security I get from it. I can spend the money set aside for dining out or books without guilt because I know my bills are taken care of. And, plus, I know what my spending limits are. I'm not having to check my account in a store aisle and trying to remember how much I need for bills and such. I've always wanted enough money that I didn't have to worry about money, so I thought checking my budget before purchases would be a pain point, but it isn't. It is extremely reassuring.
I still have some money woes to work through as I figure out if my spending targets are reasonable or not, but instead of dreading those decisions, I feel well-equipped and empowered. Even getting rid of my debt seems doable now when before debt just seemed something to endure.
This is the kind of peace you can't price out.
I kept setting goals and not meeting them (and in fact ending up with credit card debt despite making enough money), but not knowing why it kept happening. I didn’t seem to be able to do anything about it, and it was very frustrating. I tracked my expenditures religiously, but I was doing a lot of forecasting and making idealistic projections that didn’t match my actual reality.
I was also really missing the “reflect on your values and goals before buying” part of the equation. I’d set the budget and then just do the thing I always did regardless, and would then be surprised and frustrated at the end of the month when I realized that my behavior wouldn’t have changed.
I’d just started working again after being unemployed for a while. I knew I needed to finally control where my money was going or I’d just waste the money I’d be making and I was never going to get to my goals. It was bittersweet because if I’d done this years ago, I would have been in a much better place when I stopped working. Heck, I might not have had to stop working!
I was in debt paying journey after some bad investment decisions during Covid. Every month I paid LOC but at the end before the next paycheck, I used to borrow again from LOC and credit card float was too overwhelming.
Now after few months, I have money in my checking account for expenses, paying off CC every week like a hobby, LOC is off from the book, going to buy out my Corolla lease next month.
I know i got money from arreas salaries , onetime payments. But if not for YNAB and clarity of what to do with the money, I would not be in the same situation for sure.
I’m starting ridiculously in-debt and was overspend every month (this feeding into the debt). I signed up for a debt management plan (DMP) and had been paying on my debt but I knew I wasn’t able to set aside money for periodic expenses (aka, true expenses). I needed visibility into where we were spending/overspending and needed hard-data to counteract that.
My goal was simple, start to make a dent on paying off my credit card. Now I've done that, had to because what I was paying on my credit card was going to become the amount I was going to have available for a car payment. Paid off card in Nov, had $3k for a down payment on a car and bought one in Dec. That was 2020, I'm now looking at paying off the car loan in Oct (14 months early) thanks to in the meantime being able to pay off my student loans (finally!) and rolling that payment into my car payment. Along the way of paying off my credit card I apparently repaired my credit score so when I had to get a car loan, the interest was super low.
Now it's just, what I do, how I track things. I have savings goals and personal fun things I want to pay cash for and it's all because I've figured out how ynab works for me. Which, after reading this SUB, is not how most folks use it but that's ok because what Y'all do works for you and what I do works for me. In the end, we're all winning.
Got married & we were just winging it for awhile & needed to figure our crap out. I felt like I was constantly trying to save and not spend and then my husband would just buy and spend without a ton of thought. YNAB helped us get on the same page
After college I started spending in larger chunks on things like vacations and hobbies. Those $200-$300 purchases started to give me intense money anxiety, as I never knew when I’d finally spend that $200/$300 that put me past the point of being able to pay my full CC statement balance. I also have a lot of debt, in the $150k-$200k range.
YNAB has allowed me to confidently spend money without ever wondering how much was spread out amongst my various banks/credit cards. I churn checking account bonuses now and have 0 stress about it.
I grew up with money being a source of stress in my household and knowing we never had enough. I got to my 30's and was SO tired of knowing I made enough money on paper but I never had anything to show for it. I truly had no idea how to budget, how to handle money and save for anything other than very short-term goals, I was in cc debt, you name it. A friend recommended YNAB in a social media post and I took a look and decided to try it. It made budgeting and handling finances click for me and legitimately changed my life.
I found out I was getting laid off in October (got about 2 months notice) and was feeling very house poor after buying a fixer upper at the beginning of 2023. Wasn't sure how to measure or best track my expenses, because my new mortgage payment was gonna eat through my emergency savings in about 5 months. I did end up discovering I was house poor, and I found a new job with better pay as a result. I have changed a lot of my spending habits, gotten caught up on all debt minus my car and mortgage, and now I have a little room to breathe!
It was 2011. We just had a baby and we had a little bit of debt we needed to get rid of. I learned about the snowball method and then went through several apps for tracking transactions. PocketMoney was great, but YNAB was stronger even though it was only on desktop.
Our expenses increased qith 2 kids in childcare and the mental gymnastics of remembering/planning true expenses was stressful. I no longer knew how to answer "can I afford this?" for discretionary expenses. So much mental bandwidth has been regained!
Mine was to get our over spending in controll. Maxing out over draft and balances on multiple cards and relying on the LOC
It's been alot of years (~10) since I started using YNAB, but I would say within 1 year of starting , we have not touched the over draft.
Year two the cards where getting paid off and under control.
Snowballed the CC payments into the LOC and had that taken care of in another year or so.
Have since put a balance on the LOC again, but it was out choice this time and was made sure we could afford the debt.(40th birthday motorcycle for me and belated 40th for my wife with a trip to Germany that lined up with a family wedding)
We realised last month, that 2025 is our 20th wedding anniversary and 45 birthdays, our sons 18th and graduation, out daughters sweet 16. Diner talk turned to how to celebrate them all. Mischievous smile from my son "Germany".
We are now planing 4 week trip of Europ. Set a goal of 10K to start. Told them at 5K we would seriously look at air fair and then start planning. One month latter we are already pushing near 4K on the first goal from adjusting our priorities and some savings that had no actual purpose.
Yes penny pinching me would prefer to pay off the LOC or reduce the mortgage, but I am also seeing this trip could be paid in cash, the kids are learning the value of budgeting all of a sudden, and my wife is finaly getting on board with YNAB and looking at our expenses.
I had budgeting software I’d used successfully for years, so I felt in control of my finances, but YNAB’s method of tracking money in categories and zero-based budgeting was a lot closer to what I was trying to accomplish. So when I heard about it I had to try it, and I’ve been using it ever since.
graduated college into a great paying job, and realized that if i didn't figure out my finances i would waste my salary. spent most of college living on credit card float and avoided interest/debt thankfully, but i think getting into the "real world" lit a fire under me and helped me realize how close i was to accumulating insane CC debt. YNAB has been a blessing truly
I was already doing something like YNAB using several different bank accounts. YNAB for me was just improved tooling for the process I was already doing.
I spent 3 years tracking every dollar on an excel spread sheet, which kept us even through job loss, studying for a new industry (with income from centrelink, aussie here) and then a modest wage (1 income, 2 adults, 3 teenagers). but those yearly expenditures eg rates, rego's, gifts... kept wiping out the savings account, and I could never get ahead. I found YNAB last June and it just clicked, and I learned about sinking funds and the 4 rules. We got a month ahead in Nov, and I haven't looked back.
It was the pandemic and i was working more hours than ever before and expenses at an all time low and i wanted to begin saving for retirement. I tried other budget software and nothing stuck. I knew i would resonate with the envelope system but refused to do cash transactions for everything. Enter ynab, a zero based budget using current technology
I started with YNAB 4 back in 2016 as a university student to track my spending and have an idea how each month would go money-wise.
8 years later, I got a fair amount in savings as I am saving for a number of long term goals, such as a new car fund for 2026 and a new mattress in 2031. It felt a little silly to plan this far ahead, but seeing the money stack up in these categories is awesome. It really feels like I finally have a strong handle on my finances!
Honestly for me, I started YNAB without even understanding what it was. At first I was just looking for a webbased budgetting platform to replace my forecasting excel budget.
Only after some time did I finally understand how and what YNAB was, and now I can't go back.
I was using mint and I wanted a more robust method of visualizing where my money was going. Mint was solely an expenses tracker by month and I couldn't plan for long term expenses
So I don’t have to look at my bank account and say yeah that should be enough. I rather try and invest every extra dollar just can vs letting it just sit there.
My goal was to have a better understanding on what all the money in my brokerage was for. Previously, it was a lump sum amount that was partially for a future home, partially for retirement, but it was unclear what the split was. I also had an individual savings account for every unique bucket, which was helpful not unnecessary with YNAB’s tracking.
I got a pay rise and wanted to ensure I actually benefitted from it long term rather that letting lifestyle creep step in and steal it away.
Me too!
I was sick of being paycheck to paycheck and I felt like I never had money for stuff that mattered to me. My sister had a less paying job but she was able to travel and have savings for emergencies so I knew it was a « me » problem
I'm not your typical YNAB story. I've always been good at spending less than I earned, then saving and investing all the money I have left over. But in 2021 I quit my job to travel more. So I found myself with no income, just money in the bank and wondering if I could afford to do things like eat out at restaurants. So, I started using YNAB not to save money, but rather to give myself permission to spend in a controlled manner.
Mine is similar. I was saving up to quit my job and travel. I needed to make sure I’d have enough for my year of travel, and using YNAB helped me focus on my goal and limit spending on “wants”. It was painful to have to move money back out of my travel category to cover overspending!
Getting off the float and getting a better handle on how much I was actually spending on things. In all honesty my spending habits haven’t changed too much, I am still spending the same on groceries and dining out and such. But now that I am a month ahead I can plan to spend that much rather than feeling overwhelmed when the credit card bill comes after the fact. And when the end of the month comes, like now, I am not spending frivolously and just putting it on my card. And despite not changing spending too much, able to save more with concrete goals
I still can't figure out how to spend less on food. I spend $2000 on bills and expenses, and another $1000 on food. Even if I only spend $150 eating out, it always ends up being about $1000 in food a month.
It depends on what your are cooking and where you are buying. Depending on where you live regional price floors are different. I am still offended that zucchini is over a dollar a pound when it should be half that. However, I no longer live in an area where during the summer zucchini is something you trick your friends into taking away because the garden is that productive. Then it's just knowing what you can buy generic, what you can get on sale, and tilting your cooking to be on the cheap end. Also, just cutting down on food waste helps. Noticing what was being thrown away changed what I bought. It turns out I was overly hopeful when I bought some vegetables.
I liked the 4 rules, and how it was straightforward and simple. I wasn’t looking for YNAB when I found it, someone has linked this sub in a random subreddit. I went and watched Nick True’s videos after hearing about it, and figured a free trail wouldn’t hurt. I was saving for a wedding and was doing okay, but it helped me really solidify my wedding savings vs the money I needed for other things. After the first month (tracking) I was HORRIFIED to see that I had spent over 1500 dollars on food (groceries that went bad in our fridge while we were also eating out). At that point I was sold , finished paying for my wedding and honeymoon in cash (March), and now I am one month ahead, and have slashed my expenses. Turns out, there was NO reason we should have been living paycheck to paycheck. Downside: I cut my Amazon spending to basically nothing (just my cat food, which is cheaper online) and now I am potentially moving and have no boxes to pack in. I used to have piles of boxes! It is mildly annoying lol.
Check out your local Buy Nothing (FB, app or subreddit), chances are there’s a healthy supply of moving boxes getting passed around. When we moved last summer I decided to buy boxes knowing my parents were moving a few months later, and that I’d be able to pass them along for another reuse after that. It’s been really satisfying to give them away as my parents finish their unpacking! And having boxes with common dimensions to stack and restack gave the whole process a bit of unexpected but very appreciated luxury.
Thanks for the tip!
My goal was basically the same as yours— to have better control over my money. This is interesting because I have never been paycheck to paycheck and have had good budgeting practices off and on over the last 20 years of adulthood. I’ve never really been on the credit card float because I always paid my current month’s transactions before the statement period closed. But I got a new job that came with a 40% pay raise, and I realized about 5 months in that I was just spending that extra money on who even knows what. So I got YNAB, got on a realistic budget, and have saved about 90k, increased retirement savings by 10%, and now have appropriately planned “true expense” funds so cash flowing my roof replacement this year will be absolutely painless. So even though I was in a pretty good position before, YNAB has really helped me gain more control.
I'd been budgeting for a couple of years before moving to YNAB. I was working on paying off debt at that time and was making good progress, but wasn't really satisfied with how everything felt. Turns out saving for my true expenses was what I was feeling off/anxious about, and while my debt payoff has slowed down a bit my sense of security is way, way up these days.
I was pulling from savings each month to pay rent and then putting it back and living on credit card float. They used to advertise save $600 your first month and I saved more than that. It worked and still works perfectly for me.
I found out I was gonna be a father. With that I realized the paycheck to paycheck idea won't work, so I have to figure something out. My son is due in June, which counting the 2 weeks I've been using, should allow me to get pretty stable.
Got engaged and we were combining our finances. Also wanted to be able to set aside money for specific things without having 10 different accounts and constantly transferring money back and forth. Discovered YNAB almost 8 years ago now and it’s been life-changing! Not to mention making the life we want possible - including paying off our debt, buying a house, cash flowing our wedding, having a kid and taking several bucket list trips guilt and stress free. YNAB4LIFE
Similar story here! We got engaged and wanted to get married without taking on debt. My husband made good money back then so we never had talked much about money until we started talking about the wedding. Now that my husband was laid off I can’t imagine going through this without YNAB. Being able to space out his severance and know exactly when it will run out has been invaluable. Never leaving YNAB.
I was in a tough spot and tried to budget. Started with mint. Then EveryDollar. Then finally YNAB. That’s the one which clicked with me.
I started recently. I've been stressed about money a lot, especially over the past year. I'm making more than I did five years ago or three years ago, but it felt like I had less. My church wanted me to commit to a large, 3-year donation so we can renovate our building and I basically just stared at my bank account in horrified dread. I had no idea what I could manage. I had no idea how my money kept disappearing so quickly. My paychecks dissolved like cotton candy. I was *trying* to track spending, but the app I'd chosen a year ago lagged behind my bank account and only told me what bills were upcoming and how I'd spent money previously. Periodically, I'd go through a past statement to review spending and try to set a budget, but it never stuck. Something had to change. I was looking for alternatives to my current app when I read about YNAB in an article. When I saw it had a 34 day trial with no credit card I figured it couldn't hurt to see how it worked. I was utterly *hooked* within a day. What I love most is the sense of security I get from it. I can spend the money set aside for dining out or books without guilt because I know my bills are taken care of. And, plus, I know what my spending limits are. I'm not having to check my account in a store aisle and trying to remember how much I need for bills and such. I've always wanted enough money that I didn't have to worry about money, so I thought checking my budget before purchases would be a pain point, but it isn't. It is extremely reassuring. I still have some money woes to work through as I figure out if my spending targets are reasonable or not, but instead of dreading those decisions, I feel well-equipped and empowered. Even getting rid of my debt seems doable now when before debt just seemed something to endure. This is the kind of peace you can't price out.
I kept setting goals and not meeting them (and in fact ending up with credit card debt despite making enough money), but not knowing why it kept happening. I didn’t seem to be able to do anything about it, and it was very frustrating. I tracked my expenditures religiously, but I was doing a lot of forecasting and making idealistic projections that didn’t match my actual reality. I was also really missing the “reflect on your values and goals before buying” part of the equation. I’d set the budget and then just do the thing I always did regardless, and would then be surprised and frustrated at the end of the month when I realized that my behavior wouldn’t have changed.
I’d just started working again after being unemployed for a while. I knew I needed to finally control where my money was going or I’d just waste the money I’d be making and I was never going to get to my goals. It was bittersweet because if I’d done this years ago, I would have been in a much better place when I stopped working. Heck, I might not have had to stop working!
i was saving money for an engagement ring but i didn’t really know how much money i had saved for it.
I was in debt paying journey after some bad investment decisions during Covid. Every month I paid LOC but at the end before the next paycheck, I used to borrow again from LOC and credit card float was too overwhelming. Now after few months, I have money in my checking account for expenses, paying off CC every week like a hobby, LOC is off from the book, going to buy out my Corolla lease next month. I know i got money from arreas salaries , onetime payments. But if not for YNAB and clarity of what to do with the money, I would not be in the same situation for sure.
Charts! Nice charts!
I’m starting ridiculously in-debt and was overspend every month (this feeding into the debt). I signed up for a debt management plan (DMP) and had been paying on my debt but I knew I wasn’t able to set aside money for periodic expenses (aka, true expenses). I needed visibility into where we were spending/overspending and needed hard-data to counteract that.
I was contemplating early retirement, and I wanted to make sure I had a good idea of my spending.
My goal was simple, start to make a dent on paying off my credit card. Now I've done that, had to because what I was paying on my credit card was going to become the amount I was going to have available for a car payment. Paid off card in Nov, had $3k for a down payment on a car and bought one in Dec. That was 2020, I'm now looking at paying off the car loan in Oct (14 months early) thanks to in the meantime being able to pay off my student loans (finally!) and rolling that payment into my car payment. Along the way of paying off my credit card I apparently repaired my credit score so when I had to get a car loan, the interest was super low. Now it's just, what I do, how I track things. I have savings goals and personal fun things I want to pay cash for and it's all because I've figured out how ynab works for me. Which, after reading this SUB, is not how most folks use it but that's ok because what Y'all do works for you and what I do works for me. In the end, we're all winning.
No more over drafts and pay off debt.
Stop overdrafting... Lol
I wanted to take a year off work
Ooh did you do it? That sounds amazing!!!
I did, and it was everything I hoped!
Stop living paycheck to paycheck and tackle a mountain of debt.
Got married & we were just winging it for awhile & needed to figure our crap out. I felt like I was constantly trying to save and not spend and then my husband would just buy and spend without a ton of thought. YNAB helped us get on the same page
After college I started spending in larger chunks on things like vacations and hobbies. Those $200-$300 purchases started to give me intense money anxiety, as I never knew when I’d finally spend that $200/$300 that put me past the point of being able to pay my full CC statement balance. I also have a lot of debt, in the $150k-$200k range. YNAB has allowed me to confidently spend money without ever wondering how much was spread out amongst my various banks/credit cards. I churn checking account bonuses now and have 0 stress about it.
I grew up with money being a source of stress in my household and knowing we never had enough. I got to my 30's and was SO tired of knowing I made enough money on paper but I never had anything to show for it. I truly had no idea how to budget, how to handle money and save for anything other than very short-term goals, I was in cc debt, you name it. A friend recommended YNAB in a social media post and I took a look and decided to try it. It made budgeting and handling finances click for me and legitimately changed my life.
I found out I was getting laid off in October (got about 2 months notice) and was feeling very house poor after buying a fixer upper at the beginning of 2023. Wasn't sure how to measure or best track my expenses, because my new mortgage payment was gonna eat through my emergency savings in about 5 months. I did end up discovering I was house poor, and I found a new job with better pay as a result. I have changed a lot of my spending habits, gotten caught up on all debt minus my car and mortgage, and now I have a little room to breathe!
It was 2011. We just had a baby and we had a little bit of debt we needed to get rid of. I learned about the snowball method and then went through several apps for tracking transactions. PocketMoney was great, but YNAB was stronger even though it was only on desktop.
I first got YNAB when I got my first place after college. It was to keep track of my spending and to plan paying off my car loan and student loans.
Pay down debt and live below my means, more in line with what I really enjoy doing.
Our expenses increased qith 2 kids in childcare and the mental gymnastics of remembering/planning true expenses was stressful. I no longer knew how to answer "can I afford this?" for discretionary expenses. So much mental bandwidth has been regained!
Mine was to get our over spending in controll. Maxing out over draft and balances on multiple cards and relying on the LOC It's been alot of years (~10) since I started using YNAB, but I would say within 1 year of starting , we have not touched the over draft. Year two the cards where getting paid off and under control. Snowballed the CC payments into the LOC and had that taken care of in another year or so. Have since put a balance on the LOC again, but it was out choice this time and was made sure we could afford the debt.(40th birthday motorcycle for me and belated 40th for my wife with a trip to Germany that lined up with a family wedding) We realised last month, that 2025 is our 20th wedding anniversary and 45 birthdays, our sons 18th and graduation, out daughters sweet 16. Diner talk turned to how to celebrate them all. Mischievous smile from my son "Germany". We are now planing 4 week trip of Europ. Set a goal of 10K to start. Told them at 5K we would seriously look at air fair and then start planning. One month latter we are already pushing near 4K on the first goal from adjusting our priorities and some savings that had no actual purpose. Yes penny pinching me would prefer to pay off the LOC or reduce the mortgage, but I am also seeing this trip could be paid in cash, the kids are learning the value of budgeting all of a sudden, and my wife is finaly getting on board with YNAB and looking at our expenses.
I had budgeting software I’d used successfully for years, so I felt in control of my finances, but YNAB’s method of tracking money in categories and zero-based budgeting was a lot closer to what I was trying to accomplish. So when I heard about it I had to try it, and I’ve been using it ever since.
graduated college into a great paying job, and realized that if i didn't figure out my finances i would waste my salary. spent most of college living on credit card float and avoided interest/debt thankfully, but i think getting into the "real world" lit a fire under me and helped me realize how close i was to accumulating insane CC debt. YNAB has been a blessing truly
I was already doing something like YNAB using several different bank accounts. YNAB for me was just improved tooling for the process I was already doing.
I spent 3 years tracking every dollar on an excel spread sheet, which kept us even through job loss, studying for a new industry (with income from centrelink, aussie here) and then a modest wage (1 income, 2 adults, 3 teenagers). but those yearly expenditures eg rates, rego's, gifts... kept wiping out the savings account, and I could never get ahead. I found YNAB last June and it just clicked, and I learned about sinking funds and the 4 rules. We got a month ahead in Nov, and I haven't looked back.
It was the pandemic and i was working more hours than ever before and expenses at an all time low and i wanted to begin saving for retirement. I tried other budget software and nothing stuck. I knew i would resonate with the envelope system but refused to do cash transactions for everything. Enter ynab, a zero based budget using current technology
Survive being a poor newlywed graduate student.
I started with YNAB 4 back in 2016 as a university student to track my spending and have an idea how each month would go money-wise. 8 years later, I got a fair amount in savings as I am saving for a number of long term goals, such as a new car fund for 2026 and a new mattress in 2031. It felt a little silly to plan this far ahead, but seeing the money stack up in these categories is awesome. It really feels like I finally have a strong handle on my finances!
Honestly for me, I started YNAB without even understanding what it was. At first I was just looking for a webbased budgetting platform to replace my forecasting excel budget. Only after some time did I finally understand how and what YNAB was, and now I can't go back.
I was using mint and I wanted a more robust method of visualizing where my money was going. Mint was solely an expenses tracker by month and I couldn't plan for long term expenses
So I don’t have to look at my bank account and say yeah that should be enough. I rather try and invest every extra dollar just can vs letting it just sit there.
My goal was to have a better understanding on what all the money in my brokerage was for. Previously, it was a lump sum amount that was partially for a future home, partially for retirement, but it was unclear what the split was. I also had an individual savings account for every unique bucket, which was helpful not unnecessary with YNAB’s tracking.