The importance of budgeting can’t be overstated. Today we talk to the king of budgeting tools, Jesse Mecham the CEO of You Need a Budget and give you an honest YNAB review.
We talk about budgeting with Mint a lot and it’s a great tool. But there is always talk of You Need A Budget within the personal finance community so we wanted to check it out. And because we provide only the best for you, we brought on the founder to discuss the tools so we can provide an in depth YNAB review.
YNAB was originally a spreadsheet that Jesse and his wife used to budget their money when they were newly married and expecting a baby. He had just intended to sell it to make a little extra income on top of his accounting job, but it soon proved so successful that it become his career.
Zero-Based Budgeting
Zero-based budgeting forces you to “spend” every dollar. At the end of the month, the goal, as it is with any budget, is to have brought in more money than you spent. And that’s where most traditional methods of budgeting end. Great! You paid all of your bills and have an extra $600 left over. For a lot of people, that leftover money is “fun” money, to be spent on things like clothes, dinners out, movies.
Zero-based budgeting gives those dollars a job, rule one of YNAB. It’s like the difference between your unemployed friends and your friends who have a job. The unemployed dollars are sitting around all day smoking weed while the dollars with a job are contributing. In this case, contributing to your financial goals.
And that’s what YNAB is, zero-based budgeting. If you’ve tried budgeting before and not had success, it’s probably not you! It’s like dieting. Sometimes you just need to find a different method that will work for you.
Four Principles
There are four principles behind YNAB:
Give Every Dollar A Job
Not one dollar just gets to sit on its dead ass, not pulling its weight. Every dollar is working, working for you. Some jobs are more fun than others. Some jobs are paying your bills but some jobs are buying you drinks! Just because a dollar has a job, doesn’t mean it’s job is to be spent. Your holiday money might sit dormant for ten months of the year, but when the shopping season arrives, it leaps into action.
Save For A Rainy Day
If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, you don’t have anything left over for a rainy day.This rule is for large but not regular expenses like holidays, vacations, school tuition. Look ahead to these large, less frequent expenses and break them down per month. That monthly amount is added into each month’s budget. Rule two makes sure that you are planning for these expenses well before they come due and budgeting for them each month.
Roll With The Punches
You’re going to make mistakes, the unexpected will happen. That’s okay. If you overspend in one area, you’ll find money from another and move it over to the category you came up short in.
Live On Last Month’s Income
When you use YNAB, you will save enough of last month’s income to pay for this month’s expenses. What you earn in January, you spend in February. Depending on your current bank balance, this might take a few months to achieve. That’s okay, you’ll get there. This rule is especially helpful for those who have variable incomes, freelancers, and realtors for instance. This system puts an end to living on money you don’t yet have.
Getting Started
Step One
There is a free 34 day trial for YNAB. You download and install the program which runs on both Windows and Mac.

 Step Two
You can choose to use Cloud Sync so your information is updated across your multiple devices and is backed up. To back the data up, you’ll need megaphone.fm/adchoices