YNAB You Need A Budget

[WairereRose]

It'll likely be an add-on service though because of the extra costs we bear as a result. I'd like it, not so much to personally use it, but to convince people that they should look at YNAB as a viable alternative to other solutions -- where they feel direct connect is an absolute must-have feature

I could understand charging for direct connection if YNAB was a free, or relatively inexpensive software package. But YNAB costs just as much, if not more than other personal finance packages that already offer direct connection. It would be ridiculous to charge extra for what most of us consider a basic feature.

Not being one of those who considers it a basic feature, it would add no value to me at all and would slow progress on other features (reporting) that I would much rather have improved first. As well, since I'm in a different country with different banking systems, this feature is likely to not work the same way here making the feature useless to me and possibly causing user support issues which again take time away from improving other features which are to me more important (reporting) and probably even more basic. Finally, since even if it did work I am almost 100% certain that I would NEVER allow any software direct access to any of my bank accounts - one viral attack was enough to convince me that no matter how careful I am I can't ever be certain that no-one can hack me - this feature is again, completely useless to me and takes away from time developing other features which are far more important to me (did I mention reporting? )

[maryea]

I have had auto-sync in the past with another well known program. Now this was several years ago so it may have improved by now but after my initial enthusiasm I wasn't that impressed with it. There seemed to be lots of problems with it. Often it didn't work because the bank had changed their website esp in regard to security...and I 'd have to call the program owners and get it fixed or find they were "working on it." It got so there was almost always one or two accounts that would not download. Even when it downloaded, sometimes it would download duplicates so I'd have to delete those. It was always something! It worked pretty well in the beginning but at that time I was mostly struggling to learn the program...then I pretty much mastered that part but then the issue was more the auto-syncing because the banks were all becoming increasing concerned with security and frequently changing their websites.

I'm not saying I wouldn't try it again if YNAB decides to add it but I'm really not asking for it. Right now I have the best budgeting program I have ever had, I know exactly where our money is going and I feel in control. With the other program and it's auto-syncing my budget was often off and I had trouble keeping it on-track which began to make me out of control. I liked the program in some ways but I spent way too much time learning how to use it and keeping it working correctly.

[tigg]

Count me in as one that considers syncing a killer feature.

It's about the only major thing that gives me a reason to use mint.com still. As someone who has 5 CC's (most unused), couple mortgage accounts, car loan, paypal account, and a few bank accounts... once a month importing by hand doesn't take 5 minutes, it takes 30 minutes... and I prefer to look at things weekly, not monthly. I end up using a combo of mint, pageonce, and ynab... but I feel like YNAB is so close to being an all in one solution!

Thanks!

[akip]

I personally will never take advantage of an auto-sync feature.

I like that YNAB does not ask for any personal information concerning your bank account numbers, passwords, etc. With all the fraud out there, why would you work so hard to make your money work for you, and then put your passwords out there for any hacker to wipe you out?

The Canadian Gov't has recently issued warnings about using sites like Mint.ca.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/personal-finance/home-cents/ottawa-issues-warning-about-online-budgeting-sites/article1937493/

While there have not been any problems to date, it is really only a matter of time...

I find it only takes me a couple of minutes, every few days, to download my most recent transactions. If I have YNAB open, as soon as I hit the download button in my online banking, YNAB automatically pulls those transactions into the program. It might take an extra click or two on the mouse, but I feel that it is worth it! If I supply my online banking PIN or PASSWORD to a site like Mint.ca, I have violated my agreement with the bank to keep it safe, and may not be covered if there is any fraud with my account. Not a risk I'm willing to take.

Alison

[roachslayer]

DEAL BREAKER.

Sooooo disappointed. I was absolutely enamored by the excellent job of marketing and humor used on YNAB website, and loving the reviews and the idea of using this to get me away from crappy Quicken. But Nooooooo! Without auto-sync, I'm doomed.

I'm currently evaluating YNAB. The thought of having to go to each of my banks and manually download the data is a serious negative to me and is probably a deal breaker.

Darn right. And when you have numerous (i.e. over 10) bank accounts to connect in to, you do NOT want to be doing this manually. I still do log in to them manually to verify the final balance, but that is it. I dont want to hack around with each providers download methods repeatedly. Absolute torture.

I am doomed to continue using Quicken. I just want to cry. The ONLY reason I use it is because of auto-sync to all my accounts with a single click of a button. Quicken is total, absolute crap for ALL other reasons.

For paranoid security pansies, let me just say, I work in the software industry, I build online services for a living, and there are ways of doing these things securely. And for the sake of all of us consumers out there, let me also add that it ABSOLUTELY does not cost $9.99 PER month PER bank to do a simple transaction such as auto-downloading data you can manually download for free. This new crap that banks are calling "Direct Connect" and charging for it is absolutely asinine! It costs them nothing. Just like SMS TXT costs cell providers nothing, but love to charge up the nose for it. Can you imagine if your ISP charged you PER EMAIL? You'd throw a hissy. But meanwhile, we let banking and cellular companies walk all over us? I just don't get it. I dont stand for it. And getting back on topic... I sure cant use YNAB due to them being too lazy or paranoid to implement this crucial feature.

Please, YNAB, pave the way for auto-sync with banks. And contact me when you do. Until then, I will just relish the sweet memories I made of what could have been a great relationship between us.

[rodeoclown]

I'm guessing that even with 10 bank accounts, chances are you only use 2, maybe 3 with any frequency - you could download those two accounts manually each month and then do the others every 6 months or so in order to reconcile and make sure they are up to date.

I don't think Jesse's said we will NEVER do auto-syncing, but it's not something we are looking at any time soon.
Having said that, have you tried using auto-sync with quicken, then exporting a QIF file, and importing that into YNAB? That might be easier for you.

And one final option is to reduce the number of bank accounts you have...

[MansterRock]

I have been using ynab for 1 year. I have 15 bank accounts but only use 3 on a regular basis.

I too thought I needed Auto sync with the banks. And I almost stopped using ynab because of that. I am glad I didn't

After a year, it's not a big deal. I am download the ofx/qfx data every day for the frequent use accounts. Weekly for the others.

Don't use the excuse of having to do a little extra work as a reason to not use ynab. It's that good and the benefits outweigh no auto sync.

By the way aren't you tired of having to manually start Auto sync in quicken for each account that fails the first time. It's not always 100% reliable and many times I had to reset online linking due to some error. Once it wouldn't sync with BoA for almost 3 months.

You log in anyway, so take the extra 10 seconds to download the data. You will be glad you did.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

[MRKlink]

I can't even imagine having that many bank accounts! Don't you find it hard to keep track when you are out and about?

Anyway, I was a Quicken user, and I do still use it to check on our investment accounts, and I use it for the download feature to reconcile to YNAB.

I have gotten into the habit of entering in my receipts right when I get home from a spending trip (I don't own a smartphone... there's not money in the budget for that, ha!), before they've fully cleared the bank account. So most of the time, by the time they clear, and are downloaded into Quicken, I've already entered them into YNAB, and just need to clear them.

THIS is something thing I LIKE about YNAB. I don't get lazy about keeping track of what I spent where, and then go "Oh, I forgot about that" when it finally clears the account and downloads.
My DH will have the iPhone from work next month, so he'll get to enter his spending on the go then! So basically the only extra work I'm doing is the bill payments, and I have those as recurring scheduled payments, and just update the amount as needed.

[Elessar]

Auto-sync is probably going to be one of the most divisive features that YNAB would ever implement. I mean, it goes against the spirit of you watching your finances. Not to mention the general list of technical hurdles to solve, including support for the huge variety of online sync methods, as well as properly securing the data in transit as well as at rest (right now the fact that the data format isn't encrypted isn't a big deal; but add financial passwords and account information and it is).

For paranoid security pansies, let me just say, I work in the software industry, I build online services for a living, and there are ways of doing these things securely. And for the sake of all of us consumers out there, let me also add that it ABSOLUTELY does not cost $9.99 PER month PER bank to do a simple transaction such as auto-downloading data you can manually download for free.

This is a lie. If you actually build online services for a living, you would know that the huge list of bank formats across USA (not to mention the rest of the globe) is a maintenance nightmare on its own. It's effectively a never-ending feature that will constantly generate bugs because every bank is a moving target. So yes, it could easily cost 10 dollars per user to cover all the maintenance fees. You'd end up needing to hire a developer full-time just to test and maintain some target number of banks (say 100). So you're vastly underestimating the actual cost of building and maintaining software.

[roachslayer]

I have been using ynab for 1 year. I have 15 bank accounts but only use 3 on a regular basis.

I too thought I needed Auto sync with the banks. And I almost stopped using ynab because of that. I am glad I didn't

I'm guessing that even with 10 bank accounts, chances are you only use 2, maybe 3 with any frequency - you could download those two accounts manually each month and then do the others every 6 months or so in order to reconcile and make sure they are up to date.

I don't think Jesse's said we will NEVER do auto-syncing, but it's not something we are looking at any time soon.
Having said that, have you tried using auto-sync with quicken, then exporting a QIF file, and importing that into YNAB? That might be easier for you.

And one final option is to reduce the number of bank accounts you have...

Well, you folks almost have me sold on the idea. Two points of note here:

1) I'm annoyed at having to log into more than 2-3 different accounts, let alone 10-15! And I only plan on increasing the accounts, not decreasing.

2) Reducing the number of accounts one has should not be a requirement to appreciate banking software. I use ING Direct and Ally banking SUB-Accounts, and that translates to lots of targeted savings accounts to manage. I prefer this method of targeted savings, but do NOT enjoy the management thereof (Quicken being the savior/crutch so far).

I just don't see the big deal in implementing auto-sync. What I have not considered is what rodeoclown suggested, use Quicken to suck down the data, then use YNAB to import QIF from Quicken. Ha! Still, even Quicken has its issues, as was mentioned, I often have to kick and yell at it when it fails to pull the data the first 2 times.

[MansterRock]

The only additional suggestion 8 would make to rodeoclown's idea(and I may try his idea to see if the work flow is easier) is to export as a qfx file instead of qif. It's a better format as quicken is deprecating qif going forward.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

[Turf_Hacker]

I have been using ynab for 1 year. I have 15 bank accounts but only use 3 on a regular basis.

I too thought I needed Auto sync with the banks. And I almost stopped using ynab because of that. I am glad I didn't

I'm guessing that even with 10 bank accounts, chances are you only use 2, maybe 3 with any frequency - you could download those two accounts manually each month and then do the others every 6 months or so in order to reconcile and make sure they are up to date.

I don't think Jesse's said we will NEVER do auto-syncing, but it's not something we are looking at any time soon.
Having said that, have you tried using auto-sync with quicken, then exporting a QIF file, and importing that into YNAB? That might be easier for you.

And one final option is to reduce the number of bank accounts you have...

Well, you folks almost have me sold on the idea. Two points of note here:

1) I'm annoyed at having to log into more than 2-3 different accounts, let alone 10-15! And I only plan on increasing the accounts, not decreasing.

2) Reducing the number of accounts one has should not be a requirement to appreciate banking software. I use ING Direct and Ally banking SUB-Accounts, and that translates to lots of targeted savings accounts to manage. I prefer this method of targeted savings, but do NOT enjoy the management thereof (Quicken being the savior/crutch so far).
I just don't see the big deal in implementing auto-sync. What I have not considered is what rodeoclown suggested, use Quicken to suck down the data, then use YNAB to import QIF from Quicken. Ha! Still, even Quicken has its issues, as was mentioned, I often have to kick and yell at it when it fails to pull the data the first 2 times.

My suggestion (I have to make a suggestion, that's the YNAB Teacher in me!) would be to reconsider using targeted savings accounts in the first place. One of YNAB's advantages is the use of category balances to take the place of multiple single-function savings accounts. If you rely on your category balances, you don't really need a separate savings account to do this. While not knowing your exact situation, I would guess you're using individual accounts (or subaccounts) to set aside money for things like: car replacement, car insurance, property taxes, Christmas gifts, homeowner's insurance, other gifts, etc. YNAB is designed to help you manage these types of expenses through use of category balances. The major advantage in using categories for this rather than accounts is it greatly reduces the administrative overhead required to juggle all of these various accounts. Instead, you can use just a couple of accounts and accomplish the same goal.

Just some food for thought...

[litterbug]

Roachslayer, before deciding the deal is broken, you should consider doing an online intro to YNAB seminar and trying YNAB for a week. The trial period is a lot longer, but I knew within a few days that the YNAB method made perfect sense for me, and that the software was a great tool.

YNAB is not banking software; it's budgeting software that's designed to implement YNAB's method. Of course it isn't for everyone, but it's brilliantly effective for a lot of people. It's prospective, not retrospective; it's not interested in how you spent money in the past, just what you're going to to with the money you have today. But it's not about projection; it's how to go about running your finances and directing your spending behavior according to the way you want to live your life, your goals, your interests, not the urge you get to buy something shiny. Instead of bank balances, you're going to spend (and save) according to category balances. Instead of managing 10 accounts, you'll see 10 categories right next to each other on one screen. It might seem very dangerous to have all those different kinds of dollars on one page, but trust me, it's no easier or harder to take money from your mortgage account and spend it on trinkets than it is to move it over in YNAB, because in one glance you see how that's going to affect your future.

I disagree with Elassar's conclusion that downloading transactions is incompatible with YNAB's method. I like entering transactions manually and then turning to the budget page to refresh my memory of my category balances. It helps me pay attention to what I'm doing. But as a number of YNABers will tell you, you can download transactions every day or two and stay as close to your budget as I do in the same amount of time. And after using YNAB for a while, you can do things a little less frequently, although you get itchy if you don't check and adjust your spending every little while.

[rikki76]

I have a buffer, save for all my long-term and emergency expenses (all on less than $1750 income per month), and follow the rules. I do use a credit card for most every purchase (and pay it off twice a month) for the $150+ Cashback I receive every year and to boost my credit score, but I do enter everything manually and categorize every item as I am supposed to. I do sometimes lose a receipt though. If I catch that right away (by easily direct connecting every couple days) I can usually remember what I purchased. I wish I could fit a smart phone in my budget (having a $15 phone bill is MUCH cheaper), because I would love the ability to enter at the time of purchase.

I do have multiple banks and accounts so it takes quite a while to download everything into YNAB. I love the convenience of being able to reconcile my accounts in Quicken easily every few days to make sure I haven't forgotten something. That is my only hold back on purchasing YNAB. So far I'm using Quicken (daily) for the convenience of quickly knowing I'm not forgetting anything, and then entering everything in YNAB too, so it is definitely taking more time than I'd like. I too would be willing to pay for that feature.

[LarryF]

I used YNAB's download feature one time to get my initial transactions into my accounts when starting (I know, most people just start from 'today' but I'm OCD like that as you will see by my following comments).

We have always entered transactions as they occur and do the same now in YNAB. I then check the bank/credit card websites every few days, mark items that have cleared in YNAB and make sure the cleared balance in YNAB matches the bank/cc online balance. This also shows me transactions we may have missed and I enter them at this time.

One of the benefits of YNAB is that you don't need multiple physical checking/savings accounts but instead can keep track of everything separately in categories (or envelopes). We have one checking account and use one credit card 99% of the time. This has simplified our lives tremendously. In the past we had multiple savings accounts that we used for all our 'non-regular' expenses and moved money in and out of checking to pay bills. We don't do this anymore. Our current checking account pays higher interest than any savings account right now so we don't even have a "savings" account at a bank. It's all in checking but tracked in categories in YNAB.

For a while I used YNAB, Quicken, Mvelopes and Mint to track our finances. Yes, all at the same time (see....OCD) to make sure the balances all matched, didn't miss any transactions, etc. Now I only use YNAB and trust it fully. I can't see going back to any of the others and have overcome my need to check and double-check everthing I do.

You have to use what works for you but I have found that in our case, a simpler, easier to maintain solution is best.