YNAB thank you

[have4goneinsane]

Just wanted to say a quick thank you to all the mn'ers who recommended You Need a Budget.

DH was sceptical at first and it was a bit of a learning curve, but 3 months in we are both using it and, although money is still really tight, giving every dollar a job (we're overseas) means that we have enough and have been able to pay for some unexpected expenses over the past couple of months.

I now have half a month's buffer and it's helped me to really think about what I am spending.

It's brilliant, isn't it? We used to be overdrawn an awful lot but these days we're never anywhere near that. We just heard today that our car needs a new part which will cost €450 but I don't have to worry about where the money's going to come from - it's sitting there waiting!

My only regret about YNAB is that I didn't have it 10 years ago. My life would actually be significantly different now if I had.

I've just stated with it in the last week, I feel like I have a different mindset already.

I'm starting now. ..I'm going to need some help with it but I'm feeling excited

I've asked this before but never really found the answer- why is YNAB better than keeping a record on, say an excel spreadsheet?

YNAB has completely changed our finances too.

It's different from a spreadsheet because it incorporates a mindset. I've done budgets before but never worked on an adjust your budget as you go along plan. That works for me as our problem has always been not planning for the big irregular expenses. Now I check the budget not the bank balance when deciding what to spend. This means I can have money in my pocket but not feel like I have money to spend if actually I've allocated that towards the car insurance due in six months.

You could do all this on a spreadsheet if you're good at excel. For me it was about 30 USD well spent.