Who uses a budgeting / money management app and which one would you recommend?

[expandabandband]

If indeed you would recommend it at all...

For very obvious reasons, we need to keep a firm eye on our spending and so I'd like to start using a budgeting app and would love any recommendations or thoughts you have.

Would also be useful to know if you recommend a bank account too - we are currently with Smile who don't seem to be compatible with any of the apps, so I may well have to change banks to get this done.

Ok thanks. I’ve downloaded that plus YNAB plus something called Emma (because it had 11k reviews which is a lot) so I’ll have a read through of all of them.

To me, £80 per year (I get a 10% discount because I had YNAB 4 before it went subscription based) is worth it for the sync with my bank account, sync with my husband's phone, etc. But you're absolutely right that it is a glorified spreadsheet.

I've been using YNAB for 6 months and love it.
I'm someone who's kept a spreadsheet on spending for over 20 years, so always thought I was on top of our budgeting but YNAB has taken it to another level.

What I would say is that the first couple of months were a bit sobering. I thought we were doing ok but after filling in the budget realised that we needed to make changes. It was actually quite emotional, despite having a few thousand in the bank I realised that we didn't have enough to cover upcoming expenses for the whole year. the first couple of months there was quite a lot of adjustments to make, each making our situation seem worse, but now 6 months on I only occasionally add a category. 2 days ago I realised I hadn't budgeted for glasses, dh and I normally have a new pair every 2 years, I've created the category with a deadline on next may and hopefully by then I'll have allocated enough to cover one pair of glasses.

I've always been quite disciplined with budgeting etc but YNAB has given me a lot more control/visibility. I would highly recommend.

Another YNAB fan here. DH gets paid four weekly whilst I get paid monthly, so I like that I can only budget with money I have, and update it on the go on my phone.
Technically all doable on a spreadsheet but having all the transactions automatically imported makes it so easy.

As someone who doesn’t know how to do spreadsheets this makes me think maybe I should………

But the cost!

I’m also quite impressed by the dedication everyone has to it. It elevates it from ‘good app’ to something else.

Another ardent YNAB user here. It's not a tracker (although it does track as a by product) but a budgeting app.

I have supposedly lots in short term savings, but it's all allocated - taxes, Christmas, car servicing etc etc. i know exactly what I have available to spend (though it was less depressing when I had my head in the sand!)

YNAB for me too. I used other apps but they didn't really click for me. They were passively recording where my money was going whereas YNAB helped me understand that the money in my account doesn't reflect what I have to spend. I've genuinely gone from having £100 or so left at the end of the month to several thousand in my bank. It's still a long slog getting to payday but that's because I'm just excited to allocate my money.

Thank you everyone. Would YNAB work for two people who both have irregular freelance incomes? This is part of the problem, and why I thought I was only wanting a tracker...

Yes, is the short answer.

The longer answer is that YNAB is based around 4 key concepts. One of them is that you only budget the money you have. You budget your expenses until you next get paid. For example, we get money on the last day of the month, and in the middle of the month. I have all my direct debits in subcategories within a 'direct debit' category. I allocate money to each direct debit that falls between the first day of the month and the 13th day of the month. What's left over gets spread between other categories such as groceries, fuel, etc. YNAB tells you how much you spent the previous month, so it's super easy to predict what you'll need, but also very fun to try and reduce it slightly! The direct debits for the remainder of the month get allocated when the next lot of money comes in. We're actually now in the position where we're almost a month ahead, so I could allocate the whole month, but I'm trying to put aside a buffer for car repairs.

With your setup, you'd have to think how long your irregular income needs to last you. It might be that you get, say £5000 one month and nothing for the next 4 months. That means that you have to think 'What does this money need to do in the next 5 months?' That might be that you allocate all your direct debits for the next 5 months, then share what's left between other categories.

A tracker tells you what you did. It doesn't let you decide what you do. YNAB does track (it has lots of fancy reporting options) but more importantly, it lets you set the direction of your budget.

Ynab is amazing. I could probably do without now as used it for so long but it works so well. Well worth the money, they put the cost up last year and I initially wasn't happy but nothing else comes close.

Another YNAB fan here. I actually let my subscription lapse last year as I was so put out at the price hike. While I didn't have it, I tried other methods such as a bank account with different pots, a spreadsheet etc.

None of them worked as well as YNAB so I bit the bullet and signed up again. Best thing I ever did. Not only can you do all that pp have described (especially @Lougle who has articulated it well), but you can also use it as a search function for previous purchases. Eg I use the description/notes field to keep track of what item or service I bought. So when I couldn't remember who I'd bought gig tickets through I searched the band name and voila - I could find my ticket details.

I think if you're a current student with a 'school' email address you might get a discount.

@chimichangaz you're right. Students can get one year completely free.

I've woken up this morning to a YNAB notification that I have 4 transactions to deal with. YNAB has imported the transactions, then matched 2 of them to transactions that DH had entered manually last night, so there are no duplicates.

I love it that I can split my transactions in YNAB, too. If I want to, I can specify that of my £50 shop at Tesco, £3.99 was sweets for the kids, £5 was a book, £16 was an item of clothing, and £25.01 was groceries. Whereas before, I might think "Groceries cost so much. Why on earth am I having to go shopping again when I spent £50 at Tesco last week?", I can see that half of my spend was for other things.

As @chimichangaz says, the memo function is so helpful, too. I can put a note "DD3 trip to theatre" or "present for Charlie" which means that if I'm looking back at where money has gone, I understand why I spent £300 on birthday presents last year.

Have you considered using Monzo? It’s a bank but the app is so powerful for helping to budget and save.
I’ve not used YNAB but from the descriptions above it sounds like you can do this just using Monzo, which is free and you only need one app for your banking and money, if you can use one account (you can set it up as a joint).
You can also set up saving ‘pots’ all under the same account (both instant access and locked away). It calculates your committed spending for you each month so tells you how much you have left over and it categorises payments so you can set different budgets and track them all. It also has instant transaction notifications. It’s so easy!

I’ve very recently closed my monzo account, from what I’ve seen of ynab so far it’s a very different thing. So far I like the progress bars on ynab, and that it’s pulled my transactions through which I’ve matched in the budget. I don’t like - cost (I’m in free trial at moment) and it doesn’t pull through from chase (which I’m using instead of monzo as a spending account)

@PuzzlingRecluse can you export as an OFX? Googling suggests you can. It's not quite as seamless as direct import, but it's better than manual entry.

What’s OFX?

It's a financial file format. YNAB can import QFX, OFX, QIF, or CSV - if Chase will let you export your transactions in one of those file formats, you can then import it into YNAB so all your transactions appear without having to manually type them in.