[linsomniac]

I also switched to One Finance, just over a month ago, and so far I really like it. I also started using YNAB almost a month ago to try to help with the budgeting things I was getting from Simple but aren't really there in One.

Kind of unconvinced about YNAB, I want something that does more "autopilot with corrections", but YNAB seems to be "everything manual so you know where your money is going".

[relyks]

I switched to One Finance (after trying several other banks like Monzo, Qube Money, Douugh among others). I really like the simple interface, and it's pretty similar to Simple in terms of functioning. In some ways, it's better. There isn't the goals/expenses feature, but I'm pretty sure it's on their road map. I'm able to use the pockets feature for now. They allow scheduled transfers between pockets. I just have to calculate before what needs to be added to each pocket I made (like the percentage of my income) to correspond to goals/expenses. Scheduled transfers to pockets that act like goals receive an end date and an amount transferred each time to reach the goal. Scheduled transfers to pockets that act like expenses don't receive an end date and receive a fixed amount of my income on the days I receive a direct deposit.

Like the cash envelope method of budgeting, they also allow you to select which pocket the current transaction will come from, so you can use specific pockets for different categories e.g. a pocket for groceries/food. The system would be more useful if transactions could be categorized automatically like Simple allowed you to do with goals/expenses. However, I found Simple's categorization to not always be accurate. I ended up categorizing a lot of transactions on my own.

It's also pretty cool that each of the pockets also has separate account numbers and virtual debit numbers (if necessary). I linked each of my credit card accounts to separate pockets independently.

Btw, I withdrew all my money from my account out of anger as soon as BBVA announced the transition haha. The whole thing was very confusing to me. Simple's product is far superior to anything of BBVA's or PNC's. Both companies should have been transitioning in the opposite direction to Simple's product and system. This whole process started after BBVA announced that their US operations would be acquired by PNC. It's pretty stupid too. No one I know decided to stick with their account. They definitely lost a lot of customers.

[linsomniac]

I wasn't entirely happy with Simple; their base service was solid, but I was hoping for some level of spending analysis that I was never able to get, and their offering stayed static for a very long time.

PNC's Virtual Wallet was on my radar years ago as an alternative to Simple, but I never gave it a try. When the PNC purchase was announced, I thought for a bit about just letting it roll over and trying Virtual Wallet. But then I looked into the fees section and found their overdraft fees are both fairly high per instance, and capped fairly high per day. IIRC, you could run up $140 of fees a day. Not a huge concern of mine specifically, but I don't want to support a bank that's sucking off the overdraft fees teat.

I ended up setting up a spreadsheet of my fixed expenses per paycheck, and then just set up One scheduled transfers of the amount that spreadsheet tells me to. That works at least as well for me as the Simple Expenses (which had a lot of annoying warts).

[replwoacause]

I used YNAB for years but their rigid budgeting philosophy of “giving every dollar a job” never clicked for me. I just switched over to Lunchmoney and appreciate the flexibility it offers.

[zo1]

I used to use YNAB before it was a "web app", and it was pretty auto-pilot after setting up the imports/rules. It classified 98%+ of all my expenses and inter-account transfers without any issue. Every once in a while you had to classify a new transaction but that was rare after a while. Anyways, the ones that are rare like that are usually once-offs and you're already making notes next to them so you know what it was for.

[linsomniac]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but I've watched several tutorials... The workflow seems to be: Every time you get paid, you go in and assign your money to your budget. This is the "make every dollar work for you" part. But that involves going to each non-green line item and adding some amount of your remaining money to that item.

It doesn't really have an idea of when expenses are due (though you can set up dates on goals, but multiple tutorials I watched recommended putting the due date in the name, so you can manually sort the items. It also doesn't have an idea of when you get paid. So it can't do things like: "You're going to need to pay your mortgage of $X in 2 pay periods, so let's allocate $X/2 of this paycheck to the mortgage expense.

In fact, it doesn't support even "add the remaining amount for this expense", so you're going around typing the dollar values of different expenses.

I understand that this is part of their design to get people more familiar with their money and where it's going. Maybe if I was waaaay off track, and really pressed for money, that would be valuable. But I'm 90% on track, my worries are kind of higher level.

Again, maybe I'm misunderstanding something. But I've watched hours worth of tutorials, by YNAB and others, so I've at least done some level of research. :-)

[zo1]

I think they went a little too-heavy into the "manual" part of YNAB at some point. Internally and from the UI (YNAB 4) it has everything to do the stuff automatically and that's what I do.

E.g. When I get paid, that gets loaded into YNAB using a bank-import. So even if the rules don't run, I just have to go through all my "transactions" that got loaded from the bank import and just assign to pre-defined "payees". Further, each payee has a linked category so I don't have to categorize what expense that transaction was for, because it's implied by who the payee is. E.g. A butchery store payee means the category is e.g. "Groceries - Food - Meat" or just "Monthly Groceries". YNAB also has a filter where it highlights all transactions that haven't been assigned.

With the above stuff, there is no need to do any manual or scheduled expenses. The only time that doesn't apply is when you withdraw cash and spend it that way. If you do a lot of cash transactions, you'd have to do that manually unfortunately. But for myself, what little I spend using cash I just zero-out my "cash" account every once in a while with a manual transaction that is an "unknown expenses" budget category.

Some of the stuff above is specific to the YNAB 4 desktop software - before they converted to a subscription web-based tool.

[joshstrange]

Goals are going to be your friend here. I have goals on all but 1-2 categories (categories that I rarely contribute to or are just holding the money, like my taxes for freelance work) and I can select all my categories and auto-fund them all in like 3 clicks. That's pretty much all I do on pay day, go out to the furthest month I want to budget in advance, select all category groups (or most if I don't have enough money for all) and click "Underfunded" which will put the right amount to cover my goal for the month. If you set up recurring transactions the "Underfunded" button will fund it exactly what it needs. I almost never enter numbers manually. It took me 2-3 months to get my goals dialed in because I started with guesses and went from there and sometimes I still find myself saying "Ok, I'm always pressed on this category and it's more important to me than X so I'll start funding it more going forward".

You are correct that it doesn't have a concept of when you get paid or when your expenses are due, though I set up recurring transactions for everything, even things like utilities that fluctuate. I just go in on the first of the month and adjust the pending transaction to be the correct amount for my electric/water/sewage and save it. The whole idea of not telling YNAB how much I make a month was very confusing to me at the start coming from tools like Mint but there is a method to the "madness". For YNAB you never count on future earnings, all you can spend is what you have at this point in time. For the first month or two you might not finish funding the current month until part way through it but the goal is to get 1+ months ahead on all your spending so that you are always spending last month's money instead of living paycheck to paycheck.

Here is the video that helped me the most when I first got started, maybe it will help you as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPVEB759gkU

I tried YNAB4 (app-based) and nYNAB (web-based) both once before the most recent time I tried YNAB (starting May 2020) and this last time was the only time it "clicked" for me (and the first time I really got serious about my finances). YNAB has been literally life changing for me. I went from living with a very small buffer (despite my well-paying job) to having 3 months in the future fully funded. The peace I mind I get from knowing I could lose my job tomorrow and be fine for 3 months minimum (I'd probably cut some categories and/or plunder some savings-based categories to stretch it longer) is amazing. My bank account has never had this much money in it in my life and despite having to take a 20% pay cut for about 6 months, due to the pandemic, I stayed on track for everything and continued to grow my net worth.

I know I probably sound a bit like a fanatic or a "true believer" but YNAB (once it clicked for me) changed how I interact with money and my finances as a whole. I really hope it works for you or you find a tool that clicks for you if it's not YNAB!

I'm happy to answer any other questions you might have on it. I'm forever grateful to the friend who nudged me to try YNAB again and I feel obligated to "pay it forward" whenever I can to help other people get started on it.