[Haul4ss]

The whole point of YNAB (Rule #1 of their program) is that you need to proactively allocate every dollar you have. Every dollar has a job, and then you need to manually enter when that dollar is doing its job so you feel when that money actually gets spent.

I tried for years to use Mint, but it's too passive. Too easy to ignore. With YNAB, every purchase goes in when we make the purchase, and I found it keeps us more honest about our budget estimates and also helps to curtail frivolous spending.

To each his own, of course.

[gohrt]

To be most useful, YNAB should know my passive spending, and then harass me about all the dollars I am not reporting. Otherwise, I can just leak money and not talk about it.

[wutbrodo]

I fully agree. It seems a little silly that if you have a busy period at work and forget to pay attention for a few weeks, that's just a black hole (short of going through credit card statements and trying to remember every cash purchase). This happens all the time with Mint, and I can just go back and categorize all the purchases that need doing so, with the only loss being that the cash purchases I forgot about show up as non-specific cash spending (through the initial ATM withdrawal).