I’ve been budgeting with Mint for 14 years. They are having customers switch to Credit Karma. It is truly terrible IMO. It’s a website to sell you credit cards and loans, not to budget. So I tried YNAB. I tried it in the past and couldn’t wrap my brain around it and gave up. I tried it again out of desperation and something clicked this time in my mind. It is a billion times better than Mint ever thought of being. It’s basically a digital form of the cash-envelope method and you assign a job for every dollar that you have. I tried it for the first month and have never done so well sticking to my budget and saving so much money. Plus, I can save a little each month for those annual expenses, instead of being caught flat-footed by them. YNAB is $99/year, but for me that will quickly pay for itself in how it has shifted my mindset.
You are so correct. CK’s prime goal seems to be selling credit cards.
I use credit karma to check/track my credit score; I ignore their “offers”
For budgeting/income/expense tracking, I use an Excel spreadsheet.
Many online banks offer free credit score and monthly spending summary for years. I no longer see the need to use Credit Karma.
Glad you like it. I bought YNAB just before they switched to a subscription model, and have been using it for 10 years. I like it. I might even pay $99/yr for it at this point if I had to.
Oh man! I’m sad I missed that boat. It’s incredibly powerful budgeting software and will be worth the cost for us. I’ve used spreadsheets along side mint, because Mint was not exactly a really good budgeting software. (I used to copy and paste the transactions from Mint into the spreadsheet.) But it just doesn’t compare to YNAB.
Excel spreadsheet, works great for me
Ramsey has a free (and paid) budget called Every Dollar. I used it briefly and it seemed pretty decent. I don’t use an app anymore, hence, the briefly.
We too used Mint for over a decade. At this point we are lucky enough to not worry about budgeting( because we did for so many years). We are doing a double app study of our own, CK vs Simplifi with the Mint incentives. So far they are both getting the job done. I do wish I hadn’t imported our accounts as it created too much work. Both apps renamed the accts and it took unnecessary time trying to figure out which was which. We primarily use it to track our net worth and wishlists, family, travel etc. You might be happy to realize if you are diligent budgeters in your early years in retirement you might just need an app to remind you to spend money on the things you value.
That’s what I’m hoping!