My wife and I have been using YNAB for almost four years, right after the most recent non-cloud version was released. Even more so than the satisfaction that comes from having controlled costs. Income expansion, puts me in a different frame, which I find strangely empowering.
In that case, I find accounting, even less useful (once I have arrived at approximate cash outflow). Some of you may say, recording costs is not controlling it.
I now focus my efforts on income expansion rather than cost control. I suspect that this is so, for most people.įor who have not kept personal accounts, what I am describing is similar to when you got your Fitbit - The first 2-3 weeks are full of glorious insights and a month goes by and you do not really need a fitbit to tell you how many steps you walked. This made the 'insights' less interesting and approximations worked well enough for my use case. I had kept personal accounts for a while, until I realized my expenses swayed month-to-month, but within a narrow band (+- 10%). As a middle-aged, married man, my current view is:ġ.