Two years ago I wrote about a piece of software called You Need a Budget . Back then (the dark ages) this was a desktop app and required complex setup to sync to your phone. But I found the software life changing.

A year ago, they launched a cloud / web version with some key features such as directly connecting to your bank. But they also had a number of launch glitches and bugs, along with missing features.

All these issues have largely been resolved, and so I’m here to highly recommend this product (again). This time with a slick web app, the same great mobile apps, and eve better features.

You might be like “WAAAAAH Budgets? Omar why are you writing about this?”. I often get a lot of “why do you bother budgeting”. Good question.

I think this image does a good job explaining it

Carl Richards - NY Times More Money, More Success, More Stuff? Don’t Count on More Happiness

Well, the reason being is that I find that this is the most important tool my wife and I use to achieve our family goals and plan for our life today, and the future. There is a small amout of thinking that goes along with all spending, and then reporting and tracking so we can better plan for the future.

The basic gist of it is this

We use this tool to:

Assign every dollar “a job”
We have at least 1 months “budget” set aside (you spend last month’s income)
We have pre-paid and saved for every goal we have (Vacations, College Savings, Charitable Savings, Investing)
We all have our own little budgets (allowance) to spend discretionary money every month without any discussions
We know where all our money goes
Credit Card spending is treated just like cash spending, s there is no confusion

Jan 1 is around the corner and this is a great time to think about getting started.

There is really very little work to use a product like this to help you achieve your own goals. The work is actually in deciding what you want your money to do for you and your life.

It’s not budgeting.

They have a free trial good for 34 days. After that it’s $50 a year. They have great apps on iOS and Android that take a lot of the drudgery out of entering transactions.

You can read in great detail about the philosophy in my previous post .

Signup for a free trial .

OmarKnows Rating: Recommended