Anyone here use a budget app?

Every dollar

Although I don't use it anymore, Mint by Intuit did really well for me for a long time. I've since consolidated accounts so I don't need it, but it did great with linking all accounts and credit cards, categorizing transactions, creating budgets, etc.

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I use Mint

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Haven't set up a new account anywhere else and this is what I used to use. Seems like they have changed the interface like 4 times in the past few years and I fall a little behind each time. I find myself getting frustrated with it.

imho:

Best for detailed budgets - YNAB
Really good if you’re trying to get out of debt or save for something.

Best for investments - Personal Capital

Best free - Mint

Best overall - Quicken
Really hard to beat Quicken. Has every feature you could ask for and is what I would recommend to you.

New one I like is Simplifi by Quicken. I like the way they do budgeting (spending plan) as well as the watchlists. Their dev team has been really open to customer feed back and they do monthly updates and fixes. The only investment feature at the moment is account balances, which is fine if all you do is set and forget your retirement savings in index funds.

Mint but what would really help is a lock account feature for the fam.

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Mint isn't forward looking, so in my mind, it isn't a budgeting tool.

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I’ve heard this rhetoric multiple times from the YNAB crowd, and I don’t understand it. I looked into YNAB but I don’t see what makes it so different than Mint.

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Mint only lets you budget for the month you're in, not the months ahead. When I think of a budget, I'm thinking of a 12 month plan, maybe more. It's not rhetoric if it's true.

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What do you mean by that? As in doesn’t let you budget for some future expense? You can set a goal to save for that.

It allows you to set recurring non-monthly expense. For example, my trash pickup is billed quarterly. I can set that up in the monthly budget to account for it.

I can also set a “rolling budget” for any category. Meaning the remaining amount will roll over to the next month, positive or negative. So if I have enough info, I can average out my expenses for the month or year.

It also allows you to budget to specific categories, and then the general category. For example, “Restaurants” overall, but also individual parts of that, such as “Family Eating Out”, “Work Lunch”, etc.

Does Mint not accomplish this process? What part am I missing that can’t be accounted for? How does YNAB or some other “forward looking” app differ from this?

There’s certainly different ways to approach it, but I don’t see how it’s not “forward looking”.

I've used Mint for years.

My biggest issue with it is that Capital One limits Mint updates to once per day, so there is often a 1-2 day lag with my main bank accounts syncing with Mint.

Weekly Budget app on Android. Set up a weekly limit and plug it all in as you spend. Also use Monefy for android to keep track of all my accounts. Same deal, plug it in and you're on top of it 24/7

Personal Capital