I have not linked any of the accounts that I’ve created and I intend to keep it that way.
I, too, am impressed with their educational materials and their actually useful Help Center. I’m still early in my free trial but already thinking I would sign up for at least a year to really get the hang of zero based budgeting.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
This is a sobering recommendation that I will consider as I work through the YNAB trial period.
Actual Budget may be where I end up, or perhaps even back to another set of my well-loved spreadsheets, once I learn to use zero based budgeting. But, for now, the Actual Budget app looks pretty daunting compared to YNAB.
Thankfully not in the UK it seems! UK integration uses Truelayer, which seems to power a huge amount of the open banking infrastructure in the UK. No need to provide login details to my accounts to YNAB or third party, it’s done via API’s that I can remove access to when I want.
Unless it’s a third party using a third party in which case I’m wrong, but linking an account on YNAB brings up a Truelayer authorisation screen and link - and that’s what is noted in the bank app.
However, I did see something else online that YNAB data might be sold on still, so I am wary of that, even as a paid customer.
This has convinced me to try Actual Budget again, as there do appear to be some changes, but as someone mentioned above, the Spouse Approval Factor comes in to play as well…
I don’t recall ever reading about PLAID. Apparently, they are a very big deal.
Both my banks use Plaid, as well as a credit card that I have been using for more than 50 years. Just another reason to believe Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun Microsystems, was right about privacy.
I’m playing around with Actual right now and like it. I was on YNAB for many years but have been off and on with them for the last few years.
Really once they moved to a web based interface and started some regular subscription increases I looked for alternatives, including Banktivity, MoneyWiz (currently), and spreadsheets. None of them are as easy to use as YNAB, thought they all have their own particular benefits.
The thing about YNAB – they do a great job of making things really simple and helping you develop good habits around zero-based budgeting. Over years it just became second nature and easy. I really don’t think I would have developed those habits as well without the software. Though I still don’t understand how they do credit cards –
Depending on how much you like building spreadsheets, I wouldn’t be surprised if you recreate your own YNAB there after you’ve grown used to it.
The new method of credit cards I find awful. I now ignore it, and use a credit as a checking account with a negative balance, as I pay off in full each month anyhow. I can see what they’re trying to get at, but it doesn’t work nicely for me.
I’ve tried their loans feature and whilst I didn’t like that to start with, I’ve kind of grown to it but wouldn’t be a deal breaker if I had to use another tool that didn’t have it.
Was using excel sheets but it’s annoying to have to enter everything by hand, so your post (and Pupsino’s) led me to install Actual. I like the local server bit, and don’t mind about having it only on the mac.
I have never used a budget app, so I find PLAID and everything else a bit overwhelming… Actual offers to link accounts through SimpleFIN. Do any of you know about this? Specifically the safety? Does the fact that Actual is installed locally make it safer?
I’ve gone through this journey in 2022 and found nothing better than YNAB.
I arrived at the same conclusion. I’ve been a YNAB user every day since 2009.
yup, I really don’t mind paying for it because it gives me immense peace of mind. When I am grocery shopping, I use the home screen widget to log transactions then and there which saves time when reconciling.
Though I will say they are very slow to implement nice features (like stats on phone - solved by using the Lumy app but that’s another small subscription).
I thought I’d reply to this thread as it’s been a couple of months. I’m now all in with Actual Budget, and I’ve set up a server instance following their instructions so that I can access my budget on iPad and iPhone. It was very easy to do and shouldn’t be a barrier to anyone.
I’ve not touched YNAB since I last posted in this thread. I just don’t need it now that I am using Actual. I had intended to run the two in parallel for the remainder of my annual sub to YNAB so that I could decide which I preferred, but in the end I didn’t want to do that.
Actual Budget is open source and there’s an active Discord with users and coders discussing ideas, problems, etc. as well as tips on managing budgets. I don’t go in there much but I like the sense of community and that it’s users that are driving the development of the app.