When Penny used to ask me “Can we afford to buy this?” in the past, we really had no way of knowing. Sure we might know roughly how much was in our current account, and might know roughly what big items we had to fund before we next got paid, but really we were guessing. This didn’t matter so much in the past but now that we are in various versions of retirement, it is going to be nice to know just how much money we have to spend on particular things at particular times. 

I had played with the app You Need A Budget (YNAB) a few years ago and then let it lapse, but I recently started using it again and am finding it is making a real difference. It is based on the principle of “giving every dollar a job”. In other words when you have money coming in to your account assign all of it so some purpose, even if that purpose is savings or even a “not sure what to do with this” category. This means that when you look in the app at the various categories of spending, and how much is left in each, if there is nothing left you have to think about which other category you have to take it from, which might be the “not sure what to do with this category” but at least you have had to think about what you are taking, and from where. 

Contrary to what you might expect using the app doesn’t make you worry about money all the time. In fact it is the opposite. It makes you much clearer about what you are doing with your money and why.

The app has a steep learning curve but there are fantastic videos and podcasts available to help make sense of it, and to be honest, it has been great fun becoming a true budget nerd!