Every chapter is filled with anecdotes about why you should budget and the general principles behind the “Four Rules”, but there is very little in the way of practical exercises or prompts to help a person begin the process of understanding their financial picture and gathering all the info necessary to start and maintain a budget.
#YOU NEED A BUDGET JESSE MECHAM HOW TO#
Now, to be fair, the book barely mentions the YNAB software and the author does not try to sell it as a solution, but unfortunately the book also fails to provide a practical set of instructions on how to implement the YNAB approach to budgeting - despite the author claiming this could be done with a spreadsheet. Unfortunately, this book misses the mark entirely as both a practical guide to budgeting or to assist with implementing the software. In the interest of transparency, I bought this book out of a desire to help me use the YNAB online software and take my budgeting to the next level. Whatever deep hole you are in, it can lead you out. I am living proof that, whatever your goal, it will get you there. I can wax evangelical till the cows come home about this system. It gave me peace through hard times, and it kept me on track when things got better. But this system gave me a clear, time-limited, well-lighted path to being debt-free.
I actually had a negative net worth - a big one. One of the scariest things I ever did was add up all the money I owed to see just exactly how deeply in debt I was. It saw me through debt payoff that I never believed I would dig myself out from under, a year of unemployment with minimal worry, and now it's leading me by the hand toward my debt-free retirement. I've been following the YNAB for a number of years now, and can attest via personal experience how well this system works. I guess that makes sense, so that it could have reviews less than 9 hours after publication. I see a number of reviews here by people who received the book for free. This book filled in the gaps of why it works.
#YOU NEED A BUDGET JESSE MECHAM TRIAL#
I already learned via trial and error that I like what YNAB does.
Now that some of the gaps in my understanding have been filled in, I'm sold on the process. I already knew the basics from videos and podcasts, but this book does a great job of putting all of the information in one place and presenting it in a systematic manner. This book is about explaining that process, why it is the way it is, and why it leads to better decisions and progress towards achieving goals. Rather than saying "here's a bunch of features, do with them what you want", YNAB says "here is a proven process that has worked for thousands of people, follow it." I have come to view those opinions as wisdom. This book is about the YNAB opinions which are baked into the software. But it does insist that you have the money. Go ahead and budget $1000/month for iced lattes if you want. That is not to say that it tells you where to spend your money. If you try to go outside its process, it will make your life difficult. It only makes you collect the information it believes to be useful, and it only presents information that helps you now. YNAB believes that there is a correct way to budget, and the application enforces those opinions with ruthless efficiency. I eventually figured out that YNAB is not lite on features.
So what? How does any of that help me now? Somehow having all these new features and freedom resulted in less actionable information, and less peace of mind, than I had with YNAB. I could tell you how much I planned to spend on coffee six months from now. I could now tell you, to the penny, how much I spent on coffee two months ago. There was freedom to set things up however I wanted, but that didn't add up to better information or tangible goals. However, after switching to each of them, I felt lost. Those applications had many of the features missing from YNAB. I decided to try Mint and Personal Capital. I already had years of experience with Quicken. that I could never get it to do what I wanted. Whenever I used the YNAB application, I always felt that it was "budgeting lite." No complex forecasts, no detailed reports and (until recently) no automatic feeds pulled down from the bank. You could implement everything in this book with a spreadsheet or pencil and paper if you like. This book is about the YNAB system of budgeting, rather than the YNAB budgeting application.
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