You Need a Budget: The Proven System for Breaking the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle, Getting out of Debt, and Living the Life You Want
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For most people, budgeting conjures up the same feelings as, say, prison and dieting. But your initial instinct couldn’t be further from the truth. You just haven’t budgeted the right way.
You Need a Budget will teach you four simple rules to completely revolutionize the way you think about managing your money. With a budget, you’ll break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle, get out of debt, and save more money. A liberating, enabling, empowering budget will actually make you feel more free, not more restricted. The YNAB philosophy is centered around these four rules:
Give every dollar a job. Take your cash, checking, and saving accounts and assign jobs to that money. Begin now with what you have on hand. Then follow your plan. Pick your priorities, and make sure your dollars are helping you move closer to the things you care about most. Embrace your true expenses. Look ahead and identify the larger, less frequent expenses that tend to sneak up on you. Break those expenses into manageable monthly amounts. Consider insurance premiums, birthdays, holidays, charitable giving, car repairs, etc. This practice evens out your cash outflows, decreases your stress, and helps you make better decisions. Roll with the punches. Accept the fact that life always changes and you’ll likely always go over budget somewhere. If an unexpected expense comes up and you need to change your budget, just change it. The YNAB philosophy not only tolerates changing your budget but encourages it. Age your money. The goal of this rule is to increase the time between the moment you earn money and the moment you spend that money. In other words, if you’re going to break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle, you need to learn to live on money you earned a month or two months or even three months ago.
YNAB’s four rules are the pillars of a tried-and-true system that gets you to engage with your money every day. It helps you change your behavior so that you’re proactive and in control of your finances. It’s not about stressing over last month’s statement; instead, you’re looking ahead and actively deciding how you want and need to build a life of meaning, not stress.
11 reviews for You Need a Budget: The Proven System for Breaking the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle, Getting out of Debt, and Living the Life You Want
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Coko Brown –
Great book
I have always dreaded budgeting. I have tried it a million times and quit. However, I am sick and tired of my salary sounding amazing but my bank accounts and financial habits are not in alignment with what I make. This book, along with a couple others I read in the past have one central theme, mindset. I donât know about anyone else, but this book was perfect for me. It was like having a friend sit me down and give it to me straight. In the past, I thought wanting money was enough, now I know what I want my money to do for me. #PositiveMoneyMindset
Brent F. Brown –
Not just an application.. a process that leads to success.
This book is about the YNAB system of budgeting, rather than the YNAB budgeting application. You could implement everything in this book with a spreadsheet or pencil and paper if you like.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. It also always seemed to be fighting me… that I could never get it to do what I wanted.I decided to dump YNAB. I already had years of experience with Quicken. I decided to try Mint and Personal Capital. Those applications had many of the features missing from YNAB. However, after switching to each of them, I felt lost. There was freedom to set things up however I wanted, but that didn’t add up to better information or tangible goals.I could now tell you, to the penny, how much I spent on coffee two months ago… I could tell you how much I planned to spend on coffee six months from now. 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 eventually figured out that YNAB is not lite on features. It is opinionated.YNAB believes that there is a correct way to budget, and the application enforces those opinions with ruthless efficiency. It only makes you collect the information it believes to be useful, and it only presents information that helps you now. If you try to go outside its process, it will make your life difficult.That is not to say that it tells you where to spend your money. Precisely the opposite. Go ahead and budget $1000/month for iced lattes if you want. YNAB doesn’t judge. But it does insist that you have the money.This book is about the YNAB opinions which are baked into the software. I have come to view those opinions as wisdom. 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.”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. 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. Now that some of the gaps in my understanding have been filled in, I’m sold on the process. I already learned via trial and error that I like what YNAB does. This book filled in the gaps of why it works.Highly recommended!
dan shiver –
a plan to make it happen or turn things around
Follow the steps and u will find ur self in a really good position. Two things I will note are that:1. Ur not going to get this in one read. U have to read this multiple times and go back as needed to specific places to reemphasize or get the real understanding of a needed lesson.2. Like most books I read, unless I missed it, I donât see how this works if ur in straight commission. It seems to be designed for a person with a regular job and paycheck.
Carol –
Great Introduction to Budgeting
Excellent primer on budgeting without getting too technical. Loved the section on getting children involved with examples from their own family. Lol m
Jackie –
Simple, Helpful, and Funny
Loved this book. Talks about money in a way that Iâve never seen before and feels like a conversation not a lecture. Always been big on budgeting and this just revolutionized my process!!!
Ken Kaufman –
Put Your Money Where Your Priorities Are – Align How You Spend with What’s Most Important to You!
Contrary to your potential reaction to the title, this book does not tell you how to spend your money. It encourages you to determine your own priorities, or what is most important to you, and it empowers you to align how you spend your money with those priorities. Rule 1 teaches to give every dollar a job, and, according to the author, the other three rules are actually this same rule, just restated to make sure every possible application of how you might try to justify not using a budget is covered. Yes, it’s time to remove the cognitive dissonance between your actions and what you actually value most. And the content of this book is the remedy.The first four chapters cover each of the four rules. The author’s perspective in these chapters was helpful and enlightening. But the chapters on “Budgeting as a Couple” and “Teaching your Kids to Budget” were the most helpful and enlightening to me. I made some serious changes to how I manage my family’s finances based on the principles and examples shared in these chapters. I also found the real-life examples shared throughout this book to be relevant and insightful.Not only would I recommend this book to everyone, but I also bought a dozen copies for co-workers. You need this book so you can learn that you need a budget, meaning you can finally give every dollar a job that is aligned with what you believe is the most important job for that dollar. Then powerful things start to happen, mainly this – your happiness increases as you reshape your financial reality into a tool to help you accomplish whatever is most important to you.
Manuela –
E’ un libro che tutti dovremmo leggere, investendo tempo per migliorare le nostre finanze personali. Mi è piaciuto molto.
HECTOR ZERMENO –
Me encantó el enfoque hacÃa algo que muchas personas deberÃan de hacer; pero no hacen por mil razones, su presupuesto. El acercamiento del libro hacia el tema es muy práctico, y sobre todo, nos incentiva a llevar a cabo y mantener el buen hábito de presupuestar.
Larry –
This should be compulsory reading in high school to teach our children the art of budgeting and leading a more rewarding life rather than living with the stress of a never ending cycle of debt.
Stefan –
I rarely sit down to write reviews anymore, but I have to for YNAB.I started budgeting with YNAB in 2013 after a lifetime of uncontrolled and irresponsible spending of money I either just got or didn’t have, and I was experiencing considerable anxiety and fear around money.I had just moved out of my parents’ house and had to find my own way in life financially, with all-new responsibilities.YNAB literally saved my financial life. I love it. I love that I can plan ahead. I love that I have order in my life. I love that I can play and feel around with the money I have.Since 2013 I have turned my net worth around, from -xx.xxx,- to +xx.xxx,-, and financially I am now almost totally stress-free. YNAB has allowed me not to “save for a rainy day” but to plan ahead, taking all the little and big irregular expenses into account and put them one stress-free budget.Can I live off the money I have today for the next 6 months without missing out on anything? Yes!Fridge quits working, laptop implodes – don’t worry, replacements are within budget!Gas/Electricity for 2021 (!) are taken care of and in the budget now. Now that’s freedom!The money I earn this August will probably be spent sometime next year. What a relief!I don’t even look at my bank balance anymore – because that’s not what’s available to me now.Only YNABers know the freedom a bit of planning brings. Budgeting doesn’t feel restrictive, it’s the freedom to see what’s ahead, even if I have to make an adjustment here or there.YNAB has turned out to be one of the very best decisions I have made in my adult life.The book lays out Jesse’s philosophy quite nicely, and thank god it wasn’t just an ad for the software, since you could do all of it in an Excel spreadsheet, but the software is quite simply amazing and fun, so do yourself a favour and get it. You won’t regret it.
Indian Customer –
Book is good and provide ample of examples on how to budget for everyone. Explained very well every category along with how to set it up. Not pusing you to subscribe for YNAB subscription. You can follow the instruction by creating an excel file as far as you are following the instruction. No bookmark received with the book.