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Beverage Company Drilling For Whiskey In Antarctica's Ice

You Need A Budget Software Review

A while back I commented that, in an effort to tighten up the family finances, I'd be trying out the software You Need A Budget (YNAB). I also promised to let y'all know what I think of it after trying it for a few months.

While $50 for the software is a bit steep, I honestly have to say it was well worth it for us. The problem I had before keeping track of all of our spending was (a) records were not all in one place, (b) it was a hassle to track everything, and (c) I really had no overarching financial goals driving me to be serious about it. Thus it kept under the radar for quite a while. I knew we were spending less than we took in, but the details were a bit (okay, a lot) fuzzy. No software can help you with (c), but YNAB does an admirable job of addressing (a) and (b).

What YNAB does is a loose digital interpretation of the envelopes budgeting system. Step 1 is informing the program of all banking/loan/credit accounts you have, and their current balances. Step 2 is creating a budget. Their website has some guidelines on what you should include, but you will have to create a budget that will work for you, and there's really no way they can do much to help with that.

What follows is a breif description of how the software operates. See their tutorials for more info, or skip this paragraph if you're not that interested. The budgeting system, however, is quite slick. They allow you to create two tiers of categories for spending, master categories, and sub-categories. Thus in our budget, the master category of "Recreation" contains sub-categories for things like the cable bill, date night, Netflix, and plain old fun money. At the beginning of each month you budget for the month, and as you spend money you enter the transactions into the register for your accounts, and you also categorize the transaction as to which of your budget categories the money should be drawn from. Thus you have three columns of figures for each month's budget: the budgeted amount, the amount spent so far this month, and the amount remaining in the category. Unspent money from a category stays in that category and accumulates from month to month, allowing me to do things like put aside $20 per month into an auto-repair and maintenance category, which will keep adding up until the inevitable car trouble. If you spend more than the money remaining on a particular category, that overspending is deducted from the amount you have to budget for the next month.

You can also create savings categories, like "Christmas gifts," or "emergency fund," which I found incredibly helpful. Now, instead of just a pile of cash in a savings account, we know exactly how much money we have and what task(s) it is designated for.

I don't find YNAB's reporting or scheduling features very useful, so I have no comment on those.

Now for criticism of the program. The setup is a hassle. You need to inform the program of all banking/loan/credit accounts you have, and their current balances on day 1. This takes time. And then figuring out how to handle the initial balances on your credit cards when you pay them off is not easy either. It would be great if you could automate downloading of transaction info for various accounts, but that's not possible. It would also be helpful if I could move money from one category to another without having to change the "budgeted" number, and screwing up my monthly budget.

All in all, though, this experiment has been a rousing success. This has made it enough easier for us to track our spending that we now actually know where every dollar goes. This makes it far easier for us to plug holes in our spending (like the $4 fast-food lunches that add up disturbingly fast) and we are now able to save a significant portion of our income.

So, while $50 is pricey, it has certainly saved us far more than that in the few months we've been using it. I highly recommend it.

They do give a free 7-day trial, but that's not really enough time to evaluate it, so I don't really think that counts. You'd need at least 60 days to see if it's working for you.

Note: They will be coming out with a new version sometime in the next few months, but anyone who buys between now and then gets to upgrade free.

Best. Political Cartoon. EVER.

Right here. It basically sums up my attitude toward a philosophy of government-as-do-gooder.

Best "Raise X dollars for charity and I'll do Y" incentive EVER.

John Scalzi points me at this offer by Chad Orzel:

If the Uncertain Principles share of the HP contribution is greater than 1% of the total, I will recreate the famous Bohr-Einstein debates about quantum measurement, in puppet show form, and post video of it on the blog.

As Scalzi put it: "Yes, that’s right: Einstein. And Bohr. In puppet form. Talking quantum physics. You know you want it."

Bullshit

If you didn't already think the Nobel Peace Prize was a bullshit political football (Arafat? Really?), this should should convince you:

Obama awarded 2009 Nobel Peace Prize

What on earth has he done that would even merit consideration for this? He was nominated within 12 days after taking office (the deadline for submissions), and has exactly zero actual accomplishments in substantive foreign policy (which is mostly what the peace price is for, after all), unless you count leaving eastern Europe twisting in the wind. WTF? The Nobel committee doesn't even seem to have a real reason for awarding him the prize - the article says that he's trying hard to "solve complex global problems including working toward a world free of nuclear weapons." Yeah, because nobody's tried that before. It seems to rest more on the fact that they like his conciliatory attitude toward the rest of the world, and want to give him the prize to give him more political leverage at home and abroad:

[I]t was clear the Nobel committee wanted to encourage Obama on the issues he has been discussing on the world stage....

The committee wanted to be "far more daring" than in recent times and make an impact on global politics, said Kristian Berg Harpviken, director of the International Peace Research Institute.

Awarding prizes to heads of state should really wait until after they can derive political benefit from it (i.e. they are out of office) - but apparently the whole point was to give Obama said political benefit.

This opinion at the (London) Times is spot-on:

Rarely has an award had such an obvious political and partisan intent. It was clearly seen by the Norwegian Nobel committee as a way of expressing European gratitude for an end to the Bush Administration, approval for the election of America’s first black president and hope that Washington will honour its promise to re-engage with the world.

Instead, the prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace.

This is just disgusting, meddlesome bullshit.


UPDATE: Radley Balko's idea is a good one.

Link Dump

Some links to things around the web that amused, baffled, or otherwise made me look twice.

1) Dan Drezner wonders "what if author bios [for pundits and academics] were brutally honest?" He provides a few examples.

2) Ukranian Amazons? WTF!?!?

3) A Chinese guy who paints himself into scenery. Odd, but cool. The last photo is particularly freaky.

4) A blog that proves that the customer is Not Always Right. Having worked retail through high school, I can say that I find these stories scarily plausible. In particular, I was amused by this, this, and especially this one (I worked in a pharmacy).

5) CEO chews out lazy employees, who either (a) get right back to work, or (b) call the cops to arrest the CEO. Which do you think?

6) Texas Stadium scoreboard fail.

7) And something adorable for you.

UPDATE:

8) I almost forgot - from the idiots behind Conservapedia, I bring you The Conservative Bible Project. Sometimes reality is truly beyond satire. (For the record, I think this is a monumentally stupid undertaking.)

Holy. Crap.

This is the most specific sports prediction you'll ever see come true: