Want to Spend Less Time Budgeting?

Team YNAB is still basking in the glow of so much positive feedback on the new mobile app. Thank you! (Hopefully, you love it, too. If so, please share your review in the App Store or on Google Play.)

Now I want to talk about how the new app could actually change the way that you manage your budget—for the better—and why.

Frequency Up, Workload Down.

The biggest change for me, so far, has been how often I budget on the fly. It’s so easy to pull out my phone and tweak things—whether it’s categorizing transactions, covering overspending, or moving things around. And with the increased frequency in budgeting sessions? My total time spent budgeting (a.k.a., my budgeting workload) has gone down!

I used to spend, roughly, 20 minutes catching up with my budget every Sunday. In the last seven days, according to the app usage data on my phone, I’ve only used the YNAB app for six minutes (and I know that Sunday’s budgeting session will take next to no time because I’ve been updating everything on the go).

Quality Matters—in Budgeting and in Life.

It sounds counterintuitive that using your YNAB app more will lead to less time spent budgeting. The reason it works is that you’re not just opening YNAB to stare at it. You’re in there to adjust something—so that all of your dollars are doing the jobs you need them to do. That’s it.

In fact, we don’t even want you to hang out in the app (even though it’s pleasant to look at, don’t you think?). I digress. The point is, we don’t want budgeting to be your new favorite past-time. We’re not a social app. Get in, make meaningful changes, get out, and enjoy your life. And when your budgeting is done? Life is better.

A Note on Notifications …

If you haven’t already, turn on the YNAB app notifications. They’ll let you know when you’ve got budgeting to take care of (new transactions to import, overspending to cover, or new dollars to categorize). Just do it, they’ll make you a better budgeter.

… and if you haven’t downloaded the app, yet? Go do that now (iOS / Android)!

If you can’t wait until next week for more whiteboard wisdom, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you have a question or an idea you’d like us to address in a future Whiteboard Wednesday episode, we’d love to hear from you: email@youneedabudget.com.