Why I Quit YNAB (And What I Use Instead)

I need to start with a confession: I loved YNAB.

For real. I was the person who recommended it to everyone. Friends, family, random people on Reddit — if someone mentioned budgeting, I'd preach the gospel of "give every dollar a job." I ran a YNAB budget for over four years. I read the book. I watched the live workshops. I was in.

So when I say I quit YNAB, please understand this wasn't a casual breakup. It was a long, slow realization that the tool I'd built my financial life around had become part of the problem.

Here's what happened.

The Price Kept Going Up #

Let's start with the obvious one.

When I first signed up for YNAB, it was $84/year. Not cheap for a budgeting app, but I justified it: "It pays for itself." And honestly? It did. YNAB's methodology helped me pay off debt and build savings. Worth every penny.

Then it went to $99/year.

Then $14.99/month — which is $179.88/year if you pay monthly, or $109/year on the annual plan.

Let me put that in perspective. I'm using a budgeting app — an app whose entire purpose is helping me be smarter with money — and it costs more than Netflix, more than Spotify, more than most of the subscriptions it was helping me track.

The irony wasn't lost on me. Every month, I'd see that $14.99 charge and think: "YNAB would tell me to evaluate whether this subscription is worth it."

And eventually, I had to be honest: no, it wasn't.

What $14.99/Month Actually Buys #

YNAB is a budgeting app. It helps you create envelopes (they call them categories), assign money to them, and track spending. That's the core function.

Yes, it has bank syncing. Yes, it has reports. Yes, it has goal tracking. These are nice features. But they're not $180/year nice. Especially when other apps offer the same features for a fraction of the price.

The app I use now — EnvelopeBudget — costs $4/month or $40/year. It does the same envelope budgeting. It has bank sync through SimpleFIN. It has reports. And it costs less than a third of what YNAB charges.

I'll get into the details later. First, let me tell you about the other reasons I left.

It Got Too Complicated #

YNAB has a learning curve. They'll tell you it's simple — "four rules!" — but in practice, it's not.

Here's what using YNAB actually looks like:

• You need to understand the concept of "aging money" (which confuses most users)
• Credit card handling is a labyrinth — YNAB creates a special category for credit card payments that auto-adjusts based on your spending, and if you don't understand exactly how it works, your budget will be wrong
• Overspending in a category works differently depending on whether you used cash or credit
• Reconciliation is a manual process that YNAB insists you do regularly
• The "budget template" feature added complexity instead of reducing it
• Setting up goals requires choosing between multiple goal types (needed by date, monthly savings, spending goal, etc.) and understanding how each one calculates differently

I'm a reasonably tech-savvy person, and I still found myself Googling "YNAB credit card category explained" at least three times. Every time I thought I understood it, some edge case would throw me off.

The YNAB subreddit is full of posts like "I've been using YNAB for 6 months and I still don't understand credit cards." These aren't dumb people. The app is genuinely confusing in ways it shouldn't be.

I Just Wanted Envelopes #

At its core, I wanted a simple thing: put money in categories, spend from those categories, see what's left. That's envelope budgeting. That's what works.

YNAB took that simple concept and wrapped it in layers of abstraction. Aging money. Credit card float handling. Rolling category balances with overspend resolution. Goal templates with cascading priority. At some point, the tool was doing more thinking than I was, and I couldn't always follow its logic.

I wanted to see my money in envelopes. Not debug a budgeting system.

The Direct Import Problem #

YNAB uses Plaid (through their partner MX) for bank syncing. If you've used any fintech app, you know the drill: connect your bank, transactions import automatically.

Except it's not that smooth.

Here's my experience with YNAB's direct import:

• Connections broke constantly. My credit union would disconnect every few weeks and require re-authentication.
• Transactions were delayed by 1-3 days. I'd spend money today and not see it until Thursday.
• Duplicate transactions appeared regularly, especially around pending-to-posted transitions.
• Some institutions just didn't work. I had one bank account that I could never successfully connect.

YNAB's response to these issues was always some variant of "it's your bank's fault" or "try disconnecting and reconnecting." Great, thanks.

The thing is, YNAB essentially requires bank syncing to function smoothly. Yes, you can enter transactions manually. But the app is designed around the import workflow — auto-matching, approval queues, reconciliation. If you're not importing, you're fighting the app's design.

A Better Approach to Bank Sync #

The app I switched to uses SimpleFIN for bank connections. SimpleFIN is a different philosophy: it's a read-only bridge to your bank data. You authenticate once with your bank, SimpleFIN provides the data to your budgeting app, and your bank never shares your login credentials with anyone.

In practice, my SimpleFIN connections have been dramatically more reliable than what I experienced with YNAB's Plaid/MX integration. Fewer disconnections, faster transaction imports, and it works with my credit union that YNAB never could connect to.

Is it perfect? No bank sync is perfect. But it's been meaningfully better.

I Was Paying for Features I Didn't Use #

YNAB has added a lot of features over the years:

• Loan tracking and amortization
• Savings rate calculation
• Net worth tracking
• Age of money metric
• Spending trends and reports
• Goal templates
• Auto-assign

Some of these are useful. But I realized I was using maybe 30% of what YNAB offered. I wanted envelopes, transaction categorization, and basic reports. That's it.

Paying $14.99/month for an app where I used a third of the features felt like buying a luxury SUV to drive to the grocery store. It works, sure, but it's overkill.

The Community Shift #

This one's more subjective, but it mattered to me. The YNAB community used to be about helping people get out of debt and build financial stability. It was encouraging, practical, and down-to-earth.

Over time, I noticed a shift. Discussions became more about optimizing the tool than optimizing finances. Elaborate template setups. Debates about the "correct" way to handle credit card rewards. Workarounds for YNAB's limitations that were more complex than the problems they solved.

It started feeling like the community was serving the software rather than the other way around. When you need a PhD-level understanding of your budgeting app to participate in its community, something has gone sideways.

What I Switched To #

After quitting YNAB, I tried a few things:

Spreadsheets: Lasted two weeks. I'm not disciplined enough to manually enter every transaction.

Monarch Money: Nice app, but $99.99/year and it's more of a financial dashboard than an envelope budgeting tool. Not what I needed.

GoodBudget: Closer to what I wanted, but the free tier is too limited (20 envelopes, one account) and the paid version is $10/month.

EveryDollar: Dave Ramsey's app. $17.99/month for the premium version with bank sync. Even more expensive than YNAB.

Then I found EnvelopeBudget.

Why EnvelopeBudget Works for Me #

Here's what sold me:

It's actually simple. You create envelopes. You put money in them. You spend. Your balances update. That's the whole experience. No credit card float calculations, no "age of money" abstraction, no goal template types to choose between.

Bank sync via SimpleFIN. Transactions import reliably. I connect my accounts once and they stay connected. Transactions show up and get categorized. Done.

It costs $4/month ($40/year). This is the one that made me angry — not at EnvelopeBudget, but at myself for paying YNAB $14.99/month for so long. EnvelopeBudget does everything I actually used in YNAB for less than a third of the price.

The 34-day free trial. Long enough to run a full monthly budget cycle, which is exactly how long you need to know if a budgeting app works for you.

What I Miss About YNAB (Honestly) #

I want to be fair. There are a few things I miss:

• The YNAB methodology training. Their educational content is genuinely excellent. The four rules work. (But you can apply those rules in any envelope budgeting app.)
• The mobile app polish. YNAB's app is very refined. Years of development show.
• The large community. YNAB has a huge user base, which means more discussions, more tips, more shared strategies.

But none of these were worth $180/year to me. The methodology is free — it's just envelope budgeting with marketing. The app polish is nice but doesn't change my financial outcomes. And I'd rather be in a smaller community of people who are actually budgeting than a large community debating tool configurations.

How to Quit YNAB (If You're Considering It) #

If my experience resonates with you, here's how to make the switch cleanly:

Step 1: Export Your YNAB Data #

YNAB lets you export transactions as CSV. Do this for all your accounts. You'll want the history even if your new app doesn't import it.

Step 2: Screenshot Your Current Budget #

Capture your envelope names and amounts. This is your template for setting up the new system.

Step 3: Set Up Your New Tool #

Create the same envelopes with the same amounts. Connect your bank accounts. Start fresh with current balances.

Step 4: Run Both Systems for One Month #

Don't cancel YNAB immediately. Run both apps in parallel for one month to make sure the new one works for you. Compare balances, make sure transactions are importing, verify the workflow fits your life.

Step 5: Cancel YNAB #

Once you're confident in the new system, cancel your YNAB subscription. Make sure to do it before your next billing date.

Step 6: Don't Look Back #

Seriously. The biggest risk of switching is second-guessing yourself two weeks in. Every app has a learning curve. Give the new tool at least two full months before judging it.

The Bigger Picture #

I don't think YNAB is a bad product. It's a good product at a bad price with unnecessary complexity. For some people — especially those who use every feature and don't mind the cost — it's still a solid choice.

But for the majority of people who just want envelope budgeting that works? You're overpaying.

I was overpaying for years. I justified it because "it pays for itself" and because switching felt scary. Sunk cost fallacy at its finest.

The truth is, envelope budgeting is a method — not a brand. The method works regardless of which tool you use. The only question is whether your tool makes the method easy, reliable, and affordable.

For me, that's EnvelopeBudget. $4/month. SimpleFIN bank sync. Real envelope budgeting without the bloat. The 34-day free trial convinced me in the first week.

Your experience may differ. But if you're a YNAB user who's been quietly frustrated — by the price, the complexity, the broken bank connections, or just the feeling that this should be simpler — give yourself permission to try something else.

The best budgeting app is the one you'll actually use. For me, that stopped being YNAB a long time before I admitted it.