Back when Katie and I had first gotten married in 2011, I was obsessed with everything personal finance. Now that we had our own finances to manage as a couple, I was consumed with wanting to do it right.

The first several years we were married, we tried budgeting a bunch of different ways. We used Mint, created a cash envelope system, and I even spent hours and hours creating and honing my perfect budget spreadsheet. 

But in 2012, I saw a Facebook ad for YNAB (You Need A Budget). I really liked the program but didn’t like at all that it would cost me around $60 to purchase the program. I was really impressed during the free trial. But in the end I decided I wouldn’t purchase. My thinking was that I could basically do the same thing using my own budget spreadsheets that I was working on. 

The truth is, I could never get my spreadsheets to do what YNAB did automatically for me each month. So after a full year, I decided to go back to YNAB, pay to purchase YNAB 4, and I’ve never looked back since. 

YNAB is not an easy program to learn. In fact, I’ve found that it can be pretty intimidating for newbies. I remember it taking me quite a while to fully wrap my head around the way YNAB works. In fact, they recently made some updates to the program simply to make it easier for onboarding new customers. 

YNAB is still my favorite way to budget though. 

I love taking a look at new budgeting programs. I still enjoy tinkering with our budget, but the longer I go( and the busier my family keeps me), the less interested I become in something new. 

I’m also a firm believer that the best budget program out there is the one you use. So even though there’s some programs that you can budget with that I’m not crazy about, if it’s working for you then that’s great!

But what if you’re looking for a way to budget? You’ve heard about a few different programs. You’ve heard about using cash envelopes. How do you decide which direction t go? What do you really need in your budget? What are the tools and features that really make your budget better? 

Consider the following features when looking for a budget. They’re game changers. 

Your budget should track every dollar.

No matter which way you decide you should budget, using a system that will track every dollar is a must. 

The hard time I had while using my own spreadsheets was that we were also spending some of our money in cash and some on our card. It wasn’t always easy to make sure that everything got tracked. 

Using cash envelopes is still a great idea, even in 2021, but unless you’re running in Elite mode, you’ll probably be spending on your card as well.

Most budget programs will be able to import transactions into your budget but if you’re using your own spreadsheet, you’ll have to stay on top of this yourself. 

Whichever method you choose, make sure you have the ability to track every dollar that comes out of your account.

Reconcile your budget with your bank.

Here’s where I think that YNAB really shines. 

If you do YNAB right, then you’ll want to reconcile your bank with YNAB every week or so. What this does is make sure that what you have in your budget on YNAB matches what you have in your bank. 

Because of this, it’s impossible for your budget to get off track. You’ll always know that what you have in your budget is what you actually have to spend. 

Other budget programs will set up a monthly budget for you, but don’t go as far as to make sure that every dollar in your account has a job.

Sure, you could say that $1,000 is your new baseline $0, but I’d rather assign that 1,000 to my emergency fund, or create a buffer and start assigning those dollars to next month. 

Have a place to input spending on the go. 

Being able to update your spending on the go is a game changer. 

Once you make a purchase, most accounts will immediately show that purchase in your account but will tell you that the expense is pending. A new purchase will be pending anywhere from 1-3 days. 

In your bank account, what you’ll usually see is an available balance(sometimes banks use different language). Then, you’ll also see the cleared balance. 

Notice that these two balances usually don’t match. It’s because your available balance will reflect the purchases that haven’t cleared yet. 

The problem with most programs that import your transactions is that they only download transactions that have cleared. After spending, it could take several days before that spending is even reflected in your budget. 

What’s better is when you can manually add those transactions on the go. 

Again, this is a place where YNAB shines. 

In YNAB, I can add my transaction as it happens, and then several days later when it clears my account and downloads into my budget, it automatically matches up. 

It’s the best of both worlds. I’ve added the transaction so that my budget reflects the new purchase immediately, but I’ve also got the convenience of importing transactions as they clear in case I missed any.

Work for multiple forms of spending

A problem that I kept running into when we were using the cash envelopes and our spreadsheet was that we’d take out all of the money in a category for the cash envelopes but then didn’t really have a place to record spending from our card.

I eventually came up with a function where I could add transactions so that I at least had the amount that I spent accurately reflected in the budget.

But it was around that time that I gave up trying to reinvent the wheel and switched to YNAB.

Your budget must be able to work for multiple forms of spending. 

Working with cash was a great experience for us. One that made us think differently about our cash and our spending habits for sure. But how do you record the spending?

I recommend that when you take cash out to put in envelopes, you just treat that like one big transaction, record it as spending, and that money is gone from your budget. Then, you’ve got the amount left where you can see how much extra you can spend on a card before you need to stop. You’re now free to spend your envelopes like normal until they’re done.

One that you’ll use

You’ll want to make sure that your budget is one that can utilize these principles. This is where YNAB shines and it’s why I’ve been such a faithful user all of these years. 

However, there’s one last tenet that your budget has to keep. Your budget must be one that you’ll use. Ultimately, there’s some budget platforms that I don’t like as much out there, but I know that the tool doesn’t matter nearly as much as whether you use the tool or not.