If this is you, you may want to check out two pieces of software that I’ve found extremely helpful in 1. tracking my website’s rankings and 2. building incoming links to the site in order to help with search engine ranking.  One is called Advanced Web Ranking and the other is Advanced Link Manager.  Both pieces of software are made by Caphyon and run on Windows, Mac or Linux.

Advanced Web Ranking

Advanced Web Ranking is a very powerful piece of software that can do just about anything (related to website ranking, of course) that you want it to.  To give you an idea of how complex the program can be, here’s a screenshot (click images to enlarge):

You can see that the program looks quite complicated, but after spending just a little time with it, you’ll quickly get to know your way around and what was once seen as “complicated” turns into “powerful.”

Want to know just a few things that you can with Advanced Web Ranking?  Here’s a screenshot of their “Assistant”:

As you can see, there are a myriad of things that you can do within Advanced Web Ranking (AWR).  Want to view your ranking changes over the past month? No problem.  Want to do some detailed analysis on the rankings of competitor websites? You got it.  Need some suggestions for new keywords that you may want to go after? AWR has you covered.

Now, for most people with small websites or blogs, this may be overkill.  And for those folks, there are plenty of inexpensive and even free web ranking monitoring services available.  But for those who love to have virtually all data points relating to website rankings at their fingertips, I’m not sure if AWR can be beat.

Being that it would be virtually impossible for me to do a full walkthrough and highlight each of its features, let me just mention a few of the things I’ve grown to love about AWR:

The Amount of Information: AWR goes out and fetches loads of data for the keywords and the websites that you’ve chosen.  And while the data can take some time to be gathered (which is a good thing, in a way, because it does it in a “human emulated” manner so it’s more search engine friendly), it’s well worth the wait because when you’re done you can analyze the information to virtually no end.  For those data heads out there, you’ll love the power of AWR.

Scheduled Updates: If you don’t like waiting for the data to be gathered each time, all you have to do is schedule your ranking updates on any recurring schedule that you’d like and AWR does at all in the background for you.  AWR doesn’t even have to be running.  You can even schedule the updates to occur at night so you’ll have all your data ready and waiting for you in the morning.

Interactive Reports: The interactive reports that AWR supplies you are really nice.  For those that may be in charge of web marketing for their company, you’ll find these quite handy for providing professional looking reports to your boss.  And yes, you can even schedule these reports to be created and emailed automatically so you don’t have to lift a finger.

Keyword Suggestion Tools: Another great feature is the keyword research tool within the application.  AWR allows you to use the tools provided by Google, WordTracker, and Yahoo to research keywords.  In addition, it has some neat functionality in terms of picking and choosing and storing your keywords so they go right into AWR.

For an overview of all the other features (and believe me, they are many), go to the features page of their website.  Or to see an example of how AWR can really help you, go to the features walkthrough.

Advanced Link Manager

Now this is the one that most webmasters could get really excited about.  At least those that are actively marketing their website.  Advanced Link Manager (ALM) essentially can act as your hub for all things link building.  It really is a “link manager.”  The amount of data it brings in is almost mind blowing.  But the information that’s then at your fingertips can be really powerful when you’re searching for new opportunities for building links and creating relationships with other websites.

Advanced Link Manager is no less powerful (nor seemingly complicated) than Advanced Web Ranking.  But the same is true, that after spending a little time, you’ll be able to navigate your way around rather easily.  Also, the websites for each piece of software have great walkthroughs and guides that are a huge help as you learn the system.

Here’s a screenshot of ALM (the screen shown is ‘Referrers’, which is their way of showing who all is linking to you):

Just to give you an example of some of the things you can quickly learn from a page such as this: I can see here that I have about 219 websites that are linking to mine.  Since I last updated the data (four days prior), 3 links have been removed.  And of the 219 links reported by ALM, 60 of which are “nofollow” links.

I can even quickly see what the anchor text is for any given link (in the screenshot, the link text for the squidoo link was “mvelopes review - mvelopes (finicity) money manager review.”  Also, a quick double-click and it opens the linking webpage in my browser.

What else can you do with Advanced Link Manager?  Maybe this will give you a bit more of an idea:

Again, it would be nigh impossible to go through each feature of ALM, so I’ll touch on a few of the things that really shine in the system.

Backlinks Evolution: Want a quick snapshot of how your link building efforts have paid off over the last 6 months?  Or see how your link popularity has grown?  This chart will show you the number of backlinks your site has, graphed over time.  You can choose to view links for your entire site or a single page.  You can even graph multiple pages against each other to compare.  Also, using the various categories built into ALM (and customizable by you), you can choose to see “Important” links, “Paid” links, “Blog” links, and many, many more.

Link Text: This screen gives you a break down of how many links you have for each keyword or anchor text.  This can be extremely helpful as you try to determine which keywords you should focus on in the future.  And yes, by selecting a keyword, you can see all the webpages that are linking to you with that anchor text.

Competitor Analysis: ALM has a myriad of tools that help you to analyze your competitors’ websites and see why they are ranking where they are.  It can gather the same information for your competitors’ sites that it can gather for yours, so with a little time you can really see what you need to do to pass up your competitors.

Finding Link Partners: One of ALM’s primary purposes is to help you find link partners that you can build a relationship with to eventually get a link.  There are many ways to do this within ALM, one of which is using it’s “Find Link Partners” wizard.  Basically it goes out and searches sites (based either on your chosen keywords or on your competitors) and finds the sites that you are most likely to want a link from.  From the many results that it returns, you can quickly filter them by PR, outbound links, and virtually any other way you want to find some great opportunities for new links.

Contact Information: For each webpage that ALM gathers, it can quickly retrieve the contact information for that website.  From within ALM, you can then email those webmasters to start building a relationship.  ALM tracks your emails and your progress with each site so you can always know where you are in the process of attaining a link.

Just like with Advanced Web Ranking, you can schedule updates and reports to your heart’s content.  I’ve really found ALM to be a powerful tool.  Overkill for most folks? Probably.  But for those who spend a large chunk of time marketing their website, Advanced Link Manager is sure to please.

For a much more complete listing and description of ALM’s features, go to their feature page.  Or, for an example to see how Advanced Link Manager could help you, go to the features walkthrough page.

A Few Notes on AWR and ALM

There are varying levels of the product, each with different price points (Standard, Professional, and Enterprise).  Most bloggers and small website owners probably wont need something so powerful and can certainly find cheaper alternatives that will fit their needs.  But for those that are in need of such advanced software, the prices are very reasonable.  Luckily, Caphyon is having a special where they offer free licenses for the software to those who write about their products on the web (hence, this post).

I do wish that ALM and AWR were more tightly integrated with each other.  It would be great to be able to glean even more information from the data of both products combined.

I had heard about, and have since experienced, the quality of customer service that Caphyon delivers as well.  Any time I’ve had a question or small error, I’ve been responded to very quickly on the forums and via email.  Hats off to Caphyon for doing so well in that regard.

Trust me when I say that I’ve barely scratched the surface of what both Advanced Web Ranking and Advanced Link Manager have to offer.  To get a better feel for their true value, spend a little time on their respective websites or even give their free trial a whirl.  You can use the software, full-featured, for 30-days.

*Update: Version 1.5 has now been released so the discount is no longer available.

And in case you were wondering, you can upgrade to 1.5 for free if you purchase version 1.4 at the discount.  Also, if you want to give MoneyWell a whirl before you buy, they have a full-feature trial that you can download.  The only limitation to the trial is a 200 transaction limit, which should give plenty of time to get a feel for the application.  You can download the trial here.

For those new to MoneyWell, it uses the effective envelope budgeting method (only rather than envelopes, MoneyWell uses buckets - get it? Well = Buckets).  The software is solid and is sure to help with your finances if you use it consistently.  You can read the full MoneyWell review here.

YNAB 3 is a desktop personal finance application that does an fantastic job of helping you manage your cash flow by focusing on what I consider the base of any financially sound household: the budget. With many finance applications on the market trying to be all things to all people, YNAB 3 does one thing: budgeting - and it does it amazingly well. Of all the applications I’ve reviewed, YNAB 3 is by far the most effective program to help you get out of debt, save more money, and take complete control of your finances.

Sure, there are shinier applications (Mint) and more complex applications (Quicken)–even more socially-oriented applications (Wesabe)–but you’ll be hard pressed to find an application that dials into the “necessities” of personal finance and gets the job done as quickly as YNAB 3 does.

The new software is brilliant, but the real power of YNAB 3 comes from the budgeting methodology that it’s built around. In fact, YNAB is really more about following a method of budgeting rather than using great software (and great it is). I’d be doing a disservice if I didn’t go through YNAB’s methodology, as the software’s sole purpose is to support its implementation:

Effective Budgeting: The YNAB Methodology

The YNAB methodology is built around what they call the 4 Rules of Cash Flow. I’ll briefly go over each of these rules:

Rule 1: Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck

Rule one is to stop living paycheck to paycheck by living off of last month’s income. Essentially this means that money that you earn in this month, is available for you to spend in the next month. For example, all of the money that I spend in July is the money that I made in June. Now, obviously to live by this rule, you need to save up one month’s income. Doesn’t sound easy? Don’t worry, YNAB stresses over and over that you do not need to be following this rule to benefit from the software. It is, however, a very effective way to manage your money that I suggest everyone implement! Here are some advantages:

• Being that you always have one month’s income as a buffer in your bank account, you are suddenly much less stressed as you realize that you aren’t living right on the edge of financial ruin. Don’t underestimate how much this can help.
• No more timing your bills with your paychecks - saving you loads of time and tedium. You can now pay all of your bills in one fell swoop!
• Those with a variable income no longer have to “predict” and budget based on your guesstimates of what your income will be. You budget what you already made so you know exactly how much you have to work with.

Again, while it’s not necessary to follow this rule in order to use YNAB 3, I highly recommend it (regardless of what software you use). My wife and I have done it for 2 years and will never go back.

Rule 2: Give Every Dollar a Job

Rule two isn’t anything revolutionary. In fact, it’s a time tested and very effective way to budget. Said differently, “give every dollar a job” is simply using a “zero-based budget.” What this means is that you allocate every single dollar you have for the month to a specific “job.” It could be to buy groceries, pay rent, be saved for an emergency, or for having a night out on the town.

Giving every dollar a job requires you to prioritize your spending because it helps you realize that you only have a finite number of dollars each month. If, for example, you spend more on that fancy dinner date (Entertainment), then you may need to spend less in Vacation.

This zero-based budgeting is the principle behind the traditional “Envelope” budgeting method. In fact, YNAB 3 is envelope budgeting at it’s finest. You could say it uses electronic envelopes. There are other envelope-based software applications out there, but none make it as easy to implement as YNAB.

Rule 3: Save for a Rainy Day

YNAB 3 helps you prepare for both expected and unexpected larger expenses by helping you save little amounts each month that accumulate over time. These expenses might be vacations, Christmas, annual insurance premiums, car repairs, etc. The YNAB 3 software makes this unbelievably simple - it automatically “rolls over” your unspent amount in each category to the next month. For example, if I allocate $50 each month to Car Repair, the amount in that category builds up over time so that when I suddenly need a new $600 radiator, I already have the money set aside to pay cash for it (this happened to me, by the way).

This rule is truly a cash flow lifesaver. It helps you see that even though you have money in your bank account, it’s not always “available” to spend (how many times have we spent that “extra” $100 in our account only to find out we had forgotten about some upcoming (irregular) expense? By following rule 3, your irregular expenses don’t crop up on you (both the foreseeable and the unforeseeable ones). When you’re saving each month you’ll have the cash needed for these expenses.

Rule 4: Roll with the Punches

One of the most common reasons people aren’t consistent in their budgeting is because they overspend in one of their categories. It can be discouraging and can make you feel as though you’re “not doing well with your budget.” Well, overspending here and there is inevitable — it’s going to happen. For that reason YNAB 3 is designed to help you stick with your budget by “rolling with the punches.”

Rule four essentially has you pay yourself back for your overspending before you budget for the next month. The calculations are all done for you, but basically if you overspend by $50 in Entertainment one month, then the amount you have available to spend in the following month — regularly $5,000 — will be $4,950. Your Entertainment category “starts fresh” for the new month. This is effective for the following reasons:

• You are able to spread overspending across all your categories. This sort of “massages” your overspending gently into your budget next month, making it much less painful. For example, if you overspent $500 in Car Repair, in the following month you can spend $25 less in 20 of your other categories, or $50 less in 10 categories (or any mix you choose). Suddenly the large overspending is much more manageable and realistic.
• Rather than having to “punish” one overspent category (and having to dig it out of it’s own hole in the ensuing months), you can start with a clean slate. (YNAB 3 now allows you to choose to carry over the overspent amount for a specific category if you want to.)

The 4 rules that make up the YNAB methodology are what truly make YNAB different (and better) from other budgeting software applications. YNAB 3 combines this extremely effective budgeting method with top notch software to make (in my opinion) the most effective budgeting system available. I’ll now dive into the software itself so you can get a glimpse of what you might expect to see with YNAB 3.

Getting Started with YNAB 3

After a very simple download from the YNAB website, you simply follow the steps to install the software on your computer. YNAB 3 is built on the Adobe Air platform, making it able to run on Windows, Linux, and yes, Mac! Many a Mac user have been waiting for quite some time for YNAB to release a Mac version.

Upon starting up the application, you are presented with this screen:

Being that I’ll be doing this walkthrough from a new user point of view, I chose the “Create a brand new budget file.” Those that have used YNAB Pro or YNAB Basic previously can open their existing budget file to start right where they left off.

Might I add that this graphic is a big improvement on the previous YNAB Pro graphics.

Next you’re introduced with a nice and friendly “Welcome to YNAB” screen:

This welcome screen introduces you to the 4 rules of the YNAB methodology. You’ll notice each rule is hyperlinked - this takes you to the YNAB Help directory and explains in detail what YNAB and its rules are all about. By the way, this help directory isn’t like most other help files that are difficult to navigate and boring to read. These are actually extremely helpful and easy to understand. They even have illustrations throughout to help you learn quicker and easier.

When you’re ready to get going on the software, you may want to check out the “Getting Started Guide” which is also linked on the welcome screen.

YNAB = Excellent Support and Help for Users

This reminds me of a point I’d like to briefly make. YNAB does an extremely good job of customer support through many different means. A quick trip to their support page and you’ll see that they offer a myriad of help options including:

• YNAB University - 10 quick and fun lessons about budgeting. Highly recommended.
• YNAB Quick Start Guide - A one page instruction on how to get going quickly.
• YNAB Online Tutorials - A whole slew of video tutorials explaining how to do just about anything you want.
• YNAB Coaching - Free (yes, that’s right, FREE) coaching live over the internet via a webinar.
• YNAB Forums - A very active and very loyal community willing to help anyone who has a question.
• Much more…I think you get my drift. I’m impressed by the amount of help available to those starting out with the software.

My Experience with YNAB 3

YNAB has done an excellent job in their help and “getting started” documentation, so I’ll try to focus more on the features of the software rather than the detailed “how-to” so as to avoid duplicating efforts and information (while still giving you a good view of what YNAB 3 has to offer).

As you’ll see throughout this YNAB 3 review, YNAB has done a good job of walking you through the software. It has pop up boxes that ask you the right questions at the right time and that tell you important information to help you understand how the software and the (likely new to you) budgeting methodology works.

An Overview of the YNAB 3 Screen

Here’s a screenshot of the first screen you’re given in YNAB 3 (click to enlarge):

On the left are three main tabs: Accounts, Budget, and Reports. We’ll go through each one in detail throughout this review, but here’s a brief summary:

Accounts: This is where your “physical” bank accounts reside. While this tab is selected you can see, edit, add, import, schedule, and search your transactions. You can also now see your working balance on this screen.

Budget: The budget screen is where you allocate your funds to your categories, monitor your spending/savings, and more. This is the real heart of the YNAB system.

Reports: The Reports tab provides a number of a much improved reports including: spending trends, spending totals, and net income/net worth.

You’ll also notice that in the bottom-left corner of YNAB 3 you’ll see a Help tab. This has resources for the most commonly asked questions as well as access to the full Help directory. To save space, the Help tab is also collapsible. Another space saver you’ll find is that you can collapse a portion of the left sidebar by clicking on arrows shown in the third screenshot below:

A Note About Speed

Update:  After having used YNAB 3 for a couple of months now with my own budget data, I’ve found it to be slower than YNAB Pro.  I’m sure the Air platform has much to do with it.  The slowness comes from a delay between clicks.  Those with more data from their previous budgets seem to be the ones having an issue with speed, while those starting fresh don’t seem to see it as much.  The slowness is certainly an inconvenience and I hope it improves soon.  At any rate, YNAB is working on it (they even hired a full time developer to fix it), so it’s only a matter of time before it becomes a non-issue.

YNAB 3’s Budget Tab

We’ll start with the real bread and butter of YNAB: The Budget. Here’s YNAB 3’s Budget screen (click to enlarge):

At the left of the main budget window are all of your budget categories. You can think of these as your spending “envelopes.” Like any quality personal finance software should allow, these categories and sub-categories are completely customizable. You can add to or delete them to you hearts content. You can even drag and drop to change their order or choose to hide the ones you don’t want to see.

The main portion of the budget window is taken up by 3 columns: each month’s set budget amounts (Budgeted), actual spending (Outflows), and what’s left over for each category (Category Balance):

At the top of each month is a tab showing how much you have available to budget for that month. At the bottom is shown how much is rolling over to the next month to be budgeted. You can choose to collapse or expand this tab to show how these figures are calculated.

Budgeting in YNAB 3

I’ll spare you the details on how exactly to do everything in the Budget, but suffice it to say that YNAB 3 does an excellent job of making it extremely easy to set your monthly budget, know exactly how well you’re doing throughout the month, and see how your spending and saving will effect your finances in the future.

Setting Your Budget

The leftmost (Budgeted) column is where you can quickly allocate your funds for each of your spending categories. According to Rule #2, you’ll allocate all of your “Available to Budget” funds until it reaches zero (giving every dollar a job).

If you’d like, you can also use YNAB 3’s Quick Budget feature which automatically fills your budget cells for you. You can tell it to use last month’s budget numbers, last month’s spending, the average spending that you’ve had in the past, or total scheduled outflows this months. If you want to get your budget done quickly or just want a starting point to work from, this is a quick and easy way to do it.  I, however, recommend giving each category at least some thought each month so you can find areas where you can spend less and save more.

See What You’ve Spent

As you enter your transactions throughout the month, YNAB 3 automatically incorporates that spending data into your budget screen so you can see exactly what you’ve spent in each category and where you’ve spent it.

The middle column (Outflows) shows you what you’ve spent from each category. And for those times when the words “Did I really spend that much on XYZ already?!” slip out of your mouth each week, you can see a breakdown of your spending by simply hovering over the spent amount:

And by the way, if you click on a transaction, you’re taken right to that transaction in the Accounts tab to view it in more detail. A nice touch.

Manage What’s Left Over (and What’s Not)

At any given time you can see “what you have left” to spend in each category. The third column (Category Balance) shows a positive number if you still have funds available to spend or a red negative number if you’ve spent more than you budgeted.

Any unspent amount in your categories gets automatically rolled over into the next month’s balance. This is where YNAB really shines in terms of helping you save a ton of money. Your categories build up over time helping you to have money for 1.  those planned irregular expenses (annual insurance premium) or 2. those surprise expenses that you never plan on (replacing a transmission).

For your overspending, YNAB 3 now gives you flexibility in the way you manage it. By default, YNAB subtracts any overspending from the next month’s Available to Budget figure (according to rule #4). In most cases this is best. But if, for example, you want to “punish” a specific category for that overspending in the next month, you can click on the little red arrow next to the negative arrow. This will then carry over that negative figure to the next month for that category.

In the example below I set my Fun Money: His category to carry over the negative balance so that it doesn’t start fresh in the next month (it wouldn’t be fair to my wife’s Fun Money category if it did). Notice how the figures (in the red box) for “Overspending” and “YNAB Buffer for Jan” are affected.

A Few Other Features

Expandable Window: If you happen to have a computer screen with a lot of real estate, you can now see more than 2 months at a time by simply making the YNAB 3 window larger. A small, but welcomed improvement.

Date Slider: You can quickly view the months of your choice by dragging the slider at the top of the Budget screen.

Customizable Categories: I already mentioned this, but thought it deserved a little more attention. With most budget software (and with the previous version of YNAB), your categories are fixed in alphabetical order. YNAB 3 now allows you to drag and drop the master categories or the sub-categories into any order that you choose. Very handy.

Now that you’re fairly familiar with the Budget screen, I’ll introduce you to the Accounts screen:

YNAB 3’s Accounts Tab

As previously mentioned, the Accounts tab is home to the information for all of your bank transactions. Under the main Accounts tab, you will find a smaller tab for each of the bank accounts that you’ve added. You can display or hide any account that you wish.

Adding Accounts

Adding accounts is simple, as expected. These accounts represent your actual bank accounts. After clicking the Add Account button below the Accounts tab, you’re presented with a screen to enter your account name, balance, type of account, etc. You can see below that they offer many kinds of bank account types to manage.

The main window to the right of the account tabs is the Transaction Window, containing all the information for each of your bank transactions. By default the transactions window shows the date, payee, category, memo, outflow (debit), inflow (credit), and a running balance. It also allows you to mark the transaction as cleared or give it a colored flag of your choice.

A great new feature of YNAB 3 is that you can customize which columns appear in the this transaction window. If you don’t want a Memo column, you don’t have to have it. Want a Check Number column? You got it.

Adding Transactions in YNAB 3

Adding transactions in YNAB 3 is extremely simple. You have two options to add your transactions, you can either 1. add your transactions manually or 2. import them from your bank.

Add Transactions Manually

This is one area that I tend to be a little picky in. Being that my wife and I usually add our transactions manually (it helps me feel to the influence/pain of my spending more), the ease and speed of data entry is pretty important to me. This is also one area where YNAB 3 does especially well.

Every piece of data in your transaction can be entered without every having to leave your keyboard to touch your mouse. Also, the fields begin to auto fill as you start to type your data. This all may seem like small things, but trust me, it’s little details like this that cut your budgeting time WAY down and that a good piece of software certainly won’t overlook. Thank you YNAB for paying such attention to detail.

Importing Transactions

For those who would rather skip the data entry, YNAB 3 makes it extremely easy to get all of your bank transactions into YNAB in a flash. YNAB supports the most commonly used file formats from your bank: OFX, QFX, and QIF. Simply download your transactions from your bank, click the Import button at the top, and follow the instructions.

Once your transaction data has been imported into YNAB 3, the software reminds you that you need to review each transaction (indicated by a faint warning triangle). This is your opportunity to rename the payees if you want and to add a budget category to each one.

Scheduling Recurring Transactions

At the bottom of the screen, you’ll find the Scheduled Transaction area. YNAB 3 also offers the ability to schedule recurring transactions so you don’t have to remember them each time they come around. This is just as simple as adding a regular transaction. You can schedule it monthly, weekly, every 3 months, or just about any other time period you can think of.

Search in YNAB 3

One of the great new features of YNAB 3 is the ability to perform very intelligent searches within your transactions. By clicking in the search box at the top right of the application, the screen turns from green to blue, indicating that you’re in search mode (again, a simple but brilliant design).

YNAB 3’s search is quite robust. As you begin to type, it starts offering options for you to search by. For example, when you start typing in “gr” it shows you payee’s that have “gr in the name, categories with “gr”, a ‘gr’een flag, and on and on.

You can also include multiple parameters in your search. For example, in the screen shots below, I searched in the Groceries category, with the Payee name “Costco” and after the date of 12/13/09. It gave me the one transaction that matched all of those requirements.  This can be extremely powerful and helpful if you’re looking for specific transactions.

This is one of the many details that is setting YNAB 3 apart from it’s competitors. Very intuitive and very powerful.

Other Nifty Tools and Tricks

There are a few other well thought out details that I thought I’d briefly highlight here as well.

Splitting Transactions: An absolute essential item for any good budgeting software is the ability to split your bank transaction into multiple budget categories. I may, for example, buy food (Groceries) and an oil filter (Auto Repair) at Walmart in the same transaction. YNAB 3 allows you to quickly and easily split those transactions with a few clicks (it even calculates the remaining amount for you as you add categories).

Transfer Transaction Jump: On a transaction that is a simple transfer of money between two accounts, you’ll find an icon with blue and green arrows next to the “payee.” Clicking this icon will take you to the other side of that transfer (to your other account). As small, but often helpful detail.

Payee Settings and Rename Like Payees: By right clicking on a transaction you can choose to enter the Payee Settings screen where you can customize how you want the data for your future imports to perform. You can also rename like payees very easily for past transactions. Some nice touches.

YNAB 3’s Reports Tab

The new reporting capabilities of YNAB 3 is a big improvement over YNAB Pro’s. Reporting in YNAB Pro was pretty basic and always fell a little short of most other competing software. YNAB 3’s reporting graphs, however, now pack a new punch.

One thing that I really like about YNAB’s reports (that differs from many other software applications), is that you are not only shown a visual graph of your data, but you can simultaneously see the data in a table as well.

That table serves two purposes: 1. to give you easy access to the data and 2. to serve as a selection tool and key to your graph. Each item in your graph shows the corresponding item highlighted in the same color in the table. You can also click any item in the table to “draw” or un-draw that item in your graph. See the screen shots below for a clearer picture:

As you would expect, you can change the date range of your reports by dragging the date slider (or its ends) below the graph to cover the dates you want.  Also, the size of the table and graph can be easily changed with a simple drag of the mouse.

I’ll briefly go over each report that YNAB offers:

Spending Trends

The Spending Trends report is a very useful graph and table that shows you how your spending has changed over time for each category that you choose. Here’s a screenshot:

You can select (in the table) any master or sub-category that you want to be drawn on the graph. This can be helpful if you have an outlier that is skewing your graph (as shown in the screen shots below). Simply deselect that category to take it off the graph.

YNAB 3 also offers 3 “Quick Graph” options where you can choose to graph the top 5 master categories, the top 5 sub categories, or all master categories.

One last note: I also like that they’ve included the percentage numbers next to the items in the table. It’s light enough that it’s not distracting, but there in case you’d like to know.

Spending Totals

The Spending Totals report gives you that often seen pie graph showing your distribution of total spending for your different categories:

You can now drill down into each master category by clicking on it’s piece of the pie. You can then see the sub category spending for that particular master category.

Net Income/Net Worth

The Net Income/Net Worth report is a handy one indeed. It helps you to see a quick view of your cash flow and wealth accumulation over time. Here’s a screenshot:

By default, your Income, Expenses and Net Worth are drawn on the graph. You can quickly see how money has flowed into your life, how it’s flowed out, and how that’s effected your overall net worth. For example, in the screenshot above, you can see that we sold a car in July and bought a (less expensive) car in August.

You can also choose to include Net Income, Total Assets, and Total Liabilities in the graph as well.

Also, all of the above reports can be exported in a .csv format so you can play with the data in Excel as much as you’d like. You can also print the report as well.

eBook: The YNAB Way

If you’d like a very thorough, entertaining, and encouraging explanation of the budgeting methodology behind YNAB, you can purchase the ebook called The YNAB Way for $19.95.

It’s a quick read (only 40-50 pages) that teaches you the why behind the methodology so you’ll understand the why behind how the software works. They’ve made the ebook convincing, outlining in great detail the benefits of this Four Rule methodology.

YNAB 3’s Price and Free Trial

YNAB 3’s retail price is $59.95, a reasonable price to pay for such high quality software. And with the average YNAB user saving around $300 in the first month, it’s well worth the purchase price.

For those wanting to test drive the software before purchase, YNAB offers a 7-day full feature trial to let you see if YNAB is right for you.

YNAB 3’s Money Back Guarantee

If, for whatever reason, you’re not completely satisfied with YNAB 3, they offer a no-questions-asked 30-day money back guarantee.

30 days is plenty of time for you to fall in or out of love with YNAB, so there’s no risk in buying. This kind of money back guarantee is quite refreshing.

The YNAB 3 software is extremely effective and easy to use. It’s simple, and that’s what makes it so powerful. The software itself is very well designed - it’s apparent that a good deal of thought went into even the smallest of details to make the system quick and intuitive.

The level of support that you receive with YNAB is superb. There is a myriad of resources available to you (online guides, video tutorials, live coaching, amazing community forums, direct contact with the founder, etc.) to ensure your budgeting success. This is in stark contrast to most software companies out there.

While the software itself is fantastic, the real power of YNAB comes from the budgeting system that lies behind the software. YNAB’s “4 rules of cash flow” make up what is one of the most effective ways to manage your money that I’ve found. I love the YNAB budgeting methodology because it focuses you on the tasks that actually make a difference in the way you spend and save money.

YNAB states that it is: “Budgeting Twice as Effective, in Half the Time.” And after using YNAB in my family for over 2 years now, I must say that I completely agree. It’s simple, fast, and effective. And it’s sure to save you loads of money.

Try YNAB 3 for Free

I’m often asked which personal finance software is the best. I strongly recommend YNAB 3, the system I personally use. It is by far the best budgeting system on the market. The software is fantastic and the methodology is extremely effective. Click here to Try YNAB 3 with a FREE 7-Day Trial!

Pre-Release Information on YNAB 3

Below is a collection of writings that were based on information that the folks at YNAB spilled out about YNAB 3 prior to its actual release.

I’ve kept this information here for reference in case anyone was interested in some of the developments that lead up to the release.

*Note: The order of the information is sequential, starting here with the oldest info and proceeding with each new update.

Pre-Release YNAB 3 Information

I recieved an email from YNAB the other day about a new version of YNAB that will be coming out later this year. It will replace YNAB Pro and will be called YNAB 3. I get excited just thinking about it.

Public talk of YNAB 3 began on April 9th when Jesse shot a quick comment about the new version on the YNAB blog. A boy did people get excited! I was amazed to see that within only 2 days there were upwards of 70+ comments on the post. It’s great to see just how passionate and supportive the YNAB users are. It’s gained quite a following.

*Note: Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the screen to see the latest updates on YNAB 3 as I’ll be updating this post on all newly released information.

YNAB 3 to Run on Mac

The email was brief but it did mention one thing that made me literally say “Yes!” out loud as I read the email alone in my office. YNAB 3 will run on a Mac.

I’m a Mac user and have been waiting for this day for a while. While I use an emulator to run Windows (and YNAB) on my Mac (in fact, the sole reason why I bought the emulator was just so that I could use YNAB Pro…yes, I like it that much), it will be nice to have a Mac version.

YNAB 3 Screenshot

Until the receipt of this email we knew little about what the new version would entail. Ok, we still don’t know very much, but we do have a screenshot! Here’s the screenshot of the Register in YNAB 3 (click to enlarge):

What’s Different About YNAB 3?

Here’s some differences that I see right off the bat:

• Much better design - Graphically, I’m loving the look of the app.
• You now have on and off budget accounts (allows you to track money that isn’t integrated into your budget). I like it.
• Nice undo feature after some types of transaction editing.
• A search bar
• Easy time frame change buttons
• Nice import button
• A new Working Balance that tracks your bank balance according expenses that have and haven’t cleared the bank
• A slew of other actions that can be done from this screen without having to right-click
• Jesse also mentioned on the forums that you can customize the columns that you want shown. These can include check #, memo’s, etc. That’s awesome!

I can’t wait to see the Budget and Reporting sections of the app.

According to Jesse’s twitter, YNAB 3 is being built on Adobe’s Flex/AIR platform. This should allow for a ton of functionality and some really fun features.

How Much is YNAB 3?

While YNAB hasn’t had to charge for an upgrade thus far, I have to assume that they’ll have to charge something for this new version. It sounds like they’re putting a lot of time, effort, and money into this new version. One thing is for sure: it will be worth it!

YNAB 3 Info

In order to make it easier for the readers to keep up on the latest updates about YNAB 3, I’ll use this one post as a running collection of all the new information that YNAB releases about YNAB 3.

So visit this page often as I’ll be updating it everytime I hear something new about YNAB 3!

New ScreenShot

Saturday while I was downloading YNAB Pro on my new computer, I was asked if I wanted YNAB to keep me up to date on the new YNAB 3. Of course I said yes, but what I wanted to mention here is that they showed a new (although small) screenshot of YNAB 3.

Here it is:

This appears to be the same screenshot as above, but it looks like the right section is the new Reports area. From the little that you can see, it’s looking pretty good!

New YNAB 3 Site on YNAB.com

Many may have noticed that YNAB.com now has a new site design (along with a new 15-Day free trial). The main difference I see as that they no longer have the long sales copy they once had, and instead have a very suscinct webpage that still offers a great deal of information. It looks nice, clean, and to the point.

What you may not have noticed, however, is that they’ve dedicated a section to the new YNAB 3 that’s currently in development. You can see the new YNAB 3 page here.

This will be a great resource for those wanting to keep up on the latest developments of YNAB 3. There are four sections: Screenshots, Features, Video Demos, and Frequently Asked Questions.

ScreenShots

Currently the screenshots sections only contains the same screenshot that I have posted above. I’ll be sure to update when more show up.

New Features

They list a number of new features of YNAB 3. I’ve summarized them here:

• Mac Compatible: A much anticipated benefit.
• Reports: It sounds like some great improvements are being made to the reporting functionality (something that is certainly welcomed since YNAB Pro reports could use some improvements).
• Register Search: They’re adding search in the registry that offers suggestions as you type.
• Undo
• Customizable Fields: You can add or take away columns in the registry as you wish.
• Budgeted Accounts vs. Other Accounts: You can now also track accounts that aren’t part of your budget (loans, mortgage, etc.)
• Flexibility with Rules Three and Four: You will be able to determine how your overage or surplus amounts will affect next month’s budget. (I’m excited about this one!)
• Moving Money Between Categories: Drag and drop money between categories. Nice!
• Advanced Smart-ness: To help you when a mistake has been made or if you need reminding, etc.
• Scheduler Improvements: Apparently better.
• Using Your Screen Real Estate: It sounds like your YNAB window will be “fluid,” allowing you to see more as you increase your window size. This is likely due to the fact that it’ll be written on the Adobe AIR platform.

Video Demos

Scroll down for the links to a sneak peek at the YNAB 3 budget.

Frequently Asked Questions

There’s a brief FAQ section that answers some basic questions about pricing, Mac compatibility, possible release dates, and prepayment for YNAB 3. Be sure to check it out.

I was glad to see that all your current YNAB data from YNAB Pro will easily migrate over to YNAB 3.

So don’t worry, just because YNAB has a new page dedicated to keeping us all updated on YNAB 3, doesn’t mean that I’ll quit on my end. I’ll be sure to update here every time any new information becomes available on YNAB 3. Each new post will have a date icon () so you’ll know if you’ve missed anything since you last visited us.

YNAB 3 Budget Sneak Peek

YNAB just posted two sneak peek video previews of the budget area in YNAB 3! The videos let us briefly see the new look as well as some new features introduced in YNAB 3.

Check out the videos by clicking the links below:

Video 1: Changes in the Look, Categories, and Notes

Video 2: Improvements to the Spent Tooltip and Rule Four.

I’ll briefly go over a few of the cool items covered in the video:

Changes in the Look, Categories, and Notes

Overall Look and Feel - I must say that I’m quite impressed with the overall look and feel of the application from what I’ve seen far. The design is very clean and uncluttered. Everything looks intuitive enough that someone with no previous YNAB experience will easily and quickly feel right at home with the system.

Here’s a screenshot: (click the image to enlarge it)

Account Tabs - They all now appear on the left, rather than on top. You also now have the ability to track on-budget and off-budget accounts. I like it.

Available to Budget - I like how they’ve broken down the numbers so you can now more easily see how it is that your Available to Budget amount is figured.

Expanding Window - One new, very nice feature for those with larger computer screens is that by expanding the YNAB window larger, you can see more columns of your budget. Before you were always restricted to month’s of data.

Categories - The categories are now even more flexible than they were before. You can drag and drop categories or master categories to rearange them, edit them more quickly, add notes, and more.

Improvements to the Spent Tooltip and Rule Four

Spent Tooltip - Previously the Spent tooltip in YNAB Pro showed a list of transactions that displayed where you spent your money. The new Spent tooltip, however, is much better.

Primary among the improvements is the ability to click on a transaction in the tooltip (which is scrollable, by the way) and be taken to the register with that transaction highlighted. This makes tracking down your expenses much faster.

You can also see all transactions for the given category if you choose to. If you, for whatever reason, you choose to do so, you can now also reorder the columns in the tooltip.

Rule Four - This is a huge improvement and one that many will be very excited to see. Previously in YNAB Pro, if you overspent in one category, that overspent amount would be deducted from the total Available to Budget number for the next month.

With the new functionality of YNAB 3, however, you can choose to “rollover” the overspent for a specific category into that same category for the next month. This is totally optional and is done on a category by category basis.

At the end of the video Jesse reiterated the fact that YNAB 3 will be released in 2009 (only a couple more months to go!) and that they are working very hard to get it finished as quickly as possible.

The comments on the videos and the new YNAB 3 are already extremely positive. One commented, “Looks beautiful!” Another wrote in gratitude: “Your team is changing lives!”

Stay tuned, I’ll keep posting the latest and greatest YNAB 3 info as soon as it comes out!

New YNAB 3 Register Screenshot

YNAB released another screenshot of the YNAB 3 register, and it’s looking nice:

As you can see, compared to the first screenshot at the top of this page, there have been a few, exciting changes to the register. Probably most obvious among the changes would be that the Scheduled Transactions is now integrated into the register at the bottom of the screen.

Also very prominent in the screenshot are the warning indications that they have put into place to help you see areas that in your transactions that need some attention. A nice touch. There are also many other little changes that are adding to overall offering. You can tell that the YNAB team has put a great deal of thought into the user experience. It’s truly developing into an one-of-a-kind application.

All in all, I’m excited about the direction that YNAB 3 is going. It will certainly bring some great improvements upon the already very effective YNAB Pro.

FREE YNAB 3 Upgrade!

YNAB recently announced that if you purchase YNAB Pro anytime after September 1st, you can upgrade to YNAB 3 absolutely Free!

So for those of you who have been holding off on buying YNAB Pro because you had plans to buy YNAB 3, your dilemma is now solved. Now is a perfect time to start using YNAB Pro and familiarizing yourself to the YNAB methodology. Then, when YNAB 3 is released later this year (2009), you can upgrade at no cost (via download).

*Note: This may also be your opportunity to get YNAB 3 at a lower cost. YNAB hasn’t announced the pricing for YNAB 3 yet, and it’s possible the the price will be higher than the current $49.95 (it definitely won’t be cheaper). If that’s the case, save yourself some money by buying YNAB Pro now and upgrading for free later! Click here to buy YNAB Pro.

YNAB 3 Pricing Finalized

YNAB announced last week that it has finalized the pricing for YNAB 3! All things considered I think they’ve found some very reasonable price points, both for new and existing customers. Here’s the nitty gritty:

• YNAB 3 will sell at a retail price of $59.95
• Existing customers (who own YNAB Pro or Basic) will pay $39.95 to upgrade to YNAB 3.
• As mentioned in the previous post, anyone who purchased YNAB Pro after Sept. 1st, 2009 will upgrade for FREE.

***But…if you’d like a large discount…you can purchase beta access:

• Existing customers can buy beta access for only $34.95. That’s almost 42% off the retail price!
• New customers can buy beta access for $49.95 ($10 off).
• Or…new customers can simply buy YNAB Pro for $49.95 and upgrade to YNAB 3 for free when it’s released.
• Obviously, anyone who buys into the beta access will get the full version once it’s released to the public.
• If you buy into beta access, you don’t have to use the software — you can just wait for the full release having already taken advantage of the discount.

So, for those that have been waiting for YNAB 3 to come out (either because they want the software for their Mac or because they just want the new features) be sure to buy during the beta period so that you can take full advantage of the sweet discounts!

If you’re a new customer, click here to buy YNAB Pro (and upgrade to YNAB 3 for FREE), or click here to request access to the betatest.

For complete details about the pricing, see YNAB’s Pricing Post.

***Update (12/11/09): Apparently YNAB changed the pricing a bit for those upgrading to YNAB from YNAB Pro and Basic and opting in for the public beta.  They have this table now on their website:

YNAB 3 is Getting Close…

Jesse at YNAB put up a nice little teaser post about YNAB 3 that showed a screenshot of it’s application installer. This leads me to believe that we’re getting very close to the release (or at least the private beta).

He mentioned a possible sneak peak video as well. I’ll be sure to post about it as soon as it’s available.

2 New YNAB 3 Sneak Peak Videos

YNAB released two new sneak peak videos today of YNAB 3! In them we see the updated register features as well as the much anticipated Reports area.

Click on the links below to view the videos:

Video 3: Reports - Spending and Net Worth

Video 4: Register features - search and optional columns

Here’s a brief synopsis of what the videos contain:

Reports

Budget Screen: One improvement that we saw in the last sneak peak videos is that the “Available to Budget” areas contained more data to show how the numbers are calculated. I love this, but was concerned that it took up too much space. Well as you can see in the Reports video, they allow you to collapse those areas to only show the high level numbers. I like it.

Spending Reports - Totals: The upper part of the screen houses a data grid that shows all of your spending in a very familiar format (looks like your budget). The rows are collapsible and the data can be sorted in ascending/descending order as well. Nice touch.

The familiar spending pie graph (that we’re used to seeing in many personal finance software apps) is housed in the bottom part of the screen. YNAB has implemented some very nice functionality here that allows you click on sections of the pie graph to drill down into deeper categories in your budget. Of course, you can see spending amounts listed on the graph as well as when hovering a pie piece.

The graphs use an effective slider at the bottom allowing you to easily choose which time frames of data you want to see.

Spending Reports - Trends: The Trends graphs is a linear graph that shows you your spending trends. Naturally, you can easily change the date range using the same slider as was just mentioned.

What I really like about this graph is it is completely customizable in terms of what spending categories you want to see. They offer a few “Quick Graphs” to show all master categories, top 5 master categories, and top 5 sub categories. But you can also check the box next to any category to add it to the graph.

I also think it’s neat that the data grid also serves as a legend to the graph. Each colored line on the graph corresponds to colored category row in the spending grid. Nice and intuitive.

Other very nice features includes the ability to resize the grid and graph areas to your liking, export the data to Excel, or print the data.

Net Income/Net Worth: This is a nice graph that shows your progress in your net income/net worth.

Register

Optional Columns: We knew they were coming, but here we got to see how it would actually be implemented. As we would expect, it’s very intuitive and easy. Simply click the icon to the right of columns and select which columns you want shown.

Search: YNAB 3’s search looks nothing short of amazing; I was very impressed by its robust search features. I like that it suggests search items as you type (categories, payees, and more).

I also like that you can multiple search requirements to really drill down in the search to find the transactions that you want. Well done.

While some may think it a little thing, I appreciate the fact that when you begin searching, it becomes apparent that you are in “search mode” by giving a green frame to the register.

It’s details like this that YNAB implements that truly make the software easy to use, intuitive, and effective. It’s things like this that set YNAB apart from the competition.

Looking for a Conclusion?

If you’re one of the many who don’t have time to read the full review and have skipped to the bottom of the page looking for a conclusion, you can find my conclusion of the YNAB 3 review here.

The latter part of this review (with the text in gray) is a collection of information that was leaked prior to the actual release of the new YNAB 3 software.  I’ve pasted it here in case anyone was interested in how YNAB 3 came about.

Try YNAB 3 for Free

It was Thursday.  Someone came into her work wearing a cute coat from Nordstrom’s.  She got off work, went to the (fairly expensive) clothing store, and bought herself a coat.  And if you knew my wife, this is totally abnormal behavior.  She’s always felt a strong sense of guilt for buying things for her that we didn’t need.  But she didn’t feel the least bit of guilt that day.  Why?  Because we follow a budget.  And in that budget we include a little something called “Fun Money.”

In our budget, among many others, we have two categories: “His Fun Money” and “Her Fun Money.”  We take this fun money rather seriously.  We can use our respective fun money funds for absolutely whatever we want, without having to give any explanation at all.  We budget a mere $15 per month into each of these two categories.  Our budget software uses envelope budgeting so any amount that we don’t spend in a category during one month gets rolled over into the next month.  This way we can “save up” in categories for Vacations, Car Repair, Insurance, and yes, even Fun Money.

I think this a practice that everyone should incorporate into their budgets.  It allows you save up money (even just a little each month) and use it for those things that you want, but that normally wouldn’t “fit in the budget.”  Too often, if you don’t budget for “fun” like this, something always comes along that you “really” want and you end up going over your monthly budget to get it.  You need to budget for fun and entertainment or else you’ll soon grow to hate your budget and all the restrictions that it stands for.  But a budget isn’t a restriction — a budget is a tool to help you afford the things you really need and want.

So when my wife said “I love fun money!” while modeling her new (and I’ll admit, very cute) coat, what she was really saying was “I love our budget!”  Try it out.  Make sure to budget for fun and you’ll soon find that your budget is your best friend.

Giveaway Winner Announced!

Congratulations to David Ganeway for winning the FREE copy of YNAB Pro!  Using random.org, comment #16 was chosen as the winner.  You can see the screenshot of the random number generator here:

The giveaway received a lot of entries, many of which stated an important need and sincere desire to use YNAB.  If you’re one of the many who didn’t win the giveaway, you can still get YNAB Pro (and a free upgrade to YNAB 3 when it’s released) for a great deal:

For those that didn’t win, YNAB is offering a 10% discount for a limited time!

Click here to automatically enter coupon code “pfsr” and receive 10% off of YNAB Pro.

Buy now and save even more if you plan on purchasing YNAB 3:  YNAB 3 will sell for $59.95 when it’s released.  But if you buy YNAB Pro now with the 10% discount, you’ll only pay $44.95.  Since you can upgrade to YNAB 3 for FREE, you’ll save 25% by purchasing YNAB Pro now.

Most users report that they save much, much more in the first month of using YNAB than they spent on the actual software.  And if, for whatever reason, you’re not totally satisfied with YNAB Pro, you can always get a full refund within 30 days of your purchase.

Thanks to all those that entered!

What is YNAB Pro?

YNAB Pro is budgeting software built around the “YNAB Methodology” to help you take control of your money.   The very simple, yet extremely effective, software helps you to focus on the money management tasks that actually make a difference in how you spend, save, and plan for your money.  You can read the full YNAB Pro review here.

How to Enter

To enter the contest, all you have to do is leave a comment below stating briefly why you would like to win YNAB Pro or why you think a budget is important.  Be sure to enter your email address in the comment form so I can notify you if you win.

Extra Entries

If you would like, you can also earn extra entries in the contest by doing the following:

• 1 Extra Entry: For each promotion of this site on a social media website (Twitter, StumbleUpon, digg, Facebook, a forum, etc.).  Simply enter an additional comment for each one and state where you posted it.
• 1 Extra Entry: For subscribing to our RSS feed.
• 3 Extra Entries: For blogging about this contest and linking to this site.  Be sure to enter 3 additional comments.

Giveaway Details

1. Each eligible comment below will count as one entry in the giveaway.
2. The winner will be drawn at random using the comment number.
3. Winner will be notified by email, so be sure to provide a valid email address.
4. Deadline: All entries must be submitted by October 30th, 2009 by midnight.  The winner will be announced on Halloween day (in the afternoon/evening)! If the winner hasn’t responded within 3 days, we’ll run the selection process again.
5. The winner will receive YNAB Pro for FREE (a $49.95 value) as well as a FREE upgrade to YNAB 3 when it’s released later this year (2009).

Good luck with the Giveaway!

If you’re not sure if you want to read the whole 2,539 word MoneyWell review, this post will introduce you to the software and give you a general summary of the full review.

MoneyWell is personal finance software built for the Mac.  And like most software for the Mac, MoneyWell feels very solid and bug free.  The company who brings you MoneyWell, No Thirst Software LLC, is a small, yet reputable company.  The software is backed by a good 60-day money back guarantee and also offers a free trial (up to 200 transactions).  So either way, you should be covered if you find you don’t like the software afterall.

MoneyWell’s Single Window

MoneyWell uses a single-window interface to display all of your finance data including past transactions, bucket (or envelope) amounts, graphs displaying your cash flow, and an area to enter transaction details.  A picture is worth a thousand words and their screenshot (from their website) probably shows it best:

Envelope Bucket Budgeting

What I like about MoneyWell is that it uses the time-tested budgeting methodology knows as “envelope” budgeting.  Of course, MoneyWell puts it’s own twist on it and uses buckets, rather that envelopes, but the idea and theory is still the same.  Those who have used envelope budgeting can attest to the true effectiveness of the system.  It helps you to prioritize spending and savings habits and encourages you to think through exactly where you money needs to go throughout the month.  I’ve used it for years and will never go back.

The MoneyWell software is fairly intuitive, allowing someone new to the application to learn it fairly quickly.  One of most notable features is that it allows you to connect directly to your bank to import transactions.  This is something that most envelope budgeting programs don’t yet do.

Overall, I thought MoneyWell was a nice piece of software.  There were little things that I thought could be done differently or better (for example, I personally was wanting a little more options in terms of graphs and reports, but I didn’t think it was a deal breaker), but I’m sure that those that use the system will find that it helps them to better manage their finances.

The cost is $49.99, but it has a free trial.  So give it a spin and see if it meets your needs.

If you’d like to read the full MoneyWell review and walkthrough, you can find it here.

*A big thanks goes out to those who featured the MoneyWell related posts on their websites.  The full MoneyWell review was featured on AllFinancalMatters.com and this summary was featured on YesIAmCheap.com.

MoneyWell uses the very effective envelope budgeting method (well, in this case, it’s a “bucket” budgeting method) to help you better manage your finances and plan for future expenses. Among other features, MoneyWell offers Direct Connect Banking and uses a single-window interface designed to simplify your experience with the MoneyWell software.

So how does MoneyWell stack up to the other Mac-based competitors such as iBank, Snowmint’s Budget, and others?  Hopefully this MoneyWell review and walkthrough will give you a better idea of what MoneyWell has to offer in terms of effective personal finance software.

*Note: This review is for version 1.4.12 of the MoneyWell software.

Who’s Behind MoneyWell?

MoneyWell is produced by No Thirst Software LLC, a small company built by entrepreneur Kevin Hoctor.  Kevin states that part of the mission of the company is to “deliver excellent products and services that change peoples lives.”  Not a bad mission statement if you ask me.  And if there’s any avenue in which peoples lives can be changed, it’s certainly in helping them better manage their money and debt.

I personally like that MoneyWell is produced by such a small company.  This usually means that customer service is personable and often quick.  Customer satisfaction is usually top priority in small companies such as No Thirst Software.  Also, the creator has a vested interest in the product, and as such, will be very focused on future improvements.

Installing MoneyWell

MoneyWell offers a free trial version of the software for you to test drive before you buy.  The only limitation of the trial is that you can only enter 200 transactions.  This should definitely be enough for you to see if you want to buy the software for good.

After clicking the Free Trial button on the MoneyWell website, you’re guided through the basic download and installation steps to easily install MoneyWell on your computer.

After installing MoneyWell you’re given a couple of options to get started:

I particularly like that they offer the option to import an OFX, QFX, or QIF file from another budgeting software application if you’ve been using one.  Also, the sample file is a good way to click around and learn the system a little bit before diving in with your own transactions.

Being that this review will try to give you a walkthrough-type view, I chose to start from scratch.

*Note:  The MoneWell website has a good collection of tutorial videos to help you with learning the ins and outs of MoneyWell and getting started with your own budget.  Be sure to check it out if you’re needing help.

Setting Up MoneyWell

When starting from scratch, you’re prestented with this screen:

Here you can see the overall look of the application (although it doesn’t yet have any data in it).  We’ll go over the single-screen design in more detail a little later.

Adding Buckets

While this is probably pretty self explanatory, here you will check each “bucket” that you want in your budget.  These buckets are the same as envelopes in other envelope-based budgeting software programs (you may want to consider these your “categories” of income and spending).

Throughout your budgeting, you will add money to (through income) and take money out of (through spending) these buckets.  You can change these later, but you should do your best to cover all of your expense categories here.

*While I didn’t see an option to create custom buckets in this step, I did see later on that you can add custom buckets by right clicking on a bucket (in the left sidebar of the appliation) and clicking New Bucket.  You can also click the “plus” icon beneath the bucket list.  I was glad to see this capability since any effective budget must allow you to customize it to your specific spending needs.

Adding Your Bank Accounts

After adding your buckets, you’re taken to a screen to add your bank accounts.  MoneyWell offers Direct Connect to your bank which allows you to automatically download your bank accounts as well as your transactions.  You can also choose to add your bank account manually if you choose to do so (or if you have difficulty connecting with your bank).

It wouldn’t let me connect with my bank (Chase).  After digging around a bit, I found that Chase charges $10/month to allow direct connect with personal finance software.  Looks like I’ll be adding my accounts and transactions mannually (which is fine with me — I actually think it helps reinforce the monitoring of your spending habits).

MoneyWell’s Single-Window Interface

MoneyWell does a pretty good job of introducing you to the single-window interface that it uses.  Here’s the screenshot that they provide on their website:

I see this as a total matter of personal preference.  Some will really like the single-window plan, while others may see it as a bit crowded for so much information.  I don’t think it’s crowded per se, but I could see the benefit of having a separate windows for transactions (allowing more space for more historical budget/spending information without having to click to each separate bucket).

Draw the Fill Line: Setting Up a Spending Plan

Once you’ve added your bank accounts to MoneyWell, you’re now ready to set up your Spending Plan (also known as a budget).  MoneyWell refers to this step as creating “fill to here” lines on your buckets.  Basically you are noting how much money you will need to spend during the month from each bucket.

You can create your Spending Plan by clicking on the Spending Plan button  at the top of the MoneyWell screen.  You’re presented with this screen:

If you’re just starting out with MoneyWell, you will enter in the “Planned” amount for each bucket.  You can set the Frequency and Timing for each bucket as well.  If you have a number of past transactions already in MoneyWell (if, for example, you imported a larger file from another personal finance software application), you can choose to calculate your spending plan by your past history.

Data entry into this Spending Plan was quite easy.  At first I was frustrated that I couldn’t tab through the fields to enter the numbers quickly.  But I soon found that by hitting Enter on the keyboard after each entry, it takes you down to the next bucket’s Planned field.  You can thank me later for saving you loads of time with that little tip.

Fill the Buckets: Allocating Income

Once you’ve set up your spending plan (told each bucket how much money you need in it) , you can now allocate the money that you have in your bank accounts to your buckets.  If you’d like to start by allocating the beginning balance of your bank accounts, you’ll first need to designate the Starting Balance “transaction” to be used for your Salary bucket.  One way to do this is to click on the transaction and then choosing Salary from the Bucket drop down list in the Transaction Detail section.  You’ll then see that your Salary bucket shows that amount next to it.

Now, you can mannually allocate money from your salary bucket into your expense buckets by clicking and holding on the Salary bucket and then dragging your mouse over an expense bucket and releasing.  In the box that appears, type in what you’d like to allocate, and click Add.

By clicking on the Allocate Income icon ( ), you are given this screen:

The numbers in the far right column show the amount to be allocated to the respective buckets.  These are determined by your spending plan settings (you’ll notice that the numbers are half of what the “planned” column shows.  This is because I have my income set to come twice a month (hence the buckets will be filled with half the planned amount, twice during the month).

You can change the allocated amount by double clicking in the cell and changing the number. You can also prioritize the expense from Lowest to Highest.  This will help with allocating your income and making sure that your most important expenses are always paid.
After allocating your income you will see the balances of each bucket in the left sidebar.  See the following screenshots:

Empty the Buckets: Adding Transactions

There are a number of different ways to add transactions in MoneyWell.  As already mentioned, you can use Direct Connect to automatically download transaction data.  If, for whatever reason, you don’t use Direct Connect, you can either upload an exported file from your bank or you can add each transaction mannually.  We’ll look at both.

Enter Transactions Mannually

Entering transactions mannually is fairly easy.  You can new transactions by clicking the Transaction icon ( ).  You can then tab through most of the important details in the Transaction Detail section (on the right side of the screen) and enter as you go.  I like that for most transactions you won’t need to use your mouse much while entering the data (unless you want to use the Status feature).

At first I was disapointed that you needed to use your mouse to click the transaction icon for each new transaction.  But then I happened to try hitting Command + N on the keyboard and it did just what I had hoped: it started a new transaction.  Trust me, this will save you loads of time if you’re entering all your transactions mannually.

Importing Transactions

If you’re looking for a quicker alternative for entering your transactions, you download your transactions from your bank and import them into MoneyWell.  The file needs to be either an OFX, QIF, or CSV file, so make sure your banks can export one of those file formats (most banks will).

After downloading the file from your bank’s website, simply click the Import icon ( ) and select the file.  After choosing a date format that will work with your file, click “Import” and your transactions should show up in your transaction history.

The one thing that you will need to do here is go through your imported transactions and specify which bucket each transaction is for.

Moving Money in MoneyWell

Moving Money Between Buckets

You’ll sometimes find that you’ve overspend in a certain category.  Since you’re using the envelope budgeting methodology, you’ll have to take money from another category to be used to cover the overspent amount.  Doing so in MoneyWell is fairly easy.   Just as you do when you alocate money from your Salary bucket to your expense buckets, you can just “drag and drop” money from one bucket and put it into the other.

For example, in the screenshots below I had overspent in my Gifts category by $56.63 (I had $30 in the bucket to spend, but I became too generous and spent $86.63).  To cover the overage, I decide that I can take money from my Vacation/Travel bucket.  By clicking the Vacation bucket and dragging it to the Gifts bucket, I can choose to add the $56.63 to make it even.  See the screenshots for a play by play of how that happens:

Moving Money Between Bank Accounts

When you transfer money between your bank accounts (for example, from your Checking to Savings), you’ll want to record that as a transaction.  Moving money between bank accounts, however, is just as easy as moving it between your buckets.

Using the same drag and drop technique that’s outlined above, simply drag money from your checking account onto your savings account.  Then simply fill out the amount you want transferred and click Add.  If you want the amount to be shown in a bucket (in this case, Savings), you may designate a bucket for that transaction.

Reconcile Bank Accounts

Another little feature that some may find handy is the help MoneyWell gives when reconciling your bank transactions.  It’s fairly self explanatory and easy to use, so I won’t say much here.  But here’s a screenshot in case you’re interested:

I’m not sure that we need a whole new reconciliation screen for this, but the visual aids will be helpful for some.  The only thing I would add in terms of account reconciliation is the ability to do it directly from the regular transactions screen by clicking the circle to the left of the transaction to mark it as cleared.

Reports

The Reports section in MoneyWell may not be what most people might expect.  What some other personal finance software programs call reports are actually graphical representations of their spending information.

Being that MoneyWell shows much of this graphical representation in the main screen (determined by what you have selected at any give time), MoneyWell doesn’t have a separate graphical analysis area.  MoneyWell’s Reports are basically a number of different data tables showing your spending information.  While these may useful to some, I personally prefer a larger set of graphs to choose from.

Granted I may not have enough data (or rather, data over time), to really appreciate the graphs that MoneyWell provides, I’ve found other applications to have better spending analysis capabilities via their various reports and graphs.

Other Notable Features

MoneyWell offers a number of other features that aren’t covered in detail in this review.  You can read more about them on their website, but I thought I’d mention a few here.

• Scheduled Transactions
• Search Bar
• “Memorized” Transactions
• Smart Buckets
• Copy to Excel or Numbers

MoneyWell Price

MoneyWell costs $49.99.  They offer a free trial (you can enter up to 200 transactions) so you can get a good feel for what it has to offer before buying it.  If you find that MoneyWell helps you manage your money better, $49.99 is a small price to pay.

Money Back Guarantee

If you purchase MoneyWell and then later decide that it’s not for your, you can get a full refund up to 60 days after purchase.  No questions asked.  This is a solid guarantee that I believe the company will stand behind.

Conclusion

MoneyWell uses the solid envelope budgeting methodology that has helped people get a handle on their finances for years.  The MoneyWell system utilizes this methodology well.  I would like to see a little more encouragement for the users to “budget to zero.”  Currently it’s a little too easy for users to leave a chunk of money unbudgeted in their Salary bucket.  So if you use MoneyWell, make sure to stay disciplined and get to as close to a zero-based budget as possible.

The MoneyWell software was clean and professionaly developed.  I found no bugs and only a couple of areas that I thought could have used some usability improvements.  Data entry was quite simple and fairly quick.  As far as the software goes, it felt very solid.  In terms of effectiveness, MoneyWell will get the job done with it’s budget “buckets.”  I was left wanting a little more in terms of reports and graphs, but those things aren’t the main features that most will look for in personal finance software.

All things considered, if you try MoneyWell and find that it works for you, go for it.  While I may still have other favorites above MoneyWell, it’s a solid budgeting tool that, if used correctly, will help you shed debt and increase your savings.

Snowmint’s Budget is an envelope-based budgeting system that was originally created for the Mac (although there is now a Windows-based application as well).  In terms of true budgeting effectiveness, almost any system that uses the envelope methodology has the potential to drastically improve your money management skills.  The difference, then, comes in the performance of the software itself.  Is it easy to use?  Is it fast to use?  Is it intuitive and simple to learn?  Is it (close to) bug free?  These are all things that one should look into when trying various software solutions to help them in their budgeting efforts.

Snowmint’s Budget Review

So, how does Budget by Snowmint compare to the competition?  Be sure to check out my full Snowmint Budget review for all the details and the in-depth walkthrough.   But as a quick summary, lets look at the positives and negatives of Snowmint’s Budget:

The first thing that really stood out to me about Snowmint, was the degree to which they focused on customer service and backing up their product.  They offer an unconditional 60-day money back guarantee (on top of offering a free trial of the software), so you’re covered if you decide you don’t like the system after using it for a couple of months.  They strive to respond to customer emails within 24 hours and also have a large amount of product support (on the forums and FAQs) as well.  In short, everything that I was able to find pointed to the fact that Snowmint stands behind their product and are concerned primarily with making customers happy.  This is a great thing.

Another surprising thing that I noticed when test driving the software for a couple of days is that I didn’t run across a single bug in the software.  Now, you may be wondering why I might expect to find a bug in the software that’s being sold to the public.  In reality, most of the software that I’ve tested lately (especially on the Mac platform) have had at least minor bugs and somtimes rather large ones.  My hat goes off to Snowmint for providing very solid software.

As you may have read elsewhere on this site, I’m a huge fan of envelope budgeting or zero-based budgeting.  It’s a time-tested method that helps you to be accountable for each dollar made and each dollar spent.  I really like that Snowmint’s Budget uses this methodology to help manage your money.  Budget’s process of allocating money into the various envelopes (customizable by you) is quite intuitive and easy to use.  Spending money out of (entering transactions) the envelopes is similarly simple.

The main area that I thought needed some improvements was the transaction editing.  In general, it took longer than I thought was needed to enter each transaction.  Now, this issue is resolved if you download and import your bank transactions.  But if you plan on putting your transactions in the system manually each day or week, it may take a little longer than you wished.

Conclusion

All things considered, Budget by Snowmint is a solid peice of personal finance software that will help you better manage your money.  The envelope system that it uses is great.  The user interface is fairly intutive.  And the company behind the product seems reputable and willing to back up their product with a good guarantee and great support.  They offer a free trial, so if you’re looking for a good budgeting alternative for Macs (and Windows for that matter) consider giving Snowmint’s Budget a try.

*The full Snowmint Budget review was featured on MilitaryFinanceNetwork.com during the 84th Money Hacks Carnival.

Being that I’m a huge proponent of budgeting using the time-tested envelope method, I’ve been looking forward to checking out Snowmint’s Budget for a little while now.

In general, most personal finance software applications that use envelope budgeting will help you manage your spending better.  But the methodology is just part of it.  The software also needs to be well designed, easy to use, and effective.  How does Budget by Snowmint stack up to the competition?  Let’s find out.

Who’s Behind Budget?

The company that created Budget is Snowmint Creative Solutions, LLC.  It looks to be a small operation, with two principles at the head (Ron Hooper and Kyle Hammond) and a few other contractors.  I personally see this as a positive thing.  A small team means centralized responsibility and usually means that they take more ownership in the product.  This is a good thing.

There are a few things that stick out to me about the Snowmint company.  For one, everything that I read (online and on Snowmint’s website) points to the fact that Snowmint provides very good customer service and product support.  If contacted, they strive to respond to your questions within 24 hours.  The FAQ section is large and comprehensive.  Also, their forums provide a great deal of answers and appear to be rather active (with new posts and comments being added regularly).

They also have a great guarantee, but more on that later.

Getting Started with Snowmint Budget

Before I get into the actual set up process with Budget, I’d like to point out that Snowmint provides a good deal of help to get you started with Budget.  On their Budget Information page, they offer numerous helps including instructional pdf files, a visual (and effective) tour of the envelope budgeting concept, a set up tour, and a usage tour.  All of these were very helpful.

Another one of my favorites was this:

They even have instructions and guidance on how to use Budget to teach your child or teenager to learn to better manage their finances.  This is something that all of our youth need to learn and I was glad to see that it’s something that Snowmint has thought through.

Setting Up Budget

For this review and walkthrough I’ll be using the Mac version of the software.  When you first download Budget (by clicking the Free to Try button at top right of the website), you’re first presented with a Setup Assistant.  On the Budget Information page Budget provides a pdf file to walk you through setting the program up (that doesn’t use the Setup Assistant) as well as a Setup Tour (that does use the Setup Assistant).  I chose to use the Setup Assistant.

Import

After the introduction, you’re given the option to import a QIF or OFX data file.  Unclear as to what this was talking about (it didn’t already want me to import my transactions did it?), I searched in the help.  It turns out that this step allows you to import data from a previous budgeting software program (for example, Snowmint’s Budget Workbook).  For most, you’ll just want to skip this first step.

Setup Bank Accounts

This step is as simple as it sounds.  Simply give your bank account a name, enter an account balance, and click Create.

Create Envelopes

This is, arguably, the most important step of creating your budget.  Here you’ll create all of the envelopes that you’ll spend money “out of.”  If you’ve used budgeting software that didn’t use envelopes previously, you can consider these envelopes to be your different spending categories.

For example, you would have an envelope for your mortgage, one for groceries, one for entertainment, etc.

Snowmint’s Budget has a long drop down list for you to choose the envelopes from.  Or (and this is important) they allow you to create your own envelopes by simply typing it in the box.  Too many finance apps don’t allow you to create your own custom categories — I’m glad that Snowmint has seen the light.  Also, as you type, Snowmint offers suggestions.  I found this to be faster than using the drop down list.

The more fully you complete this step, trying to think of all your envelopes, the more effective your budget will be.  You may want to have a record of your past spending on hand for this step.

Distribute Funds

In this section you distribute your initial bank account amounts into the envelopes.  This is easily performed by double-clicking on the envelope listing and entering the amount.  I found out after clicking around that you can also use only the keyboard to enter amounts by arrowing down or up to the envelope and hitting the Tab key to edit (this will save you a ton of time).  Naturally, the Amount to Distribute amount is lowered by each distribution that you make.

Budget Setup

Budget tells you here that if you only wish to use the program as an account manager, than you’re now complete with the setup.  If, however, you want to use Budget as a budgeting tool (I hope that all of you would say, Yes!), it has a few more steps for you.

Using this software only as an account manager and not taking advantage of the envelope budgeting system would be like buying a Porsche and never taking it over 35 mph.

Enter Income / Expenses

The Enter Income step is fairly self explanatory, you enter the amounts and frequency of each source of your income.  Budget offers a number of pay frequencies — nice.

When you enter your expenses, it has you enter your budgeted amount for each expense.  These amounts can be anything from weekly to yearly budgets.  You also define which paycheck (in my case, Husbands or Wife’s paycheck) will be used for which envelope.

Setup Complete

There’s a friendly end screen once you’re done with the Setup Assistant.  It reminds you that your complete satisfaction is important to them and gives you their contact email.  It mentions that they try to respond to your email within 24 hours. A nice, reassuring touch.

Snowmint Budget Main Window

After the inital setup you’re then presented with the main window of Snowmint’s Budget:

The main window of Budget basically consists of four areas: the top toolbar, the left sidebar, the main envelope area, and the bottom “expansion” bar.  We’ll briefly go over each:

The Top Toolbar

Contains buttons that perform actions such as entering transactions, deposits, etc.  You’ll use this toolbar to see a transation history on a bank account basis or an envelope basis.  Also found are buttons for stats and an Info button that is used to view or change information for your envelopes or bank accounts.

The toolbar has a fairly intuitive interface.  Depending on what item you have selected, it dims or brightens icons that would be clickable for that item.  For example, if I’ve clicked on a bank account, it allows me to click on the Debit icon (brightened), but not on the Envelope History icon (dimmed).

Left Sidebar

The left sidebar contains your bank accounts and their balances.  By clicking on the individual bank acounts, you are shown the envelope balances that pertain to that bank account.

Also, with a bank acount seleced, you can click the Info button  to edit information on that account such as its name, preferences, next check #, a signature, etc.

By double clicking on an account, you open the Balance window to reconcile your bank accounts.

Envelope Area

All of your envelopes are found in the largest section of the screen.  I like that this clearly puts the emphasis on the balances in your envelopes, rather that simply what you have in your bank account (a reminder that each dollar spent must be accounted for with funds from an pre-planned envelope balance).

Each envelope shows the envelope name as well as the balance of funds in that envelope.  These envelopes are also a little more customizable (more on that later).

By clicking an envelope once, you can see the icons in the top toolbar brighten, allowing you to click on them.  This means that you can enter spending transactions (a check, debit, or credit card charge), record a deposit into that envelope, see the envelope transaction history and stats, and more.

Bottom Bar

The bar at the bottom the screen, while it doesn’t take up much space, can actually do quite a bit.

The leftmost icon opens the Envelope Display View.  This allows you to view envelopes in a customized way.  For example, I could create a Fixed Expense view to see all the envelopes that I consider fixed expenses.

To set up a custom envelope display view, simply right click in the Envelope Display window and then click New Envelope View.  Then click the Settings icon and choose your view preferences.

The Settings icon opens up a settings screen in which you customize the Envelope Display Views that you set up.  Among many other settings, this is where you determine which envelopes will show up in which view.

The Transactions icon opens a sidebar on the right side of the screen that contains transaction information.

The History icon opens a bottom window that shows transaction history for whichever account or envelope you choose.

The Stats icon adds some stats to the history view.

See the following screenshots to see each of these functions:

Customizing Envelopes

If you think the plain gray envelopes are a little bland, you’re right.  But the good news is you can customize them to a certain degree.

By clicking on an envelope and then clicking the Info icon in the top toolbar, the info window for that envelope opens up.  This window provides some good information such as the amount budgeted for the envelope, which pay that budgeted amount is coming from, and more.

If you click on the Appearance button, you can change the color of the envelope, as well as add a black and white or color icon to it.  With a couple of clicks, I turned my boring gray envelope into this:

After a few minutes, I was able to turn my envelopes into a little more colorful collection:

*If you wanted, you could color code your envelopes to help you visualize your spending.  For example, all fixed expenses could be lighter hughes of yellows, all your variable regular expenses in hughes of blue, and all your discretionary expenses (that you can control more), in darker hughes of reds.  Just a thought for those who see things more visually.

Here’s some screenshots of the envelope customization process:

Depositing (Adding Funds) into Budget

There are a few of different ways to go about recording your income or paycheck into Snowmint’s Budget.

Into an Envelope

If for example, you get some money that you want to only go into a certain envelope you can click that envelope and then click the Deposit icon .  Fill in the deposit information and click Record and you’ll see your bank account balance and the envelope balance increase by the amount of the transaction.

Manually

In most instances, however, you will be getting a larger paycheck and need to distribute that income into various different envelopes.  If this is the case, you click on the bank account (in the left sidebar) that it is to be deposited into and then click the Deposit icon.  In the Deposit window you input where the income is coming from, how much it is, and then distribute the income into the various envelopes as shown:

Using Pre-allocated Settings

If, however, you set up a budget (income and expenses) in the Setup Assistant when you began, you have another, much quicker option to record your income and distribute it to the envelopes.

Simply click on the Record Pay icon , select which pay source it is, and click either Record Pay now (to use the set allocations) or Adjust Pay Allocations (to make changes.  Your income is automatically put into the different envelopes for you according to the allocation that you set.

Adding Transactions

There are three basic ways to record transactions.  If the transaction covers only one envelope, the best way to do it is to click on an envelope and then one of the transaction icon (check, debit, or charge) and enter the transaction information (you can also just double click the envelope to open the transaction window).

If the transaction is going to be split across multiple enveloes, you click on a bank account and then click one of the transaction icons.  If you go this route, you’ll also need to set the amounts for each envelope.

You can also choose to use the Transaction Entry window to enter transactions.  As noted before, if you click the Transactions icon at the bottom of the screen, the Transactions Entry window opens.

What I Don’t Like About the Data Entry

It may be a personal preference, but I found that entering transactions into the system was a little too tedious.  The way it’s set up, while simple, requires you to make many clicks of the mouse.  I was longing for a list of sorts for the transactions so that I could just use my keyboard to enter multiple transactions very quickly.  Instead, I was clicking around to different envelopes for each transaction.  On weeks with a lot of transactions, this may get a little annoying.

Import Transactions

Thankfully, you can import your transactions from your bank.  This should save you loads of time.  I couldn’t get it to work with my .QIF file, but that may have been a problem with my institutions downloaded file and not with Snowmint Budget.

Transferring Funds

There will be times when you will need to take money from one envelope to pay for something from another envelope.  This is good in that it reinforces the idea that everything you spend, must be accounted for.

Transferring funds from one account to another is quite simple in >Budget.  All you have to do is click an envelope (that you want to take money out of) and drag your mouse to whichever envelope you want to transfer money into.  In this screenshot I was transferring money from my Restaurant envelope into the Groceries envelope:

I also noticed that when I tried to enter a transaction that would take my envelope balance negative, I got the following:

A nice touch.

A Few Other Neat Features

Stats

One of the icons in the top toolbar is the Stats icon:  It allows you to view various financial data in table, line graph, or bar graph formats. While this is a nice feature, a broader offering of reports would be nice.

Balance

Another Budget feature that may come in handy (especially if you still use monthly bank statements) is the Balance:

This is primarily used to reconcile your bank statements (or online transaction history) with your Budget software.  It’s fairly intuitive and easy to use.

…and More

This is not a complete list of all the features that Budget has to offer.  The documentation for the software goes over a number of others for the more advanced user.

Snowmint Budget Price

The listed price for Budget is $39.95 for a downloaded copy.  At the time of this writing, it was “on sale” at $29.95.  In terms of quality personal finance software this is a very reasonable price — even a little lower than most competitors.  If you want a physical CD, the price is $47.95.

Snowmint’s Free Trial

I’d also like to highlight that Snowmint offers a free trial for Budget.  It’s a great way to try the software out before you buy.  They have a fantastic money back guarantee, but if you want to take it for a test drive before handing over any dough, you can.  The trial allows 250 transactions and 4 balances, so depending on your rate of transactions, it could last up to 4 months.

To download Budget for free and start using the free trial, go to their catalog page, and then click the “TRY” button.

Snowmint’s Guarantee

Another good thing about Snowmint Budget is it’s great guarantee.  In their words: “If you are not 100% satisfied with any of our products for any reason within 60 days of your purchase we will give you a full refund.“  I would think 60 days of consistent use would be plenty of time for you to see if you like the product or not.

They also guarantee great support and privacy.  Be sure to check out their guarantee page to get an idea of how much they stand behind their product.

Conclusion

Budget by Snowmint is a solid personal finance software program that the Mac lovers out there may find to be a useful tool when trying to get a better handle on their spending. It’s also now available for Windows, so the PC users can also benefit.  I don’t believe that I ran across a single bug in the time that I spent in the application, something that hasn’t happened with the other Mac software applications that I’ve reviewed.

I really like that Budget uses the time-tested envelope budgeting methodology.  For those that are dedicated to using this software, it will definitely have a dramatic effect on your money management skills.  It’s hard to not manage your money better when you’re using the envelope method.

Is Snowmint’s Budget the best budget software out there? No.  Is it a strong contender (especially in the Mac environment)? Yes.  I had few complaints about Budget.  Primary among them was that the transaction entry could be designed to be a bit faster.  The reports could also use some work.  But all things considered, if you’re a Mac user and are looking for another alternative to help you manage your money, Budget by Snowmint is one that you should at least take for spin using the free trial.

Try Snowmint

Aaron Patzer, founder and CEO of Mint.com, officially announced this morning that they’ve signed a definitive agreement to sell Mint.com to Intuit for “about $170m.”  Having only been in existence for 3 years, this is quite the success story for Mint.com.  With it’s great technology and the 1.5 millions users that Mint brings to the table, it makes perfect sense for Intuit.  But what does this mean for all the faithful Mint users?

What Does This Mean for Mint Users?

The comments on the various news websites quickly started pouring in once the news hit.  Naturally, most of these comments focused on what this means for the future of Mint and it’s users.  The vast majority of these comments raised concern that Intuit would slowly but surely kill everything good about Mint.

Will Intuit cripple a free version of Mint and charge for any worthwhile features?  Will it take the non-intrusive “ways to save” and turn them into annoying and unavoidable advertisements?  Will it just shut Mint down?

While many are already counting down the days to Mint’s demise, I’m actually quite hopeful. Maybe I’m an optimist, but I’m encouraged by a couple of things:

1.  Mint.com will stick around - According to Mint.com: “Intuit intends to keep both the Mint.com and Quicken Online offerings… Mint.com will become the primary online personal finance management service that is offered directly to consumers by Intuit.”

2.  Aaron Patzer will become the General Manager of Intuit’s Personal Finance Group - “Patzer will be responsible for online, desktop and mobile consumer personal finance offerings.”  Having the founder and CEO on board at Intuit is certainly a good sign.  No entrepreneur wants to see his brainchild get destroyed and I’m sure Patzer will do his best to keep Mint.com the great personal finance tool that is.

3.  Mint.com now has more resources - In part of the official announcement, Patzer said, “by joining Intuit, we can accelerate our ability to add more fantastic new product functionality into both Quicken and Mint.com.”  With more resources available, we can hope to see newer and better features released more quickly.

4.  Mint.com to remain free - At least that’s what we’re told.  Aaron Patzer says to “expect Mint.com to remain free!”

In reality, only time will tell what the future of Mint.com holds after the acquisition is completed later this calendar year.  Mint.com has made some great improvements lately (see the full Mint.com review for an update on all of its new features), and we’ll keep our fingers crossed that it will continue to do so.