Compared Mint and YNAB for 3 months straight - the winner was obvious

YNAB just clicked for me after fighting with Mint's confusing categories for months, ended up saving an extra $200 a month somehow. Has anyone else made the switch and seen a real difference in their spending?

3 comments

3 Comments

lee_reed26d ago

Set up a few of the rule-based auto-categorization templates in YNAB right away, it saved me from having to sort every single transaction by hand. Once I linked my bank accounts and let it run for a week, the real spending categories showed up clearly. That's how I spotted the $50 a month I was wasting on random coffee shop stops and small convenience store buys.

sarah81826d agoTop Commenter

So that $50 figure - was it all like grab-and-go coffee, or did some of it include actual sit-down café visits with food too? I know when I finally categorized mine, I was shocked to see $35 of it was just a stupid habit of buying a coffee and a pastry every Saturday morning at that local shop near the farmers market. The other $15 was the mid-afternoon 7-Eleven runs for a soda and a candy bar. Did you notice one specific place or type of stop was driving most of it?

stellanelson26d ago

Wow, $50 a month just on random coffee shop stops? That's honestly wild to me. I thought I was bad when I noticed I was dropping $30 on energy drinks at gas stations before I switched. @lee_reed you must have a serious coffee habit or a really fancy taste in lattes. I finally saw the same thing with my own YNAB data and nearly choked when I added up all those little stops for snacks and drinks at convenience stores.