linda may

Or, how using a new budget app got my no-spend year off to a great start.

Like millions of people in early January, I made some resolutions this year to reduce my spending and pay down credit card debt this year. I also determined to reduce the sheer number of things taking up space in my home. So I started a No-Spend challenge, which you can read about here. TLDR: I’m not allowed to buy stuff (especially clothes, books, home decor and makeup) with a few exceptions on this list I made with my family, where we tried to decide in advance what few items we would need to purchase in 2024. And in the midst of this, I realized I had to change how I track my spending.

I have been using Mint as my go-to budget app for over 7 years. I loved Mint. I evangelized Mint to anyone who would listen. I loved the data it collected, the easy-to-use, intuitive app design, and the slick bar graphs it would produce at the click of a few buttons. I loved that it was free! Thanks to Mint, I can tell you my annual clothing spend in 2022 ($5,611) how much we spent at coffee shops in 2023 ($1,858), and how much we spent, on average, each year since 2019, at Trader Joe’s ($4,217.) I can even find how much we spent at the vet, my grocery budget for each month for the past 5 years, and how our budget changed over time. I admit, I also started keeping a spreadsheet in 2018.

What Mint and my spreadsheet never helped me to figure out was how to stick to my budget. Mint gave me lots of information, but it didn’t change my spending or saving habits. And now, Mint is being discontinued as of March 23, 2024. So I had to decide how to track my finances another way.

After 1 month using YNAB (the You Need a Budget app), I already know what was missing. I was missing a way to think differently about what it means to budget. With Mint, I saw (for years!) that I was regularly going over my food and clothing budgets, but there was no action for me to take when this happened – I just thought, “I guess I should spend less money.” YNAB, on the other hand, is designed to prompt you to figure out how to adjust the rest of your spending to make your whole budget balance for the month.

YNAB also makes “embrace your true expenses” one of its 4 rules – and builds in budgeting for irregular expenses (like those pesky DMV fees, and auto repairs; you don’t know when they’ll pop up – but you know they’re coming!). Originally, YNAB billed itself as helping people “Stop living paycheck to paycheck,” but has evolved that principle into “Age Your Money,” encouraging users to use budgeting to start paying for next month’s expenses with this month’s paycheck, instead of the other way around. Hearing it articulated this way was sort of an a-ha for me; it seemed so clear and actionable.

So, on January 31st, here were the results: Much to my embarrassment, in 2022, our family’s average monthly spending was $8,652, and in 2023 it was even higher, at $9,890. In particular, our total food spending averaged about $2,100 per month (gulp, equal to our mortgage payment). In January 2024, we spent only $1,343. That includes groceries, beer & wine, coffee drinks, food carts/fast food and all meals out. In my original post, I estimated that if I made a habit of packing my lunch, minimized our coffee spending, and only ate two meals out per month , we could save at least $200. In December 2023 we spent $1,670 on food – so we saved over $325 from the previous month, and more than $700 over our 2022-2023 average. Overall, our spending for January decreased to $7,542, or nearly 20% from 2022-23 levels. And what I’ve noticed is that I feel a greater sense of control and understanding of how my money should be working, and I’m not using my bank balance as my source of truth – I’m using my budget. The result of that has been that my bank balance is consistently higher than usual.

I should probably reassure you that I’m not on the YNAB payroll, really. I’m just a working mom in Oregon who wants to be free of high-interest debt and have enough savings when I’m 60 to not work full time for the rest of my life. And blogging about it.

I know I’m in the honeymoon period with a new app. I know my brain may try to figure out how to hack my new habits by going back to its old ways (being in a fog about money, taking comfort in spending on food, books & clothing). I will have to stick with it, actively track my spending and my budget, and stay the course with my spending freeze. But I feel more hopeful about my ability to stay within my budget than literally ever in my life. And that’s worth the $99 membership fee I am going to happily fork over to continue using this awesome budgeting tool this year.