[cstoner]

I've been using YNAB since March 2014. I started doing manual entry with YNAB4 and was an early adopter of YNAB5.

I manage my own personal budget as well a joint budget for myself and my fiance.

Here's my takeaway:

* The YNAB model to budgeting is how I want all future budgeting tools I use to work. They call the framework "The Four Rules" (https://www.youneedabudget.com/the-four-rules/) and they are a very pragmatic way to think about budgeting.

* Specifically, I like to be able to have my budget cover multiple months into the future. I have fairly bursty and somewhat unpredictable income. I like to have a reserve of 6 months of expenses covered just to make sure that I can handle any ebb and flow of my income.

* I have successfully convinced my partner to use YNAB and they find it valuable. It really is super useful software that is pretty straight forward to use and that makes budgeting very quick and easy.

* Sharing budgets with a partner doesn't really work the way you'd want it to. You would need to share a single set of credentials, and there isn't really any fine grained access controls.

* YNAB has been raising their prices lately, and I think it's reasonable to assume that they are going to be raising them again in the future. I am not convinced that I, personally, am getting value out of the things they say they are improving. While I have a lot of my financial history with them, I'm definitely investigating competitors to see if they would fit my needs. So far, none have but I'm going to keep looking because honestly I'm not sure YNAB is worth $100/yr ($200/yr between my partner and I is fucking crazy).

Overall, would I recommend YNAB? Yeah, probably. I would bet that if you haven't been budgeting before and started using YNAB at the current price that you would probably make at least $100 worth of better financial decisions in the first year. But there's a huge asterisk next to the price.

I remember paying $30 for YNAB4 and being happy with it. They introduced the SaaS version that would sync to import your transactions at $50/yr and I remember thinking that was kinda pricy. You could always import the transactions from your bank by downloading the Quicken files, but I understand they need a subscription model to sustain an actual business around the product.

I am not convinced that the recent price hikes have been justified by an increase in the value of the product.

[nerdjon]

The price is where I am finding myself hesitant to switch unless I find something that has a life changing feature (like features for couples).

Copilot had a price hike to $9 a month (or $70 a year I believe) but grandfathered everyone who had a subscription for $3 a month "for life" (as long as you have an active subscription).

I do keep hearing great things about YNAB and I don't mind paying for it, but if they are being that aggressive on raising pricing that is concerning.

[cbo100]

Or is it concerning that nobody else is raising prices?

We are literally commenting on an article about a similar business that is shutting down due to being unsustainable without price rises.

I was on grandfathered YNAB pricing. The increase isn’t great, but at least I know they are working to make their business sustainable.

Plex has a similar problem, I’m on a grandfathered lifetime license, but without the ongoing revenue they are really struggling to the point the product is now a mess of add-ons and I don’t even use it anymore.

[lozenge]

It's YNAB's first price rise in a long time, of 20%, and by putting legacy customers onto the new price they unlocked a lot more revenue than previous price rises. I don't think it's a sign of more future non-grandfathered price rises.