At first I was skeptical of YNAB -- the idea of giving every dollar a job and tracking transactions down to the penny seemed hellish -- but I've since become a convert. I like having all bank account and card transactions in one place and having the budgeting decoupled from the institutions. The goal-setting features are great. And keeping a careful budget of all inflow and outflow has been pretty easy and makes it nice to set up lots of small budgeting buckets. After an initial setup, it feels like a machine that keeps my finances in order without too much intervention.

If you get into YNAB, also check out the toolkit[1], which gives some additional budget analysis and planning tools.

[0] https://pcap.rocks/matt1688 (includes my referral code)

[1] https://www.toolkitforynab.com/

I've been using it for the past year. It's clean, snappy, easy to use, and has VERY powerful categorization for anyone with a programmers mindset.

I used mint but it was too much work to keep the categories up. I looked at YNAB but it seemed too overbearing. Lunchmoney has been a really refreshing tool for me.

It's also a solo developer's project, they make regular updates, and it's a clean business model of a simple monthly fee.

If you use someone's referral link you get an extra free month after their trial. Here's mine: https://lunchmoney.app/?refer=kvy5xf49