Well, I fell off the frugal bandwagon for Feb and had to return to tracking expenses in 7-day increments - don't know why this seems like a good span of tracking for me.
As expected, things were high as I spent $360 last week OOP (had a $40 purchase at JCP using gift card, so didn't include that in totals - did get 10 items of summer clothes for kids)
OK, here is a summary:
Groceries $176.02
Gas $50
Dining out $26 (trip to McD's for kids lunch on Monday, then Shamrock shakes on Fri for $16!)
Entertainment $42 for Father-Daughter Dance at school/church - also needed $13 dress for DD10 at Once Upon a Child, $40 to Great Clips for three hair cuts, gratuity and leave-in detangler that I was a sucker for buying.
That event total $95
The miscellaneous amount was donation to church, misc Easter gifts from $1 bin at Michaels, etc.
Here is hoping to a lesser week as I spent a lot on groceries last week, but need milk and fresh produce.
I'm also contemplating buying YNAB but am wondering if it is worth it to upgrade to PRO? I have looked over some of the expenses like life insurance and upcoming utilities and know how much is required to prepay for these and I'm thinking it is time to ditch Quicken and Microsoft (don't really like either of those)
Weekly Expense Summary for 2/16 to 2/23 and YNAB v YNAB PRO
February 25th, 2008 at 03:08 pm
February 26th, 2008 at 01:11 am 1203988310
The one thing where I think YNAB is better than PRO is for graphs. Since YNAB is in Excel, I can take the data and make all kinds of graphs. There's also an "Overview page" that has yearly summaries. With PRO, you *can* copy/paste the register into Excel, but not the budget page, and it's usually the budget page that I want to use for graphs. PRO has only 3 graph types built in and I find that limiting. It also produces only graphs, while I'd find summary tables much more useful. But I do like the multiple category levels, automatic scheduling, and the fact that in the Budget page, if you hold the pointer over a spending item, it will break out every relevant expenditure for the month. That's a nifty feature.
February 26th, 2008 at 02:29 am 1203992983
I'm not really big into graphs, and personally the graphs in Pro don't really tell me much - but all the other features are very well worth while.
I'm not sure if this was a one-time offer or not, but at the time I upgraded, you only had to pay the difference between YNAB Excel and Pro. So, you could start out by trying YNAB Excel, and then move on to Pro. There is also a free trial of Pro, and perhaps also of Excel.
You may also want to check out the YNAB forums. There are tons of very helpful people there who could probably answer your questions.
A tidbit - Jesse, the person who wrote YNAB, is a member of savingadivce, although he doesn't post much anymore.
February 26th, 2008 at 08:18 pm 1204057121