As Home Life Hero readers know, I’m a fan of YNAB – You Need a Budget. It’s the budgeting software I’ve been using for over a decade. Back when it was a desktop application, you’d buy it for a reasonable price and it would work on one PC, but there were no real updates to the application, and you couldn’t easily share it across computers.
Now, like most software, YNAB is a subscription software. It receives regular updates, works in your web browser and with iPhone and Android apps, and performs very well. Recently, I received the latest push of the web browser software and it’s a stunning new look – clean and easy to read:
- The new default appearance – that blue! The balance between the green bubbles for funded categories and the white and gray of the category lines. It’s very pleasing. The enjoyment you get from looking at an application is a huge factor in whether you will keep using it.
- The menu/account bar is finally collapsable. Depending on your screen size, or if you are using two browser windows side by side, the left-hand menu bar could really get in the way. One click, and it collapses, giving you important screen real estate on smaller laptop screens. Long-term YNABers know, this is a big deal, especially when reconciling accounts with bank statements.
- White space around your key metrics. There’s a lot of top menu screen real estate dedicated to the current month, how much money you have left To Be Budgeted, and your Age of Money. The new color scheme doesn’t seem like it added any spacing from the old version, but the lighter colors certainly allow this key budget information to b r e a t h e.
- Last, but not least – the left and right side information panels are resizable. While the menu/account bar on the left is collapsable, both the left and right side menus can be resized, giving you nearly complete view flexibility.
- Bonus – there’s a dark mode! For my taste, it’s almost too dark. For all the dark mode fans out there, this is a huge win and the first time it’s ever been available in YNAB.
These changes may seem small. For dedicated YNAB budgeters, these are huge quality of life improvements. It feels like the design of the desktop application came forward a whole generation with these updates.
Bravo, YNAB design and tech teams!
If you have any questions about YNAB, I’m happy to try and answer them in the comment section. If you’d like to try YNAB for the first time, please click here for a 34-day trial. If you choose to subscribe using that link, we both get an extra free month of YNAB.