During the years I’ve been trying various apps for tracking expenses and they all worked fine. They did as advertised. I was using them because I thought seeing what I spend money on, will somehow prevent me from overspending on non-essentials.
Of course, I was getting bored by day five and the app was gone, until the next time I wondered where my money goes. At the time, I didn’t realise that such apps can only help you track, they won’t influence how you spend.
This is where YNAB(You Need A Budget) came. One day, I decided to try it, and many thanks to the YouTube videos about it in the beginning — I still use it. I had many breaks in the recent years because I was lazy or unemployed, but now I use it more than ever.
I budget a couple of times in the month just because I get hyped up about planning my spending for the next month, often obsessing about every little detail. It slowly helps me not to be impulsive and to budget money for things I want to buy. It doesn’t work every month, but hey — I try.
There’s definitely a learning curve into the system they promote. And there are even many approaches one can take, depending on income frequency and other factors. Luckily, there’s a huge community around it, and there are many tutorials out there.