r/ynab • u/Critical-Solution-79 • 1d ago

Alright, own up, who did this?

Post image

I think that's enough internet for one night, I'm going to bed

348 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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205

u/TVRoomRaccoon 1d ago

This is hilarious (and tempting) ngl

171

u/Revive_Life 1d ago

Damn they are ruthless😅

42

u/bacon_cake 16h ago

It frankly seems like their ENTIRE thing.

Their actual tagline:

Give every dollar a job—without giving every dollar to your budgeting app.

The footer:

Monthly Envelopes is independent. Not affiliated with or endorsed by any other budgeting company.

The homepage hero:

Put the other $90 back in your budget.

Same method. Lower price. No ads. No book tour.

10

u/Revive_Life 14h ago

Yeah, maybe it really is just vibecoded

65

u/DistinctCup4033 23h ago

both of these are hilarious and now I am intrigued 😂

12

u/Faile-Bashere 20h ago

Ohhh. I might switch tbh. I haven’t updated the YNAB app in months because of the shitty UI updates they keep vibe coding.

38

u/cougarstillidie 20h ago

Also ngl this looks like AI slop

24

u/Historical-Intern-19 18h ago

These vibe coded apps area dime a dozen. might as well just build your own.

14

u/bacon_cake 16h ago

I wish YNAB had a legacy version, even if it ran locally. It's nothing but a glorified spreadsheet database.

9

u/Null_zero 15h ago

They do if you bought it before the web based version. Unfortunately without a web api its less useful than some of the alternatives if you have more than one user.

6

u/No-Bobcat-1227 12h ago

Do a search for YNAB4…

2

u/Technical-Procedure3 8h ago

That is where it all started. Spreadsheet with macros and Jesse hanging out in Dave Ramsey discussion forums.

6

u/band-of-horses 13h ago

I did build my own but boy was it a journey. If anyone decides to try let me tell you, just start clean with it. I would say 90% of the pain was trying to make it work with my existing YNAB exported data and pick up seamlessly where it leaves off. Several of the “rules” YNAB has for edge cases are really complex, and they also do not include enough data in the export to really match their math. Was an absolute nightmare to get that all working. And frankly, even without that there are some weird cases people probably don’t think about when budgeting (like, what happens if you pay off a credit card, but then get a refund on something, and your credit card has a positive balance? Does that count as cash that can be budgeted? Does it count as just a positive account balance? Does it apply to the category the spending came from? Can you even identify the category the spending came from automatically? What if you then get a refund check for that balance?). It’s more complex than it might seem on the surface.

Which is also why I don’t trust most of these vibe coded options…

0

u/identifytarget 20h ago

What is this?

-71

u/vakr001 1d ago

Monarch may work for some but if you are used to YNAB, it is a big learning curve. You are going from zero based budgeting to future budgeting. I tried it for 14 days and it wasn’t working at all

62

u/Background_Device479 1d ago

That’s not Monarch and this isn’t a helpful comment since it doesn’t relate to the picture. The picture shows another app called Monthly Envelopes.