You Need A Budget!! (Plus a Give Away!)

How many of you use a financial software such as quicken or money? C'mon, raise your hands. Yes... there are many of you out there. I'm one of them as well!

For many years, I've quicken user and have considered myself some one that "budgets". I keep track of my money, I have all the different accounts set up to categorize my spending, I look at my reports... I budget, right?

WRONG!

A few weeks ago I came across this little beauty of a software. It's called YNAB, or You Need a Budget! Here is why I love this software and no longer use my quicken (gulp, that's right, you heard me, I no longer use quicken!).

Instead of reactive budgeting (pay all the bills, see what's left and spend it with out much of a plan), this is total PROACTIVE budgeting.

Look at the register... looks familiar, right? It basically works just like Quicken, but here is the beautiful part...
THE BUDGET SCREEN! I Love it! You can use the default categories, or change them to fit your needs (easily). Then you input how much you have available to spend in each category, until your top number (amount available for the month) says zero! As you enter in transactions to your register, it automatically updates your budget screen to let you know if you've gone over or under.

With YNAB Pro you can:

• import transactions from your bank (the same way you did it with Quicken!)
• schedule recurring transactions
• easily split transactions
• track all of your account balances in one easy to read interface
• monitor your spending trends
• compare spending from one category to another
• never worry about being forced to "upgrade" as the old version retires (think: Quicken)... every time there is an upgrade, you get it for free! FOREVER!!!
  

This is the electronic way of "envelope budgeting"... it is easy to use, and easy to look at and you'll always know right where you stand!


Now for the fun part.

The good folks over at You Need A Budget, have agreed to giveaway one FREE download of YNAB Pro!!! This is a $49.95 program! AND YOU COULD HAVE IT FOR FREE!

There are SEVEN possible ways for you to enter this contest!! Leave a separate comment for each entry (example: Billy Bob Johnson-Follower).

1. Leave a comment with your name.
2. Blog about this giveaway, link to us, and leave the link to your blog in your comment.
3. Become a follower.
4. Subscribe to the feed.
5. Put our button on your blog (find the code on the sidebar).
   
6. Become a member of our Facebook group HERE.
7. Go to YouNeedABudget.com and subscribe to their Free 10 day Budgeting course (it's awesome, and no, you won't get spammed).

The contest runs until Friday March 6th 11:59pm MST. The winner will be announced the morning of Monday the 9th (**be sure to check back). Good luck!!

Can't wait to see if you've won? Go ahead and purchase YNAB Pro - there is a 60 day money back guarantee on the product! And don't even get me started on their support... tutorials, forums and so on. YNAB just rocks!

And of course, here is a code to use at checkout to save an ADDITIONAL 10%!

FABULESS

Good luck to you!! (Don't forget to do a separate comment for each entry!)

**UPDATE!** Please make sure we have a way to contact you if your profile doesn't lead to your personal blog or have an email on it! If we can't contact our winner and we don't hear from the announced winner within 48 hours, we'll have to pick a new one!**