I was in a crunch about five months ago. My wife and I had no budgeting system, and it showed. We had a pretty decent income, but it was slipping through our fingers too quickly, and I just felt in my gut that we were going to make a serious mistake that would cost us a lot of money. I actually had nightmares of a chain of bounced checks that would bankrupt us. So I did a little searching for a personal budget system that would work for us.

Let me give you a little more history before I tell you what I found that finally worked. First of all, I am the king of budgeting systems. I think I must have tried five or six budgeting systems, and each time I introduced a new personal budgeting system, my wife rolled her eyes in annoyance. See, the problem was that each time I brought home a new way to budget, my wife had to learn how to use the new system, and eventually she got tired of it.

We went through a few different Excel spreadsheet systems, which weren't sophisticated enough to make budgeting easy - they lacked some key features that each budget should have. We also went through Microsoft Money, which is entirely too sophisticated and complicated - instead of just focusing on my budget, I kept getting sidetracked by the forecasting tools, and MS Money was difficult to fix if I screwed it up. My point? Make sure you get the right budget the first time, one that has the features you need, and none of the features you don't need, and it'll be easy to stick with it. And it's only when you stick with a budget that you start to see some of the benefits I'll talk about later.

After all this searching, and trying all these personal budgeting systems, I finally found a budget that I liked and understood. It was Excel-based, which is great because I understand the basics of how to use Excel, and it had only the functions that I needed, without all that extra baloney. My wife wasn't so sure, though. She'd had it up to here (imagine me indicating my eyebrows with my hand) with budgeting systems, and wasn't convinced that it would be easy to use. She said that if I was so sure that this was the budgeting system that I wanted, I would have to agree never to switch budgeting systems again. Ever. Period.

So, what's the system that tamed this self-proclaimed "king of budgeting systems"? It's called You Need A Budget (catchy title, eh?), or YNAB for short. The thing that attracted me to YNAB was that if you follow the system, known as The Four Rules of Cash Flow Management, you're guaranteed to never have an overdrawn bank account. The reason why is amazingly simple: you don't spend the money you earn this month until next month. In other words, you only spend what you already have, not what you think you'll have later.

Now, I know that that's a foreign concept to those of you who are already planning how you're going to spend next month's money, or who are already spending money you won't earn for months or even years (I mean massive credit card debt). Then again, if you're in debt, you didn't get where you are now by following sound financial principles, so perhaps it's time you made a change.

Besides never being overdrawn, another great benefit of using YNAB is that budgeting is an amazingly short, simple process. My wife and I sat down today and did our budgeting for the month. Total time: five minute. That's right, only five minutes. Try doing that with Microsoft Money. Another problem with Microsoft Money is that I don't know exactly how much money I'll make this month, so my budget doesn't necessarily match the reality of my income. But I do know how much money I made last month, to the penny, which is all YNAB requires you to know. No guessing, ever again.

After the budget is entered, it's as simple as saving your receipts, sitting down once a week, and entering them. Once you're familiar with the system (give it a day or two), you'll have this down to about ten minutes a week.

Okay, I've spent enough time touting the advantages of You Need A Budget. Obviously, since it's an Excel spreadsheet, there are some things it can't do. So, here's a short list of the advantages and disadvantages, followed by my recommendation:

Advantages:

• Ease of use - With YNAB, you're using a program (Excel) that you're already familiar with. The only thing you need to learn is what goes where, and you're set.
• One-time cost - Some budgeting systems require you to pay a monthly fee. While those systems may have some features YNAB doesn't have, I dislike paying an ongoing fee for anything.
• Product support - I emailed the creator of YNAB, Jesse Mecham, after I bought the system. I had a problem that I couldn't fix, and I needed help. He had me email him a copy of the YNAB Excel file with my data, and then sent it back to me with the problem fixed. Amazing support, from a real person with a real interest in satisfied customers. P.S. - Thanks, Jesse.
• You control your data - With other systems, you aren't in control of your historical data. If their online server goes down, you're out of luck. With YNAB, you can duplicate, backup, or manipulate your historical data in any way you see fit. You can also easily see how your income and spending habits change over the years.
• The Four Rules - I know that all you free spirits out there hate rules. Then again, people who use budgets know that organization is the key to success. The Four Rules are an integral part of YNAB - to use YNAB at all, you're automatically living by the Rules. And, if you live by them, you'll realize all the benefits I described above. Believe me, it's great to have money in the bank and to know that you're the one making it all happen.

Disadvantages:

• Lack of connectivity - If you use online banking, YNAB doesn't automatically import your transactions from your bank. Then again, you won't have the problems I had with MS Money's automatic transaction import feature - duplicate transactions, transactions with funny titles that I didn't recognize, or transactions with incorrect amounts. Besides, you're saving your receipts, right? And, there are those who would say that manually entering your transactions makes you more aware of what you're spending. I happen to agree.

Conclusion:
You Need A Budget is a well-made Excel budgeting system. It's robust enough to have the features the average user will need, without the distracting non-value-added features some other systems have. If you know the basics of Excel, it's easy to use. If you don't, it's still easy to use. Even if you don't have Excel on your computer, there are free versions (such as OpenOffice) that work just as well.

If you haven't already got a budget that works well for you, that you rave about, and that saves you both time and money, here's what you need to do:

1. Listen to the interview between Jesse Mecham and myself - click on the arrow button to play this 40-minute interview.
   
2. Click here to go to the You Need A Budget website. There are demos, descriptions, user testimonials, and more. Besides, Jesse Mecham can explain his system much better than I can.
3. Give YNAB a try - It comes with a 60-day money back guarantee. Let me say, though, that after I bought YNAB and used it, I knew I wouldn't need the guarantee - I was hooked!