I’m not sure what your point is in arguing that buying something and never using it would be a waste of money - of course it is. But most saas products with a mobile app are going to cost money, and besides, they give the method away for free if someone wanted to try building it in excel. You could also get the book that the founder wrote, and just try making it work on paper or something. Of course, then you don’t get bank import or the mobile app.

Part of the philosophy of YNAB is in balance and rolling with the punches of life - ie, not being forced into a specific budget that can’t change. It isn’t restrictive like that. So it’s a lot easier to stick with (once you get over the steep learning curve) because the money to pay for everything MUST be accounted for by taking it away from something else — meaning you can actually do whatever you want to at any time, as long as you are in balance across the board. It’s that innate flexibility, more than anything else, that’s made it way more tenable for me at least.

A lot of other “budget” products just bitch at you for what you did wrong last month, with no way to readjust in the moment — or they don’t account for whims and boredom, or they can’t adapt when your life is totally upended. The key to a usable budget, I’ve found, is one that can be changed at a moment’s notice without making you feel bad about it. I haven’t found that elsewhere.