<prompt> Human: So my wife handles the budgeting for us, since shes the one at home and the one spending most of the money not saying frivolously, just buying groceries, stuff with the kid, etc. However her old fashioned budgeting really bugs me. I tried to get her to use Mint, but she hated it. She tends to not like to budget for a full month because she just seems to spend too much early in the month, making the later part of the month be really tight. So instead, she budgets weekly.We take my income, subtract our standard monthly bills mortgage, cell phone, utilities, savings, etc, and the remainder we split evenly among the weeks of the month, and thats our budget. She does it all manually on a whiteboard calendar we have in the house. Spend some money? Subtract it from the whiteboard for that week.The problem: I feel like expenses get missed occasionally. Money gets spent, then forgotten about so it never gets subtracted from the budget. As well as I want to be able to check the budget on my phone. Im all for technology, shes not so much. I want to be able to pull up an app and see our expenses and whats left.If we could possibly find an app that budgets on a weekly basis, and is very user-friendly, I might have a shot at getting her to use it. Maybe. But so far Ive never been able to find anything like that. Everything budgets on a monthly basis.Anyone have any recommendations? Or dealt with a similar situation? How did you fix it?Assistant: YNAB You need a budget has been a game for me and my partner. I cant believe how much less we are spending!! I use it in a way that I know how much money have have each week to spend. Once you learn the program and the app, its easy to figure out how to use it to meet your needs. It is a different way of thinking about budgeting so I do recommend the trial and taking some of the classes. Like I said, it has been a complete game changerHuman: I tried it out a bit myself. Wasnt really a fan. I spent a decent amount of time on it and I really just dont think that style of budgeting works for me. And I know for a FACT it would never work for my wife. Shes kind of hard-headed when it comes to her budgeting style. I really think my only solution is finding an app that fits her style, and not making her style change for an app. Trust me - been going round and round on this for years. :Assistant: What doesnt YNAB do? The thing I wont give up is reconciled accounts. Without that, you can miss spending, not know where money went, and it just feels.. Best guessy. With YNAB you know where every dime went.You can budget weekly by breaking categories like food and gas into weekly subcategories. Human: Basically the whole concept of categories just doesnt seem to work for us. Weve tried it over and over.This much for groceries. This much for gas. Weve just found it so much easier to say Ok, we have X amount of money to spend this week and just shoot for that and plan what were going to do according to how much money we have left for the week, as opposed to re-adjusting our planned budget for various categories based on We spent more this week than planned on groceries so lets adjust this other category, etc.But really it all boils down to the simple fact that my wife would never in a million years use YNAB. It would be easier to get divorced and find a new wife, than to get her to use it.  <response>: Weve just found it so much easier to say Ok, we have X amount of money to spend this week and just shoot for that and plan what were going to do according to how much money we have left for the week, Ah, but how will you know where you are overspending? How will you identify areas where you can make changes and cut down if you dont know where your money is going? Budgets dont have to be set in stone. They are just a plan for how you will spend your money. The plan can change, its not a big deal. Creating categories doesnt mean blocking yourself in - budgets are a tool, and they are flexible. as opposed to re-adjusting our planned budget for various categories based on We spent more this week than planned on groceries so lets adjust this other category, etc.You dont have to readjust the budget, you can just click to cover the overspending with money from another area. If I go over by 5 dollars on beauty, a little banner shows up and I click it and select to cover that with money from entertainment, for example. 5 dollars automatically deducts from my entertainment budget and gets applied to the beauty spending, so now Im all good.What you are doing now isnt budgeting, you are just winging it. You could have your money go a lot farther if you were being more intentional with your spending. She tends to not like to budget for a full month because she just seems to spend too much early in the month, making the later part of the month be really tight. This isnt a budgeting problem so much as a spending problem. Its easy to think, wow look at all this money, we can totally afford this and then end up overspending. Its fairly easy to just budget for the month and understand that that has to last a whole month - so to only spend your monthly budgetnumber of weeks in the month or as close as you can. If you spend over your target, youll just spend a little less the next week and plan cheaper meals. Your wife is just making more work for herself here - budgeting for a month and making adjustments when you overspend is less time consuming that making a new budget each week. I dont spend more than 10 minutes a month budgeting and that includes recording my spending and making adjustments as necessary.She does it all manually on a whiteboard calendar we have in the house. Spend some money? Subtract it from the whiteboard for that week.The problem: I feel like expenses get missed occasionally. Money gets spent, then forgotten about so it never gets subtracted from the budget.If shes missing expenses, this system isnt working well. Does she want to be the one budgeting? It seems like she doesnt like doing it, and at the very least shes not doing a great job with this method shes got going. Have you considered Google Sheets? You can check it on your phone and it will basically function the same as a whiteboardtransaction ledger. If you really cant get on bored with YNAB then this is probably your best bet. Also, she needs to sit down at least weekly and reconcile the budget with your bank and credit card statements to make sure everything was captured in the budget. If you arent going to track spending in categories, Id also save receipts just so you can figure it out later if you need to determine where you need to cut down. 