
Sharing a budget with my partner
Hi
new on YNAB. I would love to learn How to share a budget with my partner. Anyone who can help?
Thanks!
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Hi Cyan Song !
Sorry for the late response!
To share your budget with your partner, you'll want to share your login credentials. As long as you're both logging in to the same account, you'll both have access to the budgets you've created and can make real-time changes! :)
If you have a moment, take a look at our Join Forces Guide for a few tips and tricks on budgeting with a partner!
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I just upgraded from YNAB Classic after using it for years, not a deal breaker, but sharing login info seems to be a very lame non-elegant way of sharing. Adding such a simple thing seems like it could really extend the use of YNAB, like if your using it for a small business you could share to an accountant and specify read only permissions. Unless you guys are withholding that for a full business product.
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I just activated my subscription after being a ynab 4 customer and the first thing I looked for was how to share the budget with my wife so she can check it when she's out shopping. To be clear, sharing login credentials is *not* the same as "sharing a budget". Having a read-only budget view that I can send over to her so she can see at a glance what's left in her Homegoods budget for the month feels like a missing feature as opposed to a bonus feature.
I see above this is meant for "households", but that still implies multiple users, which by every definition I'm aware of means multiple users under a single account (ie, not sharing a single login).
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This is a major missing feature from the new YNAB. With YNAB 4, I could have my 3 or 4 budgets, and my partner could have her 3 or 4 budgets, and we could share one of them through Dropbox.
Now with new YNAB, I want to share just one of my 4 budgets with my partner (i.e. our joint budget), but not give him access to all of my budgets (personal, business, etc). He has a a paid account, I have a paid account. We really should be able to share a single budget without sharing login credentials (and thus ALL of our budgets).
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Hey Faness I agree with all the other voices above... It would be a HUGE help and would really make me feel that the money YNAB costs is worth it if both my wife and I were able to have separate logins that go to the same YNAB subscription/account. In real life, partners and family members share budgets but often have individual credit cards and bank accounts in addition to shared accounts, and it would be great to have my budgeting software reflect this. Please add this function ASAP!
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Faness I'm on the trial version, evaluating this for my clients as a money coach/blogger. Asking folks to share a login is a show-stopper for me, for all the reasons mentioned (sloppy security, unwanted or unintended changes which are *bad* for marital bliss, etc). Read-only flags are critical, especially for kids or other household members. Please let me know when this important change is in place!
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I agree with the need for multiple user accounts. I personally use YNAB, and a single account works for me. However, I am a conservator for my son, and want to get him up on YNAB. However, I need to have oversight and access to his account for legal reasons. Also, for such reasons, I do not want to have a single login id. This is a clear need... PLEASE PRIORITIZE!
ps. I did submit a feature request as well.
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Hi - Can we atleast have separate Budget Books password protected to open within one subscription account??? That way we could share the passwords to the common budget portfolio but have private budgets within the same account opening with passwords known to the individuals concerned. ie between Spouses, Parent and Child, Partners etc This is critical and urgently required. Very disappointed that YNAB team are deflecting this question and requirement .......
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Sharing passwords with people is a bad security practice. For something that has my banking info and other very private things, you should not be recommending users share their passwords with other people. Most people are not going to share the password in a secure way, opening up tons of risk. That risk is to the users, and also to you as a company when there are headlines like "my YNAB got hacked!!!" (when really what happened is they shared a password in a non-secure way, but by the time that is determined, the stain is already on YNAB for "getting hacked").
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Nicole at YNAB Google SSO doesn't help with this issue, as far as I'm concerned. I want to be able to share a single budget with a partner, not ALL of my budgets with a partner. I should be able to edit a Budget's settings and indicate which other YNAB users can access it. I don't want to give my partner access to all of my budgets.
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It seems that this thread is monitored by YNAB Support people. I'm wondering if maybe there could be some information given on why the decision was to not allow multiple users with their individual log-ins for one account?
It does seem very strange to market a product as a home budgeting tool (not a student budgetin tool) when we all know there are usually at least two people, and then ask them to share a login. Should't be a problem iff there are identical visibility and usage rights. Are the developers afraid that if they implement that, that that would make people want more and more complex account functions, starting with usage rights, and going on from there to visibility and editing rules? I know that this kind of stuff can get excruciatingly complex very quickly so I would understand their concern, but I'm wondering:
Is there something they know about the system they are not telling anyone? Maybe that it is could not withstand that kind of complexity once if was implemented? Are they deflecting any entrance into this kind of complexity to avoid attention on a huge mistake sitting at the bottom of the coding structure that would require rebuilding the whole thing from scratch once we started adding anything mildly more complex to accounts than what we have right now?
I guess I'm just looking for an explanation I can understand. I just signed up and am concerned about this obvious feature missing. It just raises a big red flag. It can be that the developers are trying to avoid a coding strategy error from being exposed or developers not getting paid enough to really want to dig into the problem when it is so easy to answer all question from the marketing people with "can't be done". Or is it that the management has been asked multiple times to hire a concepter but they are expecting the developers to do the concept work themselves for the same money? None of theses explanations seem very encouraging. But what else could it be?
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Thanks for the answer. Makes perfect sense, but still....
it has become customary that everyone has their own key to a house so you don't have to ask someone to lend you their key. It's a bit of a far fetched example, but it kind of demonstrates a truth about human nature that we want our own entry device into a space, even if we share that space with others.
It's not so much about keeping some rooms locked for others not to be able to enter. I's about being able to enter or exit at your own convenience without feeling like you borrowed someone's identity.
An email address is something so personal, it feels alien and weird to share it. I don't want anyone to use my personal email address as a login *anywhere*. Even if that person is not able to send emails with it. It feels like you are giving someone your drivers license.
It feels a bit as if someone has to impersonate me in order to do something. Just like you are impersonating your parents when you log into their computer with their username and password. It makes you feel like a minor. Like someone who hasn't earned the right to their own access. An email address is not something you share. Makes no difference where the software came from originally. The thought of husbands giving their wives their personal email address, the wives then have to use to get into the budgeting software (which probably is the more standard case) even has something cringe-worthy and condescending about it. Makes me think of the middle east and women not having the right to ownership and their own possessions and everything being handled by the man. Makes me think of the sixties and men handing women their allowance for the month. I think someone in this thread even talked about giving the wive non-editable access to the budget so that she can see how much she can spend this month. What on earth could be the reason for not giving another grown up human being full access to YNAB. It's not like she can accidentally launch an atom bomb. Is that woman 17 or why is she not allowed to do basic budget managing? I am exaggerating here of course, but the login concept walks a bit close to social behaviour models of de-humanising and de-valuing people. Or at least you are not really helping with the concept.
I would even argue that the approach for one grown up to borrow a highly personal identification piece from another grown up wasn't okay for grown up household users back then, and it isn't not okay for grown up users now. Makes no difference if the software is PC based or web based.
And if all of you, the entire development team plus everyone from marketing, plus the occasional freelancing information architect or concepter didn't feel it in their gut that this is a basic truth about human nature and our culture and tradition and the dynamics in families, it just keeps those red flags coming.
It's strange, because this lack of understanding of the human nature when it comes to the concept of account handling is so much in contrast to the way the software is sold with those incredible emails and videos in which we users are talked to face to face, without condescending tones or raised fingers or sarcasm or irony about our lack of ability to manage our finances. Very strange indeed.
I'm trying to figure you guys out and so far this is the biggest contradictory presence of "the light versus the dark side" being housed inside the same company I can think of seeing in the past years, if ever. Very strange indeed.
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It's not really about a conspiracy. Details matter. The things you do, or don't do matter. If the world wasn't ruled by small details being symbols for something else, marketing wouldn't work. Every brand in the world uses the power of subtle metaphors and symbols because we as humans work this way. "Just do it" by Nike means you can fulfil a dream you've not been able to follow up on up to now. That's pretty subtle yet it ties the product to a behavior, an attitude and an action. Pretty powerful for a simple sentence that actually doesn't mean anything. If that is already working so well, you can see how small details in an interface or a service concept shape perceptions and behaviours.
A service that makes you use something that is a personal identifier to lend to another person sends a strong brand message. That's just how the world works. I didn't make it up or pick up metaphors or conspsiracies that aren't there. The connotations are there, but you are choosing to ignore the complexity of the world where other brand or services choose not to. That's pretty much all that it is. You can either make the details of the world work for or against you. In this case, all I wanted to say is that the details you have chosen are working against you, because they are working against how humans function, and how we have evolved into undertanding access rights to digital services, personal rights, and the use of email addresses.
If I set a global email for my family that still means I am bending the rules of a system never intended for such a purpose to work with this special interpretation of service access you have chosen to implement. If you ever get an email from an address called "[email protected]", you know that someone is speaking "in behalf of" that family. Also an email address functions as a place to send emails to, not as an access. Services of the past years have chosen to replace the previous user name with an email address only because all of us have one and we can remember it more easily reducing cost for those services with fewer dead accounts. The idea should not be to create yet another email address that is kind of like the old user names because it has no other function. And then again it has another function. Someone has to go and monitor those emails that might go to that created address because once it is out there, emails will be written, even if you specifically created it just as a username.
No matter how trivial you think the matter is, the fact that someone has to create a shared email that actually you can't share, in order to use as an entry for several people into a service is just thinking around at least a dozen of corner instead of thinking in a straight line, and is ignoring a bunch of not so insignificant usability and behavioural problems that it is creating.
And again, it just raises red flags if a concept as simple as a personal access is over complicated to such a degree that you are "mis"-using other services, like email addresses in general, or having to create additional addresses in another service by an independent company just to be able to properly use yours.
I think we all have better things to do than to discuss these things here. I just wanted to respond one last time because using the word "conspiracy" is actually not acceptable and I am really quite concerned that you would go so far as to call someone who is simply pointing out the usability problems with your concept as someone who is politically motivated or is somewhat "extreme".
There is nothing extreme about what I said. All these connotations are in your concept. You can accept that they are there and rework your concept so it is connotation-free, or you can ignore it, but you can't make someone who is just pointing out the facts out as an extremist or "weird thinker". Well, actually you did. Bit it sure is not very nice. Detailed thinking is necessary to build quality products that function precisely. It' the kind of thinking you find with architects and all professionals who fix things so that they work properly. We are not conspiracy people. We are people finding problems in systems so that they can be eliminated and the system can work better.
I'm not going to respond any more to this, obviously, as you have chosen to get personal, which is very unfortunate. So this his hopefully something someone with a more neutral, detail and quality oriented mindset can one day dig up, if needed, once you are starting to rework the current service access concept. My bet would be that you have to pretty soon. Because actually your concept is the "extreme" thing here, that one immediately rubs against because it is so unusal and uncommon and unfortunate. Its simply not up to date in a whole lot of areas, most of which I mentioned, ranging from ignoring web standards to more subtle psychological connotations. But as they say, people always accuse others of what they are doing themselves.
I still like the service and am looking forward to using it but this exchange has shown me that your focus is not so much on detail and quality. And I guess it doesn't have to be. It's not a real banking software or one that manages city traffic. It doesn't have to have that kind of attention to detail. I hoped it would have it, but I guess you can't have it all. Thanks for the glimpse behind the curtain.
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I suspect the real reason this hasn't been implimented is they are afraid that itll be used to get free ynab access like someone might ask their friend who had a password subscription to create a new budget for them and share it with them.
Now i think the best way around that is to put limits on how many users can share or maybe even how many budgets an account can have? Just since is then you could even offer various levels of account more budgets and or users would require a slightly higher account level. I think this should solve that problem. Then you can offer different levels.
1) Administrator full access including controlling users
2) Budgeter/Write access can make any changes to the budget
3) Spender access can create transactions or edit their own transactions.
4) Readonly access for kids or maybe an accountant? These users shouldn't count towards any user limits on an account if they are only readinly on every budget they have access to.
5) No access. They can't even read the budget or see that it exists in the account.
Seperately from these per budget permissions would be an Account Owner, has access to billing info, creating budgets, ect.
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Well said Coral Battery. I think that you are spot on in the true rationale for not adding this feature - they are trying to not get Netflixed out potential paid accounts. All of the other dancing around the issue is disingenuous. However, in this effort to gain paid users, YNAB is putting their current user base at risk. My wife and I both have YNAB4 - she actually turned me onto it - but we are both balking at the upgrade to the online version because we can't share our joint budget. We each want to have our own private individual budgets in a joint budget with equal access rights. That really does not seem like too much to ask for $75 a year...
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I'm just making this transition from YNAB4, and have been happy with the support and responsiveness so far. It sounds like I don't have a new request, but I'd love to be able to create a simple budget with my 15 year old, to help her manager her babysitting money, and maybe even let her handle some of her typical expenses (clothes and such) herself. It doesn't look like I'll be able to give her her own kids account (and free student for 1 year doesn't get us through the college years). So, I think I'll get her rolling with YNAB4 for now. It should be a good experience for her either way. And I'll just try to keep an eye on feature roll out in case we get a chance to bring her online with us. Hopefully master account can do anything in any budget is enough of a reason for people to not just be sharing their account with friends.
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Faness said:
That's not to say everyone should be sharing your account. If you're not comfortable sharing your budget with someone, it's probably best they have their own account.You're talking $336 for a family of four. Non-starter...
Not even an option to consider when you might show someone a demo for 34-days but they won't really get engaged for much longer if they are starting from the position of, "why do I even need a budget?" -- typical of most people.
The ones who will sign up for this on a 34-day trial are the ones who, "I really need a budget but this other stuff doesn't seem to work". Point being, they have identified a need instead of you are trying to identify the value on the longer term cases, typical with children and young adults. -
I'd like to add my voice to this request. There really needs to be a way to designate some accounts as my, yours, and ours. There are transactions that I wouldn't want my partner to see (like if i'm buying him a gift) . We should be able to have one place to look at and share information, but each partner should be able to chose with information to share. The new app HoneyDue did this really well, but it's too new so it doesn't connect with most accounts so I couldn't use it. This seems to be a big miss for YNAB.
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I'm willing to admit I am part of the problem here. I share my YNAB account with more people than my household. I honestly don't care if my friend sees my budget in YNAB, they can't access my accounts or take the money so 🤷♀️
But for those who do care, https://familybudgets.online (let's you grant readonly access to your budgets)
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My vision of what would work great for my family would be to emulate exactly the way that 1Password handles this. I pay for a Family subscription which is slightly more than an individual one, and up to 5 household members can have their own logins, and create their own vaults. You can choose to share a vault with any number of other family members and control their read/write/manage access, and there's also a whole family vault everyone has access to.
This solves the problem of the need for 1 login = 1 identity, as well as privacy concerns, and this is the exact model YNAB needs for me to be able to get my partner contributing to our shared household budget without being able to meddle with my personal budget!