It’s that time of year again, when I am wishing desperately that there were good alternatives to YNAB for zero-based budgeting software — preferably with genuinely great native Mac and iOS apps. There are, as far as I can tell, not.

I have evaluated the alternatives. Scoured the subreddits! Monarch is “what if Mint had figured out how to be nice and done some genuinely useful things?” EveryDollar is “what if YNAB were worse and also gave money to a guy I find rather distasteful?” Actual went open-source and is therefore now actually maintained, but I don’t trust their hosting to exist long-term and don’t want to run my own.

Lunch Money looks like it gets close, and I may even give it a try, and I like that it’s a small company, but it’s also hard to tell what their prospects are of being here in five years. (YNAB: will be here in five years. I just may be five years more annoyed.) Everything else seems to be aimed at dumbing things down or is… let’s go with not to my taste or standards design-wise.

That net of all of that is basically: «sigh»