Category: Uncategorized

You Need a Budget (YNAB) vs EveryDollar

Post author By Alex Tran
Post date December 31, 2020
197 Comments on You Need a Budget (YNAB) vs EveryDollar

In the budgeting world, you won’t go far without hearing about Dave Ramsey’s EveryDollar. Being a long-time You Need a Budget (YNAB) user, I was curious to see how EveryDollar stacked up. Especially since EveryDollar has a free option.

Would EveryDollar be good enough to switch away from YNAB? Or at least worth recommending to friends who don’t want to pay for YNAB?

I used YNAB and EveryDollar side-by-side for an entire month and focused on three areas I believe are important for any app wanting to help people get their money under control.

How easy is it to:

Create your first month’s budget?
Add transactions from your smartphone?
Balance your budget at the end of the month?

This post shares what I learned and crowns a winner!

Note: Because YNAB is a subscription service, I’ll be comparing YNAB to EveryDollar’s subscription service (called Ramsey+) with a separate section for the free version.

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The Best Things of 2017

Post author By Alex Tran
Post date January 1, 2018

Every year, I find myself exploring far and wide for the best the world has to offer. I scour reviews for books, movies, and TV shows. I install and try a lot of iPhone or Mac apps until I find the best one. I listen to different podcasts. I research products and services before I spend my hard-earned money.

Which means at the end of the year, I have a list of things I can confidently recommend based on my experience.

Below you’ll find my collection of those things from 2017 grouped into various categories.

If you try any of these things, I hope you’ll find as much joy in them as I have!

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I got convicted

Conviction come’s in the weirdest ways sometimes.

Over the past year, I’ve gotten more serious about running. Initially, I chose running because it was cheap way to stay fit. Hah, what a lie. Running hasn’t been cheap. But that’s a post for another time.

As my pocket book dwindled from one running purchase after another, you better believe I jumped at the chance to become a brand ambassador for Janji. Perks included a racing singlet and 35% off future purchases.

In my head, I imagined this equation:

Sale items + 35% off = #winning

The only roadblock?

5 Lessons from 15 Years as a Christian

Post author By Alex Tran
Post date October 18, 2015
2 Comments on 5 Lessons from 15 Years as a Christian

Today (October 18, 2015) is a significant milestone in my faith journey.

Fifteen years ago today, sitting at my computer in my dorm room, I gave my life to Christ and began a relationship with him. Along with that milestone, I also hit 10 years in full-time church ministry last month.

So I thought it’d be fun to reflect back and jot down a few lessons I’ve learned along the way.

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Two Simple and Free Ways to Eliminate Porn Temptation

Post author By Alex Tran
Post date August 8, 2015
2 Comments on Two Simple and Free Ways to Eliminate Porn Temptation

The Internet is a giant, never-ending vat of visual temptation.

Pornography, celebrity sex tapes, websites dedicated to adult content/explicit images, half-naked women in ads.

It can appear quickly and from the most unexpected places.

I was listening to music from Pandora’s website once when a full-page ad of a half-dressed woman appeared as a new song started playing.

Pandora!? #nothelpful

That’s enough to get the mind traveling down the wrong path. Before you know it, you’re opening a new tab, visiting your go-to porn websites, and scouring the web for more. It’s a scenario I’ve repeated, and I know countless others have experienced as well.

So how can we combat porn and visually explicit images coming at us from every direction?

[clickToTweet tweet=”Why resist temptation tomorrow if you have the power to eliminate it today? ~@craiggroeschel” quote=”Why resist temptation tomorrow if you have the power to eliminate it today? ~@craiggroeschel”]

In this blog post, I’m going to show you two free ways I’ve eliminated visual temptation today, so that I won’t have to resist it tomorrow.

And I’ll show you step-by-step how you can use them too!