I reviewed You Need a Budget by Jesse Mecham on Amazon:

While I am a huge fan of the YNAB product, and have been using it actively for several years, I half expected this book to be a thinly veiled advertisement to purchase his tool and convert to a paying customer. Mecham only mentions YNAB in passing as part of the real life examples, and puts a link to it in the appendix.

This is not a book about how to use YNAB. This is a book to convince you first that the budgeted life is a better life, and secondly that a budget is something YOU can do.

Mecham’s Four Rules are presented in plain English using words that anyone can understand. These four rules really get to the heart of why You Need A Budget. Other financial advice will tell you what and how, YNAB is focused on the why (with a little bit of how).

Even though I was already familiar with the Four Rules, reading this book gave me a renewed vision and helped me realize I was looking at my budget as a “what,” but I needed to examine the “why”.