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SiGmA_X posted:This is my biggest complaint with YNAB. It's somewhat annoying but also saves them the trouble of needing to implement any kind of real security. Right now if someone gets into your YNAB, the worst that happens is they see a bunch of numbers.
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Jul 2, 2014 20:48
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LogisticEarth posted:It's somewhat annoying but also saves them the trouble of needing to implement any kind of real security. Right now if someone gets into your YNAB, the worst that happens is they see a bunch of numbers.
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Jul 2, 2014 23:45
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Why log in? just track the things as you do them in the mobile app it takes like 20 seconds.
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Jul 2, 2014 23:46
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:Why log in? just track the things as you do them in the mobile app it takes like 20 seconds.
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Jul 3, 2014 01:10
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:Why log in? just track the things as you do them in the mobile app it takes like 20 seconds. This except use mint if you don't want to log in and just want to double check your transactions. If mint is unavailable for you 
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Jul 4, 2014 01:16
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tuyop posted:This except use mint if you don't want to log in and just want to double check your transactions. 
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Jul 4, 2014 03:17
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I live with my partner and our bills all come out of my account and my partner pays the rent out of her account. I pay my rent to her minus half the bills. How would I indicate this in YNAB? At the moment I just reduce the rent budget and put a note indicating which bills I've taken out already. Is there an easier way to do this? Should I do an off budget partner account or somehow use a budget entry with a negative number?
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Jul 5, 2014 03:14
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inferis posted:I live with my partner and our bills all come out of my account and my partner pays the rent out of her account. I pay my rent to her minus half the bills. How would I indicate this in YNAB? At the moment I just reduce the rent budget and put a note indicating which bills I've taken out already. Is there an easier way to do this? Should I do an off budget partner account or somehow use a budget entry with a negative number? Merge accounts.
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Jul 5, 2014 03:41
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When I pay rent to my uncle I just have an outflow to "Uncle" in my rent category.
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Jul 5, 2014 13:42
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It's not hard. You have a transaction like so: Partner -300 total Rent -500 Bills +200 I can post a screenshot later. This keeps everything straight in your budget and maintains correct tracking of expenses.
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Jul 5, 2014 17:08
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The GPS feature goes a long way to making manually entering amounts easier. Just get back to your car or bike or whatever and whip it out, enter in the amount and you're done. Make sure you turn it on first, it's in the settings somewhere. The first time you use a payee at a new location, it'll have a little globe icon for gps tracking. Next time you open the app near that location, it'll auto populate all the fields.
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Jul 9, 2014 15:26
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For splitting a category my gf and I are doing this thing where if she pays, she'll enter the full amount, and I'll enter half of if with a label and memo saying I owe her. We'll reconcile at the end of the month and see how it goes. First time trying it since we only just moved in together. I'm extremely glad it wasn't a hard sell to get her to start using YNAB. She even had a lovely phone that couldn't install the app so she was just hoarding receipts for a while and entering them in at night. More disciplined than me. If I didn't have the mobile app I probably wouldn't do it at all.
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Jul 9, 2014 15:30
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Your Dead Gay Son posted:For splitting a category my gf and I are doing this thing where if she pays, she'll enter the full amount, and I'll enter half of if with a label and memo saying I owe her. We'll reconcile at the end of the month and see how it goes. First time trying it since we only just moved in together. I wish my gf would enter/track on her own. She brings me receipts. Which works, nothing is missed, and she pays attention to how much she's spending vs the budget we set, but I wish she would be more involved. Oh well, her even paying attention to her spending at all is huge progress!
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Jul 9, 2014 19:28
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How do you guys categorize stuff like vacations? I previously rolled everything into one general discrecionary category called Entertainment, which included my blow fund and savings for vacation. I realized that I don't like having a savings fund rolled into the same category as my beer fund, so I split them up. When I'm actually on vacation spending my money, should I be categorizing all my expenses as Vacation, or putting them into their appropriate categories (Gas/Restaurants/Entertainment/etc)? After thinking about it, it makes sense just to categorize all of my "while on vacation" transactions as Vacations. That way I don't have to change my monthly budget amounts for my regular categories, such as double my Gas budget if I'm doing a lot of driving on vacation. Does that make sense?
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Jul 10, 2014 16:40
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That's what I do. It works well.
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Jul 10, 2014 16:53
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Yeah that's what I do to. If I'm taking a road trip the gas costs I consider an expense of the vacation, not part of my regular gas spending. Same with anything else I'm spending on.
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Jul 10, 2014 17:06
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Ok cool, I like that better so I don't need to bump up my Restaurants/Gas/whatever categories while I'm on vacation. It messes up my averages when I try to budget those categories for next month. Thanks!
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Jul 10, 2014 17:35
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Your Dead Gay Son posted:For splitting a category my gf and I are doing this thing where if she pays, she'll enter the full amount, and I'll enter half of if with a label and memo saying I owe her. We'll reconcile at the end of the month and see how it goes. First time trying it since we only just moved in together. Splitwise. In a 3-adult household where 2 of us share finances and 1 is independent, yet we want to divide all household expenses fairly... it's absolutely wonderful and saves so much time. Even in a 2-adult household I imagine it would be super useful.
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Jul 12, 2014 00:36
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T. J. Eckleburg posted:Splitwise. In a 3-adult household where 2 of us share finances and 1 is independent, yet we want to divide all household expenses fairly... it's absolutely wonderful and saves so much time. Even in a 2-adult household I imagine it would be super useful. But if it works for you, and others, then that is what is key.
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Jul 12, 2014 01:47
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Well it's a four person household, but the gf and I share a room. We still each pay 1/4 or rent and 1/4 or utilities (since we have the master bedroom etc), but our grocery bill is something we split together, because it isn't too hard. We don't really share any other huge expenses, and we both make roughly the same amount of money. If one of us were unemployed or something, then we could try a different split (like 80-20 for rent or something). But that app looks interesting. Might be helpful sometime.
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Jul 12, 2014 04:23
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Quick question: for those who are doing Rule 4, what does your current month/next month look like as far as the "Available To Budget" line? I'm starting to tentatively budget some of next month's items, as money becomes available to budget. However, my Available To Budget for this month keeps increasing as I free up money. I know I could budget for a "buffer" like they suggest, but I tried it and didn't like it vs. incrementally budgeting next month's items.
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Jul 12, 2014 23:48
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I'm not sure I understand the question: in theory, July's Available to Budget figure shouldn't increase at all, what are you doing to make this alter? If you've got income coming in in July, it either wants to be assigned to August's Available to Budget figure (Rule 4), used to fund July's budget (not Rule 4), or locked away in your 'buffer' category (almost Rule 4). If it's assigned to August, it won't appear in July's A2B figure, it will appear in August's A2B figure instead. You can then play around with August's A2B figure as much as you like - whether it's left as an un-categorised A2B lump sum, or actually entered into your budget categories, it doesn't really matter as the money's there waiting for August to roll around! If it's assigned as income in July, that's fine - I'd just budget for your current expenses as needed, and place anything extra into a 'buffer' category. You only need the 'buffer' category once, so that one happy day you can pay for all of that month's expenses, while saving any earnt income for the following month's A2B figure. Then you're in a cycle where this month was paid for in advance last month - and this month you're pushing any income forward into next month.
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Jul 13, 2014 11:03
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so I could say that I finally figured out what this god damned cube is doing. Get well Lowtax.
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SiGmA_X posted:I don't see the point, for when only 2 people are involved. Or 3, but that's just me. I use excel for that with my shopmates (3 of us split bills, but only 2 of us split power). Super super simple. Yeah I mean, a shared spreadsheet would work too, but Splitwise just means when one of us pays a bill we put it in our phone immediately and it's done. I just do it at the same time that I put it in YNAB. It's convenient. AbsenceVsThinAir posted:I know I could budget for a "buffer" like they suggest, but I tried it and didn't like it vs. incrementally budgeting next month's items. That's what I do, just budget for next month as this month's income comes in.
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Jul 13, 2014 17:27
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spincube posted:I'm not sure I understand the question: in theory, July's Available to Budget figure shouldn't increase at all, what are you doing to make this alter? If you've got income coming in in July, it either wants to be assigned to August's Available to Budget figure (Rule 4), used to fund July's budget (not Rule 4), or locked away in your 'buffer' category (almost Rule 4). July's available to budget has been increasing for me because I didn't understand how YNAB worked so I ended up budgeting for a lot of stuff I'd already paid for last month, and then having twice the money necessary for them this month. I forgot about the ability to mark this month's income as income for next month, so once I have enough to completely cover next month's bills then things will look a lot cleaner for me. T. J. Eckleburg posted:
Cool, I'm probably going to keep doing this until I have enough to completely cover next month's budget.
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Jul 13, 2014 17:39
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I just bought this and have some questions: 1. I get my salary on the 15th and the last business day of the month (or whatever Friday is closest to those dates if they fall on weekends). My rent is due on the 1st of the month every month, so how should I enter that number? For example, July is already paid off (as evidenced by me not being homeless) but I still have the Rent line item filled out to be "paid" with my next check on the 31st. I haven't entered a transaction for it yet. I added my next check into the transactions list because I am in the habit of budgeting the entire month at once with what I know I will have. Check out my monthly budget:  What am I doing wrong here? I know I should probably have my credit cards and car loan as off-budget but I like seeing the amount I owe decrease each month because it gives me a psychological boost knowing that I'm digging myself out of debt. I paid the bills on there (phone, credit cards, car loan, power bill, and the money I owe my girlfriend) but they haven't cleared my account yet, but I can see the debits on my bank account page so I consider that money to have already been allocated and doing its job. Can someone help sort me out? I want to get to Step Four as soon as possible because I am sick and tired of living paycheck to paycheck.
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Jul 15, 2014 17:09
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You're only supposed to budget what you currently have with YNAB. It looks like you did something like use last month's values in August so that's why you're negative all over the place. Delete all of the numbers in the "budgeted" column for August to get things back to normal. When you actually get your next paycheck, enter it in as income, and then budget it. It's kind of the point of the YNAB method. Be sure to watch the videos on how to enter stuff - it really helps. When you have enough money in savings or whatever to cover your expenses for the next month, then that's when you start to budget ahead of time. Also if you're interested in your net worth then include your car's blue book value or whatever as an off-budget asset.
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Jul 15, 2014 18:53
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Those car expenses are loving brutal given your income. I think you have way less issues with YNAB than you do with budgeting. If you follow the YNAB method you'll budget only the money you have, but you may want to go over to the budget thread and ask for advice on what to budget, for how much and how to budget in general.
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Jul 15, 2014 19:38
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Knyteguy posted:You're only supposed to budget what you currently have with YNAB. It looks like you did something like use last month's values in August so that's why you're negative all over the place. Delete all of the numbers in the "budgeted" column for August to get things back to normal. When you actually get your next paycheck, enter it in as income, and then budget it. Thanks a ton - I'll delete the August values. I'll also look up my car's value to figure out my net worth. Veskit posted:Those car expenses are loving brutal given your income. I think you have way less issues with YNAB than you do with budgeting. If you follow the YNAB method you'll budget only the money you have, but you may want to go over to the budget thread and ask for advice on what to budget, for how much and how to budget in general. My income isn't as bad as it looks - I make $45000/year in Atlanta which is, for major cities, pretty low cost in terms of cost of living. My takehome every two weeks is $1376 after taxes, insurance, and 401k. My car is the second highest expense but it's fairly new. I got it in March and it's a 2013 model. I got gouged on the price because of the loan pricing and my relative lack of credit establishment.
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Jul 15, 2014 20:39
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HonorableTB posted:I just bought this and have some questions: When you get that paycheck on the last business day of the month, do you input it as income for the following month or the current month? I only get paid once a month, on the last business day, and I just allocate it as income for the next month. And, yeah, while YNAB is all about budgeting only the money you have… I don't totally use it that way. I budget 6 months out because my wage is pretty stable. I budget for the minimum I know I'll get, and the add in the additional once I know what it will be (usually 3 to 4 days before I get paid). I'm like you in that I like to see myself digging out of a hole - and I like to see what it will look like if I stay the course. Though I would recommend waiting to use YNAB like that until you are completely comfortable using it. (I would move that Auto Loan off budget, though. And then add the off-budget value of the car as well. You can still see your progress on your net worth report!) -- I've now been using YNAB for 9 full months!  My assets passed 50k in June! My net worth has climbed, on average, 2k per month! This month will be a plateau due to the move, but overall I'm making better financial choices than before I started using YNAB. Totally worth it!
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Jul 15, 2014 20:58
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Why would I move my auto loan off budget? I thought things like that were "absolute" bills and had to be budgeted for.
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Jul 15, 2014 21:03
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I asked the same question about on vs off so here is the rundown of what I got (you can autoloan either way)100 HOGS AGREE posted:Off budget accounts generally don't impact your day to day spending and thus the money (or lack thereof) in them doesn't need to be accounted for in your budget categories. You just categorize the transactions you send to them from your on-budget accounts as spending in your budget. spincube posted:On-budget accounts directly affect your spending (your everyday bank account and credit card), off-budget accounts affect your net worth (pension pot, investment account). I think that's what it boils down to.
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Jul 15, 2014 21:23
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Another question: Since I've already paid my rent for July (on June 30th), can I remove that line item from July's budget? That's sending my July budget $677 into the negative when I don't need to account for that money anymore. Should I add it in as a post-dated line item in my checking account, dated to June? Edit:  I added the last paycheck from June and my rent payment for the month of July to balance things out and get me on what seems to me to be a more realistic footing than what I was seeing before. There was no reason to account for July's rent on the July budget when I'd paid it from a previous month's salary. From what I understand of the program, this should let me continue to August by letting me get paid on July 31st and immediately budget out the full month of August on 8/1/14. Does this look right to you guys? I also moved my credit cards, loans, and debts to off-budget accounts according to advice I got earlier in this thread. Let me restate it for clarification: I moved those to off-budget because they don't directly impact my day to day spending, correct? They're one-time payments I make each month and aren't things I need to watch my spending on to avoid going over budget since they are a static cost each month? That's still a bit confusing to me. HonorableTB fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Jul 15, 2014 |
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Jul 15, 2014 21:40
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HonorableTB posted:Another question: Since I've already paid my rent for July (on June 30th), can I remove that line item from July's budget? That's sending my July budget $677 into the negative when I don't need to account for that money anymore. Should I add it in as a post-dated line item in my checking account, dated to June? Your budget is for this point forward. If you create it in the middle of a month and rent's already paid for, then that's already accounted for in how much money you have in your account. So yes, remove it from your July budget, it doesn't make sense to be there.
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Jul 15, 2014 21:44
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HonorableTB posted:Why would I move my auto loan off budget? I thought things like that were "absolute" bills and had to be budgeted for. The loan PAYMENT is the absolute thing that should be in your budget. The total loan AMOUNT as an account is more easily handled off-budget. Make a category to budget money for the loan payment, which will be a simple outflow transaction. Then just have a separate account that you adjust every so often to keep track of your total assets/liabilities. A loan like a car payment is a bit of a pain to track as a regular budget item, because part of each payment is interest, and part goes towards principle. You can't just dump your monthly bill on your total loan in YNAB, because the interest portion of the loan doesn't affect the principle. Also (and this is general budget advice, non-YNAB) you should probably rework your budget. $100 for groceries is pretty goddamn low unless you're eating ramen for every meal. Other things you don't have budgeted: -Clothing -Medical/Dental (should build up a bit of a buffer) -Gifts (Birthdays, holidays, weddings/funerals/etc) -Vacation/Travel -Computer replacement -Misc. Expenses -Other Savings goals (home down payment, additional retirement, etc.) Once you figure those in, that extra $300 will dry up quickly. Then those car payments will hurt a bit more. EDIT: HonorableTB posted:I also moved my credit cards, loans, and debts to off-budget accounts according to advice I got earlier in this thread. Let me restate it for clarification: I moved those to off-budget because they don't directly impact my day to day spending, correct? They're one-time payments I make each month and aren't things I need to watch my spending on to avoid going over budget since they are a static cost each month? That's still a bit confusing to me. Actively used credit cards should absolutely be on the budget. You're using them for daily expenditures and monthly bills. Everything else, keep off. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Jul 15, 2014 |
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Jul 15, 2014 21:46
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LogisticEarth posted:The loan PAYMENT is the absolute thing that should be in your budget. The total loan AMOUNT as an account is more easily handled off-budget. Make a category to budget money for the loan payment, which will be a simple outflow transaction. Then just have a separate account that you adjust every so often to keep track of your total assets/liabilities. A loan like a car payment is a bit of a pain to track as a regular budget item, because part of each payment is interest, and part goes towards principle. You can't just dump your monthly bill on your total loan in YNAB, because the interest portion of the loan doesn't affect the principle. - Groceries are split between me and my girlfriend; we each put in half for each payment, but I raised it to $200. - I don't travel all that much, so I won't worry about traveling/vacations until I get everything else sorted out. - Medical/Dental is a good idea. However, I have a single savings account that I'm trying to put money into. Should I open more savings accounts (eg, one for medical/dental, one for vacation, etc?) - Computer replacement and gifts, stuff like that, that can all wait until I get above water on some of this debt. My family and friends would be very disappointed with me if they knew I was wasting money on buying them gifts when I could be using it to pay off debt or build up an emergency savings cache. I re-added my credit cards to the on-budget accounts as well as the car loan. The total loan amount itself is off-budget, but there is a Pre-YNAB Debt line item for monthly payments. It's still showing me in the negative as -$489.33 overbudgeted, but I have no idea why.  Is it because it's calculating the total cost of my credit cards and other Pre-YNAB debts as outflows instead of just what I pay for it each month? Edit: I should mention that I'm 24 living with my girlfriend, we are renting an apartment together so some of that stuff like a home down payment, retirement, and things like that are not at the very top of our priority lists. Weddings and home down payments are certainly not on top of mine at the moment. I am most concerned with getting all of this situated out with the basics and get a handle on my spending and debt before I start adding in sundries and other things. My #1 top priorities are paying down my credit cards and building up my savings in the event where I lose my job, I won't end up homeless. HonorableTB fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Jul 15, 2014 |
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Jul 15, 2014 22:04
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No it's showing you overbudget because of the overspending from last month, since by default it takes it out of this month's available to budget, instead of carrying it forward.
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Jul 15, 2014 22:08
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 Well I mean it's all right there.
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Jul 15, 2014 22:09
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Veskit posted:
drat, I didn't actually remove the July rent line item like I thought I did. No wonder it shows me so overbudget. It's trying to account for a rent it thinks I'm paying twice. I paid July's rent on June 27th with money I made in June. It has no bearing on my July budget 
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Jul 15, 2014 22:12
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HonorableTB posted:drat, I didn't actually remove the July rent line item like I thought I did. No wonder it shows me so overbudget. It's trying to account for a rent it thinks I'm paying twice. I paid July's rent on June 27th with money I made in June. It has no bearing on my July budget It's confusing at first but it gets easier.
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Jul 15, 2014 22:17
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Knyteguy posted:It's confusing at first but it gets easier. Yeah, I went to June, added the paycheck and the rent outflow, then clicked the "Subtract it from next month's category balance" and now my July budget looks like it should. $1316.60 income for July so far, but it isn't taking into account my check I'm getting on July 31st for $1374.56. How would you all recommend I proceed from here? Edit: How do I get my outflows to properly display? It's displaying the total amount of debt on each credit card and other debt. I think the best thing to do for that would be to move those accounts to Off-Budget but leave line items so they can a budget assigned to them, but won't impact my outflows by displaying that I'm outflowing $961 and am $861 over budget for that category. Edit 2: THAT looks better. I know I wasn't stupid enough to budget out $2500. I moved the debt accounts to off-budget, left the Pre-YNAB Debt line items in the category and will just continue to assign money to those items and make a transfer to the off-budget accounts as an inflow so the payments are represented until they are paid off. I'm sorry for being terrible at this  They don't teach budgeting in high school or college so I'm having to learn these painful lessons now. To reinforce this and to make myself really cry, I could add my student loans to the off-budget accounts list and watch my net worth shrink in value faster than a dick in Antarctica.
HonorableTB fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Jul 15, 2014 |
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Jul 15, 2014 22:22
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