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Gothmog1065 posted:The most common response is "Start from today", but I see no actual reason to not go to the beginning of the month. I know I did when I started. Yeah, I can see why it's "start from today" since the credit cards end up confusing. Both of my statements roll over at the middle or middle-end of the month, so trying to get the numbers right on all them is a pain. I might just scrap this month and make a note to start fresh on 2/1 and actually use it.
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Jan 17, 2015 05:42
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I've watched the "handling credit cards" video a couple of times but I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around things. We use the card day-to-day and currently can't pay the full balance. Well, we could, but that money is budgeted for other things in YNAB. My statement begins/ends around the 15th of the month. The statement that I just received looks like: Previous balance: $6257 Payments/credits: $(4355) Purchases: $2177 Interest: $9.64 New balance: $4088 I must not have calculated the December payment amount correctly because otherwise I wouldn't have been charged interest on purchases, since I would have been paying for purchases plus some to pay the balance down, right? I've got $750 allocated to pre-YNAB debt for January. The YNAB method to calculate my payment says to take the balance and subtract the pre-YNAB debt balance, aka the amount I can't afford to pay: $4088-2344=$1744. This is way too low and obviously doesn't include the purchases (which have been budgeted for) that will be made for the rest of January. What am I doing wrong here?
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Jan 18, 2015 23:44
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Easychair Bootson posted:I've watched the "handling credit cards" video a couple of times but I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around things. We use the card day-to-day and currently can't pay the full balance. Well, we could, but that money is budgeted for other things in YNAB. My statement begins/ends around the 15th of the month. The statement that I just received looks like:
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Jan 18, 2015 23:50
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ilkhan posted:Paying for your new purchases doesnt avoid paying interest. The interest gets recorded like any other purchase. The amount you send should be purchases for the month plus interest for the month plus whatever your budgeted pay down amount is.
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Jan 19, 2015 00:00
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Easychair Bootson posted:Sorry, I left out a detail: a chunk of the balance ($2570 as of the current statement) is from a previous transfer that's at 0% interest. So my goal is to pay for all purchases plus put $750 towards the preexisting debt. Do I just need to wait until January 31 and make a payment based on the balance at the time? I've heard that some CC's will put your interest accruing debt at the end of your payments, so you're paying off the 0% balance first, then the interest accruing last. I could be mistaken in how that works, I would call your CC company to verify why you got charged interest. Either that or as long as there is anything that can have interest accrued will unless the statement balance is 0. However, that doesn't change what ilkhan said. At the time you're going to pay, you pay <current purchases> + <any interest> + <paydown amount>. What is your interest? (Let's see if it's a super low 6%)..
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Jan 19, 2015 04:44
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Legally they can do whatever they choose up to your minimum payment, everything beyond the minimum is on the highest interest rate first. One of the few good things Obama has signed.</derail> And if there is a balance, even a 0% balance, they probably get to charge you interest immediately instead of having a period before it starts to accrue.
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Jan 19, 2015 07:59
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Interest rate is 7.24%. Here's what December's statement looked like: Previous balance: $8065 Payments/credits: $(6970) Purchases: $4147 Interest: $14.57 New balance: $6256 ... and that statement showed $2653 as being the portion at 0%, so since the current statement shows that as $2570 it appears as though I did cover all of my purchases. So I'm guessing that there's no grace period as ilkhan said. This may cause me to shift my YNAB strategy a bit. I guess I could start putting everything on another card that I'd pay in full, and just pay my $750/mo towards the $2570.
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Jan 19, 2015 14:19
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Easychair Bootson posted:This may cause me to shift my YNAB strategy a bit. I guess I could start putting everything on another card that I'd pay in full, and just pay my $750/mo towards the $2570. That's going to be your easiest option until you pay it down.
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Jan 19, 2015 14:47
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So I posted last week or so about how I keep all my credit cards that have a running balance as an off-budget account, and whenever I make a payment I would create a transfer from my checking to the credit card off-budget account. This let me categorize the transfer under a Debt category I created for that credit card. This worked great, but now that I fully paid off an off-budget card I'm running into an issue. I fully paid off the card today, but when I set it to now be an on-budget account (since I can now pay the statement in full and will start using it for regular purchases), YNAB gets upset that I had previously given all the past transfers a category. Do I just need to give up on having these off budget account transfers so that it shows up in my reports, or is there a way for me to move the account to on budget and still keep the category intact so my charts look nice?
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Jan 27, 2015 01:24
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You'll want to create an entirely new on budget account for the card. Just think of the card as two entities. One entity represents past debt that you've already paid off and have no reason to touch again, and the second entity represents the money you'll be putting on it going forward. It would probably help if you renamed the old account "MasterCard Debt" or whatever kind of card it is, you and name your newly created account "MasterCard" to keep things straight.
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Jan 27, 2015 01:32
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Ah, that's a perfect solution. Thanks!
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Jan 27, 2015 02:02
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I tried YNAB a couple of times in the past, and I'll probably start again today (or maybe 1st of February? Not sure what would be best). Anyway, me and my girlfriend have a shared account. We pay rent, gas etc. from that account. Thing is, she won't be using YNAB. So how do I best keep track of that account? Set-up a non-budget account, then transfer money from my account to that shared account? Just budgetting from my account, and then transfer the sum to the non-budget account? Will that work?
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Jan 28, 2015 12:57
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beedeebee posted:I tried YNAB a couple of times in the past, and I'll probably start again today (or maybe 1st of February? Not sure what would be best). There's always the option of reconciling the account more often to add her transactions. Perhaps once a week? If you don't have tons of transactions, it shouldn't be too time consuming.
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Jan 28, 2015 13:29
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beedeebee posted:I tried YNAB a couple of times in the past, and I'll probably start again today (or maybe 1st of February? Not sure what would be best). Or, if she keeps the receipts around, she could give them to you at the end of the day, (or whenever) and you can then enter in YNAB. Also, I started YNAB budgets a few times over until I got the hang of it, and I found out that it was easier when I started in the day that I got paid. YMMV, though.
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Jan 28, 2015 13:43
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Dale Sveum posted:There's always the option of reconciling the account more often to add her transactions. Perhaps once a week? If you don't have tons of transactions, it shouldn't be too time consuming. HardDisk posted:Or, if she keeps the receipts around, she could give them to you at the end of the day, (or whenever) and you can then enter in YNAB. Hmmm. But let's say for example rent is $800. We each pay $400, so I just transfer that from my account to the shared account. She does the same, and then the $800 goes to our landlord. My original idea was to just let that 400 transfer from my account to the one that's not on the budget (=the shared account). Because that's all I pay. If I do set up that shared account in YNAB, do I just add 400 'income' from my girlfriends account and then deduct 800 in rent? Or am I not thinking about this the right way? I do have to say that I'm currently at work and can't play around with YNAB, I'll check out to see if there are some more options when I get home in a couple of hours.
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Jan 28, 2015 13:55
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beedeebee posted:Hmmm. But let's say for example rent is $800. We each pay $400, so I just transfer that from my account to the shared account. She does the same, and then the $800 goes to our landlord. My original idea was to just let that 400 transfer from my account to the one that's not on the budget (=the shared account). Because that's all I pay. Personally, I would keep that account off budget since it sounds like there wouldn't be much added value in having it on budget.
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Jan 28, 2015 14:27
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AbsenceVsThinAir posted:Personally, I would keep that account off budget since it sounds like there wouldn't be much added value in having it on budget. Since I can't think on a non-convoluted way to make this work I have to agree with this.
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Jan 28, 2015 15:08
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beedeebee posted:I tried YNAB a couple of times in the past, and I'll probably start again today (or maybe 1st of February? Not sure what would be best). Here's how I'd think about it. Other options work too of course, but I think this is most YNAB-y (grain of salt, I started using it pretty recently). You don't pay $800 rent, you pay $400 rent. I would record your $400 transfer out as your rent, and do not add the shared account in any way (not on budget or off budget). If you're concerned about monitoring them cashing the checks or whatever, that's what I use mint for (or your bank's website if the shared account is at the same bank as your individual account). I still use YNAB and Mint. YNAB's strength is planning and forcing you to think about every transaction you make (by manually entering, and by shifting money between categories if you overspend). Mint's strength is automatic monitoring for unauthorized/doubled/unpulled charges. I think there's value in using 2 tools (and the amount of time it takes to use Mint the way I do is minuscule. You don't have to even categorize transactions to get value from it). That said, I enjoy spending time thinking about this sort of thing. I totally understand if people want to consolidate to 1 tool.
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Jan 28, 2015 15:13
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I've got a shared account with my girlfriend that covers rent and bills, I just have a 'joint account' category in YNAB that I budget for. I don't use YNAB for the joint one at all, just my own money. It works out ok, I don't need to budget the joint account as that's all fixed payments. It's also less effort.
Lady Gaza fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Jan 28, 2015 |
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Jan 28, 2015 15:24
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Grumpwagon posted:Here's how I'd think about it. Other options work too of course, but I think this is most YNAB-y (grain of salt, I started using it pretty recently). This is how I'd do it as well.
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Jan 28, 2015 16:01
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I have a question: I get paid on Friday, January 30th. Should I consider this income for this month, or income for next month? I'm going to be using it for groceries and rent plus others, so a lot of expenses will be in January even if they're *for* the last three days in January + February up until Feb 13.
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Jan 29, 2015 00:09
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I mark that kind of money as money within the month. Rent may be due on the 1st of Feb but I need to make sure I have enough before then so my budget sheet shows rent as the last thing that's due and paid for in a month. Any extra will roll over so it doesn't matter too much. Just figure out a way that makes sense to you and how you pay bills.
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Jan 29, 2015 00:13
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This is why it's good to get to Step 4, so you don't have to worry about it. It's really easier than you think. As you say, you're already saving for rent in the previous month's budget. And most bills you receive in January aren't due until the first week in February. Just save up a buffer to cover groceries and the like, and boom. Step 4.
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Jan 29, 2015 01:14
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Would like an opinion on how to handle cash with a budget. Let's say I pay $100/month for cellphone service but also split it with a friend. He gives me $50 in cash for his split. Should I be budgeting for the whole bill as that's what I do pay and then add the $50 as an income in that Cellphone Bill category?
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Jan 29, 2015 19:07
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Lblitzer posted:Would like an opinion on how to handle cash with a budget. Let's say I pay $100/month for cellphone service but also split it with a friend. He gives me $50 in cash for his split. Should I be budgeting for the whole bill as that's what I do pay and then add the $50 as an income in that Cellphone Bill category? That's how I'd do it
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Jan 29, 2015 19:11
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Lblitzer posted:Would like an opinion on how to handle cash with a budget. Let's say I pay $100/month for cellphone service but also split it with a friend. He gives me $50 in cash for his split. Should I be budgeting for the whole bill as that's what I do pay and then add the $50 as an income in that Cellphone Bill category? Almost, but not quite (assuming I'm reading what you do correctly). I have a similar situation with rent. Putting it into your terms, I budget $50 for the category. When I pay the bill, I enter the transaction for the full amount, so I'm temporarily over in the rent category. Then when I get paid the $50, I categorize it as an inflow to rent and it balances. It has the added benefit of tracking that you get paid by your friend. My understanding of what you do is you budget $100 for the category. Then when you get paid, don't you have a $50 balance in the category?
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Jan 29, 2015 19:12
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I love this program. It's helped me save about 12 thousand dollars over the past year. The timing of my paychecks is sort of giving me trouble. I have a 30 hr. part time job that pays me a reliable $2k a month at regular two-week intervals at the middle and end of the month. Then, I also have a business online that pays me toward the end of every month--from the 27th to the 30th--which I have been putting toward the next month's budget. So if that online business check came at January 28th (which it did), that will now pay for (almost all of, thankfully [hooray sales!]) February's bills. So let's say I will have enough in my buffer at the end of February to pay for March's bills. But, at the same time that I have plenty of money in that buffer, I get a paycheck at the end of February which normally would go toward March. So, now, that paycheck goes toward the buffer for April. I get two paychecks from one job during March which go straight to the buffer for April. I have another paycheck at the end of March from my online business which also goes to the buffer--which conceivably would pay for...May? Is that about right? As a related question--are you guys including money set aside for savings and spending money when you pay from last month's income (i.e. you've got enough for that in your buffer), or is just the mandatory stuff like rent/groceries etc?
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Jan 29, 2015 19:45
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Captain Magic posted:As a related question--are you guys including money set aside for savings and spending money when you pay from last month's income (i.e. you've got enough for that in your buffer), or is just the mandatory stuff like rent/groceries etc? I would say no as they serve different purposes. However, if it makes doing your poo poo easier, then by all means include it in the "buffer". To me a "buffer" or Rule 4 is paying all of next month's bills / things that are going to be paid out (6 month insurance, saving for certain items like vacations), while "emergency funds" and their ilk aren't included because that's what you're going to be using to pay for bills when poo poo hits the fan.
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Jan 29, 2015 20:12
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Gothmog1065 posted:I would say no as they serve different purposes. However, if it makes doing your poo poo easier, then by all means include it in the "buffer". I can see that, definitely. Hmm, I'm not sure. I think it definitely makes sense to put enough in the buffer for all the Rainy Day stuff--things that will be paid out. But I also sort of treat my savings like bills--all the accounts are automated to withdraw at the beginning of the month, and I take a certain amount of safety knowing that money's "gone" and I can't mess with it anymore.
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Jan 29, 2015 20:27
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Grumpwagon posted:Almost, but not quite (assuming I'm reading what you do correctly). I just started using YNAB so please bare with me if I'm overly complicating things! So how I do it now is this: I budget $100 for my bill, I pay the $100 using a debit card and file that transaction under that budgeted amount. Friend gives me $50 cash although what confuses me is if I want to even include cash as an inflow on YNAB. I guess maybe that's where I sit right now is needing to figure out if I'm going to track cash.
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Jan 30, 2015 17:36
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Lblitzer posted:I just started using YNAB so please bare with me if I'm overly complicating things! Then you're going to be shorting yourself $50 on your budget since you've got an outflow of $100 and you're only putting $50 into it. The whole point of YNAB is to track all of everything. I always deposit all of my cash, especially when it comes to something like that. In the end, it's $50 and if you don't care that that money isn't actually being accounted for, then don't mark it. Your budget will just reflect that you paid $100 for the bill and that's the end of it. My wife is terrible about this poo poo at work. Her coworkers pay her cash for their food, and she orders for everyone, then never gives me the freaking cash so basically we just spent $40 at Taco Bell. "But I use it for food later" and off we go with the excuses and mental gymnastics. Gothmog1065 fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Jan 30, 2015 |
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Jan 30, 2015 18:03
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Lblitzer posted:I just started using YNAB so please bare with me if I'm overly complicating things! If you actually deposit that cash then you could put it down as a $50 inflow. If not, then you could have it as a separate cash account or a category in order to track it. https://www.youneedabudget.com/support/article/handling-cash1
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Jan 30, 2015 18:05
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Lblitzer posted:I just started using YNAB so please bare with me if I'm overly complicating things! If you deposit the $50, mark is as inflow on that category, and budget your normal $50. When you pay the bill it will balance out at $0 category balance (-$100 payment, +$50 budgeted, +$50 inflow). Otherwise, spend the $50 cash wherever, decrease your food or entertainment budget amount by the $50, and budget $100 towards the category.
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Jan 30, 2015 18:16
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Okay I'm confused about how to do this. I got paid today, but January isn't over, and I still have expenses for January (last rent payment for Feb plus groceries and such). How do I categorize this income? Income for January or February? If I do it for February, will I have to fudge the transaction dates for everything I buy today to make it jive? I don't want to put another rent payment in February because I'm already going to have two of them that month to pay for March and it will throw my numbers off. Do I set it as income for January? But the problem with that is that I have bills that need to be paid *in February*, but are due before my next check comes in, so they need to be paid this pay period. But I've already paid those bills for January, and adding more money to the categories for January means my numbers for Feb will be off. Goddamn I hate not being paid on the 15th and 30th/31st of the month like I used to. I get paid every second Friday now, no matter when that date falls, and it makes this a lot harder than it should be.
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Jan 30, 2015 18:34
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Lblitzer posted:I just started using YNAB so please bare with me if I'm overly complicating things! I'd make a separate account for the cash and do it as an inflow there. Then you can either spend it as normal or transfer it to checking if you end up depositing. I rarely use cash but it's still necessary to track in YNAB because it comes up often enough. The only reason why this wouldn't be the case is if you immediately deposit that $50 so that it's part of your checking but even then I think it's inevitable at some point that a cash account in YNAB will be helpful. My reasoning here is that you really won't want that $100 all as a single outflow for your bill because that's not what it's actually being used for. Only $50 is for the bill while the other $50 is spent on weed and tacos or whatever. To me, it's important that the categories are used properly because half of the power of YNAB is to be able to quickly see that you're spending too much on tacos for the month and while that money may not be significant compared to your entire budget, it can certainly swing individual categories. HonorableTB posted:Okay I'm confused about how to do this. I got paid today, but January isn't over, and I still have expenses for January (last rent payment for Feb plus groceries and such). How do I categorize this income? Income for January or February? If I do it for February, will I have to fudge the transaction dates for everything I buy today to make it jive? I don't want to put another rent payment in February because I'm already going to have two of them that month to pay for March and it will throw my numbers off. Do I set it as income for January? But the problem with that is that I have bills that need to be paid *in February*, but are due before my next check comes in, so they need to be paid this pay period. But I've already paid those bills for January, and adding more money to the categories for January means my numbers for Feb will be off. Splitting the inflow can sometimes be helpful. Categorize it as "Income for January" with just enough to cover the rest of your expenses, then the remainder is "Income for February" and is freed up to be assigned for next month's budget. This works if you want to micromanage but really isn't necessary because you can dump all of the extra money wherever it needs and they will retain a positive balance to be used next month. February will have less $ available to budget but it won't matter because you've already got it left over from the month before. i.e. I spend $200/mo on groceries, but if I bump it up to $300 because of payday today then that balance carries over and I can work off that until mid-Feb when I get another paycheck and only need to add $100 to have a net $200 grocery budget for Feb. Splitting as I described above makes it a bit cleaner because you have 200 budgeted for each month rather than 300/100 but it's the same thing in the end. This becomes less and less an issue as you break into step 4 because by that point you're operating almost entirely off of the positive balance and not assigning to categories as you need it. Eventually you'll be marking every inflow as income available for future months. Teeter fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Jan 30, 2015 |
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Jan 30, 2015 18:42
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HonorableTB posted:Okay I'm confused about how to do this. I got paid today, but January isn't over, and I still have expenses for January (last rent payment for Feb plus groceries and such). How do I categorize this income? Income for January or February? If I do it for February, will I have to fudge the transaction dates for everything I buy today to make it jive? I don't want to put another rent payment in February because I'm already going to have two of them that month to pay for March and it will throw my numbers off. Do I set it as income for January? But the problem with that is that I have bills that need to be paid *in February*, but are due before my next check comes in, so they need to be paid this pay period. But I've already paid those bills for January, and adding more money to the categories for January means my numbers for Feb will be off. Budget the money for January and pay the February rent and bills with it. You will have left over money "this month" that rolls over and you can use that money to budget for the bills that need to be paid within the first 2 weeks. For example look at my sheet. I have to have rent paid by the 1st so I budgeted the paycheck I got today to that. I have some extra money leftover for the month that has been rolled over and budgeted to the early bills next month (You can see the 188.42 not budgeted to Jan at the top of Feb) like an estimated electricity and random bullshit. Your March rent will be need to be budgeted and saved at the end of February to apply for March. 
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Jan 30, 2015 18:48
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Why do you have an outflow under pre-ynab debt? And do I want to know what "meUndies" category it for?
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Jan 30, 2015 19:04
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ilkhan posted:Why do you have an outflow under pre-ynab debt? https://meundies.com/ they are the most comfortable underwear in the god drat world. step up your underwear game The way YNAB does pre-YNAB credit card debt is as a massive outflow. This is my first month using YNAB George H.W. Cunt fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Jan 30, 2015 |
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Jan 30, 2015 19:18
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Lol but why is it a monthly bill
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Jan 30, 2015 19:28
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They have a subscription thing where you get their print of the month
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Jan 30, 2015 19:31
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