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Pinball posted:Kind of a weird question, but I hope you guys can help me out. I'm currently living off savings (as I am a poor grad student), with two small paychecks coming in monthly from my part-time job and another monthly check from one of my parental units (who refuses to stop giving me money, and I've tried to make her stop), all of which goes into the savings account and gets withdrawn at the beginning of the next month. Obviously, YNAB doesn't like this weird situation, and when I try and set up the budget for the next month, it insists that I'm overbudgeted. How do I get it to understand that withdrawing money from my savings is technically income? You *are* overspending. The income going into savings vs checking doesn't matter to YNAB at all.
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Apr 29, 2015 23:50
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Pinball posted:Kind of a weird question, but I hope you guys can help me out. I'm currently living off savings (as I am a poor grad student), with two small paychecks coming in monthly from my part-time job and another monthly check from one of my parental units (who refuses to stop giving me money, and I've tried to make her stop), all of which goes into the savings account and gets withdrawn at the beginning of the next month. Obviously, YNAB doesn't like this weird situation, and when I try and set up the budget for the next month, it insists that I'm overbudgeted. How do I get it to understand that withdrawing money from my savings is technically income? Set your savings as an off budget account. When you transfer it to an on budget account, categorize it as income.
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Apr 29, 2015 23:50
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Pinball posted:Kind of a weird question, but I hope you guys can help me out. I'm currently living off savings (as I am a poor grad student), with two small paychecks coming in monthly from my part-time job and another monthly check from one of my parental units (who refuses to stop giving me money, and I've tried to make her stop), all of which goes into the savings account and gets withdrawn at the beginning of the next month. Obviously, YNAB doesn't like this weird situation, and when I try and set up the budget for the next month, it insists that I'm overbudgeted. How do I get it to understand that withdrawing money from my savings is technically income? Can you describe how you are recording your income? There are basically two ways to register income in YNAB. The first is to say it's income for this month or next month. This puts money into an account but gives you unbudgeted money to be put into a category. The other is to register a transaction to an account and category as an inflow, this is money being brought in but is given a category. If you are putting your money into a "savings" category this month next month you'd subtract from the account on the budget screen which would push the money into your overall budget. For my paychecks I flag them as income but returns I generally just do the inflow I don't suggest making your savings off budget because it makes it hard to see your overall financial health. I suggest watching the initial 4 training videos.
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Apr 30, 2015 00:08
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Pinball posted:Kind of a weird question, but I hope you guys can help me out. I'm currently living off savings (as I am a poor grad student), with two small paychecks coming in monthly from my part-time job and another monthly check from one of my parental units (who refuses to stop giving me money, and I've tried to make her stop), all of which goes into the savings account and gets withdrawn at the beginning of the next month. Obviously, YNAB doesn't like this weird situation, and when I try and set up the budget for the next month, it insists that I'm overbudgeted. How do I get it to understand that withdrawing money from my savings is technically income? As mentioned, you could have your savings account be off budget and "pay yourself income" from it. If you want it to be on budget, (and this is the way I'd do it) would be to have a category named "Savings" with all your savings there, then every month record a negative <your living expenses> from that category. That will give you that amount to be available to budget. You'd then budget that as normal. EDIT: Your small paychecks should just be recorded as income, and you should reduce the negative amount from your savings by the amount of the paychecks.
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Apr 30, 2015 00:19
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Alright, May 1st is here so I went and made a Fresh Start. Everything is looking good except for the fact that transfers I made into my credit cards (from my checking account) to take care of their balances can't be categorized as Pre-YNAB Debt to zero those categories out. I don't want to budget any of this month's money into them because they were covered by last month's budget. How do I fix this? Edit: I guess I could just set starting balances of $0 on the credit cards and adjust my checking account's starting balance by the outstanding amount on the cards... IAmKale fucked around with this message at 14:40 on May 1, 2015 |
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May 1, 2015 14:22
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Karthe posted:Alright, May 1st is here so I went and made a Fresh Start. Everything is looking good except for the fact that transfers I made into my credit cards (from my checking account) to take care of their balances can't be categorized as Pre-YNAB Debt to zero those categories out. I don't want to budget any of this month's money into them because they were covered by last month's budget. How do I fix this?
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May 1, 2015 14:40
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I just started using YNAB about a month ago. I have the hang of most of it, but a few things still trip me up. For instance, my mother-in-law wanted to buy concert tickets and was going to pay me back. I used my credit card. They were $330, which I put as an outflow on my card. I then created a category so I could assign the debt to it without charging it to another category. So it has a negative balance. So today she wrote me a check for $330. So...I should assign it as an inflow to my checking account to that category and then just add another transaction being a transfer from my checking to the card? A second question, I have a "house fund" account that is currently on budget, but I'd like to move it to off budget. When I just click the account and move it, I get a bunch of transactions needing a category and also I move to over budgeted by a bunch, but that doesn't make sense to me. I have a "savings goal" category of House Fund which I budget to, then I add transfers as the money actually goes to the account
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May 5, 2015 03:04
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myron cope posted:I just started using YNAB about a month ago. I have the hang of most of it, but a few things still trip me up. Moving stuff between on/off budget is a pain in the rear end. Transfers between on budget accounts dont get a category as the money isn't leaving your budget. Moving that category to off-budget means the money is being "spent" versus "moved", and thus get a category and will change your budget for each instance of spending into that house fund. Why do you want it off budget?
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May 5, 2015 05:03
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ilkhan posted:You've got the first part correct. The check is an inflow on that category to checking and you just pay the bill as a transfer per normal. Eh, I guess it doesn't need to be--it's just not an account I'm going to be spending from any time soon
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May 5, 2015 23:49
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How would you go about combining your spouses finances? I assume just decide if you want to do a joint or individual checking accounts, then add their income and expenses and increase/decrease budget categories as needed? Otherwise I was thinking I would just increase/decrease the budget categories as needed and then count split rent, utilities, groceries, etc as income into my account so that it balances out.
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May 8, 2015 19:37
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Just put both of your accounts on-budget, then adjust your budget amounts, then pay bills, record income, and record transactions like normal. Regardless of YNAB, it's less hassle if you just have one checking account, but you can do it either way.
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May 8, 2015 20:38
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I've been tracking expenditure over the last few weeks with YNAB and enjoying getting the extra control. Never had this level of knowledge about how my money was working. I've set aside a small sum for spending money, but I'm finding it really hard to justify spending it on almost anything. I bought a couple small picture frames but that's about it this month! Is it normal to act in such a spend thrift way when getting started budgeting? On the other hand, having to consider what is really necessary feels good right now; it makes me weigh up a few small short term impulse purchases against a single medium or long term purchase which probably has greater value to me than the others combined.
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May 16, 2015 23:03
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Slimchandi posted:I've been tracking expenditure over the last few weeks with YNAB and enjoying getting the extra control. Never had this level of knowledge about how my money was working. As you spend more time budgeting your money, you'll become more comfortable that the amount you've budgeted to every category, including your throw-away-money category, is the right amount. When you're comfortable with the fact that you've actually budgeted the right amount, you'll be more comfortable spending the money in that category.
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May 17, 2015 02:23
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So I live in Japan and manage my budget in two currencies. Obviously my income and most of my expenses are in Japanese Yen, but I still have around 1500 US Dollars between two US banks back home. Sometimes I use my US debit card on amazon to order gifts for my family in America (birthdays, etc). Is there any way to track all this in YNAB? I'll also probably be doing transfers between dollars and yen more in the future so I want to, hopefully, configure YNAB before that. Red and Black fucked around with this message at 05:22 on May 17, 2015 |
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May 17, 2015 04:24
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I'm on step 4, and I'm getting my first 3 paycheck month since using YNAB. My plan was to just top off the categories we've been burning through or have some upcoming expenses in that we hadn't been specifically planning on. Still, that will probably only be about 1/3 of the extra paycheck money. I don't really see any benefit to being more than a month ahead on since we have emergency savings already, so I guess I would just probably put the excess in there since we don't really have any other plan for the money. Am I missing something?
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May 18, 2015 13:54
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Sounds like a good time to start a new hobby.
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May 18, 2015 15:43
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I'm starting "fresh" in YNAB after many months of not using it...should I just wait until June, since 75% of my budget categories have already been spent? If I put in my starting May balance, I can't actually put in a budget for something like rent because it's already gone (or I guess I put in a budget of 0.) YNAB tell me I then have $950 less to spend, which isn't entirely acurate. I guess the other option is go through my bank transactions and put in what my ay starting balance was and then fill out every transaction? Seems a lot easier to just start fresh on June 1st.
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May 19, 2015 21:45
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I'm a student going home over the summer and concentrating on business. That is, I have no regular income. I have some savings to to drop on (this is likely to be low as i test sites) various potential business and my parents are generous enough to provide free rent and food for a few months over the summer. Does YNAB support this - ie no income just expenditure? I'm happy to go into debt if I have a solid business idea with the maths to prove it. When you remove food and the majority of rent (I have to pay deposit and half rent over summer for the house I'm moving to after summer) the only real expenditure is pleasure or in my case testing websites with with adwords. i live nice and in the sticks so I can improve my fitness by running w/o gym membership and I can solidify relationships with my family and local friends (although maintaining friendship can sometimes be expensive - not a diss on my friends but like a trip to the pub in the UK is quite the price). Is YNAB right for me?
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May 20, 2015 00:28
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DrBouvenstein posted:I'm starting "fresh" in YNAB after many months of not using it...should I just wait until June, since 75% of my budget categories have already been spent? tl;dr: start fresh on June 1st.
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May 20, 2015 00:43
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Crack posted:Is YNAB right for me?
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May 20, 2015 01:03
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Karthe posted:I'd highly recommend starting on June 1st. I started using YNAB in late March, and I went back to mid-March and input everything up through when I started using YNAB. Despite feeling like I'd started off the right foot, I eventually found myself with some category overflows because of how my money gets used during the course of a typical month (pre-paying rent with the previous month's income, etc...). It eventually became too unwieldy to reconcile and I was never able to figure out how get it to reflect the real state of my assets without showing a bunch of "overspending". I ended up starting fresh on May 1st and since then things have been going way better. YNAB doesn't care about transactions before you start using it, and I think they even recommend ignoring everything before you started. If you started using it today, it would simply ask you to budget all the money in your on budget accounts for the remainder of the month. Once June rolls around, you would budget that whole month, etc. That being said, it can be easier to just start on the first, although you do lose a little bit of tracking info for the current month.
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May 20, 2015 03:28
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Chomskyan posted:So I live in Japan and manage my budget in two currencies. Obviously my income and most of my expenses are in Japanese Yen, but I still have around 1500 US Dollars between two US banks back home. Sometimes I use my US debit card on amazon to order gifts for my family in America (birthdays, etc). Is there any way to track all this in YNAB? I have a very similar situation with euros and US dollars. YNAB can only do one currency per budget, so you can either A) create a yen budget and convert your dollar transactions to yen manually, or B) maintain separate yen and dollar budgets. I think A is better if you use both currencies a lot, while B is better if you mainly use one currency. I chose B, because I only spend dollars once every few months. Also, at least in my case, my dollar budget is very basic because I don't need to account for daily living expenses, recurring bills, etc.
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May 20, 2015 06:35
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Judging from my own experience and the past few posts, I'm thinking I may wipe and start over on June 1st, but I've been trying to get YNAB set up and am a little confused. I started it just a couple of days ago and have been retroactively putting in transactions from this whole month. I THINK I have a decent grasp on how this is all actually working, but something I'm confused about is YNAB denoting all the money from the two accounts I have put in as May's income. I keep a decent buffer amount in my checking as a 'just in case', so this obviously doesn't reflect what my actual income will be on a month to month basis. I'm guessing YNAB is just pulling what it has as income and next month that number will only reflect actual income for June? Or is this more synonymous with 'this is what you have in your accounts and available to budget'? Another thing is that I make a decent but unpredictable amount of money from freelance projects on top of my full-time job, which I typically use to further pay down my car loan and channel as much as I can into savings. Because of this, I'm overspending on my car payment and savings categories, as what I've budgeted is the minimum required payment and base percentage from my paychecks, respectively. I'm not sure exactly what this means or how to fix it; is there a solution for this? Do I just bump up what I had budgeted for that category in accordance with how much extra I'm paying into it each month?
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May 25, 2015 21:24
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redcheval posted:Judging from my own experience and the past few posts, I'm thinking I may wipe and start over on June 1st, but I've been trying to get YNAB set up and am a little confused. I started it just a couple of days ago and have been retroactively putting in transactions from this whole month. I THINK I have a decent grasp on how this is all actually working, but something I'm confused about is YNAB denoting all the money from the two accounts I have put in as May's income. I keep a decent buffer amount in my checking as a 'just in case', so this obviously doesn't reflect what my actual income will be on a month to month basis. I'm guessing YNAB is just pulling what it has as income and next month that number will only reflect actual income for June? Or is this more synonymous with 'this is what you have in your accounts and available to budget'? YNAB is perfect for freelancers for this very reason.
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May 26, 2015 06:46
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AHH, okay, that makes way more sense now, thanks!
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May 26, 2015 12:22
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One month in and starting to get the hang of things, using cleared and uncleared balances, shuffling money around as you get to the end of the month. Wish you could do a little more with the mobile app, but thanks to whoever pointed out the GPS tagging, that is a very useful feature. If I have overspent in one category, how should I be rectifying it at the end of the month? Pinching from an emergency fund? Or an underspent category which will be funded fully next month? Or do I need to do it at all?
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May 26, 2015 15:42
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Slimchandi posted:If I have overspent in one category, how should I be rectifying it at the end of the month? Pinching from an emergency fund? Or an underspent category which will be funded fully next month? Or do I need to do it at all? I do a little of everything. This past month I on a whim decided that I wanted to do some fairly major landscaping at our house so I wiped out my "big purchases" category and pilfered the rest from my emergency fund (worth it, by the way). In other instances I'll just let the negative balance roll over to the next month and try and absorb the overage then. The months following that I try and determine if I've just budgeted poorly and need to earmark more money for that category going forward or if it was just a fluke and shouldn't happen again. I've learned that our "restaurants" category needs to be upped, we've been doing horrible there. Failing that, I will try and steal from some other discretionary categories. I usually do that as a last resort as I like getting balances in these categories so I don't have to think as much about "can I afford to buy this gift for XYZ", etc. I do find that it's hard to keep balances in some of these categories as my wife is now spending to the category balance (as opposed to the bank balance). It's hard to get to her to think about future purchases. Baby steps, I guess.
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May 26, 2015 16:04
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Slimchandi posted:One month in and starting to get the hang of things, using cleared and uncleared balances, shuffling money around as you get to the end of the month. Wish you could do a little more with the mobile app, but thanks to whoever pointed out the GPS tagging, that is a very useful feature. It depends on the overage. If you can pull from an underspent category, do that. I try to avoid pilfering savings funds and future expenditure funds though. Like if I want to go out for dinner, and I have some spare grocery money, I switch it over. On the other hand, here's this example: I do a lot of driving for work. Like, 500-1000 miles a week sometimes. That generates a hell of a fuel bill for which the company reimburses me. However, the reimbursement comes in up to three weeks after the expenditure, and I simply roll my fuel overage into the next month when the reimbursement comes in. Now, this can be dangerous if you do your primary spending directly from a checking account without a whole lot of buffer, but if you spend from a line of credit or a credit card (or have a good buffer) it's not a big deal to tack on the extra expenditure for which you're going to be reimbursed. If you've achieved Rule4 you can try pulling an income back in to the current month as well.
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May 26, 2015 17:20
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Thanks for the suggestions. Once I understood what 'give each dollar a job' actually means, it makes much more sense, and I can trust the individual category balances. I will have enough for the yearly bills as long as it all adds up. Maybe 'don't leave dollars without jobs' would be better?!
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May 26, 2015 17:41
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Beach Bum posted:It depends on the overage. If you can pull from an underspent category, do that. I try to avoid pilfering savings funds and future expenditure funds though. Like if I want to go out for dinner, and I have some spare grocery money, I switch it over. On the other hand, here's this example: I do a lot of driving for work. Like, 500-1000 miles a week sometimes. That generates a hell of a fuel bill for which the company reimburses me. However, the reimbursement comes in up to three weeks after the expenditure, and I simply roll my fuel overage into the next month when the reimbursement comes in. Now, this can be dangerous if you do your primary spending directly from a checking account without a whole lot of buffer, but if you spend from a line of credit or a credit card (or have a good buffer) it's not a big deal to tack on the extra expenditure for which you're going to be reimbursed. If you've achieved Rule4 you can try pulling an income back in to the current month as well. Quick tip, if your company pays you a fixed rate per mile driven ($.575 etc) just create an entry for 'Income this Month' following your reimbursable miles and when the check hits split your entry into the regular income and the one you tagged for mileage. That'll pay for the reimbursable gas as well as giving you a bit more income to allocate for that month (Car Maintenance for instance). That helps smooth things out and make it reflect reality more. Alternatively, I created a 'To Be Reimbursed' category that perpetually carries negative balances forward as I do a lot of expensing with my personal credit card. Before a business trip I will fill up my gas tank (my fuel budget) and following the trip I will fill it back up again but categorize that fillup with 'To be reimbursed'. It's not 1:1 as the reimbursable rate is going to be higher than your fuel bill but it's up to you how you want to dispense those dollars. I sweep them into my budget, personally.
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May 26, 2015 18:01
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I'm enjoying finding out more about budgeting using YNAB and their podcast is a good listen for weekly financial tips. It doesn't seem very heavily promoted on their main site. http://youneedabudget.libsyn.com/
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May 28, 2015 07:30
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How do I get money "out" of a category where it's saved from last month and into a category that would be more useful? Example, if I were saving for a camera and someone bought me one.
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May 30, 2015 18:29
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Defenestration posted:How do I get money "out" of a category where it's saved from last month and into a category that would be more useful? Example, if I were saving for a camera and someone bought me one. Budget a negative amount in that category. The drop down menu for the budgeting cell also has a Balance to Zero function that will do it for you.
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May 30, 2015 18:43
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BaseballPCHiker posted:How would you go about combining your spouses finances? I assume just decide if you want to do a joint or individual checking accounts, then add their income and expenses and increase/decrease budget categories as needed? Otherwise I was thinking I would just increase/decrease the budget categories as needed and then count split rent, utilities, groceries, etc as income into my account so that it balances out. In terms of YNAB budgeting, the simplest solution would be to have one YNAB budget file, one shared account with both incomes, all bills going out and no credit cards. Naturally, I do the complete opposite. I don't recommend you do it the same way as we do but perhaps explaining our process will give you some ideas. My partner and I have separate accounts with our own income plus a shared "household" account in both our names. 1. My finances, managed as a YNAB budget file. Each month I transfer a set amount into the household account. 2. My partner's finances, managed as a different YNAB budget file. Each month she transfers a set amount into the household account. 3. Completely separate account in both names, managed as yet another YNAB budget file. Income is both our transfers and outgoings is basically all bills. We both set our transfers in one lump payment at the first of each month. They are classified as transactions and not transfers since the household account is "off-budget" from the point of view of our personal files. We then use the "split" feature to categorize them into the basic categories. Rent, groceries, utility bills, entertainment etc. The shared account categorizes both payments as income. The majority of the bills match up exactly with the categories we set in our personal files. This is fairly obvious because most bills are a set amount every week/month. Some categories are more fluid, we "play' with the budget based on the situation. Sometimes we forgo quality meat and some of the more "luxury" groceries if the month has a higher number of social obligations. We don't have credit cards attached to our personal accounts. Instead we have one "high reward" card with an independent finical group in both our names that we use for all household bills. To maximize rewards, we also use it for a lot of our personal purchases (exemptions being gifts for each other or places that don't accept credit). At the end of the month, we go through the transactions on the card and determine who they belong to (mine, partner or shared) and pay it off. It's sounds like a lot of effort, but it's a fairly streamlined process. We both know how to use the software and since we are both saving hardcore for an eventual house deposit (god help us), our transactions aren't that numerous.
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Jun 1, 2015 02:53
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Did a fresh start and am working on setting everything up again from here on out. I have a line item for the emergency fund I'm saving up, and the savings account that money is going to is one of my on-budget accounts. So to get this checked out, do you just budget the amount you'll be transferring into that account, move that money from checking to savings and that's it? You don't need to put in an actual transaction demonstrating you 'charged' yourself that money from checking, presumably. So will just transferring it be fine? I'm still not sure how month to month roll-overs and things like that work.
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Jun 1, 2015 13:20
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If you've got it on budget, then yeah, budget the amount and (optional) move it into the savings account.
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Jun 1, 2015 13:35
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Yes, all money in on-budget accounts is one pool that's available to budget into your categories. YNAB doesn't care where that money is actually located and transfers between on-budget accounts don't affect the budget. So to start out, you create all your on-budget accounts with their current balance. All hat money now shows up as available to budget at the top. If you want to reserve some of that money for a certain task, you enter that amount for that category (the first column for that month). If you spend against a category, the transaction shows up in the second column and reduces the money available in that category (the third column). Money in the third column never goes away until you either spend against that category or you take it out (by budgeting a negative amount), so if you don't spend it, it'll stay there for the next month.
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Jun 1, 2015 13:36
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Okay, cool. I'm pretty new to actually getting my financial stuff organized... I'm using this savings account to build up my emergency savings. Since that's not really money I'm gonna have budgeted out on a month to month basis, is there any reason not to just actually have it be off-budget? Having a chunk of money I'm not going to actually spend and don't want to touch look available to budget is kind of throwing me off. vvv thanks, this makes more sense now! mareep fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Jun 1, 2015 |
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Jun 1, 2015 18:32
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redcheval posted:Okay, cool. I'm pretty new to actually getting my financial stuff organized... I'm using this savings account to build up my emergency savings. Since that's not really money I'm gonna have budgeted out on a month to month basis, is there any reason not to just actually have it be off-budget? Having a chunk of money I'm not going to actually spend and don't want to touch look available to budget is kind of throwing me off. If you have 3 months of living expenses already saved up in that savings account just leave it off budget and dont touch it until an emergency. Utilize those off budget accounts for things like savings.
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Jun 1, 2015 18:39
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You could also create an emergency fund category, and assign that available to budget money to that category. I prefer that to an off-budget account, since it will be easier to handle when you need to use it, but YMMV.
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Jun 2, 2015 17:13
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