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gariig posted:IllegallySober if you haven't taken the YNAB courses I highly suggest it. Even if you can't make it to a "live" course signup and I think they send you a link to a pre-recorded one. It goes over how to use the software (which is a bit obtuse) and the whole "4 rules" aspect of YNAB. Thanks- I watched all the videos already and did take the live Intro course. I'm just trying to confirm my understanding of it  I thought YNAB was really obtuse when I saw other BFC'ers using it before but after digging into it more it seems like a really useful tool- I think the hardest part is just getting everything set up.As of right now I think I have everything added into it except for my IRA accounts. Is there a reason or benefit to adding these? I'm not going to be budgeting outflows from them or anything but I guess they are part of my net worth so according to YNAB they would be useful to have in there? How does one reconcile these with the value changing?
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Nov 13, 2015 00:05
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IllegallySober posted:Thanks- I watched all the videos already and did take the live Intro course. I'm just trying to confirm my understanding of it I leave my IRA as an off-budget account and update it with my quarterly statements. It does nothing for me, but like you said it can be factored in to net worth and it makes me feel good to pretend like I have money somewhere even when my checking account is empty.
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Nov 13, 2015 00:36
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IllegallySober posted:This is what I realized after the fact. Thank you for the clarification though That is one option. If you prefer keeping emergency funds in a savings account, you can always throw that into an off-budget account (in YNAB) and when you add to the fund you can count it as an outflow from your budget. Then you don't have to worry about buying something or paying bills with money that isn't in your checking.
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Nov 13, 2015 00:47
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Dale Sveum posted:That is one option. If you prefer keeping emergency funds in a savings account, you can always throw that into an off-budget account (in YNAB) and when you add to the fund you can count it as an outflow from your budget. Then you don't have to worry about buying something or paying bills with money that isn't in your checking. My problem was I didn't know how to account for the "income" that came from transferring the initial $500 from the off-budget account into the on-budget checking account to pay for the car repair. So ultimately this is what I want to get back to (having $1000 I don't think about and isn't in an account) and then also build a secondary emergency fund that will still stay in the account. Tell me if this makes sense: So, as of right now, I have an emergency fund account (on-budget) that is at a zero balance and I have a line item in YNAB for Emergency Fund Replenishment that has $180.71 budgeted to it. If I now make the current Emergency Fund off-budget, YNAB freaks out and tells me I'm $1000 overbudgeted. It's sounding like what I want to do is the following: - Budget each month until the balance of the Emergency Fund Replenishment line item reaches $1000 - When it does, create a new, off-budget Emergency Fund account - Transfer the $1000 balance in the Emergency Fund Replenishment line item to the new, off-budget Emergency Fund - Hide the off-budget Emergency Fund account - Continue budgeting each month into the Emergency Fund Replenishment line item - Transfer these funds each month into the old, on-budget Emergency Fund Is this too convoluted or does this make sense for what I want to do?
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Nov 13, 2015 01:14
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IllegallySober posted:Is this too convoluted or does this make sense for what I want to do? It depends. Why are you doing this? What benefit do you get for putting the $1000 into an off budget account? If you think you'll check your account balance, realize you have an extra $1000, and buy a PS4... then hide it! However, I think keeping way more cash than you can spend on hand and in your checking account is the easiest. You don't have to worry about over drafting because your net worth is accessible right now but you're spending to your budget not your account balance.
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Nov 13, 2015 07:50
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gariig posted:It depends. Why are you doing this? What benefit do you get for putting the $1000 into an off budget account? If you think you'll check your account balance, realize you have an extra $1000, and buy a PS4... then hide it! However, I think keeping way more cash than you can spend on hand and in your checking account is the easiest. You don't have to worry about over drafting because your net worth is accessible right now but you're spending to your budget not your account balance. Yea by hiding money from yourself, you're kind of missing the point of YNAB in the first place. gariig is right, spend to your budget and not your account balance. Checking account balances are irrelevant outside of emergencies, you look to YNAB to tell you what you have available in your subcategories. You still need willpower to keep yourself from "well I have 1000 in emergency fund savings but I'd really like to buy Fallout 4, despite not budgeting it, I'll pay myself back next month". It's a learning process. This is not meant to be rude, but constructive: Given that you've had two threads in this forum and you're still wanting to hide money from yourself, you've got to work on planning and impulse control.
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Nov 13, 2015 14:57
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gariig posted:It depends. Why are you doing this? What benefit do you get for putting the $1000 into an off budget account? If you think you'll check your account balance, realize you have an extra $1000, and buy a PS4... then hide it! However, I think keeping way more cash than you can spend on hand and in your checking account is the easiest. You don't have to worry about over drafting because your net worth is accessible right now but you're spending to your budget not your account balance. The benefit would be that despite best intentions I can't accidentally spend the money like I just did a few days ago while I'm learning the software. Although I suppose once I hit Step 4 that would be pretty difficult to do. dreesemonkey posted:Yea by hiding money from yourself, you're kind of missing the point of YNAB in the first place. gariig is right, spend to your budget and not your account balance. Checking account balances are irrelevant outside of emergencies, you look to YNAB to tell you what you have available in your subcategories. While I know you prefaced your last comment with saying it wasn't meant to be rude, I kind of can't help but take it that way. You're suggesting that because I wanted to set up an additional safeguard to help myself save money for emergencies, I need to work on impulse control? For what it's worth, the idea behind this was taken straight from Ramsey who last I heard was thought of reasonably well here. Awful App is being a pain so I can't upload the image of the page in this post but I'll try again later if anyone cares. This is what I'd done with my emergency fund for the last year or so, and it worked- I never even thought about having the money. Would doing this in conjunction with YNAB be redundant? Maybe. Is it a little silly? Yeah, I suppose so. But if it helps me, what's the harm in doing it? To me it's no different than adding an off-budget account that isn't tracked. The only difference is the location of the money, right? (And yes, I've started two threads in this forum- both of which were ultimately very helpful to me. I don't currently have an active thread but I suppose I could start a third if BFC really desires more entertainment. I'm not sure why that matters to the current discussion though.) For now, I guess I'll try it yours and gariig's way and see how it works out.
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Nov 13, 2015 18:10
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I think the way I see it is that emergency funds are a part of your budget, but maybe this is just a difference in how you and I want to approach it. If you have $1000 in a savings account for emergencies, there should be a $1000 line item in your budget for an emergency fund. Hiding it from myself doesn't let me see how much of a safety net I actually have within my budget. This also gets applied to other savings goals. If I have $2000 for a new car, $500 for a vacation, and a $2500 emergency fund then I would transfer that entire $5000 to a separate savings account and let YNAB break down the sum in to smaller parts. The account balance will say $5000 but the "rainy day goals" section of my budget will show me the details of how the money is assigned. In your case, your method does seem a bit convoluted to me but it would still work. It sounds like maybe you made a savings account on budget and put $500 in there but didn't match that value in your actual budget originally? Just allocate all of your funds up to your budget amount and if it's really necessary then you've got the account balances listed to help decide where you can pay each bill from. That should be a non-issue as you get closer to rule 4, as you've said
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Nov 13, 2015 18:50
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IllegallySober posted:While I know you prefaced your last comment with saying it wasn't meant to be rude, I kind of can't help but take it that way. You're suggesting that because I wanted to set up an additional safeguard to help myself save money for emergencies, I need to work on impulse control? I mean if you have a plan that you're cool with, by all means have at it. I was genuinely not trying to upset you, what I took away from your post was that you were looking to hide the money from yourself for whatever reason, I just assumed it was for impulse control. I don't have any off-budget accounts so I'm not exactly sure how they would work, so I can't comment on your original plan. I hide stuff from YNAB too for my own reasons that may only make sense to me. I don't have any non-liquid accounts listed in there since I'm not concerned at all with net worth, just categorizing my "cash on hand" accounts. I consider my 403b/Roths/529s to be untouchable, so there is no point for me keeping them in there. My only debt, a mortgage, is also not in there, it's just a category in YNAB that I budget the same amount every month.
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Nov 13, 2015 19:48
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Hey guys, is there any real downside to not going the final step and following Step 4? I've followed the rest of the steps to a tee, but for Step 4, I just can't bring myself to do it when it'll look like I'm pulling a month's worth of income from my emergency fund. I'm salaried so I know exactly how much I'm getting paid and when so on the first I can budget my month out, and then I pay for everything that I can with my credit card anyway for those sweet cashback dollars. After my second paycheck of the month gets deposited, I just pay off whatever's on my card.
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Nov 17, 2015 14:53
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kidrobotx posted:Hey guys, is there any real downside to not going the final step and following Step 4? I've followed the rest of the steps to a tee, but for Step 4, I just can't bring myself to do it when it'll look like I'm pulling a month's worth of income from my emergency fund. I'm salaried so I know exactly how much I'm getting paid and when so on the first I can budget my month out, and then I pay for everything that I can with my credit card anyway for those sweet cashback dollars. After my second paycheck of the month gets deposited, I just pay off whatever's on my card. When you get your next paycheck in November, it goes toward "income for December." That's money you have, and that's the money you're budgeting with. If not, then you're not quite at step 4 yet!
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Nov 17, 2015 15:03
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kidrobotx posted:Hey guys, is there any real downside to not going the final step and following Step 4? I've followed the rest of the steps to a tee, but for Step 4, I just can't bring myself to do it when it'll look like I'm pulling a month's worth of income from my emergency fund. I'm salaried so I know exactly how much I'm getting paid and when so on the first I can budget my month out, and then I pay for everything that I can with my credit card anyway for those sweet cashback dollars. After my second paycheck of the month gets deposited, I just pay off whatever's on my card. Day 1 of the month you have the whole month paid for. Gives you a lot more flexibility.
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Nov 17, 2015 15:14
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kidrobotx posted:Hey guys, is there any real downside to not going the final step and following Step 4? I've followed the rest of the steps to a tee, but for Step 4, I just can't bring myself to do it when it'll look like I'm pulling a month's worth of income from my emergency fund. I'm salaried so I know exactly how much I'm getting paid and when so on the first I can budget my month out, and then I pay for everything that I can with my credit card anyway for those sweet cashback dollars. After my second paycheck of the month gets deposited, I just pay off whatever's on my card. What you need to grasp is that your buffer and your emergency fund serve the exact same function--to stand between you and catastrophe. The sole difference is in how YNAB accounts for the money, withholding income for a month so you always appear to have less than you do. If you live by rule 4 (which you already do in effect, just not formally), YNAB will work as intended and you will not be in any less secure of a position--should you somehow need every last cent, it's still available if you just switch your paychecks back to the current month. In fact, if you're that concerned about your emergency fund being a certain size, you'll most likely build it up again very quickly and be even more secure than you had been.
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Nov 17, 2015 17:46
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Practically speaking, if you want to "activate" rule 4 in YNAB, you just categorize the income as next month. So if you start doing it in December, every December paycheck gets marked "Income for January" , and YNAB won't show it as available to budget until the January column. Then for December either draw down positive rollovers from November, or negative budget the emergency fund and apply it to what you need. Then in January any extra income can go back into the emergency fund. Like the other poster said, if you've been saving enough, then you should have more than one month saved in the emergency fund, so all you're really doing is splitting off a months worth of saved cash into a separate pool for the "upcoming" month. Another way to think of it: Without Rule 4, you have: "Hot" dollars - money that's in a budget and OK to spend. "Cold" dollars - money that's off budget or in a emergency fund category that can be used to cover sudden expenses or shortfalls. With Rule 4: "Hot" dollars - money that's OK to spend today "Warm" dollars - money that's scheduled to be allocated and spent next month "Cold" dollars - money that's a true emergency fund or savings to cover an unexpected shortfall or huge expense.
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Nov 17, 2015 20:35
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Alright, that makes sense. The hot/warm/cool thing explains the thinking pretty well. Guess I was just fixating on my emergency fund being a certain size instead of looking big picture.
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Nov 17, 2015 20:38
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Rule 4 just means that payday comes but you already have everything covered for this month. Rent, utilities, groceries, etc all have enough in their budget to last for the month so your choices are to either dump all that that new income in to rent/utilities/groceries for the next month or add it to whatever savings goals you have. You can also just add it to the current month because values roll over, ie if you put 300 in to groceries and only spend 200 then you're starting the next month with 100 in that category already. Point being, rule 4 is that fun time when you get money and everything is already paid/accounted for so you don't know where to place it.
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Nov 17, 2015 20:53
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Yeah that's the other thing, you can just do a gradual change over without touching the emergency fund by intentionally over allocating against your spending categories and letting them roll over. So if on the first of a month your rollover balance for every category should be enough to cover what you normally spend that month, then just start putting all new pay checks in the next month. Congratulations, you are now Rule 4 compliant without an emergency fund drawdown.
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Nov 17, 2015 20:59
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If you make Rule 4 without an emergency fund drawdown, you have essentially buffed up your emergency fund by another month's worth of expenses. Not a bad thing at all, mind you, but that is what happens.
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Nov 17, 2015 21:09
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I did the official ynab method of putting like, $400 into a 'rule 4 buffer' category every month and then saying gently caress it and drawing down the remaining chunk from my savings or my emergency fund or something because everything just gets so much loving easier. To be fair, it took me a long time to actually understand what the hell rule 4 was, for some reason. It's a simple concept but the language just made it not make sense. I though it was just having extra money in each category balance, for some reason
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Dec 3, 2015 00:34
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So I got one of those codes to the YNAB5 beta. Is there any way to import the budget and transactions from YNAB 4 to the new web based one? I'd rather not lose all my budget data and such.
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Dec 4, 2015 16:26
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sparkmaster posted:So I got one of those codes to the YNAB5 beta. Is there any way to import the budget and transactions from YNAB 4 to the new web based one? I'd rather not lose all my budget data and such. I don't know anything about 5, but I would assume one of two things: 1> The new YNAB will automatically grab your files (Back them up first!), and just keep chugging right along, 2> There will be an import function, and at worst, you'll have to export in 4 first, then import into 5. However, I would lean heavier on option 1.
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Dec 4, 2015 16:34
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According to the subreddit this feature is coming but not available yet.
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Dec 4, 2015 18:55
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Something I quite don't understand: last month I allocated 700 in the grocery category. I ended up spending only 575. This month I allocated another 700, but the 125 i saved the previous month have carried over and now my grocery balance is 825. That's annoying, I'd like it to be 700, how do I remove the carrying over? Do I have to screw around with November "budgeted" column so that all the savings go only to the "emergency fund" row?
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Dec 11, 2015 15:18
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Just budget $125 less in December. Or live with the $125 rollover for the month as you might be spending more in December to make up for the $125 not spent in November. Then adjust at the end of December (or whenever).
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Dec 11, 2015 15:29
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CarrKnight posted:Something I quite don't understand: last month I allocated 700 in the grocery category. I ended up spending only 575. Select this month's grocery category "budgeted", press the minus key (-), type 125 and hit enter. Then you can budget it to the emergency fund or wherever. There aren't any options for underspending (/overbudgeting) as there are for overspending (where you can select if it deducts from next month's "available to budget" or carry over the negative balance in the category).
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Dec 11, 2015 15:35
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CarrKnight posted:Something I quite don't understand: last month I allocated 700 in the grocery category. I ended up spending only 575. The idea is that you budget your average spending amount each month. Some months you might spend less and rollover some money, some months you might spend more and use some of your rollover money. I usually just let rollover stuff ride.
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Dec 11, 2015 16:56
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I usually trim underspending in a category to pay for overspending in other categories, but it depends on how anal you want to be about it.
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Dec 11, 2015 17:49
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Personally I like having the nice round numbers at the beginning of each month, so normally what I do it just use the option to "budget last months expenses" to refill the budget category back up to my standard amount. In case you don't know where that option is, click on the budget field you want to fill, and then click on the little icon that appears next to it. It will give you a bunch of options to auto-fill that budget field with. SpaceCadetBob fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Dec 11, 2015 |
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Dec 11, 2015 18:13
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There's also the lightning bolt in the top right corner of the budget's monthly summary that will do that over every field. Good for when you have a full month of "available to budget" money. Methods for dealing with under- (or over-) spending vary a lot based on what you want to accomplish, but either way you probably have a "target amount" for each category. If you're consistently budgeting where you have $50 more left over every month, drop that from your budget and let it even out again. Or at the end of every month, "balance to zero" every over-spent category and move the newly-freed funds into a buffer category or however you want to set it up. Just play around until you find a method that you like, because that's the one that's going to stick (and probably work) best for you.
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Dec 12, 2015 05:19
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Thank you all, so much.
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Dec 12, 2015 10:27
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Oh cool new YNAB is unveiled/released in two days. http://www.youneedabudget.com/blog/2015/the-new-ynab-lands-in-two-days/ quote:For the next little while, this little blog is going to get a little crazy as it relates to this little thing we’ve been working on for more than two years. Ok, there is nothing little about it.
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Dec 28, 2015 15:46
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SaltLick posted:Oh cool new YNAB is unveiled/released in two days.
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Dec 28, 2015 16:24
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ilkhan posted:New YNAB still crap, as far as I know. First I've heard of this, care to elaborate?
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Dec 28, 2015 17:46
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Thermopyle posted:First I've heard of this, care to elaborate? So better for newbies, but less substance for vets. Crap may be a bit harsh, admittedly.
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Dec 28, 2015 18:29
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ilkhan posted:doesn't let you rollover negative category balances So how do they expect you to handle reimbursable expenses that span a month boundary?
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Dec 28, 2015 18:53
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SaltLick posted:Oh cool new YNAB is unveiled/released in two days. I've been shying away from trying YNAB because I think I have things under satisfactory control just using Mint, but I found out the new one will be a monthly subscription model @ $5/mo or $50/yr. I've never been a big fan of subscriptions like that except for Netflix and Amazon Prime. Now I'm contemplating whether to get YNAB4 today before it goes off the table so I can try it in the future if I want it, without the subscription burden.
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Dec 28, 2015 21:10
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SpelledBackwards posted:I've been shying away from trying YNAB because I think I have things under satisfactory control just using Mint, but I found out the new one will be a monthly subscription model @ $5/mo or $50/yr. I've never been a big fan of subscriptions like that except for Netflix and Amazon Prime. Thermopyle posted:So how do they expect you to handle reimbursable expenses that span a month boundary?
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Dec 28, 2015 21:38
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Thermopyle posted:So how do they expect you to handle reimbursable expenses that span a month boundary? Either way, I'm on the new version for a few weeks now. It's pretty OK for what's available. Given that it's a web app, it's rather attractive and functional. If you run it in Chrome as "app" without the browser chrome (by making desktop shortcut and opening as its own window), it looks pretty much like a regular desktop app. However it isn't feature complete yet. Mainly the reports aren't enabled yet, and the inline calculator isn't functional, either. Might change on Dec 30th, but I don't know, they're not saying anything about it on the forums.
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Dec 28, 2015 22:46
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Thermopyle posted:So how do they expect you to handle reimbursable expenses that span a month boundary? This is crucial to my budget. Already hating the idea of a subscription model, and I won't be recommending ynab anymore, which is sad.
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Dec 28, 2015 23:57
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Note that in the pre-subscription world where YNAB just charged for major updates once a year or so, YNAB is more expensive than in the subscription at $50/year world.
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Dec 29, 2015 00:28
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