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I want to transfer money from the regular account to the savings account and have that fulfill that particular general savings budget line. I see that I can transfer money to the savings account, which reduces the bank balance appropriately, but I don't see how I can simultaneously mark that as my savings budget for the month. Creating a transaction from my bank account to pay the savings budget reduces my bank balance by that amount, but how do I then indicate that I have moved it to the savings account? Enfys fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Jun 6, 2016 |
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Mar 14, 2016 23:27
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Alright so 1. Your savings account is still money that's available, it's just sitting somewhere else, so moving it from one account to the other doesn't actually mean anything with respect to your budget. What you want to do is budget a certain amount towards a 'savings' category. If, after that, you want to move that money to your actual savings account, you can do that. But the amount in your running 'savings' budget is what your savings is, not what's in your account. Shorter answer: money budgeted doesn't mean money spent. Budget x to it every month and the positive category balance will carry over. Alternately (don't do this) move your savings account to off-budget (don't do this) 2. Because it's every other month, and you apparently have some savings, just front load it. Budget your actual bill amount this month. Next month the regular avg bill/2 amount, and then come may's budget you'll have enough for the bill plus maybe some buffer. Sockser fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Mar 14, 2016 |
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Mar 14, 2016 23:36
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I don't quite understand the savings category - where am I saying that money is going? Right now, if I complete all my savings budget lines, my YNAB bank balance will reduce to that amount and will no longer match my actual bank account balance. Enfys fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Jun 6, 2016 |
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Mar 15, 2016 00:37
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It's okay, it's a little weird starting out. When you say ', if I complete all my savings budget lines, my YNAB bank balance will reduce to that amount and will no longer match my actual bank account balance.' That's where you're doing something wrong. I'm going to do some dumb example budgeting here, bear with me You're starting fresh, you have $10,000. 2000 of it goes into this months expenses: 600 for rent 100 for utilities 300 for groceries Etc When you go to the grocery store and spend $75 on groceries, you enter that as an outflow in the groceries category In addition to all that, you're going to put the remaining $8000 into your savings category, so your budget looks like 600 rent 100 utilities 300 groceries .... 8000 savings And then you don't enter an outflow for your savings category. You budget that amount and it removes it from the amount you have available to budget. Next month you budget another $500 into the category (again with no actual outflow) and now there's $8500 budgeted for savings, and again no outflow. You're not 'spending' that money, you're just sequestering it away in a bucket I can put together an actual example in Ynab if you're still confused E: something that might help: pretend you don't have a separate account for your savings. You're not transferring money anywhere, it's just a pile of money with a label on it in your checking account
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Mar 15, 2016 01:17
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Enfys posted:retirement and investing help You may want to look here: Long Term Investing and Retirement In the short term you will want to look into opening up an ira/roth ira (blind recommendations with no idea of your income, vanguard account into a target retirement fund of the year that you plan to retire in a roth ira) and depositing 5500 for the tax year of 2015 since you still have a month left to do so. This of course depends on your income and amount of savings you have, but if you have several thousand above your six months of savings you should definitely get that money in before tax day locks you out of investing it. Depending on your 401k/403b/etc at work you may be able to deposit money into that account for 2015 as well. Edit: Well apparently I misread the post, my bad. Joiny fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Mar 15, 2016 |
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Mar 15, 2016 01:33
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Enfys posted:(which I know is both bad and also probably beyond the scope of this thread and likely this forum since I don't live in the US so don't have access to things like Roth and various US index funds or whatever). Unless that's open to foreigners, but for some reason I doubt it.
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Mar 15, 2016 17:53
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quote:
I had a very similar experience to that when I first started using it, then one day it just suddenly clicked with me. I think the piece I wasn't understanding is that 'being saved' is as much a job for my money to be doing as paying rent or bills. All the money in both of my savings accounts is currently budgeted for savings, and if I were going to transfer more money to them then the only thing I would do is add the transfer transaction. The job is the same, and there's no outflow on the actual budget.
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Mar 15, 2016 19:06
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you ate my cat posted:I had a very similar experience to that when I first started using it, then one day it just suddenly clicked with me. I think the piece I wasn't understanding is that 'being saved' is as much a job for my money to be doing as paying rent or bills. All the money in both of my savings accounts is currently budgeted for savings, and if I were going to transfer more money to them then the only thing I would do is add the transfer transaction. The job is the same, and there's no outflow on the actual budget. It really does help to think of budget categories as envelopes. You label one envelope as 'Cable bill - 50 bux - 15th' and you know that you need to put 50 bux in there before the 15th, and that on the 15th, 50 bux are going to magically disappear out of that envelope. Well, have an envelope labelled 'long term savings - do not spend!' and start stuffing money into that envelope, and watch as it gets fatter and fatter.
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Mar 15, 2016 21:41
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Do any of you bother keeping an HSA on-budget? (YNAB4) I occasionally use my card for some OTC item like contact solution or condoms but for the most part it just sits there and requires effort to add inflow and keep the budget equal. I'm weighing out whether it's worth it or if I should leave it off budget and ignore tracking those sort of items and doctor visits altogether. Teeter fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Mar 15, 2016 |
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Mar 15, 2016 21:47
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This took me a little while to get my head around. Money only leaves the budget when spent. You want to think of saving as 'spent' because you won't want use it for anything else. But to YNAB it's not spent. 'Being saved' is a job, so let that savings category just grow month by month. It's an envelope filling with cash. As tempting as it might be to have savings off budget and do real outflows to them, it works out worse in the long run, messes with your reporting especially.
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Mar 15, 2016 21:53
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Slimchandi posted:This took me a little while to get my head around. I disagree, I have a bunch of accounts I keep off budget, including a post-tax brokerage account, my retirement accounts, my mortgage, my house's approximate value as reported by zillow, etc. YNAB can report on my overall financial situation with far more clarity than what I'd get just looking at the inflows and outflows of my checking account. If you don't want a savings category in your budget that swells monotonically, you put your savings account off budget, budget transfers to that savings account and if you need to tap into it you can transfer back in from savings and treat it as income. There's far more rigor involved in liquidating savings this way than just subtracting from your savings category and putting it into hookers or blow.
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Mar 15, 2016 22:23
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You keep your hookers and blow categories separate?
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Mar 15, 2016 23:48
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Teeter posted:Do any of you bother keeping an HSA on-budget? (YNAB4) I keep mine on budget but have a "Healthcare" category equal to the balance of my HSA account. Things charged directly to the HSA card get categorized that way. Reimbursements are just transfers (no category) and the original charge is categorized appropriately.
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Mar 16, 2016 00:00
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GlitchThief posted:You keep your hookers and blow categories separate? It's important information to track.
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Mar 17, 2016 15:58
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Sockser posted:
I'm still confused, so an example might help. Enfys fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Jun 6, 2016 |
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Mar 17, 2016 22:17
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Enfys posted:I'm still confused, so an example might help. I think where you're hung up is savings. Here goes a lovely example budget I did in ten minutes (in hindsight it would've made more sense to do Feb/Mar rather than Mar/Apr, but whatever) Here's your accounts:  Hooray, you've got a hefty chunk of savings! Here's your budget for March and April (I realize after uploading that I overbudgeted March, pretend you're better than I am at adding numbers together)  Down at the bottom is your savings. 8000 of that is what you had before, and you're tucking away $400 from your paycheck this month, leading to a category 'balance' of 8400. Next month you'll do the same but you can only scrape $325, to a category balance of $8725. This matches your savings account balance, but it doesn't need to. You could totally keep some of that money in your checking account if you want. It's not doing anything, you've just earmarked it as 'money that I'm saving' Notice how there's no outflows in the savings category. That's because, like I said, no money is being spent. It's just chilling until you someday want it, at which point you'd either enter an outflow from the savings category, or budget a negative amount in the category to make it available to spend. And here's an actual transaction register for both account in case you need that, too:   NOTICE: There's no category on transfers because it's not spending. You only categorize spending. If you're still having problems after this, you might need to actually post your budget or something e: Enfys posted:I don't quite understand the savings category - where am I saying that money is going? Just cuaght this snippet. You're not saying the savings money is going anywhere, because it isn't. YNAB doesn't care what account your money sits in. You just budget money for it and don't do any outflows. You keep saying 'complete the budget' and I have no idea what that means. I think you're forcing it to spend your savings. Don't do that. example of what I think you're doing:  Don't do that. Enter the line in the budget screen and leave it alone at that point. e2: I also illustrated how to do your utilities every other month, in case you're still having issues there Sockser fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Mar 18, 2016 |
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Mar 18, 2016 03:56
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I swear, nYNAB is so confusing in places. Take this, for example: This was taken from the Credit Card Payments section that I usually have hidden because I pay off all my cards in full. That $67.46 is showing up as a March overspend when I flip over to the April budget. The current balance on this card is $14.48. How does any of that reconcile? All of the other categories in March are either green or grey - there's not a single overspent category. So how the hell am I supposed to interpret this? I still have no idea how that $67.46 is even calculated, despite the pop-up's "helpfulness". And how am I supposed to interpret a positive Available balance in Credit Card Payments? Can I cover this "overspend" on my Chase card with my Amex's $177.96 "positive" balance? YNAB said I could completely ignore this part of nYNAB if I didn't carry a balance but obviously that's not true 
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Mar 25, 2016 17:06
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When did you start using nYNAB or this CC account? Did it have a balance on it that you didn't budget for paying off? Your Total Spending and Budgeted Spending cancel each other out which is consistent with no overages in budget categories.
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Mar 25, 2016 19:06
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Thank you so much for this. It really cleared up my confusion and helped me see how to use the software. I was putting savings in as an outflow and didn't really understand how to think about this category of money, so I appreciate all the help here.
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Mar 25, 2016 20:17
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The credit card line item overspending is something I've been struggling with as well. I think I'm slowly getting a handle on how it works, but it's like it's designed for someone who uses credit cards in a way that nobody actually does. Here's an example. I put all of my purchases through my card, and pay it in full every month. My card cycle date is the 25th, and the balance for March is approx $900. All of those purchases are covered by my March budget or the last few days of my Feb budget. My credit card line says I have $432.96 in green. When I make my $900 payment, it'll overspend that category by about $450. As I make purchases on the card, that overspend decreases and will eventually be in the positive by the end of next month. Is this how it's supposed to work? I have no idea. I think the theory is that budgeted purchases add to the virtual envelope that I have available to pay my credit card bill, but what I don't understand is why it doesn't line up with my actual purchases and payments. I find that as long as I don't pay the card until after the first of the month, it doesn't affect the amount I have available to budget.
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Mar 26, 2016 13:19
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If you pay each month in full, create a regular account for your credit card.
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Mar 26, 2016 15:08
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I'm giving up on the standalone YNAB and starting up this newfangled web version. Is there anything special about it I need to know that will gently caress me up if I don't see it?
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Mar 27, 2016 22:16
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The above, i.e. don't use the credit card account for credit cards you don't pay off in partials. And go install the Toolkit for YNAB extension, if you're using Chrome.
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Mar 27, 2016 22:57
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Teeter posted:Do any of you bother keeping an HSA on-budget? (YNAB4) I don't bother. Money in the HSA is only ever spent on healthcare, so it seems pointless to budget it. If I ever need to figure out what I'm spending on healthcare, which is not something I personally need to do month-to-month, I can just look at my statements instead of constantly babysitting it in YNAB.
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Mar 28, 2016 00:04
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Combat Pretzel posted:The above, i.e. don't use the credit card account for credit cards you don't pay off in partials. And go install the Toolkit for YNAB extension, if you're using Chrome. Toolkit is pretty great, definitely do that. I'm going to have to experiment with having a regular account for credit card purchases. How do you handle it being in the negative most of the time? Or is it a non-issue?
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Mar 28, 2016 02:22
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It's a non-issue, because it gets added to your networth and reduces it accordingly, since the money has indeed already been spent. Paying off the card end of the month is just a numbers game.
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Mar 28, 2016 02:36
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Combat Pretzel posted:The above, i.e. don't use the credit card account for credit cards you don't pay off in partials. And go install the Toolkit for YNAB extension, if you're using Chrome.
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Mar 28, 2016 05:58
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 Positive net worth as of this friday. 
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Mar 28, 2016 13:45
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IAmKale posted:Are you saying I should set my credit cards up under a different type of account since I don't carry balances on them? Yes, because the be system with CC accounts acts funky of you do any number of things, and can really screw with balancing your budget. I just set my credit cards up as "Cash" accounts and now it works swimmingly.
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Mar 28, 2016 13:50
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SaltLick posted:
That is some seriously awesome progress. Congrats! Did you get a new job or something around September? Seems like the net worth started taking off around then.
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Mar 28, 2016 14:14
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I got a modest increase at a new job in July but after retirement was taken into account my take home was more or less the same. I think the biggest factor into getting ahead is budgeting for 4 weeks in a month and that "extra paycheck" every couple of months padding that step 4.
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Mar 28, 2016 14:30
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SaltLick posted:I got a modest increase at a new job in July but after retirement was taken into account my take home was more or less the same. I think the biggest factor into getting ahead is budgeting for 4 weeks in a month and that "extra paycheck" every couple of months padding that step 4. Extra paycheck months are the best with ynab
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Mar 28, 2016 22:17
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Defenestration posted:Extra paycheck months are the best with ynab Or the worst. I think I need to graduate to something else at this point. I budget monthly, but get paid biweekly. This doesn't work too great with YNAB when I'm well beyond step 4. I mean, I guess I could do something like reduce my monthly Roth IRA allocations to match 2 paychecks per month, and toss those 3rd paychecks completely in there when I get them. Maybe that's the easiest solution since I like the envelope system to help me keep my spending in check.
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Mar 30, 2016 02:48
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SaltLick posted:
Congratulations!  Excellent work, keep it up.
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Mar 30, 2016 03:13
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Dustoph posted:Or the worst. I think I need to graduate to something else at this point. I budget monthly, but get paid biweekly. This doesn't work too great with YNAB when I'm well beyond step 4. I mean, I guess I could do something like reduce my monthly Roth IRA allocations to match 2 paychecks per month, and toss those 3rd paychecks completely in there when I get them. Maybe that's the easiest solution since I like the envelope system to help me keep my spending in check. I just budget for two paychecks a month and treat the random third as a bonus to top off categories
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Mar 30, 2016 13:24
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Dustoph posted:Or the worst. I think I need to graduate to something else at this point. I budget monthly, but get paid biweekly. This doesn't work too great with YNAB when I'm well beyond step 4. I mean, I guess I could do something like reduce my monthly Roth IRA allocations to match 2 paychecks per month, and toss those 3rd paychecks completely in there when I get them. Maybe that's the easiest solution since I like the envelope system to help me keep my spending in check. Just treat the third paycheck like a bonus, stash it in your savings or make an extra car payment or whatever, it's like having free money and it's awesome.
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Mar 30, 2016 15:41
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Has anyone solved the best method for handling items to be reimbursed in nYNAB? It's especially a nuisance when I have to pay for the first room of a hotel stay for business up front but won't be able to submit the expense report until after the trip is completed (3 months later). It seems as if I put a negative value in a "To be reimbursed" category it'll flow into the next months 'overspending from previous month' budget dollars. Can I just do the same amount (negative) again in the next month and keep kicking the can down the road until I get my expense report submitted and paid? I GET why they decided to turn off the push forward a negative balance function as my biggest misuse of YNAB classic came from that, but there has to be some sort of handling of business reimbursements on personal cards.
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Apr 2, 2016 19:01
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I've just started sucking up the cost and then accepting repayment as income in a later month but then I lose the ability to keep track of which of my shithead friends owe me money. They should just add another category for it like credit cards or something.
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Apr 2, 2016 19:12
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Bummer. That stinks. Another question, but around goals. If I'm expecting to spend $600 a year in car maintenance, what's the best way to structure the goal? $600 by Dec 31? If I have an expense would it offset it or would it always be showing I'm short of my goal if I incur any expenses? Having $50/month may be a better goal but feels like there's a more intelligent way for it to be handled to build up to the balance taking into account expected costs.
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Apr 2, 2016 19:29
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TraderStav posted:Has anyone solved the best method for handling items to be reimbursed in nYNAB? It's especially a nuisance when I have to pay for the first room of a hotel stay for business up front but won't be able to submit the expense report until after the trip is completed (3 months later). It seems as if I put a negative value in a "To be reimbursed" category it'll flow into the next months 'overspending from previous month' budget dollars. Can I just do the same amount (negative) again in the next month and keep kicking the can down the road until I get my expense report submitted and paid? You can't roll over a category with negative balance in nYNAB? lame.
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Apr 2, 2016 22:03
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