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LLJKSiLk posted:I've owned YNAB for several years but started using it at the beginning of this month as my budget has spiralled out of control. This is the first month in at least a year and a half where I am comfortable at the end of the month financially. Congratulations. A little effort will go a long way. Keep us posted
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Sep 22, 2016 23:00
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I've been using various software for at least 17 years; I remember using MS Money and a third-party app on my Palm Vx for mobile receipt entry. Most recently Moneydance. They're all good for not going negative at the end of the month. YNAB keeps you positive and growing, if you use it right. Hands down best software I've used for budgeting. I wish I'd had it from the start.
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Sep 23, 2016 16:23
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I've been using YNAB since early 2014, and I think I'm butting up against the edges of its capabilities: once you're comfortably Rule 4 and able to simply 'roll over' month to month, there's no further lands to conquer. I'd just like a little more flesh on the Reports screen bones - like being able to review your spending as a proportion of your income, instead of 'this is what you spent'. Stuff you don't need but would be useful simply for curiosity, or for fiddling's sake. A 'goal seek' mode, where you specify your end goal ('2500 in Horse Candles category by February') and the software works backwards to your current situation, would be fantastic.
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Sep 23, 2016 18:13
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so I could say that I finally figured out what this god damned cube is doing. Get well Lowtax.
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Goals sort of works in nYNAB but you lose all reporting with it, and the goals feature isn't more than you could get with a calculator and the notes field in YNAB4; just take $Target ÷ Months, budget it for the month, add a note with "$xxx by yyy: $zzz/mo". You don't get anything fancy, but if you trust your numbers (and remember the note) you'll do fine.spincube posted:like being able to review your spending as a proportion of your income You can sort of get this too, with the income v. expense tab (as slow as it is), but you have to do the math again of $Expenses ÷ $Income. (Alternatively, you could export it and import it into something like Excel/Google Sheets that might be able to format it better) TheCenturion posted:Hands down best software I've used for budgeting. I wish I'd had it from the start.  I used it well for a while, stopped using it around the start of 2015 when I really needed it most, and I ended up regretting it and back-importing all of it, categorizing it, and setting it up when I started again at the start of 2016. The spending reports are way too useful and helped me get an idea of what was going on, so I could plan out the future better.
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Sep 23, 2016 18:22
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You get most of the reporting back in nYNAB via the Toolkit.
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Sep 23, 2016 19:40
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Zamujasa posted:You can sort of get this too, with the income v. expense tab (as slow as it is), but you have to do the math again of $Expenses ÷ $Income. (Alternatively, you could export it and import it into something like Excel/Google Sheets that might be able to format it better) I suppose: it's just a shame that the data's there, but YNAB doesn't do anything with it. In fact, its weird date-and-time-based versioning system - hosed if I can remember when I recorded my last horse candle resupply - combined with the lack of an Undo option, means it seems to discourage 'what if' experimentation. What's my average grocery spend, per trip? I can already view my total and average spend for the month, and yeah I could export my expenses to play with the data elsewhere, but come on YNAB work with me here.
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Sep 24, 2016 09:56
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Combat Pretzel posted:You get most of the reporting back in nYNAB via the Toolkit. Yeah, the toolkit is so robust that the actual nYNAB folks should be embarrassed that some dude in his spare time is blowing them out of the water re:features and functionality.
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Sep 24, 2016 16:09
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El Mero Mero posted:Yeah, the toolkit is so robust that the actual nYNAB folks should be embarrassed that some dude in his spare time is blowing them out of the water re:features and functionality. Or hiring him.
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Sep 24, 2016 16:29
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Also, this: https://financier.io/
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Sep 24, 2016 16:47
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El Mero Mero posted:Yeah, the toolkit is so robust that the actual nYNAB folks should be embarrassed that some dude in his spare time is blowing them out of the water re:features and functionality. I mean, that's not really how it works? Writing code is like, such a small fraction of what goes into large scale software development. YNAB needs to do design work and fit things into their future vision and show how things will be profitable to the company, then implement the code, test it, do some bug fixing, run through and entire regression process to make sure they didn't break anything else, and then do a full production roll Meanwhile the toolkit dudes just need to cobble together a few lines of code and if it breaks they can just say "hey man it's free and I'm doing it as a hobby"
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Sep 24, 2016 19:18
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Yeah, but things are like at least half a year late. Took them ages to implement some stupid CSV importer, and other than that from release to now, it's mainly just been bugfixes, nothing in new features. They couldn't even deliver simple comfort features like entering a scheduled transaction into register and skipping to the next occurrence. Apparently they had to rewrite the whole calculation engine, too, somewhen during the first half of the year. If you need to rewrite a core component of your product that early, it's kind of a sign that something's not right. Who knows what else is going sideways.
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Sep 24, 2016 19:32
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I jumped onto nYNAB and then came to this thread and now I'm feeling antsy about my future. I think I'm going to stick with it for now, though, because otherwise I'll lose all of my inertia and founder outright. In other news: holy poo poo. Like, holy poo poo entering my expenditures into YNAB is terrifying for me because apparently I spend FAR too much money on eating out while at work  . It's worse at my new job because I can't just walk somewhere and get food, I have to get it delivered if I want to eat out and that adds up fast as all hell. I think I like this better than using Mint for tracking because it requires more direct involvement from me, but the automatic "import" function does some doofy stuff where it mis-labels payees and stuff.When it comes to the "payee" field, do you guys treat it like a checkbook with literal entries or in a more abstract way? That is to say, would you write "Price Chopper on Street X" or would you write just "Price Chopper" or just "Groceries"? The latter seems to be abstract enough that it's just restating the categories, but I feel like I want to differentiate between "I ate at Zachary's because I ordered food to eat during work like a piece of poo poo  " and "I ate at Zachary's because my fiance and I wanted to get some pizza together tonight". I suppose that's better handled through the "memo" field?I'm still trying to get my head around an effective way to use this for myself.
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Sep 24, 2016 20:47
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Ignoranus posted:I jumped onto nYNAB and then came to this thread and now I'm feeling antsy about my future. I think I'm going to stick with it for now, though, because otherwise I'll lose all of my inertia and founder outright. I just use the place name (e.g. "Albertsons") and if I need to differentiate more than that I use the memo field. I use the memo field for gas, too (eg. 14.229 @ $2.319, 258.1mi = 18.1mpg). It doesn't mean much for my budget but if I ever wanted to look back at it the information is there.
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Sep 24, 2016 20:53
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By and large I'll label it by general name, so 'wegmans' for groceries But I have separate payees for ex Wawa and Wawa fuel so it automatically populates the categories But then I have a general 'beers' pages because I go to a shitload of different bars and it's all cash and a pain in the rear end so I just count out my wallet the next morning and throw it all under beers.
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Sep 24, 2016 21:18
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I wouldn't get hung up on payees, as starting out it's better to get into a routine of creating and sticking to a budget: worst case scenario, you just start over in a few weeks knowing more about what you're doing and how it can suit you better this time.Ignoranus posted:I feel like I want to differentiate between "I ate at Zachary's because I ordered food to eat during work like a piece of poo poo Sounds like a category difference - where you spend your money isn't as important as whether it's going out of your 'work lunches' category, or the 'eating out / can't be bothered to cook' category, or whatever. I keep 'groceries' and 'household bits' separate for this reason, so I can stock up on paper towels and detergent without it coming out of my food money!
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Sep 25, 2016 08:52
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It's been a while since I used YNAB, but I'm realizing I need to get back to it. I last used it to get from the being in the red to in the black, but I need to need to be more strict about following a budget, because my savings could definitely be growing faster than they have been. I set up a lot of my budget this morning (I'm sure there are some categories I'm forgetting that I will need to add in the coming days/weeks/months) and I forget, with setting up scheduled payments do I need to set up the payment in both the "to" account and the "from" account? I'm trying to set up a scheduled payment that happens every month for my student loans. I had it set up in my checking account, and I thought I remembered scheduled activity automatically getting duplicated in the account which receives the month, in this case my student loan account. It didn't show up, so I made another scheduled activity under the student loan account. I know I can just wait and see, and fix it then, but I'd rather get everything squared away now best I can so I don't lose motivation like I have the other few times I've tried to restart using YNAB.
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Sep 25, 2016 16:06
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spincube posted:Sounds like a category difference - where you spend your money isn't as important as whether it's going out of your 'work lunches' category, or the 'eating out / can't be bothered to cook' category, or whatever. I keep 'groceries' and 'household bits' separate for this reason, so I can stock up on paper towels and detergent without it coming out of my food money! Question: I think next year I'm going to start an HSA. Does anyone bother to put this in YNAB? I'd like to know how much I'm spending on co-pays etc. but the money will never be in any of my accounts if I understand this correctly
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Sep 25, 2016 16:15
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GAYS FOR DAYS posted:I'm trying to set up a scheduled payment that happens every month for my student loans. I had it set up in my checking account, and I thought I remembered scheduled activity automatically getting duplicated in the account which receives the month, in this case my student loan account. It didn't show up, so I made another scheduled activity under the student loan account. I know I can just wait and see, and fix it then, but I'd rather get everything squared away now best I can so I don't lose motivation like I have the other few times I've tried to restart using YNAB.
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Sep 25, 2016 16:29
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Defenestration posted:Agreed. I have three food categories: groceries, lunch (food I ate in the town where I work), and restaurants I have my HSA in ynab as an off-budget account, because otherwise I'd likely forget I even had it.
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Sep 25, 2016 17:56
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What I do for my FSA is show income on the first of the year (it actually is) and then move it into a separate Medical (FSA) category. Then just manage it from there. Seems to work well. Just have to budget more than actually hits your bank account in January but it nets out.
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Sep 25, 2016 18:06
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Ignoranus posted:I jumped onto nYNAB and then came to this thread and now I'm feeling antsy about my future. I think I'm going to stick with it for now, though, because otherwise I'll lose all of my inertia and founder outright. It's good to have that realization, as it (usually) helps force you to cut back a bit. As far as food/drink categories, I have 4: Groceries, Fast Food, Restaurants, and Bars/Alcohol Fast food and restaurants is really a tossup- but I mostly consider anything cheap on the go/lazy dinner at home to be fast food, and something a bit more expensive to be restaurant spending. The higher my fast food expense at the end of the month, the more I keep in mind I need to plan ahead. Restaurant spending is mostly a social thing which only happens a couple times a month, so that's not a big deal. I'm sort of using YNAB backwards at the moment. More of an expense tracker to monitor past behavior in an effort to control future behavior. I don't generally budget, but spend as little as is practical.
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Sep 29, 2016 15:17
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Ignoranus posted:
I tend to be pretty specific with payees because the autocomplete makes it easy to enter new transactions, though there are a few I generalize because the category is way more important than the specific payee ie Food Trucks or Parking. Don't drill down to details like "7-11 on 1st" vs "7-11 on Main St", just put "7-11" and it's enough. Enable GPS and it will know which one specifically if you enter the transaction on the spot, then next time you make a new record while nearby it will autocomplete with the details. E.G. Whenever I get gas, I hit new transaction and it knows if I'm at a 76, Chevron, or Shell and auto-populates the Fuel category as well as the payment method I use. Super easy. My food categories are similar to how others have set it up. Lunch = things I purchase while at work. Fast food = food I get when I'm too lazy to cook. Restaurants = food I get with others, or is otherwise the only option because I'm away from home. Groceries = nearly everything else. By doing it this way, I can look at reports (I'm on YNAB 4) and watch trends for where my overall food spending is at. If my overall food spending is up then it's typically because I'm spending inefficiently and it's easy to see what the breakdown is in case I need to bring lunch to work a few days or buy extra groceries to avoid fast food. Zamujasa posted:I just use the place name (e.g. "Albertsons") and if I need to differentiate more than that I use the memo field. I highly recommend the app aCar. I've been using it for years in conjunction with YNAB and it gives a very clear picture of your car expenses and details. Every time you fill up gas it takes like 10 seconds to log odometer, fuel $/gal, and total gallons purchased. It's just as simple to type in the same thing whenever you have repairs and services done. Using just that info it can calculate stats and generate a timeline for your vehicle to report things like running costs, MPG, or give you awesome alerts for things such as 3,000 miles driven since your last oil change or 6,000 since your last tire rotation.   
Teeter fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Oct 2, 2016 |
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Sep 29, 2016 17:59
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I consider getting nYNAB and noticed that there is a life-time discount if I have YNAB 4 already. Now, it says that I should use the same e-mail adress I used to buy YNAB 4 for nYNAB. What am I supposed to do if I got YNAB 4 on Steam? Edit: Ah, nvm, there is a secondary FAQ as well. Randler fucked around with this message at 12:15 on Oct 2, 2016 |
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Oct 2, 2016 11:59
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Randler posted:
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Oct 2, 2016 14:57
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Yeah, I hadn't even heard about nYNAB until I read that post. I went and read about it, and I'm not paying a monthly subscription. It doesn't look like the upgrade is really worth it at all.
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Oct 2, 2016 15:21
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GAYS FOR DAYS posted:Yeah, I hadn't even heard about nYNAB until I read that post. I went and read about it, and I'm not paying a monthly subscription. It doesn't look like the upgrade is really worth it at all. I need to update the OP mentioning the two products.
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Oct 2, 2016 15:56
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I used aCar but one time I wiped my phone and didn't have a backup and it made me sad so I don't use it anymore 
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Oct 2, 2016 22:03
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is there an equivalent to aCar on iOS?
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Oct 2, 2016 23:08
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Combat Pretzel posted:Also, this: I'm real stoked for https://financier.io, it is nearly at feature parity with YNAB4, works offline, and the guy pushes out updates like once a week, so I'm excited to see him get to where YNAB4 is and then go past that. He's also pretty responsive on the subreddit for it, every feature request I've asked about he's directly responded to and thrown onto his trello page. While I'm testing it now I just threw the local storage for it from the chrome folder onto my dropbox and symlinked it so I can mess with the same budget at home and at work. (C:\Users\*USER*\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\IndexedDB\https_app.financier.io_0.indexeddb.leveldb)  Really all I'm waiting for now is split transactions (that he appears to be working on for the next update) and I'll subscribe to support the guy because it's only a buck a month. Search will probably come soon after along with more reports and that'll be that. And QFX import if you're into that, I guess (I'm not). Also I think he's planning on letting you do custom colors so I'll have my dark mode eventually... I'm really just worried YNAB4 is gonna break eventually and hell if I'm going to like run a VM just for a budget program jesus christ. 100 HOGS AGREE fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Oct 6, 2016 |
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Oct 6, 2016 14:59
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:
You shut your mouth! Technically I don't need YNAB anymore because I really have cured myself of bad financial habits (well maybe 90% of them) but it's nice to track my progress from lots of debt to a positive net worth.
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Oct 6, 2016 18:39
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Financier is great, but I'm having trouble understanding cleared versus uncleared line items?
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Oct 6, 2016 19:05
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:Financier is great, but I'm having trouble understanding cleared versus uncleared line items? What do you mean? It works the exact same way it does in YNAB4. 
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Oct 6, 2016 19:08
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:Financier is great, but I'm having trouble understanding cleared versus uncleared line items? 'Cleared' items are things you've bought and paid for, and that match up with an entry on your bank account or credit card statement. 'Uncleared' items have been paid for, but there's no entry on your statement yet. It's there to make sure both your records and your bank's records match up. For example, if a mystery item shows up on your statement that doesn't match up with one of your recorded purchases, you can either query it with the bank or slap your forehead for forgetting to record a purchase.
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Oct 6, 2016 19:31
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spincube posted:'Cleared' items are things you've bought and paid for, and that match up with an entry on your bank account or credit card statement. 'Uncleared' items have been paid for, but there's no entry on your statement yet. Thanks. I never used YNAB but Financier seemed to be hitting its stride right as I was getting started budgeting. I liked Mint but there were just too many loving ads. Uh, no, I'd rather NOT open another line of credit, thanks, I am going to pay down the ones I have instead.
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Oct 6, 2016 20:45
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Credit cards often list pending charges where payments you've made will show up, but they haven't actually been processed/cleared yet. Same with something like rent; you may physically write a check and hand it off so you've done the transaction on your end but it still takes a few days before the money actually leaves your account. In this case, the transaction can be logged for budgeting purposes but you don't need to mark it clear until the money actually moves in/out of your account. Having both Cleared and Uncleared balance displayed helps when I am comparing it to my credit card transactions. The cleared balance should always match up with whatever my credit card's website displays as balance, as long as these are equal then I know all of my transactions are logged correctly. The uncleared balance lets me know how much my budget and accounts actually contain for working purposes. In practice, I will log a transaction on my phone as I make it and leave it uncleared (unless it's cash and "clears" instantly). Once every week or two I will log in to my CC accounts and can easily compare with YNAB because the uncleared transactions stick out. I tick them off as cleared where appropriate and can easily tell if I've missed a transaction if that "cleared balance" doesn't match up in both places. In YNAB, this also feeds in to reconciliation. You can reconcile an account according to a particular statement date and it will only show cleared transactions. If it all looks good and is accurate then you approve the reconciliation and all of those transactions become hidden so that things are much more manageable from then on out. Not sure if Financier does reconciliations yet. This way there's little to slog through when reviewing because only a handful of transactions are shown, and of those only a few may be uncleared at a given time. I used to take forever to reconcile accounts because one stupid $5.13 charge would throw things off and force me to go line by line but using cleared/uncleared knocks that work down to just a few minutes by making it easier to check in on periodically.
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Oct 6, 2016 21:36
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I've always been an enthusiastic user of YNAB but the stagnant development is frustrating. I've decided I'm going to try running Financier parallel with YNAB. Shouldn't be too much extra work. Does financier do goals like YNAB? That's basically the only thing i like about nYNAB over ynab4.
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Oct 9, 2016 00:09
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Rexim posted:I've always been an enthusiastic user of YNAB but the stagnant development is frustrating. I've decided I'm going to try running Financier parallel with YNAB. Shouldn't be too much extra work. Not yet but it's on his todo list.
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Oct 9, 2016 03:40
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Is there a way to roll over negative balances from one month to the next? Sometimes there's a reason for carrying them (ie work expenses).
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Oct 16, 2016 02:28
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Rocks posted:Is there a way to roll over negative balances from one month to the next? Sometimes there's a reason for carrying them (ie work expenses). I don't believe so on nYNAB (which is why I'm still using YNAB4).
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Oct 16, 2016 02:59
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There is no reason for carrying them over in the budget view, the money had to have come from somewhere. It's an expense like any other and should be budgeted, even if the next month you get reimbursed. If you literally couldn't afford it then it means you borrowed money (via credit or some other means) and that should show up as debt as a negative balance on some sort of account, but the budget view should still be green.
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Oct 16, 2016 03:46
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