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Sockser posted:Something that I do in my budget, since I get lots of work lunches at the local sandwich establishments, is to have a separate budget item for 'fast food'=poo poo lunches I'm buying at work and 'dining out'=taking my girlfriend out to a restaurant or ordering in some GrubHub or the like. This might be overkill for you, it might not. I like to track them independently. In Nevada, car registration is based on age and MSRP. It would cost about $1000 the first year to register a $55000 car, and then like 950, 850, 750, etc each year afterwards. I believe it is similar in California. In Illinois, it was a flat $100 per year to register anything from a crappy scooter to a Bentley.
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Sep 27, 2016 23:58
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I'm new to a budgeting and have a few questions. 1. My commuter rail card, 401k savings and insurance are taken out on a pre-tax basis and paid for. I never see that on my paycheck. I was trying to account for them, but it's always weird and slightly off cuz the pre tax thing. Can I just not put those on my budget and record take home pay and everything I manually pay there? 2. I budget for Netflix bi-monthly. Last week Best Buy had a deal where if you bought a $60 Netflix gift card you got a free $10 Best Buy gift card. I just bought it, and am planning on just subtracting Netflix money like normal from a paycheck. I have a buffer and am not living paycheck to paycheck. Is there any other problem with this that I'm not considering?
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Sep 30, 2016 15:35
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Doing your budget pretax kinda blows and unless you're going to do some crazy tax return I don't see much of a benefit. Record your 401k as income to a different account and then everything that's subtracted just don't worry about. As far as the Netflix card I'm not sure I understand the issue? If that gift card special puts you a month ahead, congrats, you've got $15 extra to budget next month.
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Sep 30, 2016 18:04
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Sockser posted:Doing your budget pretax kinda blows and unless you're going to do some crazy tax return I don't see much of a benefit. For Netflix I guess I was just wondering - I paid $60 for it. Can I just not record that but continue recording $10/month for Netflix (even though it won't come out of my account for six months since it is coming from the balance)?
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Sep 30, 2016 18:26
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If you are concerned about the Netflix thing and want to make sure it tracks correctly, you can set your Netflix category to roll over, so that any excess or shortfall will carry forward the balance. Then you can mark the $60 as a Netflix purchase. You will be over budget right now, but as you move forward and don't have to pay for it, the budgeted amount will be counted against the shortfall until its eliminated. Does that make sense?
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Sep 30, 2016 18:29
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It seems kind of crazy to worry that much about accounting for what ought to be a pretty minor component of the budget. Just mark that you paid sixty bucks and carry it over.
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Sep 30, 2016 18:46
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Yeah you're right. I was more worried about the pre-tax stuff.
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Sep 30, 2016 19:05
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If it comes out pre-tax, is a sunk cost and you can't change it, why put it on your budget? It's not money you need to worry about. You're doing the right thing - paying yourself first - and you can basically ignore it.
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Sep 30, 2016 19:27
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Transactions should reflect reality as should account balances. If the Netflix account is currently at -$60 due to your recent purchase, it will return to zero in three months (or whatever). Meanwhile that account is negative to remind you that you shouldn't be spending related to that category. Budget and track net income and expenses. That represents the cash and capital you control. Tracking gross and worth is very complicated because you need to handle fluctuations in the 401k, in your commodities, and so forth. If you cannot determine how much withholding is coming out of your paycheck, say to within 4¢, then you shouldn't worry about accurate teaching of net worth.
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Oct 1, 2016 00:24
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Alright so I've toiled and hammered away at the October 16 here - all of this is after tax, after 403 and VSRP contributions have been taken out: I: Salary 1 - 6912 Salary 2 - 5284 E: 529 - 500 School - 2400 Baby Expenses - 250 Books & Netflix - 52 Dining Out - 200 Groceries - 600 (we found an Aldi nearby!) Electric - 200 Gas - 100 Waste, Water & Sewer - 45 Childcare - 600 Closing Costs - 3700 Internet - 50 Phones - 239 CC1 - 283 CC2 - 52 CC3 - 240 CC4 - 300 Student Loan 1 - 805 Student Loan 2 - None this month Medical - 400 Fuel - 420 Car Insurance - 150 Vehicle Payment - 1350 We end this month a thousand in the black even though we're paying like 2 times our normal mortgage for closing costs for the new house. Should we pay one of the credit cards or start our emergency fund first?
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Oct 4, 2016 03:04
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my eyes loving pop out of my head every time I see your car payment Do you have zero liquid savings? I'd probably bank a little cash in your efund, but it depends on your interest rates, to some degree.
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Oct 4, 2016 14:21
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If you have no liquid savings, absolutely get that started first. A blown furnace or your fridge taking a poo poo or anything going wrong with your new house will loving destroy you. At least get some semblance of a savings rolling. Once you've got like, a few grand stashed I'd say split your money between paying down the highest interest debt and continuing to build an emergency fund. You may want to even hold off on the 529 contributions until you have more fluid cash on hand.
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Oct 4, 2016 19:38
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Sockser posted:You may want to even hold off on the 529 contributions until you have more fluid cash on hand. Concur on this, or at least reduce contributions.
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Oct 4, 2016 20:08
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Are these your credit card minima? If so that's really bad, and if not you're probably doing it wrong. As much as I concur with the others, I have to suggest that, with that much high interest debt, you only maintain enough emergency money to pay your bills. Think about it: You have $1k in savings and the furnace blows... onto the credit card it goes. Likewise for half of everything else. I'm sure there's pages past where we discussed this thoroughly (some moron needs to update the op hmmm), but having money in the bank isn't earning you any interest if there are cards to be paid. Always pay minima except on the highest interest card until it's gone, unless you have an intro period that will convert to a higher rate soon that should be paid off before then. Put new purchases on the lowest rate card if you must, though it's best to have a card that is paid off within grace monthly if you're buying new purchases (as budgeted!) with a card. In any case, run the numbers. $1k sitting versus paying down a card. If you're holding it in savings, just be aware of how much it's costing you each month to have that safety buffer.
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Oct 4, 2016 23:51
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Sure, thanks. The good news is I get a $10,000 quarterly bonus next paycheck, and my wife goes to full salary so the second paycheck goes up. It sounds like you guys are in agreement that the first and most important priority is paying down the high APR credit cards (there are 2) and then savings, and then the 0% APR credit cards (there are 2)? We don't have substantial cash on hand, but because of the way our balances work we have several thousand dollars cash on hand until the very end of the month, when it is allocated to future large expenditures like tuition. The money in the black at the end of the month is going to go on to one of the cards or into a true income-independent emergency fund, so one of the payments will be larger than is indicated, I appreciate your help in prioritizing. EAT FASTER!!!!!! fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Oct 5, 2016 |
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Oct 5, 2016 14:28
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Stash some of that bonus for emergencies and yeah just wipe out that high interest debt.
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Oct 5, 2016 17:17
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Agreed stash a little to cover the bills then burn the high interest cards to the ground. 10% simple interest on 10k is $83/mo, which is your Internet and half water/garbage. At 15%, interest charges literally eat your food for you.
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Oct 5, 2016 23:27
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PhantomOfTheCopier posted:Agreed stash a little to cover the bills then burn the high interest cards to the ground. 10% simple interest on 10k is $83/mo, which is your Internet and half water/garbage. At 15%, interest charges literally eat your food for you. This... this is probably the best and most terrifying description of APR I've ever read. Thanks for this.
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Oct 6, 2016 16:05
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Hi guys. Started reading this thread yesterday, read a couple pages in before realising all the discussion was 3 years old  but some of it was still good. I'm finally sick of living paycheck to paycheck and having to borrow off family for emergency expenses. I picked up YNAB in a Steam sale a year or so ago and gave it a whirl but stopped soon after and have gone back to that for now since, well, since I have it already. Looking through this thread though I have noticed that I am probably using it incorrectly, but even incorrectly it makes more sense to me than the way it "should" be used.  This is what I have worked out. It makes a lot more sense to me to budget this with my income "filling up" the deficit made by the budgeted amounts in the line items than budgeting the money as I get it. So a couple questions. A) Is there a better tool/software package than YNAB for this style of budgeting? B)Would I be better off trying to use YNAB the way they want me to use it, by only budgeting the cash I have now? C) Are there any glaring errors you guys can see (aside from the massive overbudgeting due to no income set)? My income looks like this: Paycheck: $686.51/week (sometimes up and down of this, usually above. My planned solution for above is to add the extra over as an inflow) Rent: $100 from my mother, $90 from her SO, both of these weekly. $200 every other week from my roommate. Total rent paid on the property is $370/week paid all by me. (Australia) Edit: I'm not sure what I have done wrong with the image? Link to the image is here Edit edit: I realize I have no savings whatsoever at the moment. I am working toward that with this budget once I have paid off the credit card and can start hammering away at the loan (it's a personal loan for a car as the car was secondhand and too cheap for a car loan from my bank so I think I got screwed on the interest rate of the loan. I am unsure of the exact interest rate right this moment but I'm gonna figure that out). My initial goal for savings is going to be 2 months expenses and then move up from there to six months, although this is going to be heavily affected by large one off expenses for travel and some surgery that is in the murky future, I hope I'll have more concrete info on these things soon but who knows. EDIT THE FINAL: Nearest I can tell without calling the bank, is the rate for the credit card is 1.8%pa? This was listed on my statement as "Interest rates (per annum) on credit balances) and the Personal Loan is at 13.39% (yikes thats higher than I thought) Dante18907 fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Oct 7, 2016 |
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Oct 7, 2016 00:34
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Hi I am fixing your image: Dante18907 posted:So a couple questions. A) Is there a better tool/software package than YNAB for this style of budgeting? B)Would I be better off trying to use YNAB the way they want me to use it, by only budgeting the cash I have now? C) Are there any glaring errors you guys can see (aside from the massive overbudgeting due to no income set)? If I am following what you want to do, you might want to look at Mint instead - although I am not sure if it works with australians banks and everything, you should be able to do exports/imports manually? If it syncs so that works best. Mostly, Mint operates in the way you seem to want to plan things, which is balancing your inflows and outflows against each other on a monthly basis. To address B, I don't use YNAB, but my understanding is that the theory is to deliberately only use money you have in hand, and not commit future income (which you do not have) to paying bills you know are due. This isn't a bad idea, especially if you are new to working out a budget, because one of the most common errors people have is 'pre-spending' money before they have it (Oh I get paid this Friday so I can put this meal on my card and pay it off...) particularly because people will do sloppy math and pre-spend more than their income before they get it (thus ending up deeper in debt). Committing to only spending money you actually have prevents this, which is good for building habits and understanding. But to 'work', it sort of means you need to have enough money in hand to cover your monthly dues. If you don't, well, then things look really dire (which is actually true, because if you don't have enough cash to cover your bills you are living way too close to the edge) but make sit difficult until you get that one-month cover under your belt. But if you are going to stick with YNAB, I would say that you should be trying to follows its guides and use it as intended - otherwise you are better off using something else or even going it on your own with a balance sheet. Re: your budget, what is 'Spending Money', and why is it budgeted to $800? You need to break down expenses so that you can track them better - is this for eating out, drinking, dates, buying toys? What is it? You have way too much debt and way too little savings to be treating a weeks paycheck and then some as walking around money. Itemize this out and then work out what you can eliminate here to clear up your debts and built your savings.
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Oct 7, 2016 01:25
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Ashcans posted:Hi I am fixing your image: Thanks! I tried to do that initially but it still only gave me the broken image icon so  Ashcans posted:If I am following what you want to do, you might want to look at Mint instead - although I am not sure if it works with australians banks and everything, you should be able to do exports/imports manually? If it syncs so that works best. Mostly, Mint operates in the way you seem to want to plan things, which is balancing your inflows and outflows against each other on a monthly basis. I'll have a look at it. I was kinda shying away from Mint because I would prefer to manually add transactions (this is how I have done the 2-3 things since I started this yesterday) and it sounded like Mint was automated, can I not use the automation stuff and just manually add transactions so I am more aware of whats in/out of my accounts? Ashcans posted:To address B, I don't use YNAB, but my understanding is that the theory is to deliberately only use money you have in hand, and not commit future income (which you do not have) to paying bills you know are due. This isn't a bad idea, especially if you are new to working out a budget, because one of the most common errors people have is 'pre-spending' money before they have it (Oh I get paid this Friday so I can put this meal on my card and pay it off...) particularly because people will do sloppy math and pre-spend more than their income before they get it (thus ending up deeper in debt). Committing to only spending money you actually have prevents this, which is good for building habits and understanding. But to 'work', it sort of means you need to have enough money in hand to cover your monthly dues. If you don't, well, then things look really dire (which is actually true, because if you don't have enough cash to cover your bills you are living way too close to the edge) but make sit difficult until you get that one-month cover under your belt. Ashcans posted:Re: your budget, what is 'Spending Money', and why is it budgeted to $800? You need to break down expenses so that you can track them better - is this for eating out, drinking, dates, buying toys? What is it? You have way too much debt and way too little savings to be treating a weeks paycheck and then some as walking around money. Itemize this out and then work out what you can eliminate here to clear up your debts and built your savings. Mostly video games/carrying about money in case I stumble across something. I guess it is too high. I budgeted it out at $200/week, but I also forgot I havent budgeted my other monthly spendings like Netflix etc. So I will need to relook at this. I know I wont be able to stop my spending on video games cold turkey, I am ok with this as it is pretty much my only large expenditure hobby, and that is what this is supposed to cover. (Video games in Aus are like 80-90 for a main title and 30-50 for other/older games) I figure since I don't smoke, drink, drugs etc, other than food and fuel, of which food is going to all but disappear in the coming months for a while (meal replacement paid for by a family member leading up to surgery) that this was an ok amount to have sitting around. I wasn't intending to start Saving just yet, looking to pay off the credit card and use it as a buffer/main purchasing account and pay off it and then put the money from the credit card onto the personal loan and pay that off before really looking at Saving heavily, at which point I was looking at moving toward 2 months expenses really quickly then slowly building out to 6 months. Im super new to budgeting, I've pretty much been living paycheck to paycheck for the last 10 years (basically since I finished school) and the loan and credit card are very new, so before then it wasn't too big of an issue in my mind as I had zero debt. I will 100% relook at the spending money category.
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Oct 7, 2016 02:22
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Just had a look at Mint, unfortunately I can't even use it in Australia. No way to just use the budgeting stuff without linking bank accounts etc and since Australia isn't supported guess I am SOL here for Mint.
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Oct 7, 2016 02:43
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Take a look at the free Google spreadsheet templates to get started (e.g., budget tracker by Joao Geronimo). As you're hoping to get out of the paycheck to paycheck tragedy and already have done some planning ahead, and are willing to do the tracking, a spreadsheet should help you keep records while you work on your style a bit. Nothing prevents tracking some of your more active monies in YNAB later, for example. If you want something more tangible, you can print free ledger and budget sheets, or buy a $5 starter home budget ledger from an office supply store. Most of these are designed to permit you to budget the entire year.
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Oct 7, 2016 06:59
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PhantomOfTheCopier posted:Take a look at the free Google spreadsheet templates to get started (e.g., budget tracker by Joao Geronimo). As you're hoping to get out of the paycheck to paycheck tragedy and already have done some planning ahead, and are willing to do the tracking, a spreadsheet should help you keep records while you work on your style a bit. Nothing prevents tracking some of your more active monies in YNAB later, for example. Awesome. I'll definitely look into these, thanks. I spent about 2 hours this afternoon making a spreadsheet for myself to just track everything I have coming in and out and get some figures out of those numbers like 2/4/6mo buffer targets and to quickly try and balance it. Got it pretty close just like that after realizing I was budgeting enough money to cover the electricity bill solo when it's a three way split. Also cut the "Spending" budget in half. Unfortunately I remembered a bunch more expenses so I didn't have a huge win haha. On the way though.
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Oct 7, 2016 08:02
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Here's my new budget, now that I have a new job. I posted about a windfall in the newbie thread as well, which I guess is almost all going to my credit card. Income: $3160 / 4 wks Rent + utilities: $1020 Internet: $70 Groceries: $200 Car insurance $68 Gas: $50? Prescriptions: $65 Pet food: $75 Vet: $50 Doctors: $50 Car maintenace / repair: $100 Credit card: $140 Other Medical: $315 Netflix: $10 Household/hygiene supplies: $30 Haircuts: $15 Joint fun money / capital improvements: $200 Student Loan ??? Repay debt / build cushion: $775 - Student Loan I know the fun money seems kind of high, but for most of the past two and a half years we have been eating out at least three times a week, usually more. I want to put enough in there that it's an easier transition, so we're less tempted to overspend. The credit card line will actually be much less, and will be wiped out in December once the final interest comes in from the previous month. Once the credit card is gone, I'll first put that into getting a cushion of 1 month's rent and bills that can't be paid with a credit card. I'm going to freeze the credit card in a block of ice, since I always overspend even when just using it for gas and groceries for rewards points. I'll probably put the internet and insurance through there and have it autopay the balance every month just to keep it active. I applied for graduated payments on my student loans since I have two years in IT and hopefully within another two years will be making a significant amount more money. Once I have a comfortable cushion I will start throwing as much money as I can at the loans. Next year I'll have to start paying for health insurance, as well as my wife's car insurance and phone bill. I'll have to work out a new budget then, and I expect I won't be able to put away nearly as much money after that. My wife doesn't work. She's doing much better with those expensive "other medical" procedures, but she's still not well enough to work, at least not in the fall and winter. She's applying for disability again, but who knows how long that will take, or if she'll even get approved.
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Oct 24, 2016 01:34
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At a glance that looks fairly well balanced, though I hope you don't have $100 in car repairs.  Make sure you use the leftover wisely, or save it for the automotive rainy day when you need a new radiator.
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Oct 24, 2016 23:24
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Yeah, repairs is for building up for unexpected failure, as well as oil changes or wipers or whatever else. Same with pet, just saving up for vet bills. I do need a new windshield, but I need to call my insurance company about that. I'm going to have to add a lot to gas, though. It turns out my new job is a 60-65 mile round trip. I'm going to go the most gas efficient way I can find, there are some back roads that I'll get better mileage on while being about the same time and distance. 22 Eargesplitten fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Oct 25, 2016 |
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Oct 25, 2016 02:14
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Do the math to see if it's really worthwhile. Most people significantly overstate their gas expenses. Let's say you get 20mpg, which is a really low estimate. You burn three gallons of gas per day on your commute, which costs (at local prices) $6.45. If you manage to increase your fuel economy on your trip to 25 mpg (extremely unlikely but let's say for the sake of argument that it's true), you will now only burn 2.4 gallons, costing you $5.16 per day. Your absolute, ultimate upside, assuming 22 commuting days, is $28.38/mo. More likely, you're going to save maybe 10%, which gets you fourteen dollars a month. Not nothing, but not worth fussing over and making things less convenient for yourself.
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Oct 25, 2016 17:33
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You'll save just as much maintaining good accelerator control and providing ample stopping distance. Brakes and burnt calipers and rotors get to be expensive, but you can run a good set of pads for 50kmi (instead of the 10kmi that some manage). Likewise it takes less fuel to keep it going, which you can't do if you're +-10mph because you're not leaving enough room and are constantly slamming your brakes. If you want to be completely  you can drive the same speed and still ride your brakes. People in Seattle do this all the time (both feet I guess)... uphill ffs.
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Oct 25, 2016 23:31
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After a couple of months on Financier - we absolutely love it. We are a car payment and a mortgage payment ahead, and have paid down approximately 40% of our credit card debt, with the rest anticipated to be gone before it's generating any interest. Our budget varies pretty dramatically because of our quarterly bonus cycle, but the breakdown we've achived so far looks a little like this: Listed as percentages of monthly net income (after 403B max, VSRP max, taxes, insurance, pre-tax gym fee) 15.4% current tuition for MBA (only 3 semesters left) 10.8% mortgage payment (only 29.9 years left) 8.7% car payment (only 4.5 years left) 8.7% child care expenses and discrete baby consumable goods (only 17 years left) 8.1% student loan service (only 4-6 years left for PSLF) (the vast majority of this is planned to become elligible for PSLF but is at pretty awful interest rates averaging 8% - there's a 0% interest in there we're letting ride and a 8% private loan we plan to pay soon) 4.2% food (2/3 groceries, 1/3 restaurants) 3.2% college savings account 3.2% additional emergency savings (emergency savings currently only about 1/2 a month ahead) 3.2% "furniture fund" 3.1% car maintenance, car replacement savings, car insurance 2.9% upcoming travel and vacation savings 2.2% medical copays, pharmacy spending, household goods, clothing, dog spending 2.2% gasoline 2.0% minimum service of consumer debt currently all @ 0 interest (plan to be clear of this by May) 2.0% cellular, internet and TV 1.9% trash, water, electricity (projected) and gas 1.3% gifts, Christmas savings, "special projects" 1.2% entertainment 0.6% "spending money" for unbudgeted miscellany remaining: roughly 14.4% of our salary each month. I think we should probably allocate this money to either 1) paying down CC debt, 2) paying off a private student loan inelligible for debt forgiveness and at something like 7% interest, 3) filling up our emergency fund tank ahead of schedule. The wrinkle here is that we get a bonus (of roughly 50% of the total take-home pay in a month) every 3 months, which has been doing a lot of the work of clearing bad debt. I think i could wait for that to hack down a CC which is going to come off grace period and then next the private loan. Should we race to pay down our credit cards at 0 interest? Should we stretch to pay off the private student loan? Or should we bolster our anemic emergency fund to be 3 months ahead of major capital expenditures instead of 1/2 a month ahead?
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Nov 10, 2016 15:22
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Pay down the student loans first IF they don't penalize for prepayment (unlikely) and if they don't advance your next payment due date. That is, if you pay Nov+Dec now, ensure that your next due is still Jan. This permits you to chomp off the interest accrual without losing your buffer. If you have an emergency, you'll have all those spare months to skip loan payments. 0% CCs you should still pay a bit extra to make you look like a good debitor, but should otherwise merely ensure it's empty before going above zero apr, unless there are annual fees, in which case drop it immediately.
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Nov 11, 2016 00:27
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PhantomOfTheCopier posted:Pay down the student loans first IF they don't penalize for prepayment (unlikely) and if they don't advance your next payment due date. That is, if you pay Nov+Dec now, ensure that your next due is still Jan. This permits you to chomp off the interest accrual without losing your buffer. If you have an emergency, you'll have all those spare months to skip loan payments. Unfortunately this loan does not, it would advance our next payment due date and thus would deplete our buffer. Hence, instead, we've decided to buff our buffer. A follow up question about budgeting - when you folks consider "emergency fund" what percentage of your background spending are you considering in this bucket? Because while we budget quite a bit of income every month, we try to keep our honest to God make or break expenses as a much smaller fraction of that pool. It seems very unlikely that with two earners in the house we would have financial hardship substantial enough to put both of us out of work AND disqualify us from our paid short and long term disability insurance. So I look at things like 180 days of mortgage, 180 days of student loan payments, 180 days of car payment, 180 days of utilities, 180 days of food expenditure realizing that a lot of the stuff on top of that spending is discretionary. Ultimately it seems too conservative to have a lot more than 40-50k sitting around for emergencies, given that much more substantial money is available to us out of other accounts in an honest to God actual emergency, and that our level of consumption and discretionary spending could be reined in without any real difficulty.
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Dec 8, 2016 06:37
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When I calculate my emergency fund I look at expenses that cannot be easily deferred or suspended. If I lose my job we can cut our entertainment and eating out, I won't go shopping, but we're going to have to keep paying our rent/insurance/phone bill. Sometimes this is complicated; for a situation where I lose my job but expect to get a new one soon, we wouldn't want to pull my daughter our of daycare because then we'd lose her spot and we'd have to find another place before I could go back to work. But if something happens where I am out of work for a long haul, that might be on the table to help us curb expenses. But ideally we plan our fund to include this and then have removing it as an option on the table to extend how long we can last. This can mean you end up with more money sitting around in checking or savings not 'working'. One option is to stagger how you keep your fund, so you have what you consider enough for an instant emergency in savings, and then additional amounts in accounts that might have a longer access period (like MMA or CDs I guess, although those rates have been pretty abysmal for ages.) Then if something happens you use your saving account while you unlock the other tiers (if needed). I don't put any emergency money in a form where it can't be accessed readily or could lose value though.
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Dec 8, 2016 15:40
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Hi everyone, I've been using YNAB and it's awesome. I've already cleared two credit cards and I'm looking to start paying off my student loans soon. I am kind of stumped though: I started the budget on 11/20 and it automatically rolled over and cleared out my entries for November when it hit December . Ideally, I thought it would roll over an exact month from 11/20 (because that's how long I budgeted for). I get paid on the 5th and 20th, so now I'm in this weird position where I'm looking at everything I have due that month from the 21st to the 4th and budgeting that piecemeal, and then looking at the stuff I have due from the 5th to the 19th and budgeting that piecemeal. Otherwise, if I start budgeting on 12/1 for everything in December, I've "missed" the payments I made from 11/20 to 12/5, if that all makes sense. It will look like I have something like 50% more expenses due than I really will because they were already paid in November. Am I overthinking this? Is there a better way to do this and will this just develop with time doing this? Any help is much appreciated.
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Dec 21, 2016 06:48
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Input how much money you have right now. Then budget that money for the things you still need it for this month. Budget the rest for the first things you'll need to pay first next month. When you get more money, budget the rest. The idea behind YNAB isn't assigning some fixed values to each month, it's that you assign tasks to the money you have right now and repeat that when you get more money. That's why they stress building up a one month buffer. If you have a buffer, you can start planning ahead, but before that point, you need to focus on what you need your money to do before you get more.
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Dec 21, 2016 19:14
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Also, there's a YNAB thread here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3599364 Great resource. It overlaps with this one but thought you may be interested in a platform specific resource.
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Dec 21, 2016 19:35
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Tamba posted:The idea behind YNAB isn't assigning some fixed values to each month, ... 
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Dec 22, 2016 00:24
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FWIW it's really fun to move the money to different little piles and think about "well what would it be like if I spent $4000 on shoes this month?" "naaah, better put it in the emergency fund!" Just seeing the numbers move is really good reinforcement that these little things can and do add up.
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Dec 22, 2016 19:51
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Is there a program like Mint that's more user friendly? I could never stick with it because of issues like frequent asking of security questions, problems connecting to various accounts, and phantom/duplicate transactions. I just want something that updates consistently and automatically. Tried quicken but that was even worse.
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Dec 30, 2016 21:13
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I don't think so. Unfortunately I don't think the sync issues are a fault of mint, they are usually from the bank site blocking logins and requiring additional verification- I have thus all the time with my retirement account, basically any time I want mint to sync they end up sending me a verification code by text I have to put into mint and then it will work for a couple days. If you find a better one let us know
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Dec 30, 2016 21:20
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