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TheCenturion posted:Do you also try to peddle bicycles with your hands, then complain how horribly they work unless you use as intended, so dehumanizing, like it's the master telling you, a human being with agency and free will, what to do? It's almost like we're agreeing but you were unable to take hyperbole as a joke
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Apr 17, 2017 15:02
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I see what they're trying to do with that (all spending has to come from somewhere), but if you're "rule 4" this is unnecessary. You're not counting on money that hasn't come in yet, it's very specifically there and waiting for your next month or however many months you're ahead. I don't know if they still have "rule 4" or not with nYNAB.
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Apr 17, 2017 19:41
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They have "age your money" now, which is the same idea except less intuitive. nYNAB is like they rolled back YNAB4 to an earlier draft full of worse ideas.
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Apr 18, 2017 14:34
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So here's a fun budgeting question. You know how if you have multiple credit cards you can either pay the highest interest down first or pay the lowest balance off for peace of mind? I have the reverse problem where I made a chunk of money over my budget, and I have to put it into my long term goals. These long term goals are all 'Target Balance by Date' goals and are things like travel, christmas gifts, emergency savings, and a new deck which is way more than the money I'm budgetting. So what would you do when you have extra money - 'pay off' those long term goals according to the easiest balance to hit or put a chunk into some of the bigger goals to make future payments easier? I can see the argument either way - if I top off all of those small goals, I can dump every dollar from the next month on into the deck savings. Or, I can dump it all into the deck and get a head start, but contribute a little less each month since I'm still feeding into the smaller goals.
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Apr 22, 2017 15:23
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You're really overthinking this. Just put it in whatever category you want to prioritize over the others. You can adjust if those priorities change.
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Apr 22, 2017 17:38
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FateFree posted:So here's a fun budgeting question. You know how if you have multiple credit cards you can either pay the highest interest down first or pay the lowest balance off for peace of mind? I have the reverse problem where I made a chunk of money over my budget, and I have to put it into my long term goals. These are equivalent in my experience, just do what makes your budget look nicer, personally I like to top off all the small goals first.
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Apr 22, 2017 18:35
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Dango Bango posted:You're really overthinking this. Just put it in whatever category you want to prioritize over the others. You can adjust if those priorities change. Well there is no priority, these are all fixed events in the future that would get fully funded one way or another. But I think I will do what Fano recommended, and just top off the little goals so I can ignore them and simplify my outstanding goals.
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Apr 22, 2017 20:46
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FYI, anyone that went with Financier, or plans to, whenever YNAB4 breaks, be aware that the developer said he's happy with it in its current state and won't be spending much time adding features. Given that it doesn't even have scheduled transactions, it pretty much implies abandonware.
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Apr 27, 2017 21:05
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What do you guys use scheduled transactions for? I mean I have recurring things but I don't see why I would care to put them in as scheduled things rather than just wait around for my bank to import those charges since they are budgetted anyway. Whats the benefit?
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Apr 27, 2017 21:55
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FateFree posted:What do you guys use scheduled transactions for? I mean I have recurring things but I don't see why I would care to put them in as scheduled things rather than just wait around for my bank to import those charges since they are budgetted anyway. Whats the benefit? It's also great for entering repeating transactions that involve split costs. For example, on the 1st of every month I send my wife my portion of the mortgage, HOA, and property insurance. I have a scheduled transaction that records this automatically and properly pulls an amount from each of the three budget categories.
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Apr 27, 2017 22:32
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Most people waiting on Financier to have scheduled transactions are doing so from the comfort of YNAB4 and want to skip over nYNAB entirely. For these people, automatic imports aren't really a thing. Recurring transactions are the only way to go for the whole mess of repeat bills we're all stuck with. I also set up all of my off-budget accounts with recurring transactions so that they gradually increase in YNAB as contributions get made. I only go in to update the balance manually a few times a year.
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Apr 27, 2017 22:50
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Scheduled transactions are also great for recurring but not frequent transactions. Annual payments for life insurance, HOA fees, fertilizer companies, etc. I routinely look a few months ahead at what's coming up and budget accordingly.
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Apr 28, 2017 00:29
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Wouldn't it be better to set a target goal by date for those so you can save money each month towards them?
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Apr 28, 2017 01:07
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FateFree posted:Wouldn't it be better to set a target goal by date for those so you can save money each month towards them? Then I would need to remember what that goal is composed of. If something comes out or in for a particular category I'd need to remember that. There's also the feature for 'budget for upcoming' that's useful that looks for scheduled transactions.
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Apr 28, 2017 02:13
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I use scheduled transaction to dump in all my monthly bills that don't necessarily fall on the first of the month so that money is already gone from my accounts on the 1st
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Apr 28, 2017 02:21
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I just use the category notes field in YNAB4 to note when/how often I expect irregular things and repeat the budget number monthly, adjusting if I need to myself.
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Apr 28, 2017 02:33
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TraderStav posted:Then I would need to remember what that goal is composed of. If something comes out or in for a particular category I'd need to remember that. I guess I don't understand why you'd need to remember what the goal is composed of - isnt the name of the category the goal itself? Like 'Car Insurance' set as a target goal by date 3 months from now or whatever. Or maybe you are combining multiple goals into one category? If thats the case then I understand, but I keep my categories more targeted I guess. Like for instance every time I get invited to a wedding I'll create a "So and So's Wedding' Category in my Special Events group and set a target goal by date for their gift.
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Apr 28, 2017 04:07
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FateFree posted:What do you guys use scheduled transactions for? I mean I have recurring things but I don't see why I would care to put them in as scheduled things rather than just wait around for my bank to import those charges since they are budgetted anyway. Whats the benefit? Ynab4 doesn't have import so I use it for any recurring bill that doesn't change. No point manually entering my car insurance every month when I can do it once then just mark it approved from there.
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Apr 28, 2017 04:24
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FateFree posted:I guess I don't understand why you'd need to remember what the goal is composed of - isnt the name of the category the goal itself? Like 'Car Insurance' set as a target goal by date 3 months from now or whatever. Or maybe you are combining multiple goals into one category? If thats the case then I understand, but I keep my categories more targeted I guess. Like for instance every time I get invited to a wedding I'll create a "So and So's Wedding' Category in my Special Events group and set a target goal by date for their gift. You got it, some categories or broad. Home maintenance can include both my annual fertilizer service as well as weekly lawn service. Both are costs go to maintain my home (so if I ever need to calculate the cost of owning versus renting) but I don't want to see line items for both. I also include funds in here for emergent maintenance too. I do have a separate car insurance category that isn't with my auto maintenance category though, so I'm a bit schizophrenic on my methodology. Been doing YNAB for 5 years so we have kind of settled on what works for us.
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Apr 28, 2017 11:25
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TraderStav posted:You got it, some categories or broad. Home maintenance can include both my annual fertilizer service as well as weekly lawn service. Both are costs go to maintain my home (so if I ever need to calculate the cost of owning versus renting) but I don't want to see line items for both. I also include funds in here for emergent maintenance too. That's why you'd do home maintenance as a top category and lawn maintenance as a sub category
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Apr 28, 2017 11:56
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FateFree posted:What do you guys use scheduled transactions for? I mean I have recurring things but I don't see why I would care to put them in as scheduled things rather than just wait around for my bank to import those charges since they are budgetted anyway. Whats the benefit?
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Apr 28, 2017 12:26
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Sounds like scheduled transactions go hand in hand with not having an auto import feature, I didn't know YNAB 4 doesn't have them. To be honest it sounds like much more work (especially for variable transactions like utilities) so I'm glad I'm using nYNAB. I think a lot of people get into deep seated habits with software like this, even if it isn't ideal. Luckily I never used YNAB4 so I have no prior loyalties. Setting specific targeted goals eliminates any need for reminders or split transactions, for me at least. With my wedding example I remember at first creating a Wedding category to lump all weddings together, but then I needed to do the math to figure out which gift to save for blah blah. In the end I found it much easier to create a top level Events category and specific targeted goals for the smaller things. Then I can just collapse the category and ignore it for the most part.
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Apr 28, 2017 12:33
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I don't know if I'm understanding this conversation correctly. Are people using auto import fully in lieu of recording their own transactions? That would be an awful idea, both in that it leaves your budget out of date much of the time and in that it makes bank errors and fraud difficult to detect. I'm not seeing what's cumbersome enough about scheduled transactions to be worth that, or to be worth the risk of a security breach (which, honestly, has got to be inevitable).
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Apr 28, 2017 13:35
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I use the mobile app to enter manual transactions, but if a bill is coming in at some point I wouldn't bother putting that in as a scheduled transaction, because there would be no point. I have a category for it, I'm buffered a month in advance, so all I need to do is let the bill come whenever it comes. In fact at the beginning of the month I don't even bother with recording my transactions because a delay of 1 or 2 days is fine. Towards the end of the month I start to pay more attention and manually enter because I don't want to go over any of my categories, but I could easily see how someone could just leave everything to the auto import and be fine with it. You still have to manually approve and categorize every automatic transaction, so you aren't losing any of the fraud detection.
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Apr 28, 2017 13:49
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I have scheduled transactions so I can see at a glance what's supposed to come out, have any changes or discrepancies shoved in my face, and have the available budget for the bills in question more accurately reflect what's unspent vs building up when the bank or auto withdrawl winds up being five days later due to bank computers being treated like old fashioned paper ledgers and not updating in a timely fashion.
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Apr 28, 2017 14:43
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Chin Strap posted:That's why you'd do home maintenance as a top category and lawn maintenance as a sub category That's one way, but you'd end up with a LOT of subcategories. I prefer top categories to be things like fixed expenses, variable expenses, irregular expenses, and savings goals.
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Apr 29, 2017 01:30
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Got a question: Let's say I have budgets Mortgage (1,000), Food (500) , Utilities (250), Date Nights (250). Last month, I left a toilet stuck running for several days and utilities shot up to $500. No problem, I can abandon my spouse for the month and move money from Date Nights (250->0) to Utilities (250->500). Now, this month in YNAB, I have budgets Mortgage (1,000), Food (500), Utilities (500), Date Nights (0). I guess when I transferred money from Date Nights to Utilities last month, it transferred the budget permanently across? How would I make a transfer from one budget item to another just once so that it doesn't affect future budgets?
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May 4, 2017 13:25
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You aren't moving around 'budgets' you are moving around actual money - so you took those $250 dollars that were sitting in a virtual 'Date Night' checking account and moved them into the virtual 'Utilities' checking account. If you want to put more money into your date night this month, you'll need some inflow from a source of income to go into your To Be Budgeted, and then you can move $250 from that into your date night account. Make sense? I find it helps to treat every balance as actual dollars and every category as a mini, virtual checking account. Edit - or if you like thinking more concretely, imagine every category as an envelope with cash inside. You moved $250 from the 'Date Night' envelope into the 'Utilities' envelope, so of course it won't be back the next day. You'll need to refill it with money from somewhere else. Pretend that 'To Be Budgeted' is the table with cash scattered all over it, waiting for you to stuff it into the appropriate envelopes. And your paycheck is a money sack that someone dumps on the table every few weeks. And so on. FateFree fucked around with this message at 13:45 on May 4, 2017 |
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May 4, 2017 13:34
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Potato Salad posted:Now, this month in YNAB, I have budgets Mortgage (1,000), Food (500), Utilities (500), Date Nights (0). I guess when I transferred money from Date Nights to Utilities last month, it transferred the budget permanently across? How would I make a transfer from one budget item to another just once so that it doesn't affect future budgets? As far as I can tell in YNAB4 there is no way to make a one-time transfer as you describe. Every time you want to transfer you have to adjust the budgeted amounts for the relevant categories, then adjust them back next month. I populate my "baseline" budget two months out to avoid having to adjust back. A one-time transfer feature would be nice and more in line with the idea that the various categories are "virtual accounts", but I guess that's not happening. Related, if you have an accrued balance in a category that you'd like to transfer somewhere else (like emergency fund to medical bills or whatever), you have to enter a negative budgeted amount in that category for that month. It's not intuitive.
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May 4, 2017 14:38
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I'm not sure I follow. Is the question simply about what number autopopulates if you set your budget using that feature? Because yes, that will use whatever number you used the previous month rather than your usual number. But I don't understand why that would be a problem if you're looking at the numbers afterward, because it'll be permanently back on track as of your next budget. I prefer to fill everything out fresh each month so I can look at the real spending and see whether some trimming might be appropriate.
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May 4, 2017 20:51
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epenthesis posted:I'm not sure I follow. Is the question simply about what number autopopulates if you set your budget using that feature? Because yes, that will use whatever number you used the previous month rather than your usual number. But I don't understand why that would be a problem if you're looking at the numbers afterward, because it'll be permanently back on track as of your next budget. This. I have...four basic types of budget categories. Well, technically five. 1: Fixed monthly bills. I.e. 50 bux a month for auto insurance, and this changes once a year, maybe. 2: Fixed not-monthly bills. I.e. Water tank rental is 150 bux every three months. 3: Fixed monthly amounts. I.e. I always budget 550 bux for groceries. 4: random monthly amounts. I.e. I don't budget towards 'clothes' but if I need to buy some clothes, I move funds from somewhere else. 5, technically: A slush category that leftover goes into, and that I pull out of as needed. Types 1 and 2 you can generally ignore; every month you're going to budget that amount, and every month that amount is going to come out. If you notice a non-zero number at the end of the month, either a payment didn't get made/taken, or the amount has changed, and you need to adjust. Types 3 and 4, you keep an eye on. Maybe you're budgeting 100 bux a week for groceries, but there's some great sales, you wind up having lots of left overs, and you find yourself with a 100 bux surplus. Decide what to do with that. Let it ride? Don't budget a hundred bux next week and use what's already there? Pull it out and reallocate it? Maybe you notice that despite not budgeting any money towards clothes, you wind up spending 250 bux a year on new socks and underwear. So you start budgeting 20 bux a month towards clothes, knowing that you're going to wind up spending it. This 'look over the previous twelve month's spending' is where this poo poo really starts to shine. My electricity bill is low in the winter, and high in the summer, due to a/c. They don't offer equal billing, or I haven't bothered to check. But, I can take last year's total electrical bill, add ten percent, divide by 12, and I know what I need to budget per month. January to June, I'm building up a surplus. June to October or so, I'm spending that surplus. Then I'm building it up. But it's a lot more manageable and smart to be always budgeting, say, 150 buxs a month to electricity than to be bugeting 100 bux a month for half the year, then 200 for several months. I make a note for the budget line of when the last time I reconciled; for example, if in Oct 2016 I checked the previous year's spending, added 10%, divided by 12, then in Oct 2017 at the end of the month, I'm going to hopefully have a surplus sitting there I can pull out, recalculate new electrical usage, adjust my monthly budget amount, and move on with my life.
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May 4, 2017 21:05
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Aaaaaah, the "assign every dollar a job" thing just clicked. That's....different. But it makes sense with how you actually run a household in the real world. I might just like it. Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 02:15 on May 5, 2017 |
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May 5, 2017 02:12
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Nocturtle posted:
Thanks. I have a bunch of money in a "bus pass" category, but I don't take the bus any more, and was wondering how I get money out of that category without going back several months and adjusting all the budgeted amounts down. Had no idea I could just enter a negative amount.
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May 5, 2017 02:33
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Couldn't you just click on the available balance and move however much you want to somewhere else?
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May 5, 2017 03:08
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BAE OF PIGS posted:Had no idea I could just enter a negative amount. RIP toilet and marriage but budget will be solid as a rock
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May 5, 2017 13:35
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FYI, financier seems to be dead. It'll still work, but don't expect any new features (like scheduled transactions, search, mobile app). The developer is happy with it being "stable" and doesn't intend to do much more than keep the lights on. It's a bummer, but at least I never ponied up my $12 (or even if I did, it's $12).
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May 9, 2017 00:22
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Mr_D posted:FYI, financier seems to be dead. It'll still work, but don't expect any new features (like scheduled transactions, search, mobile app). The developer is happy with it being "stable" and doesn't intend to do much more than keep the lights on. It's a bummer, but at least I never ponied up my $12 (or even if I did, it's $12). I will have literally zero hesitation about re-upping another year of Financier. I love the interface, I love manually reconciling my transactions, and by now it makes perfect sense to me.
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May 9, 2017 13:18
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Combat Pretzel posted:FYI, anyone that went with Financier, or plans to, whenever YNAB4 breaks, be aware that the developer said he's happy with it in its current state and won't be spending much time adding features. Given that it doesn't even have scheduled transactions, it pretty much implies abandonware. Mr_D posted:FYI, financier seems to be dead. It'll still work, but don't expect any new features (like scheduled transactions, search, mobile app). The developer is happy with it being "stable" and doesn't intend to do much more than keep the lights on. It's a bummer, but at least I never ponied up my $12 (or even if I did, it's $12). Doing a quick interest check, do people feel there's room for Yet Another Player in this space? I'm a YNAB4 holdout and have the shared general anxiety that some day it will stop working (lol, Flash). My perception of nYNAB is that it's targeted squarely at people who are having difficulty going paycheck to paycheck, and the auto-import is not valuable to me because there's no way I'd hand nYNAB/Mint my bank's credentials, ever. YNAB does everything I NEED, but not everything I WANT that people have managed to mix into nYNAB, e.g. lifespan of cash on hand. Also I don't use mobile YNAB4 because I don't Dropbox, but having a phone sync story seems like it could be valuable. So I've been contemplating starting to build something in the space. Is it crowded enough that this seems stupid? Do you also wish there was something different in the space and would be interested in seeing a third player? Would you pony up cash for something good, and constructive criticism for something that isn't yet good enough? If there's enough interest I'll start up a separate thread so we don't hijack this one. 
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May 9, 2017 14:16
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If you made a nYNAB that didn't gently caress up credit card refunds I would switch.
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May 9, 2017 14:21
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Dwight Eisenhower posted:Doing a quick interest check, do people feel there's room for Yet Another Player in this space? I'm a YNAB4 holdout and have the shared general anxiety that some day it will stop working (lol, Flash). My perception of nYNAB is that it's targeted squarely at people who are having difficulty going paycheck to paycheck, and the auto-import is not valuable to me because there's no way I'd hand nYNAB/Mint my bank's credentials, ever. YNAB does everything I NEED, but not everything I WANT that people have managed to mix into nYNAB, e.g. lifespan of cash on hand. Also I don't use mobile YNAB4 because I don't Dropbox, but having a phone sync story seems like it could be valuable. As another YNAB4 holdout, I'm definitely interested in something new along those lines: proactive transaction entering, no link to bank accounts, phone app and sync between devices. It would also be nice to have some planning tools and not just reports (but it also needs reports). I have no way of answering your question about if there is space in the market for it, but I've been looking for the next thing after YNAB4 dies and there's nothing that really ticks all the boxes for me.
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