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Admiral Joeslop posted:Yup, pure commission. Better than the ten years I spent in retail and I don't actually have to sell people ON things. Yeah in that case I think I'd schedule a 6mo running average -20%, but not having been in such a situation I'm purely spitballing that proposition. You'd know better, honestly, and your initial plan sounds reasonable.
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Dec 31, 2019 09:59
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Putting in my checks as I go seems to be the sensible way if I understand how ynab works but despite owning it for four years I've never really used it. Is there a way to set goals in classic or is that only in the new version?
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Dec 31, 2019 14:43
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Oh yeah you're not supposed to enter income into the register until it hits your account. I thought we were discussing scheduled transactions. No goals in YNAB4 but you can fill out your budget category in advance (I do this for all my non-monthly static expenses). The red over budget text only applies to next month, not the following months, if that's the sort of thing that bothers you. Goals is about the only thing I miss from nYNAB.
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Dec 31, 2019 14:55
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Starting the whole budget in earnest, tomorrow. To double check; -Input my checking and savings accounts (both on budget). -Put in all monthly bills, set up amounts for groceries/spending/restaurants/etc to somewhat generous levels (until I figure out what amount I realistically need to be at). -When I get paid, list that as inflow. -Adjust paid amounts as needed (higher water bill is paid from spending money for example). -Input all transactions when they happen, with the proper category (gonna take some doing to remember). -When a savings goal is reached (new mattress or something) I just remove that entirely and reallocate the money. Does this sound right for babby's first budget?
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Dec 31, 2019 15:22
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Not sure about that last point.. you save up for a mattress in the category, when you hit the goal you just leave it there until you buy a mattress. Then the transaction points to the mattress category, the money is all gone, and you can hide the empty mattress category unless you need another one. One savings category you should definitely have is the total amount of money you earn in a month, this way you can re allocate that money at the start of the month and you won't care when your checks come in.
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Dec 31, 2019 19:59
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For the last point, hiding the category is the same as deleting it I suppose so that would work. Would just need to change what the money goes to. For that last point, I make pure commission so I don't know what I'll make in a month. I could take the average but that feels like the same thing we discussed last page.
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Dec 31, 2019 20:11
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Admiral Joeslop posted:For the last point, hiding the category is the same as deleting it I suppose so that would work. Would just need to change what the money goes to. Budget for your lowest actual month's income and reassign if/when you make more?
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Dec 31, 2019 20:29
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Dango Bango posted:Budget for your lowest actual month's income and reassign if/when you make more? Thanks for making me realize I used the same phrase in both paragraphs  I guess I'm just confused about the purpose of this savings category. The program carries over monthly expenses and I put in transactions to make sure I'm actually paying what the category says. Is it just an easy way to keep in mind my monthly earnings?
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Dec 31, 2019 21:00
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The Savings category is a category that is set up so you remember to put aside some cash for your savings. Of course you can choose how much to put towards that according to your goals, and you could even outright delete it for now if it doesn't make sense to you.
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Dec 31, 2019 21:38
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Admiral Joeslop posted:For the last point, hiding the category is the same as deleting it I suppose so that would work. Would just need to change what the money goes to. Deleting isn't really the same as hiding if there is a transaction associated with it, if you try to delete ynab will ask you to reassign the transaction and I guarantee it will mess up your budget. This is because ynab keeps track of your balances by adding up all the previous transactions you've ever made. Hiding lets you keep the numbers intact. You don't want to delete the fact that you spent money on a mattress, you just don't want to see it any more. About your income, you may not know the amount you earn in a month, but you should know roughly what you spend in a month. You want to have at least that amount of money sitting in an envelope/category, so that on the first of the month you have money right there that you can budget out for the month. Whatever you earn this month isn't your concern until the next month. If you have roughly one month saved up, you aren't living paycheck to paycheck. If you have 3 to 6 months saved up, you have next month and emergency money saved up.
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Dec 31, 2019 21:44
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The savings category is for things like an emergency fund. I've got 3 months expenses in the on-budget savings account in a hidden category. We have other savings categories for our tax deductible pension contributions that we add to each month and then move to the off-budget pension accounts in December.
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Jan 1, 2020 00:31
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Save in specific categories and spend in general ones.
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Jan 1, 2020 05:15
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Is there a simpler YNAB than YNAB? Preferably a non web-app? I'm moving up North and losing modern internet access (my current is 100mb/s and the best available where I'm going is 1.5mb/s) so I'm trying to remove as much web-access as possible.
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Jan 1, 2020 15:47
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Shout out to the budgeting nerds who are spending their first day of 2020 closing out their 2019 budgets and bringing down YNAB
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Jan 1, 2020 20:29
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~~web apps~~
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Jan 1, 2020 21:25
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Since we're bitching about it, how does YNAB still not have mass Payee editing?
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Jan 1, 2020 21:31
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I thought there was? At least there's payee merging. I'd show it, but the web app is down for maintenance.
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Jan 1, 2020 22:06
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Yeah you can Payee merge, and a kind of hack is just creating whatever you want the new Payee to be and merging all the old ones into that, but it's clunky and also it doesn't work for Transfers. The practical example is where I'll import transactions from an off-budget account and set them to their own category. Later down the line I'll decide to integrate the off-budget account into my budget, and now I have 400 transactions that I can't convert into a transfer so I have to reimport them (which has its own set of issues) It sounds like a bit of a niche problem but googling around it seems a bunch of people have asked for it and apparently you could it in YNAB4 so it isn't clear why they didn't include it in nYNAB
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Jan 1, 2020 22:15
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virinvictus posted:Is there a simpler YNAB than YNAB? Preferably a non web-app? I'm moving up North and losing modern internet access (my current is 100mb/s and the best available where I'm going is 1.5mb/s) so I'm trying to remove as much web-access as possible. I think you'd be all right, I don't think nYNAB would pull all that much data. However, your only option with YNAB would be to beg someone for their YNAB4 key so you could use that. I'm not real familiar with alternatives because I'm so pleased with YNAB(4).
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Jan 1, 2020 22:19
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How about Firefly III? It's a web-app, but it's self-hosted, so you could just the docker container on your PC (or your NAS if you have one) and it will work without access to the internet.
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Jan 2, 2020 00:58
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Tamba posted:How about Firefly III? Here's a link to the site instead of the docs: https://firefly-iii.org/
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Jan 2, 2020 01:12
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Slimy Hog posted:Here's a link to the site instead of the docs: Wow. I like this. Setting it up now! Thanks.
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Jan 2, 2020 01:21
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So I signed up for the YNAB trial to see what it's all about. It's kind of neat being able to enter all of my financial information in to one place for purposes of seeing retirement/checking/savings accounts in one place, but I'm a bit confused about the "budget" part. I've linked my credit card accounts to YNAB, but does it automatically characterize transactions from each CC, or do I have to manually tally up how much we paid for gas each month, for example?
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Jan 9, 2020 21:47
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Residency Evil posted:So I signed up for the YNAB trial to see what it's all about. It's kind of neat being able to enter all of my financial information in to one place for purposes of seeing retirement/checking/savings accounts in one place, but I'm a bit confused about the "budget" part. I've linked my credit card accounts to YNAB, but does it automatically characterize transactions from each CC, or do I have to manually tally up how much we paid for gas each month, for example? Think of the categories like real physical envelopes in front of you. How much money do you need for gas for the remainder of this month? Put that much money in there. When a transaction comes through, you have to give it a category, and then it will automatically deduct from the envelope. Over time it will guess the category for you but you'll have to choose one if it doesn't know yet. Also I don't believe retirement accounts belong in this tool, I use mint for the grand overall picture because it has property as well. But some people like it.
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Jan 9, 2020 22:17
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FateFree posted:Think of the categories like real physical envelopes in front of you. How much money do you need for gas for the remainder of this month? Put that much money in there. What do you mean by transaction? Right now, all ynab seems to see is that I owe Chase a few thousand next month. Will it ever see that $200 of that was gas?
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Jan 9, 2020 22:23
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Residency Evil posted:What do you mean by transaction? Right now, all ynab seems to see is that I owe Chase a few thousand next month. Will it ever see that $200 of that was gas? I'm assuming you had a balance on the card when you started. Once you start entering transactions (aka, you enter a purchase for gas) it will show up in the category you assign it to.
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Jan 9, 2020 22:30
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FateFree posted:Think of the categories like real physical envelopes in front of you. How much money do you need for gas for the remainder of this month? Put that much money in there. drive me nuts to school posted:I'm assuming you had a balance on the card when you started. Once you start entering transactions (aka, you enter a purchase for gas) it will show up in the category you assign it to. Huh. Gotcha. Maybe YNAB isn't the right tool for what I'm looking for then. It'd be nice to know that "oh, we spent $xxx on eating out last month, which brings us to $xxxx for the year."
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Jan 10, 2020 00:10
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Residency Evil posted:Huh. Gotcha. Maybe YNAB isn't the right tool for what I'm looking for then. It'd be nice to know that "oh, we spent $xxx on eating out last month, which brings us to $xxxx for the year." It can do that with reports easily. I can look back and see I spent $2000 in 2019 for restaurants. Just need to categorize your spending appropriately. Do the tutorials! They really do help a ton and get you on board with their 4 step process
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Jan 10, 2020 00:49
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RE, ynab is probably the most valuable piece of software I wrapped my head around. Spend at least a month or two trying to make it work before you tap out.
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Jan 10, 2020 01:07
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YNAB4 revolutionized my life.
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Jan 10, 2020 02:31
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Residency Evil posted:Huh. Gotcha. Maybe YNAB isn't the right tool for what I'm looking for then. It'd be nice to know that "oh, we spent $xxx on eating out last month, which brings us to $xxxx for the year." Ynab is for planning for the future, how much cash do you have and how are you planning to spend it. The intent is to know you have the cash to buy something before you commit. As said above yes, you'll also know how much you spent, but unless you import all of the older transactions then they don't have the data to pull from. The philosophy behind Ynab is that the past has happened and it's time to look forward. It's really a great tool and a fantastic way of viewing your money. Anyone who sticks with it for a couple months becomes a success story at some level it seems like. The key is going to be modifying your behavior. If all you want is the data honestly I'd probably use mint. I wasn't too keen on them having all that data about me though.
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Jan 10, 2020 02:55
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Residency Evil posted:What do you mean by transaction? Right now, all ynab seems to see is that I owe Chase a few thousand next month. Will it ever see that $200 of that was gas? Keep in mind that you are starting ynab with a blank slate, it does not know what your previous transactions are and it doesn't care. It looks into the future, all it knows right now is you have a balance on your card. But when you use the card, a tx comes through and it knows how you spent it, because you assigned it to a category/envelope. If you do this for a full month, you'll know what you spent on gas for the month. If you do this for a year, you'll have an excellent average of what you spend per month on gas. The longer you use it, the more valuable it becomes, so don't get discouraged at the start. Instead think of it like you are starting fresh and all you have to care about is categorizing correctly. "But Mint can show me all my previous gas transactions right now" Yes but Mint doesn't help you with this month, it only tells you what you've done in the past. The difference is YNAB will force you to manage your money one month at a time, every time a transaction occurs, because you assigned your money before it was spent, and you can shift the assignments around if a budget wasn't met or something unexpected happened. YNAB is a monthly money management tool - that its primary function. I still use Mint every day to look at my net worth and get a nice overall picture of my finances. But I ignore their budget stuff because its passive and useless compared to an active solution like this. FateFree fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Jan 10, 2020 |
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Jan 10, 2020 03:24
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Agreed that mint is more for knowing what you did (I've never used it, that's just what I've heard) while ynab is for making plans with what you've got. "Give every dollar a job" is rule 1 in their little budgeting philosophy and what it comes down to is that I can be on a tight budget but still confidently know that I can blow a few bucks on something at the end of the month because the money is still in the pretend envelope for it. With budgets before, I just had a general sense of anxiety and dread. I felt like I should be depriving myself all the time to stay under budget, but had no way of knowing where I was. Now I know how much I can spend today, instead of waiting for the bills to come to see if I didn't screw up last month.
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Jan 10, 2020 03:40
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TheCenturion posted:YNAB4 revolutionized my life. 
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Jan 10, 2020 04:08
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Looking around before my nYNAB trial runs out. Does anyone have experience with Pocketsmith? Obviously this is the YNAB thread but their website makes it look decent and the price seems comparable. I suspect at this point I'm too used to the YNAB WAY though.
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Jan 10, 2020 07:57
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Pocketsmith isn't zero-based budgeting is it? I wrote it off because I thought it was just some generic "look what you've been spending" poo poo like mint.
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Jan 10, 2020 08:43
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You can make it do that. But it has a weird way of handling transfers and it doesn't unify accounts, which makes budgeting a pain in the rear end, when you frequently pay from different accounts for a specific category. That was a while ago, maybe things changed now. I'm not even sure what's going on there, since it appears pretty faceless the last 2 years or so.
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Jan 10, 2020 10:28
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FYI you can change the Starting Balance date of any account and YNAB will retroactively download any past transactions starting on that date. You'll have to manually categorize all of the old transactions (as opposed to YNAB doing it for you automatically after the first one), but it's doable.
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Jan 14, 2020 16:16
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You can do it but you probably shouldn't. It's antithetical to the ynab way. They used to explicitly say not to do it in the docs and in various training material.
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Jan 14, 2020 19:18
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YNAB's philosophy has been a good north star, but their "best practices" heavily depend on you being a perfectly spherical budgeter in a frictionless vacuum.
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Jan 14, 2020 19:35
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