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aidoru posted:Am hoping I can get an idea of what budgeting software I can use since I haven't had a lot of luck with any of the big ones lately aside from Excel (and it's hard to track how much I spend on, say, Lego sets each quarter doing everything through Excel). Most systems don't encourage you to spend money you don't have so you'll run into that in most. Basically money comes in, you assign it to a budget category, if you pay via credit card the budget moves to using that money to pay off your credit card rather than go into debt. If you aren't using your budget system to build a nest egg to get ahead of paying off your credit card then honestly just stay with your bank's tracking.
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Aug 10, 2022 04:28
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boop the snoot posted:Thanks for the tip about putting in a support ticket. I got a really quick response and I am switching from plaid to MX, which I suppose works better with Mastercards (I have a hunch that MX is a Mastercard company?). Glad I found this thread! This is my sentiment.. Eventually I'm sure I will want to migrate to something cheaper. But for someone who just started using YNAB last year.. this app has helped me pay down tons of debt and keep spending in check.
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Aug 10, 2022 22:07
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Those YNAB success stories that they regularly post on their Facebook page are pretty loving tonedeaf. Just got another one. "Family of six barely surviving from paycheck to paycheck". But YNAB changed it all. They even posted the related networth graph, in which it shows said family amassing around 55KUSD in about 9 months. The gently caress! 
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Aug 10, 2022 22:21
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Combat Pretzel posted:Those YNAB success stories that they regularly post on their Facebook page are pretty loving tonedeaf. Just got another one. "Family of six barely surviving from paycheck to paycheck". But YNAB changed it all. They even posted the related networth graph, in which it shows said family amassing around 55KUSD in about 9 months. The gently caress! Personal finance pundits and communities often have that problem, hence the rise of alternative places like /r/povertyfinance/ for people living in the margins and unable to increase their income where the standard "just track your finances" advice is at best useless and often insulting. See also: henry.gif
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Aug 10, 2022 22:30
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YNAB definitely helped me when I was younger, tracking every dollar seeing where I was spending frivolously, and motivated me when I started playing around with graphs seeing my net worth go up or loans down. But making 3x what I did when I was 25 definitely helped a lot more.
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Aug 11, 2022 14:54
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If I get a check from a roommate that is for, say, $550, but is actually representing $600 dollars they owe for rent minus $50 that I owe them as my share of utilities, can I put it in the budget as a split transaction with both inflows and outflows without messing something up?
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Oct 4, 2022 16:43
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Well, if you're importing bank statements, it'll get weird. If you have 50 bucks in 'electricity - goes to roommate' and a category of 'rent' that gets, say, 1200 withdrawn every month, with 600 being transferred into it by you and 600 from the roommate, I'd deposit the check, mark it as 'income - this month,' assign it to the 'rent' category. I'd then go take 50 bucks out of the 'electricity' category, and put 50 bucks into the 'rent' category. That's what's happening, and everything will reconcile nicely.
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Oct 4, 2022 17:12
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Baronash posted:If I get a check from a roommate that is for, say, $550, but is actually representing $600 dollars they owe for rent minus $50 that I owe them as my share of utilities, can I put it in the budget as a split transaction with both inflows and outflows without messing something up? I do this sort of thing in ynab4 to track rebates for loyalty programs: Split: 550 Rebate: -50 ie inflow Groceries: 600 Basically the same as doing it in three transactions but then it reconciles with my bank later without issues. I personally am not a fan of tracking this sort of thing as income, that messes up my reports later. Edit: Thinking about it more, I would structure it as: Split txn: Split Total: -550 (inflow - matches cheque you receive) Rent: -600 (inflow to account for rent owed by roommate) Utilities: 50 (outflow to account for your share going back to roommate) Separate txn: Rent: 1200 (outflow - matches payment you make on behalf of yourself and your roommate) This way you net spend 600 on rent and 50 on utilities and it will reconcile to the two transactions in your bank account register. Cold on a Cob fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Oct 4, 2022 |
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Oct 4, 2022 17:53
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I just set up flow through categories. Split the transaction treat everything coming in as income.
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Oct 5, 2022 01:01
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Combat Pretzel posted:Those YNAB success stories that they regularly post on their Facebook page are pretty loving tonedeaf. Just got another one. "Family of six barely surviving from paycheck to paycheck". But YNAB changed it all. They even posted the related networth graph, in which it shows said family amassing around 55KUSD in about 9 months. The gently caress! So many of the stories are "I was making 100K salary but was spending it on poo poo to fulfill my unhappy life then told people I was really living pay check to paycheck because ~*~*~*~ LIFE IS HARD *~*~*~*~. One month on using YNAB and I realized I had 90K in my saving account. Then my parents drop dead in a car crash and I got their house and 2nd car! I had to roll with the punches and it was REALLY HARD. My 90K saving account went down to 40K after all that trauma. BUT I HAVE A HOUSE!" Anyway. As an Canadian I need to cut back on A LOT of expanses as I am out of work and inflation had gotten out of control. I am considering cutting YNAB seeing that it will cost me like 150 bucks for the subscription. Funny enough. It is the time that I really need to hop back on budgeting wagon, but I can't get myself into YNAB.
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Oct 22, 2022 02:14
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https://www.budgetwithbuckets.com/download/ Lot of people are switching, one time fee. Then again YNAB used to be a one time fee so who knows.
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Oct 24, 2022 02:10
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apatheticman posted:https://www.budgetwithbuckets.com/download/ I've been using this and it immediately "clicked" for me while YNAB never did. There's also a basically unlimited trial period, it just shows you a budgeting bucket for the software itself that you can't remove until you pay.
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Oct 24, 2022 08:27
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gschmidl posted:I've been using this and it immediately "clicked" for me while YNAB never did. There's also a basically unlimited trial period, it just shows you a budgeting bucket for the software itself that you can't remove until you pay. Is there any talk of developing an app for it? I don’t like YNAB, but I do like that it’s easy to enter items on my iPhone. Auto import has always been a pain for me so I manually enter everything and I like doing it then and there (get gas, enter it in the app. Go to Costco, enter it into the app by category while it’s fresh on my mind).
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Oct 24, 2022 14:29
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nwin posted:Is there any talk of developing an app for it? I don’t like YNAB, but I do like that it’s easy to enter items on my iPhone. Auto import has always been a pain for me so I manually enter everything and I like doing it then and there (get gas, enter it in the app. Go to Costco, enter it into the app by category while it’s fresh on my mind). I mean, the link that was posted straight up says 'iOS coming soon' and 'Android coming soon' so, maybe?
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Oct 24, 2022 14:52
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TheCenturion posted:I mean, the link that was posted straight up says 'iOS coming soon' and 'Android coming soon' so, maybe? Oh thanks. They’ve been saying that for a while so it’s good to see they’re finally doing a beta test.
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Oct 24, 2022 14:56
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Buckets makes me think I don't even need a phone app. One less set of notifications.
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Oct 24, 2022 16:30
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I might give it a try. For me, I’ve stuck with YNAB because iOS app+bank import are what keeps it low stress for me to use, but I need to wonder how much I need these things.
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Oct 24, 2022 17:24
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The dude who makes buckets seems like a pretty good person fwiw
El Mero Mero fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Oct 24, 2022 |
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Oct 24, 2022 17:43
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nwin posted:Oh thanks. They’ve been saying that for a while so it’s good to see they’re finally doing a beta test. https://www.reddit.com/r/budgetwithbuckets/comments/xjs4mi/any_daring_android_users/ Android Beta APK if you are DARING.
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Oct 24, 2022 19:36
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That actually looks promising! I could get away from my old YNAB4 Wine/Linux hack job and use this potentially.
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Oct 25, 2022 18:37
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How detailed to people keep their budgets? I budget with a fixed/variable/sinking fund spreadsheet, and some of my sinking funds are very detailed. I think most people just keep a surplus of misc and when, say, Nintendo Online needs to be renewed they just deduct it from that rather than a Nintendo Online sinking Fund of $2 a month. Same with other stuff like your dental visits, which ideally are free cleanings twice a year, but, maybe this year you needed a filling. I think I am overthinking it. Do people do this?
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Oct 31, 2022 20:35
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CmdrRiker posted:How detailed to people keep their budgets? I budget with a fixed/variable/sinking fund spreadsheet, and some of my sinking funds are very detailed. I think most people just keep a surplus of misc and when, say, Nintendo Online needs to be renewed they just deduct it from that rather than a Nintendo Online sinking Fund of $2 a month. Same with other stuff like your dental visits, which ideally are free cleanings twice a year, but, maybe this year you needed a filling. I think I am overthinking it. Do people do this? I just budget current and next month with the money I have in the bank ie I stay two months ahead of my bills. I keep my categories broad in areas where I have little control/don't overspend and detailed in areas where I have lots of control/do overspend. My categories have changed a lot over the years but I've tried to merge categories where I received no value/insight from tracking separately ie I used to track electricity, cell phone, gas, etc separately and now I just track as bills because they tend to be pretty static for me and there's not much at this point I can do to cut costs here anymore.
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Oct 31, 2022 21:05
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CmdrRiker posted:How detailed to people keep their budgets? I budget with a fixed/variable/sinking fund spreadsheet, and some of my sinking funds are very detailed. I think most people just keep a surplus of misc and when, say, Nintendo Online needs to be renewed they just deduct it from that rather than a Nintendo Online sinking Fund of $2 a month. Same with other stuff like your dental visits, which ideally are free cleanings twice a year, but, maybe this year you needed a filling. I think I am overthinking it. Do people do this? I budget everything, even the $1.08 monthly app, as its own category. It helps me with remembering what's coming. I also include the due date in the descriptions.
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Oct 31, 2022 22:50
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Anything that I know comes out on a specific day gets a category. My Nintendo online budget gets 6.03 a month.
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Oct 31, 2022 23:12
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I like keeping track of any subscriptions in their own category, otherwise it annoys me when a charge goes through for something that I should have cancelled.
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Nov 2, 2022 14:31
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 Quick snapshot of the category groups that I have setup. I try to have a category for every single expense. My subscriptions are each a separate category falling into a 'subscriptions' category group. If it is a fixed expense, I round up to the nearest dollar. This lets me slowly create a buffer without even noticing it. My more variable expenses are just a flat dollar amount. If I underspend for the month, then it takes less for me to fill the line item next month and letting me start getting ahead of expenses. I'm really trying to get some debts paid off as well as getting 1 year ahead of my expenses. I know there's a lot of folks not so happy with YNAB's constant price increases, but the app has really changed my life and I'll continue supporting their development!
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Nov 2, 2022 17:48
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Yeah, it's part of the whole 'give every dollar a job' philosophy. It's also the way to keep track of subscriptions you don't need, price increases that you might want to have brought to your attention, and so on. Hell, I have a few things where I budget like a buck fifty a month, for once-every-five-years license renewals.
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Nov 2, 2022 17:59
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It beats trying to remember why "car" is precisely $137.63, and having to figure out what the new value should be if something changes price. I think YNAB pays for itself for me in keeping me organised and on top of longer-term bills with what feels like minimal effort, but I'm not really happy about it. Or many of the new features to be honest. Goal stuff for the categories is great, I love the little green bars, no complaints there. But mortgage tracking, I set it up and it almost immediately broke and I couldn't be bothered to figure out why. That's simple enough to track in Excel once a month anyway. Buckets looks worth checking out next time my subscription is up, though.
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Nov 5, 2022 09:19
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I had the same experience with mortgage tracking. I tried to add my new mortgage and it calculates everything wrong for some reason. It thinks I'll be done @ 29 years instead of 30 and calculates the interest wrong. I'll try again, but it's not matching my mortgage documentation at all which is weird since I think it's basically built for USA home mortgages and nothing else.
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Nov 5, 2022 14:58
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Hey all, sort of confused about how YNAB works. I'm only familiar with Mint before and I quite liked it but thought I'd try this out one since its so well recommended. I do a lot of purchases obviously over my credit card, but I noticed there's a separate budget line for "credit card payments". This is sort of confusing, can YNAB not just connect to my credit card so that it calculates payments etc. from there together with my monthly bills from my debit card? I don't have issues paying off my credit card so I'd rather just abstract it as one of multiple ways I expense things in my budget, can YNAB do that? What I liked about Mint is that it connected to all my accounts, automatically classified my payments and put it up against my previously set budget (so I set $XXX for Groceries, and Mint would detect a purchase on my credit card for $50 from GROCERY STORE Y and subtract that automatically from my preset budget and tell me what I have remaining). Does YNAB work similarily?
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Nov 5, 2022 18:01
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You may want to review the envelope concept and tutorials before seeing if you would dive in. On the whole, YNAB is more intentional than mint, it will attempt to auto classify your transactions however you still have to go through and approve them. At a high level there is a visa payoff because the core concept is "give every dollar a job" you are essentially not reducing your dollars available by using a credit card.
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Nov 5, 2022 19:09
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apatheticman posted:You may want to review the envelope concept and tutorials before seeing if you would dive in. Yeah I still don't get how this is different than Mint, even after going through the tutorials. Really sorry, I'm obviously missing something here and being dense. In Mint, I set my target budget (say $500 a month for Category X). As I purchase things, it automatically deducts those amounts from my target budget (by automatically detecting which kind of purchase was related to Groceries, or which is related to Transportation, etc.) and provides me alerts and notifications if I'm nearing my limit so that I can tighten up spending or if I want to know at any given point in the month "what I have left". Each month I can then review those target budgets and adjust them by seeing my spending habits ("Oh, yeah we should cut back on eating out, I'm cutting that budget down by $100 and adding that $100 to Entertainment"). I dont really get what you mean by visa payoff and not reducing my dollars available. How is YNAB different in the above except just not being able to auto classify all my transactions and making me do it manually? edit: I don't mean this in a snarky way, sorry if it comes across that way, I just mean am I: A) Misunderstanding here how YNAB works (maybe I don't get how "give every dollar a job" is a different concept than just having a budget where you track your inflow/outflows?) B) Missing the benefits to YNAB not being able to automatically classify my transactions C) Missing that autoclassification (in my scenario above) isn't really necessary with how you're supposed to use YNAB C) YNAB works the same as Mint but just happens to not have great auto classification as one of its features Oysters Autobio fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Nov 5, 2022 |
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Nov 5, 2022 19:15
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Oysters Autobio posted:Yeah I still don't get how this is different than Mint, even after going through the tutorials. Really sorry, I'm obviously missing something here and being dense. Understandable its different, I would say the main differences are 1) You don't budget until you have the money in the account, when money comes in you assign it to your budget. This can be auto assigned fairly easily but you aren't "budgeting" dollars that aren't in your hands yet. This is the primary difference between mint.com and other budgeting software. This is also why it sets up an auto payment for your credit card, it is not assuming you are going into CC debt. The dollars aren't "finished their job" until they are out of your chequing/savings account. 2) There are some quality of life improvements, as in it will auto siphon in your transactions and attempt to auto classify them. However they exist as a working balance, if you ever wish to reconcile then you can go through and review. Mint.com will probably auto classify based on user data. Where as YNAB will need a good 2 or 3 weeks of you manually classifying your transactions to get a sense of where its going. It also does it by vendor so if you are using the same vendor for 2 budget categories you'll have to go in and manually change. 3) The intent is to be more mindful of what dollars you have and what you are doing so its not really set up as a set it and forget it mentality. Most power users aren't using bank transactions to classify and are manually entering it themselves, checking their budget when they are buying things, and overall integrating it to their daily life. They are nerds.. Most arent doing this but a combo of one or two (I manually enter because my grocery delivery service is annoying with holds). The high overall intent is you won't need to get alerts as if you are using it as a normal user you'd have a fairly good understanding of where you are at for your major budget categories. More words than I intended but yeah TLDR its more intentional and requires more monitoring than a mint as the overall end goal is to get you to be more aware of your spending. apatheticman fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Nov 5, 2022 |
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Nov 5, 2022 19:33
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apatheticman posted:Understandable its different, I would say the main differences are I think I'm starting to get it, thanks! Will need to do some more reading probably because I guess I'm having both trouble understanding how exactly I implement the whole "dollars assigned to a job"/ "budgeting when the money comes in" concept, and also trouble understanding what the overall of "theory of change" here as opposed to how I understand a normal budget works. What I'm used to thinking of a budget is where you just write down your monthly income and monthly costs in advance, then you record your expenses throughout the month, and then check in throughout the month to adjust and track your purchasing habits. This results in you adjusting throughout the month ("Oh yeah, I'm getting close to my $200 per month budget on takeout, better plan to cook on Friday") but then also lets you adjust your budget from the previous month ("You know, we're really only spending $100 a month on candles, not $200. Let's add another $100 to my monthly savings transfer"). Like in this scenario, I can conceptualize how that awareness translates into behavioral/habit or other changes. But I can't quite wrap my head around YNAB here in terms of what my "workflow" here is. Thanks, really appreciate it, probably just a matter of me reading more.
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Nov 5, 2022 21:12
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The easiest way to understand it is your max budget is money you already have. So if you're budgeting November, you are not using money you will receive in November to do it, you are using money you earned and didn't use up to that point. This way your budget is not fantasy. Caveat: I'm still running the old YNAB 4 desktop client so I am not closely familiar w/ how the web version works.
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Nov 5, 2022 21:18
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The YNAB videos on YouTube are actually pretty helpful to understand it. If you pay your CC off every month, do yourself a favor and set those accounts up as checking accounts instead of a CC. It’ll save you a lot of headaches.
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Nov 5, 2022 21:50
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“Every dollar has a job” is just the logical extension of the envelope system. If all your typical categories have their envelope filled with their monthly budget then what is the leftover pile of money doing? What envelope will it go into? It could be a long term saving goal, additional money in another budgeted category, or extra money to pay off debt. For example I budget out my monthly rent, grocery, and fun stuff. All that extra money has no “job” but it does exist as I have earned it. I take that money and throw it into a “car” category that acts as a pit to save for a down payment. Once I buy a car I’ll use that envelope category and whatever is in it to do so. At the end of the month my entire paycheck isn’t necessarily spent but it is accounted for in some sort of future spending.
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Nov 6, 2022 06:44
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Do their online training. But just reverse your thinking. Instead of tracking your spending, you’re planning your spending. Ever category is a bucket. Rent bucket. Gas bucket. Grocery bucket. Water bill bucket. Long term savings bucket. Beer money bucket. Etc. Some buckets are mandatory. Gotta make rent. Gotta pay the bills. Some are mandatory but not critical. Should put some in the car repair bucket, but there isn’t a fixed monthly auto withdrawal. Some are discretionary. You have a bucket for new fishing lures. You get paid. Now you need to take every dollar, and put it in a bucket. Fill up your mandatory buckets. Then fill up your kinda-mandatory buckets. Then your discretionary buckets. Got money left over? Great, find a bucket for it. Came up short this month? Take money out of the discretionary buckets and put it into the mandatory buckets. Then, when you spend money, it comes out of a bucket. Wrote the rent check? That comes out of the rent bucket. Bought a new fishing lure? That comes out of the fishing lure bucket. Ran over a nail? Time for a tire patch, and that comes out of the car maintenance bucket. Not enough in the car maintenance bucket? Move some money from another bucket into the car maintenance bucket to cover it. TheCenturion fucked around with this message at 12:12 on Nov 6, 2022 |
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Nov 6, 2022 12:10
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TheCenturion posted:Do their online training. And the most important bit: Start putting money into next month's buckets And then the month after
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Nov 6, 2022 22:37
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Henrik Zetterberg posted:The YNAB videos on YouTube are actually pretty helpful to understand it. This is really good advice if you're paying off your CC every month. Telling YNAB your CC is a checking account skips a step that adds, IMO (and because I have it on autopay), unnecessary complexity. If you're literally following your actual dollars around, then yes the $47.86 I put on the card at the grocery store is technically only a promise to pay later and those actual dollars haven't changed hands yet so I guess I should create a budget line to pay the CC company for those things I've already bought... or just skip all that stuff and make a transfer payment once a month to match your balance.
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