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TheCenturion posted:Do their online training. Thanks everyone for the explanations! It's starting to make sense, just need to learn about YNAB to understand what a typical "YNAB workflow" looks like. Like, in the example above using buckets how much of it is automated? Like, when I use money from a bucket to pay for something, does YNAB detect this and automatically update what I have left in each bucket, or do I have to do this manually on a regular basis? What's this look like for people? Are people curating YNAB weekly, monthly, etc? My only concern is that one of my issues with budgeting I think is anxiety. I have a steady job and no issues with paying things off, but I think I avoid going into my bank account out of some anxiety. With Mint, I felt like I could feel less anxious because I had prepared guardrails, notifications and automation so I could quickly check and get relief that "everything is going fine". The end benefits of YNAB really start to make sense for me when I consider that the model takes into account what actual money I have, whereas a budget is artificial (if you're under $100 in groceries this month, this just gets "wiped clean" the next). But, if this takes a lot of work to keep running then I have to be realistic. How often are you folks actively "working" in YNAB as opposed to just monitoring / checking it? With Mint I felt that I'd only need to "work" once per month, and the rest I could just monitor my spending limits. Is this like a weekly thing? Daily?
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Nov 7, 2022 13:55
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I’m a weird nerd who enjoys reconciling my YNAB and do it once a week typically. I’m a YNAB4 sicko who never wants to move to the modern platform though. I feel you on the anxiety thing. I use to have that when I was living paycheck to paycheck but once I got my finances under control I started to enjoy the process and seeing the system work. YNAB at this point is less a budgeting tool and now a spending tracker for me but it took a few years for that transition to happen.
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Nov 7, 2022 14:02
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Oysters Autobio posted:Thanks everyone for the explanations! It's starting to make sense, just need to learn about YNAB to understand what a typical "YNAB workflow" looks like. YNAB has two parts that interact; your budget and your account ledger. So lets do a concrete simple example. I have some categories. I keep my funding requirements in the title itself, for my own edification. Rent - 100/month Gas - 50/month Groceries - 50/month Car Repair Fund - 50/month Dining Out - 50/month Fishing Lures - 50/month Long Term Savings - 50/month minimum I get a paycheck for 500 bux. I put an entry into the ledger, either manually or doing a bank download and editing it (after the first time, it become automatically categorized.) Payee - My Employer. Category: Income for December. So, now I have 500 bux waiting to be budgeted. I go to my budget, and I assign 100 to rent, 50 to gas, 50 to groceries, 50 to Car Repair, 50 to Dining Out, 50 to Fishing Lures, 50 to Long Term Savings. That's 400, I have an extra 100 left over. So I stick that in long term savings, too. Then I go grocery shopping, and spend ten bux. So, I put a payment in my ledger, either manually, on the mobile app, or just later on when I download my bank transactions. "My grocery store." "$10." And it wants to know what budget category this is from. So I pick 'groceries.' Now, if I look at my budget, I see I have 40 bux left in the groceries bucket. Cool. Then I go to the fishing lure store, and holy poo poo, they have a Golden Whumpus Spinner Limited Edition! Those things are impossible to find! Buuuuuutttttt it's 75 bux. My budget bucket for Fishing Lures only has 50 bux in it. So, now I have a choice. Do I pull 25 bux out of another category? Maybe I'm willing to forego some dining out this month, so I pull 25 bux out of the Dining Out bucket, and put it into the Fishing Lures bucket. Maybe I decide I can't afford the Golden Whumpus Spinner Limited Edition and sadly walk away. Either way, I'm intentionally making a choice about where my money is going to go, rather than simply categorizing all my spending at the end of the month and noting that I'm in the red because I spent too much. I really have to think about where every dollar I actually have is going. quote:My only concern is that one of my issues with budgeting I think is anxiety. I have a steady job and no issues with paying things off, but I think I avoid going into my bank account out of some anxiety. With Mint, I felt like I could feel less anxious because I had prepared guardrails, notifications and automation so I could quickly check and get relief that "everything is going fine". YNAB will solve your anxiety issues, because you always know how much money you have, what your money is doing, and if you really can spend that money. quote:But, if this takes a lot of work to keep running then I have to be realistic. How often are you folks actively "working" in YNAB as opposed to just monitoring / checking it? With Mint I felt that I'd only need to "work" once per month, and the rest I could just monitor my spending limits. Is this like a weekly thing? Daily? I try to enter my transactions into YNAB as I make them; i.e. while I'm at the checkout or on my way out of the store. I download my bank transactions and reconcile once a week. Takes about five minutes. If you're inputting your spending as you go, you're just going through the list and clicking 'approve' as it matches the bank entries up to your entries. At the end of each month, it's a few minutes to budget the unbudgeted amounts for the next month. Give it a try, it's really not that hard, but reaps so many benefits.
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Nov 7, 2022 14:19
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Like the others have said, it's more conscious and proactive than Mint and it serves s different set of needs. Personally, the wife and I were making budgets and just mystified at the end of the month that our good intentions weren't enough to keep us out if the red (this was before Mint existed or maybe it just wasn't available in our country). Putting the budget in YNAB and then entering the transactions as they were made was a game changer. If YNAB was up to date then I could just look and see how much money I actually had left in the category instead of "I feel like I've been pretty good this month". It linked our budget to our spending and that really made a difference for us. We were able to make it through a 3 year stretch with one of us off work or part time while we did Masters degrees without taking on any debt. I guess Mint is more real-time now than it used to be? But reports at the end of the week just felt like getting on the scale instead of counting calories, doing the counting first is what makes it work for me.
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Nov 7, 2022 16:52
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Before YNAB, I used Microsoft Money, then MoneyDance. And they were more like forensic tools than budgeting software. They answered the question 'where did all my money go?' Like examining a crime scene. YNAB and similar tools flip the script. You're not tracking down what you spent money on, you're choosing what you *will* spend money on in the future. You stop looking at your bank account and you start looking at your budget. Like you said, when you're tracking spending, you think in terms of 'I think I have enough' or 'I don't remember spending much on dining out this month, so I should be fine.' With YNAB, you're not looking at your bank balance, you're looking at your budget. Want to know if you have enough in the hobby budget to buy that new hobby thing? YNAB will tell you. No ambiguity. You do or you don't. And if you don't, you can then choose to sacrifice something else, but you're watching the numbers change. It's not 'I don't think I ate out a lot this month,' it's 'I have fifty bucks in the Dining Out category, do I want to take that money out of that category and put it in the Hobby category?' TheCenturion fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Nov 7, 2022 |
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Nov 7, 2022 17:01
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A big thing for me when I first actually committed to doing things the YNAB way, was realizing that even though I was paying off my cards every months and I was living comfortably enough, I was still living paycheck to paycheck. I just didn't understand what paycheck to paycheck really meant-- I thought it just meant "is poor" Switching things into the YNAB mindset got me like three months ahead on spending, which was rad as hell. At this point I keep more of a six-week buffer in my active cash (if something goes terribly terribly wrong I can pull out of my catchall emergency fund or sell some stock or something), but it's still good to know that I am set for the next six weeks at all times.
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Nov 7, 2022 17:11
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TheCenturion posted:Before YNAB, I used Microsoft Money, then MoneyDance. I really like how you describe the other types of software. I used one provided by my bank before YNAB, and this is exactly how it worked - seeing the after rather than considering the before. YNAB budgeting got me through a period of unemployment where I had zero income for two months (graduate students aren't eligible for unemployment after we graduate, isn't that great???). I understand the cost is a turnoff for lots of folks, but it has been an awesome tool for a terrible money manager like me. I feel like I should also mention, I have never had an issue with my credit card accounts. I have used YNAB both for paying off large balances over time, and for paying off the card as I go.
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Nov 7, 2022 18:10
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Oh drat they just added account sharing (upto 5 accounts) and you can do it without others seeing your budget! Finally, something worth the price increase. Time to get my parents on board!
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Nov 10, 2022 16:43
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Harminoff posted:Oh drat they just added account sharing (upto 5 accounts) and you can do it without others seeing your budget! Finally, something worth the price increase. Time to get my parents on board! Unfortunately it apparently means that the sharer or admin can see others’ accounts, others just can't see the admin's. So not entirely the balanced solution I was hoping for. If course this'll limit YNABs loss of revenue than if people sprayed their friends with bonus accounts. I guess it limits it just to parents & kids.
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Nov 14, 2022 17:51
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Yeah its a solution for more than one person having access to the budget/accounts. Not the best but whatever.
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Nov 14, 2022 18:00
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Weird, the email is kinda misleading then?quote:YNAB may have changed your life, but what about the ones you love? Now you can invite your partner, family, or other close-knit group (up to five people) to join your YNAB Together group where each receives their own YNAB account and login—and it’s all included in your subscription.
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Nov 14, 2022 19:10
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Wouldn't be the first time they did a misleading email. But I read up on it when they were tweaking it so maybe it is legit.
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Nov 14, 2022 19:49
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Just bought a subscription.  Tell me it gets easier after the first couple of months of adjusting the budget over time? It’s discouraging to constantly be moving money cuz I didn’t plan for things. It is kind of humbling to realize I really don’t consider or plan my spending and that I need to get a little better control of it.
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Nov 30, 2022 08:02
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It gets easier for sure but you might still be finding random subs or annual payments for a while. It's worth it when your categories start getting overfull once you've got your system nailed down and you can start pulling money out to enjoy nice things!
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Nov 30, 2022 08:43
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greazeball posted:It gets easier for sure but you might still be finding random subs or annual payments for a while. It's worth it when your categories start getting overfull once you've got your system nailed down and you can start pulling money out to enjoy nice things! Would you suggest tightening up my spending to the bare minimum until I can grow an overflow rather than just see how my active spending pays out over a six month period and balance accordingly?
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Nov 30, 2022 09:01
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virinvictus posted:Would you suggest tightening up my spending to the bare minimum until I can grow an overflow rather than just see how my active spending pays out over a six month period and balance accordingly? My wife and I had been working with a spreadsheet budget and going into the red over and over so we started by trying to stick to that budget and gradually split categories and got more specific over the years. We did a completely fresh start after 4 years I think and made all new categories that described things better. In your situation, are you trying to avoid a crisis or are you just trying to rein in your spending? I'm not a fan of austerity for austerity's sake so give yourself a goal to save for if you go that route. Christmas is always a challenge so don't feel bad about everything being hosed up in December. We first signed up in March I think, because we were still dealing with Christmas poo poo in February.
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Nov 30, 2022 09:12
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One thing that's starting to piss me off with YNAB is their privacy policy widget can't be acknowledged or otherwise hidden, and it covers up the last couple categories. I have to make dummy categories now just to deal with it. Been doing this for at least a month now. You'd think they'd notice if they were users of their own software?
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Nov 30, 2022 17:50
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Does it go away if you click on the privacy policy link?
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Nov 30, 2022 18:19
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Nope!
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Nov 30, 2022 18:21
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Tayter Swift posted:One thing that's starting to piss me off with YNAB is their privacy policy widget can't be acknowledged or otherwise hidden, and it covers up the last couple categories. I have to make dummy categories now just to deal with it. seems like a browser issue, i don't have that experience in chrome or firefox
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Nov 30, 2022 18:40
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Yeah, maybe do the usual stuff, like clearing your browser cache. That fixes most such glitches.
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Nov 30, 2022 19:17
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Ok, we moved from ynab 4 to the subscription app a couple years ago. Overall I really like it, but I’ve been struggling to make the targets work like I want them to. I’m trying to use the “needed for spending” savings target to budget the proper amount for daycare each month. I’d like to have $4,500 in the budget category at the end of the month for next month’s bill. I then pay the bill by the 5th, which varies by the number of weeks in the month, and want to save back up to $4,500 again. Instead I get this:  YNAB sees that I set a net of $4,500 aside for this month and stops there. It then fails to direct me to fill the coffers back up and leaves me with $172 to pay for daycare next month. I can’t figure out the behavior of this spending target or how to make it work for me.
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Dec 1, 2022 00:32
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I may be misinterpreting your use case, but what about the 'Savings Balance' type?
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Dec 1, 2022 18:54
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I am confused about something that I suspect is quite basic. If I look at this month I have say $5k “ready to assign” after filling all the December buckets. But if I look at January that number drops to $500 before I have actually assigned anything in Jan. The difference seems to be the amount of my credit card debt **last month**. There is no particular reason to think that the spending will be split the exact same way between my card and cash this month, and my current CC balance is zero because I just paid it. How does this work? E: I suspect what I really want to do is net off my underspent categories (“available” > amount needed for this month) against my negative CC available amount but I’ve no idea how. Beefeater1980 fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Dec 3, 2022 |
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Dec 3, 2022 04:53
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If your CC is all paid off, just re-create that account as a checking account. Then you don't have to deal with the confusing clam-shell shuffling and it makes a lot more sense.
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Dec 3, 2022 14:16
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apatheticman posted:https://www.budgetwithbuckets.com/download/ Heh, I came here seeking for a cheaper alternative. Thanks!
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Dec 8, 2022 01:54
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Does it have reports yet? So far any alternative didn’t do it for me for the lack of the income-expense report like in YNAB (the large grid with all in- and outflows).
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Dec 8, 2022 09:56
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YNABJ - Blowjob or Bud(J)get - Why not plan for both? This thread has been ongoing for almost 9 years, and only shoved a teensy section about alternative software. Now that YNAB isn't the ONLY premier super best software (Probably still the overall best, but $$$), may be time to revamp the OP. The theory is the same for planning ahead, but the software maybe different. Any suggestions for a new OP? Going to do a "past" vs "future" thinking section (IE: Mint vs YNAB, much like TheCenturion's explanation a few posts up. Then having software categories in both. Also if anyone wants to help my lazy rear end with features for the software itself, would be helpful!
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Dec 14, 2022 13:50
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So I am back on YNAB and I have only been doing this for 2 weeks. Should I delete my account, and then use a referral link to make a new account? Will I automatically get two months free instead of 1 or do I have to subscribe to get that free month?
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Dec 21, 2022 00:56
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I used YNAB pretty religiously for a few years, about a decade ago. Since then I've used it off and on more as a correction tool for a couple months here and there when we would change jobs, have a kid, or something else that was a significant disruption to our budgeting. We moved to Canada a couple years ago, which was a significant disruption to our budgeting, but I just never got around to our budgeting so I've decided to go full steam for the next year (and however long after) to get a handle on things now that all our immigration, moving, and other new stuff is sort of behind us. So I'm sure I'll have other questions down the road as the last time I was really into this it was still just YNAB 4. But first question: is there a way to tell YNAB to handle different currencies? We still have USD savings and USD retirement funds along with our CAD finances. So if I want to import our USD savings account, is there an easy way to tell YNAB the currency difference? I don't think it makes much of a practical effect other than it is bugging me. I suppose I can just move all of them into "off-balance" or whatever the name is for accounts that shouldn't go towards your day to day money.
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Dec 29, 2022 19:59
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Voodoofly posted:I used YNAB pretty religiously for a few years, about a decade ago. Since then I've used it off and on more as a correction tool for a couple months here and there when we would change jobs, have a kid, or something else that was a significant disruption to our budgeting. Just label it a USD account, if you aren't touching it that much it shouldn't matter for currency conversion, also drop the savings it in a category labeled USD and you're fine. If you need to actually use it you can do the FX gain/loss at time of use. Would suggest savings would be on account, retirement funds would be off account.
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Dec 29, 2022 22:01
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Currency conversion always gets on my nerves in YNAB, there's a plugin that makes it easier though: https://ynab.rmillan.com/plugins/multi-currency It will convert at the daily rate on the day the conversion is done, so things may not always line up exactly depending on if you're always up to date and have the plugin set to run daily (I don't). I'd just make small adjustment transactions when it was time to reconcile. All of my bank accounts and most of my day-to-day is in one currency but this country is really small and nobody else uses our currency so there can be a lot of transactions to manage from time to time. Most of my issues went away when I got a card that does zero commission currency conversion (Revolut) and then I can just enter the amount in my local currency.
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Dec 30, 2022 00:43
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Is there any easy way to catch ynab back up after an absence? I haven’t used it for more then a year, and don’t want to have to manually upload and tag the data for that period. But I also don’t want to have to make a new budget and recreate all my existing categories. Although that’s probably the better option at this point.
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Jan 1, 2023 00:05
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Demon_Corsair posted:Is there any easy way to catch ynab back up after an absence? I haven’t used it for more then a year, and don’t want to have to manually upload and tag the data for that period. "Make a fresh start" keeps your old categories and scheduled transactions.
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Jan 1, 2023 00:15
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I don't take new year's resolutions too seriously anymore but it's handy to have the budget history to spot some places I could cut back this year. Mostly thanks to the YNAB Toolkit extension reports which remain far better than the built-in ones. edit: I meddled enough with my categories throughout the year and now I'm spotting a bunch of earlier purchases that would fit better elsewhere. Do I dare meddle with the past? Yeah. And yeah, I would just do a fresh start, manual uploading is pretty hassle-free but good luck trying to identify months' worth of mystery purchases. uvar fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Jan 1, 2023 |
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Jan 1, 2023 01:04
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My free trial is about to expire. I am debating if I want to close my account and start a new one, using a referral code or keep the one I have and let it sit in idel until I get the money to buy a subscription. It's only a month's worth of data so it might not be worth it to keep the "history".
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Jan 1, 2023 16:07
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DrNewton posted:My free trial is about to expire. I am debating if I want to close my account and start a new one, using a referral code or keep the one I have and let it sit in idel until I get the money to buy a subscription. It's only a month's worth of data so it might not be worth it to keep the "history". Try buckets before you make the plunge. Doesn't do auto import but... its cheaper. Like free if you want it to be (it just ads a budget line to pay them eventually). https://www.budgetwithbuckets.com/ (To be completely transparent, gently caress YNAB for their subscription price, its lovely and exploitative) apatheticman fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Jan 1, 2023 |
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Jan 1, 2023 19:07
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apatheticman posted:Try buckets before you make the plunge. I tried Buckets but I am not 100% feeling it just yet. I use to be part of YNAB for years, then deleted my account after being money strong and yeah some of their business choices were madding. However, things happen that completely wiped me out of my savings and had to borrow from loved ones. Right now I just want to use something I am familiar with. I just do not have the mental compacity at the moment to learn a new layout/etc. I chose to delete my account and start a new trial with a referral from a Canadian. Considering that we pay an arm and leg to use YNAB for a year, that person could use the free month. I am keeping an eye on buckets though.
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Jan 1, 2023 20:02
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After trying out Buckets for a month, it didn’t have all the features I want. I’m sticking with YNAB4 for now. However Buckets looks like it has serious potential to eventually replace YNAB4 so I’ll be keeping my eye on it.
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Jan 5, 2023 17:43
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I was way behind on the thread and curious about nYNAB so my wife and I could possibly start using it. It was funny going through all the posts convincing me not to. We've been using financier (https://app.financier.io/) since '15/16, and I think we'll just continue to use that. I'm ok with entering transactions manually, and I'm happy to throw $12/year at them. It's also been open-sourced and there really isn't any active development, but it works well enough for our needs. Someone developed a mobile version of it as well (https://app.fmobile.io/), which works pretty well on my phone. I do own YNAB4, but we never had the classic iphone app so looks like we're out of luck there. I had also paid $99 for lifetime access to budgetwise.io, but I never ended up using it as there were some big things missing for me, but that was years ago. Not sure what the state of it is now.
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Jan 5, 2023 21:08
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