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Our take home pay has shrunk somewhat since we are putting more of my wife's paycheck (50%) into her 401k for the rest of the year. I'll probably do the same thing next year because I want to see how low I can get the taxes. Based on 2013 numbers maxing a 401k and two IRAs along with our other deductions (standard/PEs) should get us down to an effective 1.5% federal and 3-3.5% state. Insane. The savings are about $4,500 Anyway, something my wife and I are doing now to save money/benefit our health is to order a single plate at restaurants and just share it. So two $10-12 dollar meals became a big $17 dollar meal at the last restaurant we were at and we were both full when it was over, usually we feel too full. I got the idea when the girl at Five Guys misunderstood me and just gave me a single large burger instead of two. So my wife and I just split it and the fries and we were fine. She's also eating more whole fruit at home and during our vacation we got rid of the sodas again so I think we're on the right track. I list my budget later, I need to make it a bit more realistic. Also vacation is over so no more eating out 
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Jul 11, 2013 14:04
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Orange_Lazarus posted:Our take home pay has shrunk somewhat since we are putting more of my wife's paycheck (50%) into her 401k for the rest of the year. I'll probably do the same thing next year because I want to see how low I can get the taxes. Based on 2013 numbers maxing a 401k and two IRAs along with our other deductions (standard/PEs) should get us down to an effective 1.5% federal and 3-3.5% state. Insane. The savings are about $4,500 Why would you try to defer tax with a trad IRA when you're already in a low tax bracket? Roth it and watch out for your contribution limits.
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Jul 11, 2013 15:02
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Engineer Lenk posted:Why would you try to defer tax with a trad IRA when you're already in a low tax bracket? Roth it and watch out for your contribution limits. I live in North Carolina, second highest tax bracket in the nation. I think the IRA/401k deductions affect both state and federal income. If I'm wrong I really need to drop the IRA and go back to a ROTH. Anyway here's how it looks in NC:  Standard deduction is like $6,000 and there are no other exemptions. Here's what I got using this state/federal 2013 calculator using only the standard deductions and 2 personal exemptions. I would file jointly with my wife. I'm guessing we'll have to use the standard deductions since we will be renting or will own a home completely in the future. Owed: Only standard deductions Federal/State Owed: $8,772.50 Owed: Only using 401k/Standard Deductions to Federal/State: Federal/State Owed: $4,992.50 Owed: using 2 IRAs/401k/Standard Deductions Federal/State Owed: $2,772.50 401k/IRA savings vs just standard deductions: $6000 Savings using IRAs vs just the 401k: $2220 I only want to do this for a year in 2014 (so yeah, taxes will be a little different then I'm sure) to get an IRA maxed out, then I would go back to funding my Roths. I'm also assuming that I'll be staying in an apartment or renting so there won't be a mortgage interest deduction so I'll have to use the standard. I'm sure this is probably going too far but that's why I really appreciate having you guys around to tell me I'm going to far. Part of me just wants to do this for fun, I mean I'm sacrificing a lot but still paying a higher percentage than GE and I don't get any tax credits either edit: Had to fix a few things. Sephiroth_IRA fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Jul 11, 2013 |
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Jul 11, 2013 16:33
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Orange_Lazarus posted:I live in North Carolina, second highest tax bracket in the nation. I think the IRA/401k deductions affect both state and federal income. If I'm wrong I really need to drop the IRA and go back to a ROTH. Okay - this makes almost no sense. From your first numbers, you're only in the 15% federal tax bracket, so even paying the full 7.75% in state taxes that only pushes your margin to 22.75%. If you retire in the great state of Washington (no state income tax) you'd come out better putting money in your Roth unless you plan to not go over the 25% bracket in retirement (around 85k/yr with the standard deduction for 2014). You're taking money off your top margin now in the anticipation of your top margin later - since the difference in NC is only 0.75-1%, you don't gain that much by gaming the system. E: You save 0.75% on your marginal taxes by dropping your income below the magic 60k threshold. You run the risk of +10% federal if you end up with more income in retirement (plus whatever state taxes). I would go for the Roth. Engineer Lenk fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Jul 11, 2013 |
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Jul 11, 2013 18:29
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The thing is I currently live on $30k with my wife which includes my $12,000 mortgage and I'm quite happy. So I don't see why I need to take more than an inflation adjusted $30k a year when I retire without a mortgage. So I doubt taxes would be an issue. Everything we enjoy is cheap. Sephiroth_IRA fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Jul 11, 2013 |
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Jul 11, 2013 21:58
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Orange_Lazarus posted:The thing is I currently live on $30k with my wife which includes my $12,000 mortgage and I'm quite happy. So I don't see why I need to take more than an inflation adjusted $30k a year when I retire without a mortgage. So I doubt taxes would be an issue. There are required minimum distributions from a 401k and trad IRA when you hit 70.5 (but not from a Roth until after you die). If you keep socking away money at this rate you'll almost certainly end up paying more taxes in the end. Engineer Lenk fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Jul 11, 2013 |
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Jul 11, 2013 22:54
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Ah OK I never really thought about the minimum distributions before but that's definitely something to keep in mind. My plan was to eventually reduce (not eliminate) my tax free contributions in favor of Roths/Taxable accounts because I want to retire or semi-retire early.
Sephiroth_IRA fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Jul 12, 2013 |
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Jul 12, 2013 00:12
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Orange_Lazarus posted:Ah OK I never really thought about the minimum distributions before but that's definitely something to keep in mind. My plan was to eventually reduce (not eliminate) my tax free contributions in favor of Roths/Taxable accounts because I want to retire or semi-retire early. All the more reason to take advantage of your low tax rate now - it's likely that your income will go up over the next few years unless you plan to change careers or drop to part-time immediately. You'll need to save quite a bit outside of an IRA/401k if 'early' means 'before 55'.
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Jul 12, 2013 07:19
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Oh, yeah, if you haven't heard, YNAB is on sale for a little while. I still don't work for them, but I really love their program. 
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Jul 12, 2013 11:39
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Thanks for the tip on the YNAB sale, just started using it at the beginning of the month and really like it so far. Too bad the family get-togethers over the 4th have already wrecked my budget As for budgeting Cash, so far I've been trying to classify it when I take it out of the bank. If I take $100 out at the ATM and intend to use $50 for food and $50 for entertainment, that's how I've been marking it in YNAB. If I have anything leftover from that $100 that I didn't spend on food or entertainment it's basically free game.
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Jul 13, 2013 22:55
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FYI, YNAB is on a flash sale on Steam Greenlight for just 12.49€ and whatever that'd be in dollars. For less than 5 hours from when this post was made.
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Jul 14, 2013 13:09
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Just nabbed the YNAB sale like 15 mins before it expired. Looking at this it lets you set a Cash account so the way I'm going to do it is do a transfer from checking to cash and then add the cash transactions manually like I intend to do everything else. I put the YNAB cost in my entertainment category for the month because I am going to enjoy doing this manually, I've been using Mint for a year but there are all these little annoyances that inputting everything manually will help with. Dealing with cash being one of them.
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Jul 14, 2013 19:10
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I picked up YNAB during the sale, now I'm busy trying to pay attention to the quickstart guide and videos. The main thing I want to ask is, how do I deal with having a pile of cash already in the bank? I'm supposed to add in my checking+savings accounts, yeah, but then it shows me as having  my entire bank amount listed as available.
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Jul 14, 2013 20:47
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Create a regular budget based on your monthly income. Any surplus, which probably are a few/several thousand, stuff that into the emergency savings envelope. --edit: And/or create a bunch of envelopes for (upcoming) projects and expenses you might want to budget for, and stuff money into it.
Combat Pretzel fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Jul 14, 2013 |
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Jul 14, 2013 20:59
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Combat Pretzel posted:Create a regular budget based on your monthly income. Any surplus, which probably are a few/several thousand, stuff that into the emergency savings envelope. --edit: And/or create a bunch of envelopes for (upcoming) projects and expenses you might want to budget for, and stuff money into it. I went through one of the YNAB live web sessions and the main point the guy was making that I didn't realize is even if you need to budget a bunch of things for the whole month, only budget in YNAB down to $0. I, for instance don't have enough money I'm willing to touch to budget all of July yet, so I only should budget for things I want the money I have now to do. I'll go back and add in the rest of my bills for the month once I get paid on Friday. He suggested adding a buffer budget to sock extra money away until that hits your average budget for a month so you can start budgeting for next month, then take that money back out and hide the category once you're done with it. You can even eventually start marking your income as for next month instead of this month, when you earned it. The main thing YNAB tells you to do is to loving ignore your bank account balance when doing spending, instead look at the money you have budgeted for that category. You want to eat out tonight? You don't have $1k, you've got $50 in your Restaurants category, so don't spend more than that $50 dollars. And if you do, look at your budget and lower down a different category to compensate. The video tutorials are actually really useful. 100 HOGS AGREE fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Jul 14, 2013 |
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Jul 14, 2013 21:23
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:You budget the savings amount in the category for your savings, to remove it from your budget. That and as you pointed out, the live seminars, which are free, are really awesome because they will answer your questions about both budgeting as well as the software.
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Jul 15, 2013 00:46
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Reading the recent push for YNAB stuff here and in DogsCantBudget's thread, I must say it seems like there's a great deal of  involved, enough so that each thing I read makes me a bit more concerned about the YNAB methods. What started off as a 'weird' feeling has been progressively turning into  or  or something. It still sounds reasonable for those just learning to budget, but I'm curious how long it takes for all the hidden caveats to become unnecessarily annoying. Do long term users of YNAB start looking for other solutions? What are the biggest limitations?Initial setup sounds like 'the worst', but it leads me to ask a dumb question: Why don't you just lie to the thing and claim your income is that much higher this month so you actually have food money, and balance that by lowering your savings? If you have $10k in savings and you "know" some of it is for food and StrangeExpenseThisMonthA and so forth, why not record $9k in the savings 'envelope' and just tell YNAB that you've already been paid $1k so, woohoo, we can stuff it into these budget accounts? What I do for budgeting became a bit easier to explain after reading some historical double-entry accounting stuff, and it sounds like YNAB has a flavour for some similar trickery. For example, it sounds like credit card balances need to be listed as "off budget accounts", whereas a monthly credit card payment (such as paying down a balance) would need to be listed as a separate account/category/whatever. Is that the YNAB way? If so, that's somewhat classic double-entry. I guess what I do for 'budgeting' is more 'transaction processing', which is single entry with the system enforcing the double-entry side of things. In that model, a budget is nothing more than 'apply a bunch of transactions at the given moment in time'. 
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Jul 15, 2013 17:52
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PhantomOfTheCopier posted:Initial setup sounds like 'the worst', but it leads me to ask a dumb question: Why don't you just lie to the thing and claim your income is that much higher this month so you actually have food money, and balance that by lowering your savings? If you have $10k in savings and you "know" some of it is for food and StrangeExpenseThisMonthA and so forth, why not record $9k in the savings 'envelope' and just tell YNAB that you've already been paid $1k so, woohoo, we can stuff it into these budget accounts? That's exactly what I thought people should be doing when they set up YNAB - presumably, some of the money you have was already "budgeted" for the month you're in and isn't savings in any meaningful sense - I can't understand how or why you'd do it differently. Basically, you tell YNAB your starting checking/savings/whatever account balances, and then you have to budget all that money. Your savings will, presumably, go into savings categories. The leftover money gets budgeted into other things you're going to be spending money on. You don't have to "lie," you just have to budget the money you already have. At the time of initial setup, your on-budget account balances are considered income. OrangeKing fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Jul 15, 2013 |
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Jul 15, 2013 18:10
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I found YNAB to be a total time-waster. I don't want to track every single expenditure and credit. My credit union already has tools to do this for me, and my own spreadsheet is a good way to know where we should be every month.
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Jul 15, 2013 18:27
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PhantomOfTheCopier posted:Reading the recent push for YNAB stuff here and in DogsCantBudget's thread, I must say it seems like there's a great deal of So I'm trying to YNAB, and actually am not quite following their system in July. Mainly cuz I started after most of(if not nearly all) of my bills were paid, and my budget just looked wonky as gently caress when I did it. I ended up at negative 2k for this month, but also know that my wife is getting a 2k paycheck by the end of this week which when I put it in will end up zeroing out. Next month, after I get my first check, I expect to be zero'd out completely, but if you look at my YNAB(which I copied forward for basically the next 12 months), YNAB says that by next August I will be at -114k! Thats right, negative. Instead of saying "well it looks like you spend 114k over the next year on your expenses", it says "looks like you'll be 114k behind as of next year". I wish I could somehow tell it my estimated monthly earnings so that can be taken into account Edit: wife just told me her paycheck...put it in, and yay we're positive for the month(100 bux but its better then nothing!), she doesn't get it till thursday, but she's the company accountant so knows what her payroll will be...just won't mark it cleared till Thursday DogsCantBudget fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Jul 15, 2013 |
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Jul 15, 2013 19:28
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DogsCantBudget posted:So I'm trying to YNAB, and actually am not quite following their system in July. Mainly cuz I started after most of(if not nearly all) of my bills were paid, and my budget just looked wonky as gently caress when I did it. I ended up at negative 2k for this month, but also know that my wife is getting a 2k paycheck by the end of this week which when I put it in will end up zeroing out. Next month, after I get my first check, I expect to be zero'd out completely, but if you look at my YNAB(which I copied forward for basically the next 12 months), YNAB says that by next August I will be at -114k! Thats right, negative. Instead of saying "well it looks like you spend 114k over the next year on your expenses", it says "looks like you'll be 114k behind as of next year". I wish I could somehow tell it my estimated monthly earnings so that can be taken into account First, budget the money you have, not the money you will get. Of course you'll be -114k next August, you're planning on spending money that you don't have yet. Or if you want to do it a totally different way that isn't really following the YNAB method, click on your categories and make the arrow point like this -> What I mean:  Versus  The whole point is not to do your budget a year in advance because your life will change and you need to roll with the punches. Sure you know your rent, but, yeah, you know your rent. Why do you have to enter it 12 months in advance?
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Jul 15, 2013 19:46
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Yea, but it seems I know *MOST* of my expenses. I think for me using YNAB to be able to say well, this month you planned to spend 500$ on restaurants. It's 7/15 and you've spent 400, slow your role and start going to the drat grocery store you idiot. It seems I have 7500$ of monthly expenses.  Of those roughly 4500 are unavoidable expenses(debts like car payments/student loans, rent, food, etc) another 3000 in avoidables/things I'm trying to save. and then 2500 a month which should be "extra money" which can go more into savings, but I want to "really see" what I have next month DogsCantBudget fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Jul 15, 2013 |
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Jul 15, 2013 19:55
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DogsCantBudget posted:Yea, but it seems I know *MOST* of my expenses. I think for me using YNAB to be able to say well, this month you planned to spend 500$ on restaurants. It's 7/15 and you've spent 400, slow your role and start going to the drat grocery store you idiot. It seems I have 7500$ of monthly expenses. God why isn't "debt" recorded as Pre-YNAB Debt? This way its balance is just going to go up forever, messing up all of your balances. To answer your question, it's
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Jul 15, 2013 20:50
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I really like YNAB because I actually like going in and recording every expenditure I do because often, the thought that I have to pull out my phone and go in and record something will make me think "Hmmmm, do I really need to spend money on this?" Usually the answer is no. Mint is great and all but with YNAB my budget feels a lot more proactive than reactive. And I like sitting down and balancing my budget, I actually enjoy getting all my poo poo in order and taking a closer look at what I've been spending my money on. This feels a lot closer to the way my parents/grandparents budgeted, except on a computer. I'll still keep my Mint account because it's useful to be able to see an updated overview of all my accounts but I am definitely a YNAB convert.
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Jul 15, 2013 20:56
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tuyop posted:God why isn't "debt" recorded as Pre-YNAB Debt? How can I convert it? And if so, do I set it as a negative balance(with the loan amount?)
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Jul 15, 2013 21:03
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I'm actually leaving my student load debt offbudget like how you have it. I still record how much goes out to those loans, but I like budgeting extra to my loans every month and not setting it as a massive negative number makes it a lot easier to figure out exactly how much I'm going to overpay. I don't have any other debt and I can just look in the sidebar and see the total amount I owe anyway.
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Jul 15, 2013 21:10
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DogsCantBudget posted:How can I convert it? And if so, do I set it as a negative balance(with the loan amount?) You change the account from off-budget to on-budget. It's really a case of "Do Whatever" anyway, it would just bug me to have a huge balance in "debt" as a line. The way you're doing it makes it easier to figure in interest charges. If you keep your debt on-budget, you can record interest charges as Pre-YNAB Debt itself, and it'll be reflected in the balance of your payments*, or you can do off-budget and have a separate line for interest charges. Whatever. * Make a $150 payment, pay $10 in interest, see a payment of $140 in your debt's line. Edit: Actually, you can do away with the balance by recording your debt payment transfer (from checking to an off-budget account) as an expenditure in the debt category rather than a transfer with no category. This is how I handle my car payment. tuyop fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Jul 15, 2013 |
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Jul 15, 2013 21:14
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PhantomOfTheCopier posted:Reading the recent push for YNAB stuff here and in DogsCantBudget's thread, I must say it seems like there's a great deal of quote:Initial setup sounds like 'the worst', but it leads me to ask a dumb question: Why don't you just lie to the thing and claim your income is that much higher this month so you actually have food money, and balance that by lowering your savings? If you have $10k in savings and you "know" some of it is for food and StrangeExpenseThisMonthA and so forth, why not record $9k in the savings 'envelope' and just tell YNAB that you've already been paid $1k so, woohoo, we can stuff it into these budget accounts? What I did when I set up YNAB, was to instead set up my savings as an off-budget account, so that money is not available for me to budget anyway (I would have to transfer it into an on-budget account and record it as income then), but I haven't heard of anyone else doing it that way. quote:What I do for budgeting became a bit easier to explain after reading some historical double-entry accounting stuff, and it sounds like YNAB has a flavour for some similar trickery. For example, it sounds like credit card balances need to be listed as "off budget accounts", whereas a monthly credit card payment (such as paying down a balance) would need to be listed as a separate account/category/whatever. Is that the YNAB way? If so, that's somewhat classic double-entry. When you first start using YNAB, all spending that was on the credit card from before (that couldn't have been recorded individually) just gets put into a Pre-YNAB debt category, which will be in the negative and go to 0 as you pay it off.
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Jul 15, 2013 21:15
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Of YNAB,tuyop posted:The whole point is not to do your budget a year in advance because your life will change and you need to roll with the punches. Sure you know your rent, but, yeah, you know your rent. Why do you have to enter it 12 months in advance? Yes, it is necessary to make adjustments, by I strongly advocate the saving of $125 each month to pay your six-month, $600 auto insurance bill. "$125?!  ", you say. "But of course, at that rate it takes you two years to save six month's ahead". Any adjustment necessarily occurs when you get your bill and find it to be $650. "Darn, so instead of being 1.5mo ahead, now I'm only 0.92mo ahead, and I should now budget $135.42/mo."How does YNAB handle slackers like me who 'balance their books' long past the transaction dates? While my records always match physical accounts, it's none of their concern if I have an uncleared transaction from Books to CreditCard1 from January.  (I think the worst I remember is a clothing purchase that I entered 14 months afterwards; yeah, that was before I had a good plan for clothes purchases.)
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Jul 15, 2013 22:08
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PhantomOfTheCopier posted:How does YNAB handle slackers like me who 'balance their books' long past the transaction dates? While my records always match physical accounts, it's none of their concern if I have an uncleared transaction from Books to CreditCard1 from January. I think the goal using the method described on the YNAB site is that the budgeter should be actively managing and engaging your finances. The problem with a lot of folks is that they are not actively engaged with their finances. Since the software seems to have been built from the ground up using the methodology described on the site, its hard to get it to fit any other methodology. That being said, the budgeting style they use works, even for larger purchases. The other way to look at the way YNAB seems to be built is that its based off an agile way of looking at budgeting. Rather than planning and then executing your budget (waterfall), they're looking at making people be more agile in their budget (iterative and responding to needs as they arise). For the large bills/large ticket items in my budget, I have 2 categories - somethign I'm expecting (insurance bill or season tickets), and stuff that might need some buffer (I'm never sure how much my registration + smog is but I have an idea). I just divide based on that and plan accordingly (with the corresponding full bill listed in my budget).
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Jul 15, 2013 22:54
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Picked up YNAB when it was cheap to see what the fuss is all about. I read a bit of the founder's philosophy and watched the first video and decided their method was not for me. I currently calculate out what I want my budget to be very finely in Excel, then implement it into Mint in a much more general form to give me much more wiggle room per category. Since we have a large amount of cash on hand, I pretty much ignored the 'Available to Budget' line and just implemented my spreadsheet. In the end, I think it functions now as a streamlined version of my Excel with transaction recording capabilities. Works fine, not something I'd spend $50+ for. Briantist posted:What I did when I set up YNAB, was to instead set up my savings as an off-budget account, so that money is not available for me to budget anyway (I would have to transfer it into an on-budget account and record it as income then), but I haven't heard of anyone else doing it that way. I did the same thing, except for On Budget accounts I did set up an account for our Emergency Funds. I didn't enter in my accounts as they are, but merged accounts where it made sense and split out funds where it made sense. So entering in the Emergency Fund and other short term goal savings as a 'budgeted' expenditure makes it so that the 'Balance' part auto tracks it as if it was all separate accounts, which is nice. Knowing how much to budget per month for those categories is calculated in Excel. PhantomOfTheCopier posted:Of YNAB, I agree. The system seems better for people who are coming back from the brink or already in a really bad situation to get them to a normal state. Shadowhand00 posted:The other way to look at the way YNAB seems to be built is that its based off an agile way of looking at budgeting. Rather than planning and then executing your budget (waterfall), they're looking at making people be more agile in their budget (iterative and responding to needs as they arise). I'm not sure what this means. You're implying that being agile means that you don't plan and execute. Or that being 'waterfall' means you don't respond to needs as they arise and you don't engage in your finances or look over/adjust regularly. Neither is true.
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Jul 16, 2013 00:43
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Rurutia posted:I'm not sure what this means. You're implying that being agile means that you don't plan and execute. Or that being 'waterfall' means you don't respond to needs as they arise and you don't engage in your finances or look over/adjust regularly. Neither is true. Eh, I'm just talking out of my rear end based on how I believe YNAB was actually developed. Its seems like they would use an agile framework for their software development - if that works for them, then it would make sense for them to think of budgeting in a very iterative way. Works for some people, doesn't work for others. Agile and waterfall project management frameworks still respond to change and adjustment. I was just speculating on how their build of the software was so tied to their specific budgeting philosophy.
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Jul 16, 2013 02:43
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Shadowhand00 posted:Eh, I'm just talking out of my rear end based on how I believe YNAB was actually developed. Its seems like they would use an agile framework for their software development - if that works for them, then it would make sense for them to think of budgeting in a very iterative way. Works for some people, doesn't work for others. Agile and waterfall project management frameworks still respond to change and adjustment. I was just speculating on how their build of the software was so tied to their specific budgeting philosophy.
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Jul 16, 2013 06:43
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I just purchased YNAB and maybe I haven't delved into it hard enough but I'm failing to see what advantages this has over the excel spreadsheet I had been keeping for my budget. I'm just a little underwhelmed so far. Maybe it starts to show its usefulness in the second month?
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Jul 17, 2013 01:48
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Tomahawk posted:I just purchased YNAB and maybe I haven't delved into it hard enough but I'm failing to see what advantages this has over the excel spreadsheet I had been keeping for my budget. I'm just a little underwhelmed so far. Maybe it starts to show its usefulness in the second month? If your excel spreadsheet can keep line amounts and selectively pull excess balances from the available to budget for next month or carry that amount forward within that line with the click of a button, then you're way better at excel than me. But yeah, it's basically just a pretty shell for a well-designed spreadsheet with cloud syncing, mobile apps, hotkeys, and a slick interface designed from the ground up around an effective methodology. The advantage for me was the shift from account spending to category spending. It's possible to get that from excel, but it never clicked for me before YNAB. Worth it.
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Jul 17, 2013 02:06
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Basically what tuyop said. If Excel works for you, use it. I'm only about 5 days into YNAB but I like it a lot so far, the mobile app is a big part of that, but it is just so much less complicated than my excel sheet I setup, which I really used more for reporting than budgeting. If you like excel use it, if you think the YNAB system isn't for you, don't use it.
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Jul 17, 2013 02:55
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PhantomOfTheCopier posted:Of YNAB, I get paid twice a month (15th and last), plus at other points in the month from side income, she gets paid little bits at a time over the course of the first 2 weeks of the month. YNAB's approach of entering income when you get it, has been really great in that regard, because even though I have a steady job, I also have side income, so both of us have "variable" incomes that are difficult to account for in a spreadsheet or other budgeting methods/tools I've seen. YNAB is absolutely about planning though; I'm having trouble figuring out why you think it isn't? I see what you're saying about saving $125/month for a $600 6-month bill.. that would work fine in YNAB (quite well actually). You just keep budgeting $125 int hat category every month while spending nothing against it. The "balance" for that category carries over each month. Want to change the amount going forward? Just do it. I budget for lots of things this way, auto insurance, renter's insurance, my scheduled dental work, Christmas, even my car registration (every 2 years). I will say that YNAB does not handle slackers like you very well (I'm not sure of a system that does). If you don't enter your transactions, you aren't looking at a complete picture, so it's difficult to make budgeting decisions. Anyway, I don't mean to keep white-knighting YNAB. You seem to have a negative impression of it and that's fine, but some of the issues you have with it don't seem to be lining up with my experiences. I think people who can use Excel effectively should stick to it; they probably won't get much out of YNAB unless they have specific pain points with the spreadsheet. Excel just wasn't for me.
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Jul 17, 2013 21:58
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Briantist posted:Anyway, I don't mean to keep white-knighting YNAB. You seem to have a negative impression of it and that's fine, but some of the issues you have with it don't seem to be lining up with my experiences. I've been feeling the same way, and I think the variable income aspect is huge. As a freelancer, YNAB has made me so much more confident in my budgeting in a way other things hadn't been able to help me with nearly as much. Of course, it's completely down to what works for you: I felt like I got nothing out of Mint, which a lot of people here swear by, so I can't blame anyone for not liking YNAB either. I will say that I didn't get this criticism either, though: quote:YNAB is absolutely about planning though; I'm having trouble figuring out why you think it isn't? I see what you're saying about saving $125/month for a $600 6-month bill.. that would work fine in YNAB (quite well actually). You just keep budgeting $125 int hat category every month while spending nothing against it. The "balance" for that category carries over each month. Want to change the amount going forward? Just do it. As he says, there's no reason at all that you can't plan ahead for future expenses in YNAB. It rather actively encourages you to, in fact. OrangeKing fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Jul 17, 2013 |
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Jul 17, 2013 22:08
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I don't use YNAB, so I'm stuck going off information that's freely available online and information here. I guess I just don't understand this at all:tuyop posted:First, budget the money you have, not the money you will get. Of course you'll be -114k next August, you're planning on spending money that you don't have yet... It sounds like YNAB supports long term savings (this is not what it sounded like over the last week), but doesn't necessarily promote that approach (?). In any case, I'll take my confusion into the corner and sit for a while. I'm not buying the thing. It sounds like a good piece of the puzzle, appropriate in many cases, very different from Mint and other choices, and probably not for me. Maybe I'll manage to watch some of the video to see if that helps my comprehension. Otherwise, give it four weeks and we'll have forgotten YNAB because this place will be loaded with people excessively lauding Mint.
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Jul 17, 2013 23:01
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I think you can do both? Be flexible in your budgeting and save for irregular expenses. The former should really be how you handle your discretionary spending, I think. In YNAB, I use a note in the line to help me:  Now I know that I need to put 193 in my car insurance line every month, which is my monthly premium plus what I estimate the total premium to cost next year*, divided by twelve. Yes I pay a lot of car insurance. And I'm driving 4400km this month so my gas bill is insane, before anyone mentions it. If for some reason I make less this month, I can always just forgo that extra bit in that line and pay only the bill, or I can just cut spending in discretionary areas. If I come into a bunch of money and choose to do away with funding that line for the next twelve months, I can also just dump like 1200 bucks into it and not worry about it I guess. Flexibility! * I'm not actually doing that right now, but for completely different reasons.
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Jul 17, 2013 23:18
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