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You can add forward-dated transactions in YNAB, so if you want you can add six months of future paychecks and budget for those months without it looking like you've massively overbudgeted. The total account balance will look messed up but you can still reconcile to the cleared balance so you don't lose out, and this way you can check you're budgeting enough to cover future expenses etc.
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Jul 18, 2013 00:11
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Seriously to anyone else that didn't like YNAB, I love EEBA.
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Jul 18, 2013 00:29
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Briantist posted:I have 2 perspectives to YNAB, because my girlfriend and I have our finances separate and we both use YNAB. I am doing well enough, not at the brink at all (I know this was Rurutia's phrase, not yours), and my girlfriend is building her own business while paying off student loans and other debt, so her budget is way more.. lean. In my view it's working well for both of us. Maybe I wasn't clear. YNAB as a software program works fine and as I said is just a more streamlined version of what I'd already done in Excel. I'll be using it since I paid $15 for it which I'm happy with. I don't think it was worth $50+ and it's the insistence on their specific methods that grates on me (hence responding to Phantom's comments about their Rules). The specific methodology do seem to work better for more 'lean' budgets if that wording suits your tastes better. I wasn't making any indictment on people who like YNAB or its methodology, the above is obviously all opinion. I'm pretty poor myself but saved a large cushion and live very frugally so their methods really didn't make sense to me (for instance, I can afford to just pay $500 for item X now and reap the benefits while paying myself back over Y time without jeopardizing my emergency fund, versus having the money slowly accumulate in my bank account and do nothing). In addition, I also manage the budget for the household where my fiance makes far far more than I do, so that might taint my view. But there's a few quirks in the software that has workarounds if you don't want to use their method but when you read on the forums about them, there's a bit of a snobby attitude in that they keep insisting that you should use their method and not use the workaround. I think people are talking past each other when some are referring to the specific methodology and usage they promote and some are referring to the software itself. My criticisms are largely on the former. Rurutia fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Jul 18, 2013 |
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Jul 18, 2013 00:33
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Having people here discoursing over tools does bring a lot of good things to light, particularly if we can be reminded of those special tricks we use to make our money work for us:Rurutia posted:(for instance, I can afford to just pay $500 for item X now and reap the benefits while paying myself back over Y time without jeopardizing my emergency fund, versus having the money slowly accumulate in my bank account and do nothing) I think it's fair that people are at different places. I have no particular troubles with Mint, YNAB, and friends, but I feel people here have pointed out limitations for their use, restrictions to their intent/methods, of failures to supply what's needed in certain cases. I outgrew Money, then Quicken, then spreadsheets many moons ago. I have something above 50 logical accounts that are active, spread among multiple physical accounts with different forms of split interest earning, and my base salary goes to nearly 30 of them. Maybe I should buy YNAB just to see it crash.  Briantist posted: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. This did make me think of a question earlier today, however, which is admittedly a bit relativistic. If you will admit a slight bit of absurdity: pre:2013-07-20 You have $1000 in your checking account. 2013-07-31 Purchase $1000 of gold (to be shipped) from some vendor. 2013-08-01 Credit card files transaction report. $0 balance. 2013-08-02 Vendor reserves gold, charges $1000 to CC company. 2013-08-03 CC verifies charge for $1000. 2013-08-04 Vendor ships gold via special shipping company. 2013-08-06 Gold arrives in armored vessel. 2013-08-10 CC bill received. $0. 2013-09-01 CC files transaction report. $1000 balance. 2013-09-10 CC bill received. $1000. Due by 9/25. 2013-09-20 Electronic check schedule with checking account, $1000 to CC. 2013-09-22 Electronic check reports as "In Progress" in checking account. 2013-09-24 Electronic check reports as "Cleared" in checking account. 2013-10-01 CC files transaction report. $0 balance. 2013-10-10 CC bill received. $0 due. Report shows "Payment received, Thank you" for 9/23. If everything was cash for trade, we could be reasonably certain of our balance. As we move to verifying receipts at the end of day, or entering items that a tool has "missed" at the end of the week, or dealing with balancing at the end of a ten-day vacation, we're necessarily running things as a debit to other of our accounts. I would hope that we budget for at least some of this, and how "tight" it is depends on one's buffer. This is OP "Section 6. Boundary mismatch and inflation". 
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Jul 18, 2013 03:55
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PhantomOfTheCopier posted:Having people here discoursing over tools does bring a lot of good things to light, particularly if we can be reminded of those special tricks we use to make our money work for us: I actually just came back from a 10 day vacation, and took extra days to have some dental work, so I had like a 2 week hiatus from entering transactions (except a few cash transactions for which I had no receipt, and entered on my phone). That's the longest I've gone so far without keeping up with things, and it was all fine, just took a little longer than usual. You don't have to buy YNAB to try it; the trial is 35 days (this is mostly directed at other people who might want to try it, not trying to get you to). For that list of events you posted, I would record the following transactions: 7/31 - In my CC account: purchased $1000 of gold from Vendor in category Survivalist Equipment (as uncleared) 8/3 - Clear the above transaction (I assume that CC verifies the charge means that if I look at the account I'll see the charge and the balance or at least available credit will reflect it) 9/20 - In my checking account: record a transfer of $1000 to the CC account (uncleared). This will create an associated ingress transaction in the CC account (uncleared). 9/22 (or 9/24) - Mark the checking transaction as cleared (in YNAB they describe cleared as when the bank "knows" about the transaction, and this is generally how I use it so either date works) 10/1 - Mark the CC side of the transaction as cleared. From 7/31, the category balance for Survivalist Equipment and the amount available to budget would be affected (and that's what's most important). The account balances (as shown on the left) are affected right away when you enter transactions, it's only when you click into them that you can see the breakdown of cleared/uncleared. In this way, cleared vs uncleared is less important in YNAB and I usually use it as a way of noting that the balance I see if I look at the bank's web site won't match at this time, or more frequently I use it as a way of reminding me that I need to do something else with that transaction or review it when it clears (like with write-in tips at restaurants on credit cards, so I can be sure the final amount they entered matches what I wrote). In the end I feel like your budgeting philosophy (or the way you execute it) might just be outside the bounds of what YNAB works well for (which is not an indictment of your methods in any way). And again, I'm not trying to push a particular method or tool on anyone. Sorry to everyone if it's coming off that way, I'm enjoying the discussion.
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Jul 18, 2013 17:01
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I'm pretty sure his point was that, from the day that he bought the gold, to the day that the gold was actually paid for by someone, 80 days have passed. So somehow, for that 80 days, your net worth should be staying at, say $1000 (you just transfered 1k in cash to 1k in gold), but since the cash is taking 80 days to change hands, for that 80 days you actually have 1k in cash and 1k in gold. It's that whole cash float concept right? http://www.theinvestor.tv/money/PlayingTheFloat.htm
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Jul 18, 2013 17:12
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I've been looking at the YNAB stuff and I guess I'm in a different situation in that I don't want a budget, I want a light-weight program that can track expenses and debts for repayment. My girlfriend and I are sharing a bank account as we've just moved overseas and her card has a much better transaction charge than mine. But that means that everything we spend money on gets pulled out of her card, which I've loaded cash onto. We want a program that we can use on our phone to track single purchases and who put what amount in and what amount is owed. E.g. Monthly bus tickets, Total: 70 euro, Shared cost: Me 35, Her 35. Shared payment: Me 10, Her 60. And the program will keep track of this and calculate that I owe her another 25 euro for us to be square. I checked out trackeverycoin and it doesn't have this feature of sharing both cost and payment. Does anybody know of a program or website like this? The optimal scenario is to be able to just whip a phone out and add it right there on the spot after each purchase, and have it track who owes whom and how much.
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Jul 18, 2013 19:44
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tuyop posted:I'm pretty sure his point was that, from the day that he bought the gold, to the day that the gold was actually paid for by someone, 80 days have passed. So somehow, for that 80 days, your net worth should be staying at, say $1000 (you just transfered 1k in cash to 1k in gold), but since the cash is taking 80 days to change hands, for that 80 days you actually have 1k in cash and 1k in gold. Having 1k in cash and in gold for 80 days in this scenario is just a loan of 1k from your credit card (that's where the additional funds come from). But if you want the net worth to remain the same in the budgeting program then his pile of gold should be an account in itself, then the sequence looks like this: 7/31 - In my CC account: transfer $1000 to Gold account 8/3 - Clear the above transaction 9/20 - In my checking account: record a transfer of $1000 to the CC account (uncleared). This will create an associated ingress transaction in the CC account (uncleared). 9/22 (or 9/24) - Mark the checking transaction as cleared (in YNAB they describe cleared as when the bank "knows" about the transaction, and this is generally how I use it so either date works) 10/1 - Mark the CC side of the transaction as cleared. The only real difference here is that the net worth number and the available to budget numbers stay the same. Or if you want the available to budget number to go down while the net worth stays the same, make the Gold account off-budget and then when you do the first transfer you again have to choose a category (Survivalist Equipment).
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Jul 18, 2013 19:44
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Sulla-Marius 88 posted:I've been looking at the YNAB stuff and I guess I'm in a different situation in that I don't want a budget, I want a light-weight program that can track expenses and debts for repayment.
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Jul 18, 2013 19:46
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Sulla-Marius 88 posted:Does anybody know of a program or website like this? The optimal scenario is to be able to just whip a phone out and add it right there on the spot after each purchase, and have it track who owes whom and how much. Maybe try splitwise? It was featured in lifehacker awhile ago. That or like a google spreadsheet?
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Jul 18, 2013 19:54
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This might be what you're looking for. My wife and I used it to track our "fun money"so we didn't have to use physical cash all the time. https://www.clearcheckbook.com/
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Jul 18, 2013 20:02
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tuyop posted:Maybe try splitwise? It was featured in lifehacker awhile ago. Splitwise looks perfect! Just a simple debt tracker. We'll trial it now over the next few weeks and see if there are any issues. Thanks.
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Jul 18, 2013 23:25
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I'd just create a 'gold' account. When you purchase it you transfer $1k from CC to the gold account, when you pay off your card you transfer $1k from checking account to CC, and you occasionally mark-to-market the value of your gold. Doesn't seem super difficult.
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Jul 18, 2013 23:36
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Does anyone have a USAA mortgage that works with mint? I really want to set up a "pay off my loan" goal, but it doesn't show up when I click that goal. Strangely, mint thinks our USAA auto insurance bill is also a loan, but that shows up fine under that category. I don't have any other mortgages, so I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong or if Mint/USAA are just being dumb.
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Jul 19, 2013 03:44
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The latter portion of this was a response to Briantist, namely that entering a transaction immediately is pretty much impossible, reconciliation is required, and budgeting necessitates some thought about how much money you actually have to spend. One can create tricks with fluidity with spare money, but that becomes very difficult if a bank account total drops to nearly zero with every transaction.Briantist posted:I can't tell for sure but it sounds like you have actual separate accounts for what most people would just use a category in YNAB/Mint. I could see how that would complicate using YNAB since every time you "budget" for something it would also involve transfers. Or maybe I'm just misunderstanding you, and it's a difference in terms. I have a number of "accounts" which are logical containers with an explicit purpose (food, rent, tires). Accounts can have children --- or, thinking in the other direction, accounts are grouped into categories (living expenses, automotive). Those logical accounts are all necessarily a child of a physical account (savings1, checking1, savings2) and "balancing the books" means that the totals in my records match the physical account balances on record with those institutions. Indeed, then, I have lots of accounts, so it would takes lots of categories in YNAB/Mint, and many more than that if one stores rent money in multiple physical accounts, for example. A recorded "transaction" is money moving from one account to another. I do "single-entry bookkeeping" and the system enforces the double-entry side: One account is necessarily debited, the other credited, based on the amount in the transaction. Reports of account balances know how many transactions aren't yet cleared, so you get a cleared and uncleared balance for each. My budgets are effectively a plan for income. When I receive periodic income from an established source, that "budget" is application of percentages to create the transactions necessary to move the money from the creditor account (employer) into the 26 different receiving accounts (food, rent, tires, etc.). I've discussed percentage budgeting before, but I can process income rather instantly, even if it's a tad off from a "precise value" due to on-call bonuses and such, because it's just 25 multiplications (plus sending the leftover to 'savings'). No thought required, just "do the plan". I consider "budget" and "plan" to be synonymous. I have been using the same budget since January, and it probably took me an hour (because I redid the entire thing). quote:2 week hiatus... That's the longest I've gone so far without keeping up with things, and it was all fine, just took a little longer than usual. tuyop posted:It's that whole cash float concept right? entry for $1620, and the bank says you have $5000 in your account, all is well. You can move money between GH and HG all you like, and they won't be any wiser. Likewise, everything takes time to clear, so your personal records might take time to enter as well. The notion of "balancing the books" or "auditing the books" is based on that lag, namely that batch reconcilation of accounts can be done and may be more efficient. If I sit down and enter five receipts for gasoline, it's all copy/paste and changing a timestamp and value; there's no wasted time looking around for the right accounts five times over. Briantist posted:I dunno, I feel like that couldn't be his point because the concepts you're talking about are getting to be outside the scope of budgeting.  then we've got a lot of work to do. If people don't have the $500 needed to pay their credit card bill next month because they expected it to be on this month's bill but it hadn't posted yet and then they forgot to click the little button to save more than $500 to pay next month's bill  then we need to point them toward run-on-avoidance resources and help them improve their techniques for tracking expenses correctly. Let's not forget that some people use their tax refund money long before it arrives, and that could be a matter of weeks.Thanks for the links, tuyop and Nocheez. PhantomOfTheCopier fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Jul 19, 2013 |
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Jul 19, 2013 05:22
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Man, you are very sophisticated in your budgeting. 
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Jul 19, 2013 12:49
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tuyop posted:Man, you are very sophisticated in your budgeting.  Perhaps, but it doesn't mean I don't make mistakes or am otherwise lazy. Besides, accounts are pretty easy; for example:pre:Checking (4)
Automobile (15)
Gasoline (18) $332.924
Insurance (17) $97.169
Maintenance (19) $1036.721
Registration (67) $-52.593
Tires (66) $-40.338
Total $1373.883
Money Market (46)
Auto Insurance (50) $1145.935
Auto Maintenance (69) $2773.177
Auto Registration (70) $110.381
Gasoline (64) $2091.648
Tires (71) $629.131
My failure comes not from wasting money on frivolous spending, but on wasting potential earnings and putting my money to use. I have a good year's worth of salary saved up. Here's the rough budget and how many months ahead I've been: pre:Account Percent 2012-07-31 2013-07-26 Rent 21.70 11.21 13.00 Food 10.06 14.36 19.35 StudentLn1 7.78 2.34 0.57 lies StudentLn2 2.42 7.21 7.61 lies Fuel 2.27 28.49 29.65 Memberships 2.25 1.90 1.17 Phone 2.14 9.67 10.86 AutoMaint 1.90 17.19 46.58 AutoInsur 1.50 25.33 21.38 Electric 1.46 13.33 15.52 ISP 0.66 12.21 11.87 Movies 0.53 26.42 15.86 Liquor 0.53 38.62 33.90 LivingExp 0.53 14.33 34.77 RentInsur 0.52 21.83 19.56 Laundry 0.30 13.50 23.99 Health 0.29 59.41 73.07 Entertainment 0.21 -1.14 -24.03 AutoRegst 0.17 14.84 12.53 ForestPass 0.14 7.87 -1.93 Even with the Roth dumping, and maybe taking a long vacation if I switch jobs, the biggest remaining chunk is more retirement savings (which is not shown above). I do some, but I should work to "get ahead" as much as possible while I can, so I imagine my budget will go into "depletion mode" for a while to make up the difference. In the end, I don't think it's that difficult. Categories are little budget microcosms, so you might have food saved in multiple places (like three, haha), but it has given me better control over transferring funds in the past. I used to transfer into the money market after each paycheck back when I had a tighter budget, and transfer out before large purchases, but now it's kinda nice to have the buffer in savings since I might churn through $3k (and need to maintain a $1k minimum) while bills come and go and the paycheck waits until month end. I'm sure there are some ways to do this with cloudy software, but most of them would seem to take a great deal more typing and clicking around... and then I probably wouldn't do it.
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Jul 27, 2013 06:39
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This is probably a very basic accounting question, but here it goes. I'm using an Excel spreadsheet to track my budget. I've started using two of my credit cards to churn points in certain categories. I was paying the cards off almost weekly through my bank but it was making me confused about where to track the money. Am I better off just paying the credit cards on the due date, for whatever the statement balance is and tracking the purchases under the category as I spend? Seems like if I do it right, my gas + groceries for one month should equal my Amex bill the next month?
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Jul 29, 2013 04:09
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I really love that your money is tracked to the thousandth, Phantom.Dantu posted:This is probably a very basic accounting question, but here it goes. I'm using an Excel spreadsheet to track my budget. I've started using two of my credit cards to churn points in certain categories. I was paying the cards off almost weekly through my bank but it was making me confused about where to track the money. Am I better off just paying the credit cards on the due date, for whatever the statement balance is and tracking the purchases under the category as I spend? Seems like if I do it right, my gas + groceries for one month should equal my Amex bill the next month? Yeah you could treat your CCs as accounts, budget the money based on category, and then move the money when your statements are due. The money movement does not count in your budget because it's not spending, the spending occurs when you buy the thing with the CC. Record the spending.
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Jul 29, 2013 16:30
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Dantu posted:This is probably a very basic accounting question, but here it goes. I'm using an Excel spreadsheet to track my budget. I've started using two of my credit cards to churn points in certain categories. I was paying the cards off almost weekly through my bank but it was making me confused about where to track the money. Am I better off just paying the credit cards on the due date, for whatever the statement balance is and tracking the purchases under the category as I spend? Seems like if I do it right, my gas + groceries for one month should equal my Amex bill the next month? I’m not answering the question you are asking, but be careful. Study after study shows that when people have reward cards and they earning points they spend more. Everyone always says they are the exception to this rule, but credit card companies are not dumb and if customers with reward cards were not over time profitable, they would not offer points. I don’t care how often you make the payment, but I agree that no matter when or how often you pay, the money is spent when you buy the stuff and that is when you should be monitoring the spending and what you should be tracking.
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Jul 29, 2013 17:22
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Dantu posted:This is probably a very basic accounting question, but here it goes. I'm using an Excel spreadsheet to track my budget. I've started using two of my credit cards to churn points in certain categories. I was paying the cards off almost weekly through my bank but it was making me confused about where to track the money. Am I better off just paying the credit cards on the due date, for whatever the statement balance is and tracking the purchases under the category as I spend? Seems like if I do it right, my gas + groceries for one month should equal my Amex bill the next month? The only thing I've noticed regarding using credit cards like this, is most cards update your credit report when your statement is cut. If you care about your credit score and are trying to keep it as high as possible your utilization could get out of whack. For example if you spend 3K a month on a 5K limit card and wait for your statement to cut, the CC company will report your balance as 3K on your credit report showing 60% utilization. It doesn't matter if you pay it off completely as they probably won't update your report again until your next statement is cut. Ideally you want utilization below 25% or so. If you're talking about putting 2K on a 10K card though, that won't make a big difference. I personally pay my card about a week before the next statement is cut so the reported balance to the credit reporting companies is low or zero.
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Jul 29, 2013 19:27
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tuyop posted:I really love that your money is tracked to the thousandth, Phantom.  and budgeting percentages have five places after the decimal.Dantu posted:"Credit cards"... Keep two accounts in your spreadsheet that are used to pay the two cards. When you make a purchase on a card, record the transaction and move the money from the appropriate category (Food, fuel, etc.), into the CC payment account. In this way, when the bill comes, you will always have more in the CC payment account then the amount billed on the monthly statement, and you won't use that money for other purchases since your spreadsheet has it isolated for those payments.
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Jul 29, 2013 19:39
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PhantomOfTheCopier posted:Mills Alternatively, set up automatic payments with your CC company for the full statement balance from your chequing or whatever. Spend freely within your budget, leave your money where it lies (your chequing). It will all get taken care of by computers and you'll never pay an extra fee. I mean, as long as you never spend money that you don't have. That's a good spreadsheet method to keep track of it, though.
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Jul 29, 2013 20:25
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Zeta Taskforce posted:but credit card companies are not dumb and if customers with reward cards were not over time profitable, they would not offer points. The bank gets paid more than 1% for processing transactions, so it's possible for them to make a profit off of a 1% rewards card without ever charging a fee or any interest.
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Jul 29, 2013 21:31
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Hey, so in YNAB, I just entered in all my cash stuff for the month since it's payday. Each payday I'm going to withdraw cash for different categories like groceries, gas, etc. and then I just want to enter the full amount I withdraw in YNAB so that I don't have to enter in 9 billion cash transactions during the month. So I just did that along with items I'm transferring to savings. Now it says I'm like $1500 over budget. Huh? How do I fix this? I entered everything as outflows...was this wrong? And none of what I entered is showing on the main budget screen either.
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Jul 30, 2013 12:53
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Hip Hoptimus Prime posted:Hey, so in YNAB, I just entered in all my cash stuff for the month since it's payday. Each payday I'm going to withdraw cash for different categories like groceries, gas, etc. and then I just want to enter the full amount I withdraw in YNAB so that I don't have to enter in 9 billion cash transactions during the month. Uh, you need to budget your categories out in the budget screen, and then record your spending in the accounts screen (AKA the "register"). The spending in the accounts makes up your outflows, and the outflows subtract from your budgeted amounts to make the balance. Also, this is a strange way to use YNAB. Just saying.
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Jul 30, 2013 15:49
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tuyop posted:Uh, you need to budget your categories out in the budget screen, and then record your spending in the accounts screen (AKA the "register"). The spending in the accounts makes up your outflows, and the outflows subtract from your budgeted amounts to make the balance. ...I don't understand what's strange? If I budget 200 for groceries per month, and I pull out 200 cash on the first for groceries, why can't I just enter in I spent $200? I'd rather do that than enter in $186.55, then $4.00 for milk a week later? Why does it matter if ultimately I'm going to spend all $200? I did do the budget screen, I just didn't know why it put me over budget when on the account screen I entered it all in.
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Jul 30, 2013 17:16
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Hip Hoptimus Prime posted:...I don't understand what's strange? If I budget 200 for groceries per month, and I pull out 200 cash on the first for groceries, why can't I just enter in I spent $200? I'd rather do that than enter in $186.55, then $4.00 for milk a week later? Why does it matter if ultimately I'm going to spend all $200? It's just not typical use. Typical use is to enter each transaction rather than some kind of envelope. If you can meet your financial goals doing it this way then it sounds excellent as a no-stress alternative to puzzling over CC transactions every Thursday. I'm not really sure why it would put you over budget unless you took out more cash in some categories than you budgeted, resulting in a negative balance in some categories. Like, if you did: 200 in groceries 220 in gas 70 in booze And then recorded outflows (cash withdrawals in your case) as: 100 groceries 120 gas 80 in booze Then you're going to be overbudget $10 even though you have tons of money left, because that's how the whole category system works.
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Jul 30, 2013 17:24
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tuyop posted:It's just not typical use. Typical use is to enter each transaction rather than some kind of envelope. If you can meet your financial goals doing it this way then it sounds excellent as a no-stress alternative to puzzling over CC transactions every Thursday. OK...I had a complete idiot moment and looked at everything again. I put a number pretty close to our total income in a calculator, then started subtracting categories, and that was why. I really was over budget. I just didn't think it was possible to be over by $1700. This month we won't be able to save anything or pay off our small credit card like we hoped. It's because of a $300 out of town wedding and a $200 computer repair, neither of which I/we can back out of going to or paying for. I managed to get it down to $170 over, which I'm hoping I overestimated in some cash categories like groceries and gas for the cars. I already moved money to savings today since my paycheck came, but I'm gonna have to move it right back out to checking. Oops.  I am hoping September will be a lot better. There's no expenses looming on the horizon, so hopefully at that point we can pay off our smallest credit card (~$460) and start getting money into savings.
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Jul 30, 2013 18:54
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Hip Hoptimus Prime posted:...I don't understand what's strange? If I budget 200 for groceries per month, and I pull out 200 cash on the first for groceries, why can't I just enter in I spent $200? I'd rather do that than enter in $186.55, then $4.00 for milk a week later? Why does it matter if ultimately I'm going to spend all $200? I would at least do it the long way until you have a solid grasp on how much you actually need to budget each month for each category. Of course I just started YNAB as well and I could be completely wrong. Drunk Johnny fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Jul 30, 2013 |
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Jul 30, 2013 21:37
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Drunk Johnny posted:I think it helps you keep track of how much you are actually spending. Also it will help control your spending. If you budget 200 for groceries and only need 150, you will be more likely to spend the extra 50 if you just take it out all at one time. If you were tracking it more precisely you will know to only budget 150 per month on groceries, and you can budget the 50 elsewhere. When you consider this over multiple categories I think you will be able to save more/budget more efficiently. You might be better off with the envelope method. YNAB (and maybe all budgeting) is essentially a virtual envelope method anyway. If you insist on having the cash on hand and not recording transactions, then using real envelopes might be better than YNAB for you.
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Jul 30, 2013 21:49
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Briantist posted:I dunno, I feel like that couldn't be his point because the concepts you're talking about are getting to be outside the scope of budgeting. Net worth shouldn't change in those transactions. The purchase creates an offsetting asset (the promise to deliver the gold, then the gold itself once it arrives) and liability (accounts payable). When you pay the credit card bill, you extinguish an offsetting asset (the cash) and liability the account payable charge. I'm not sure how YNAB works for asset accounting, but I'm pretty sure that's how you should book those transactions if you're doing double entry bookkeeping.
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Jul 30, 2013 22:13
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KernelSlanders posted:Net worth shouldn't change in those transactions. The purchase creates an offsetting asset (the promise to deliver the gold, then the gold itself once it arrives) and liability (accounts payable). When you pay the credit card bill, you extinguish an offsetting asset (the cash) and liability the account payable charge. I'm not sure how YNAB works for asset accounting, but I'm pretty sure that's how you should book those transactions if you're doing double entry bookkeeping. Indeed, though, this is why I have credit card payment accounts, to represent assets that are tied up (then there's the issue of cleared versus uncleared), but it need not be as complicated as a double-entry system, in general. In fact, in what I'm using right now, a transaction clears; there is no method of temporal delay, so money transfers between accounts might look weird if one isn't careful.
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Jul 30, 2013 23:06
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Another question about debt payoff. My husband bought an iMac before he even knew I existed. He financed it through Pioneer Military Lending (ugh--they are horribly predatory) and on his paperwork for it, the interest rate is 18%. He set up an allotment on MyPay to pay them, so we've never like, "made a payment" in a sense that the money was already gone from his check. However now that I set up YNAB I asked him if I could look at the paperwork for it last night. His monthly payment on the computer loan is $147 per month! So I'm thinking that is what we should kill first because a) it is the biggest monthly payment we have, b) the interest rate is the worst out of all our debt, c) there's still 15 months left until payoff on it (with a remaining balance of $1,998), and just ugh. If we kill off this one, that $147 will make a significant difference in paying off the others. So would it be a good idea to pay it off first? Here is our other bills: Student Loan: $1762.03 - 6.8% interest Credit Card #2: $4,285 - 12.99% interest I have checks coming in the mail in the next 6-8 weeks from accounts I closed that were out of state, for about $700 and $2500, respectively, which I'd like to throw at any of the above. Hip Hoptimus Prime fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Jul 31, 2013 |
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Jul 31, 2013 15:28
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Hip Hoptimus Prime posted:Another question about debt payoff. My husband bought an iMac before he even knew I existed. He financed it through Pioneer Military Lending (ugh--they are horribly predatory) and on his paperwork for it, the interest rate is 18%. He set up an allotment on MyPay to pay them, so we've never like, "made a payment" in a sense that the money was already gone from his check. However now that I set up YNAB I asked him if I could look at the paperwork for it last night. His monthly payment on the computer loan is $147 per month! So I'm thinking that is what we should kill first because a) it is the biggest monthly payment we have, b) the interest rate is the worst out of all our debt, c) there's still 15 months left until payoff on it (with a remaining balance of $1,998), and just ugh. If we kill off this one, that $147 will make a significant difference in paying off the others. So would it be a good idea to pay it off first? Depends on the approach you take. The mathematically correct approach is to pay off your highest interest rate debt first. Others recommend tackling the lowest balance debt first. Some people find the whole motivational aspect of paying off the low-balance debts to be worth the often-negligible difference in interest expenses. But yes, either way you should pay off that iMac. I too financed a computer (from Dell) and kind of forgot about the $33/month payment until I'd spent something like $400 more on the computer than it was worth.
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Jul 31, 2013 15:48
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tuyop posted:Depends on the approach you take. The mathematically correct approach is to pay off your highest interest rate debt first. Others recommend tackling the lowest balance debt first. Yeah, I think paying off the Mac makes the most sense. As for YNAB...I don't think I can use it. It's way too confusing. I went back through again because I felt like it was wrong. Our monthly income combined is $4,963, and I just didn't think it was right that we couldn't fund savings accounts *and* pay off the smallest credit card this month when we have a more than decent income. So I wound up deleting everything I already had entered in YNAB and started fresh, and it turns out that we could pay off that small card and save and go to the wedding/pay the computer guy...so I just did all that. I think for my own sanity though, from now on I'm doing pen and paper and the envelope system. Or maybe I'll pick it up and use it again when we're closer to being debt free.
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Jul 31, 2013 16:20
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Hip Hoptimus Prime posted:Yeah, I think paying off the Mac makes the most sense. IF you want, put some screenshots of what your budget categories are and how you're dividng them up. In addition, when you're getting YNAB started, a good idea is to just put your current balances and budget that out. It'll give you a good idea of what you have going for you for the first cycle. Once you get your first paycheck, put that in, and budget out what you are going to need to spend in that first pay check. Did you get a chance to go through the YNAB method webpages? They're helpful in getting the system set up.
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Jul 31, 2013 16:54
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Shadowhand00 posted:IF you want, put some screenshots of what your budget categories are and how you're dividng them up. In addition, when you're getting YNAB started, a good idea is to just put your current balances and budget that out. It'll give you a good idea of what you have going for you for the first cycle. Once you get your first paycheck, put that in, and budget out what you are going to need to spend in that first pay check. Well, what I wound up doing was I just put all our income combined for August in checking:  This is the budget screen (look at the left column for August):  I had originally put all our savings accounts on there--like vacation fund, car replacement fund, Christmas fund, etc. but then when I'd transfer stuff to them, it would give me weird error messages if I chose the corresponding category from the drop-down (category, not payee). Same for if I entered in a payment to the debt accounts. So I wound up deleting all those and leaving them off budget for now. The iMac isn't on there since it comes directly out of his checks. e: spending money looks high--$600--but included in that is $200 to pay the computer repair guy. We each get $200 per month "allowance." e again: here is the bottom half of the budget screen:  Domani is our dog--we have a health insurance policy for him and I want to get the $500 deductible saved for that. Then the insurance is supposed to pay 90% of vet bills after that if he gets sick. Hip Hoptimus Prime fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Jul 31, 2013 |
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Jul 31, 2013 17:05
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Transfers don't get categories in YNAB because you track the spending in the account that made the purchase, not when transferring money into that account to balance it out. You don't really need to transfer money to those specific categories, just transfer it into savings and then earmark that money for a saving goal
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Jul 31, 2013 17:08
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Yeah you should really watch the videos and maybe go through a webinar if you want YNAB to work for you. I recommend the credit card webinar because that poo poo can be confusing. However, pen and paper and cash envelopes is a good start and you can totally achieve your goals that way.
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Jul 31, 2013 17:51
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