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Irritated Goat posted:I do put effort into keeping it up. Am I always on top of it? No but the fact I'm trying to figure out what works for me would mean I'm trying to rectify that. Any transactions with a debitor must be entered and routinely compared; they become harder to reconcile as time goes by. As one builds buffer, however, there's the unfortunate realization that some entries can be significantly delayed. I've entered some receipts nearly a year after the transaction occurred. 
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Jan 16, 2016 00:02
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As you are saving ahead and building buffers, you should have several accounts that are months ahead at this point. For example, "six months ahead" in all expense categories is a common goal. That being the case, and given that having $1k on a credit card is dumb, you should construct a loan into the auto maintenance account to cover the expense. Use a little bit from savings, some from car savings, maybe even a bit from food and rent. Then adjust your monthly into the auto maintenance category so you can pay off the loan in the next twelve months.
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Jan 30, 2016 00:13
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Breetai posted:Ah. Yes. I deliberately fudged the numbers by assuming exactly 2 fortnights in a month which then affects both monthly and quarterly calculations. This both covers worst-case months with regards to income vs. expenses (i.e. Feb), and means that I'm over rather than potentially underestimating my expenses so that I have a small buffer in those categories.  Car Registration, 26.87/fortnight saved, 701.00 annual expected. The best I can come up with is that you've used days per year: 701/26.87*14=365.2400 days per year. Well, that means you're short most years but will make it up every leap year ($0.076 buffer). Every 100 years you're short again (one cent), but you make it up every 400 years. Does that all seem ridiculous? Well, it is. If you want to "fudge the numbers", use 26 fortnights per annum and you won't have to rely on the 4yr or 100yr plan.Contrast that with Internet, 75/mo, saving 37.50/fortnight. You're spending 900/yr but saving 975/yr (at 26 fortnights, and more if you use days per year). That's quite the buffer in the name of "number fudging", unless you intended to save an extra month by year end. And the quarterly? Yeah that's $1600/yr or 61.54/fortnight, so you have an annual buffer of at least $133. While the long term average number of days per year isn't 365, most years have 365dy or 26.07 fortnights. On the other hand, the average month has 365/12/14=2.1726 fortnights. In the end, you're undersaving in some categories (the big ones) and significantly oversaving in others (the small ones). If you're trying to ensure you have the money when you need it, you're better off starting with a balance large enough to cover your "long month" instead of having all that fortnightly extra that could be put to use someplace else. This arithmetic is covered in the first few pages of the thread. Also, please use a "code" block like a normal person so we can copy/paste.
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Mar 7, 2016 05:12
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Boxman posted:Any suggestions on budgeting for couples... without fully co-mingled finances)? I currently use Mint,... If you use "your card" for $100 of groceries, and you're owed $50 from the Boxman+One joint account, then your account is the creditor and the joint account is the debitor. Either it pays you the $50, or it registers that it owes you $50 (just as you would owe a CC company $50). Reconcile later, or use tricks like you owing it money at a later date to keep things in balance. If Mint can handle these types of pseudo-accounts, then it's silly. But you've hit the square nail squarely on the head: Mint and YNAB serve specific and very limited circumstances. You basically need three copies of them going because you have three accounts. Trying to overload them is going to lead to grief followed by a ream of paper to fix the problems. Use spreadsheets and paper now to save on that noise.
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May 22, 2016 02:53
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Perhaps it would help drive home the point that planning and reviewing is important if we renamed the thread from "how to track expenses" to "how to create a budget".
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May 29, 2016 05:40
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And another round of good planning pays off!
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May 30, 2016 17:02
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How much do you plan to spend on each per year?
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May 31, 2016 23:36
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Irritated Goat posted:I honestly couldn't say. I've never planned for clothes or stuff I need around the house. I get it as it becomes necessary. I claim it would be significantly better to create an annual budget for clothing, and living expenses, and adjust when you discover you've significantly misestimated or as the situation changes. There's a few very basic budgeting points here that you seem to be forgetting:
Now then, are you honestly suggesting that you cannot look at your existing wardrobe and get an idea for what will need replaced in the next year? Or that you don't have an idea for how many other articles of clothing might become necessary? Or how many you might randomly decide to purchase? It seems a quick survey through an online retailer would permit a very good estimate of "How much I'll probably spend". General living expenses are set in the same way. After arriving at your planned annual expenses, for each category individually, you decide what you're willing to save based on (remaining) available income and how much falls into your "wants" category (  spending). You then save and spend to your available funds, and the categories permit category tracking. If you go over, oops, it reduces your spending in that category for a while.If you have a "small emergency", you try to make it up by forming a loan from another category, with the expressed requirement that the loan includes repayment terms (hopefully you charge yourself 0% interest). An "emergency" only occurs when the budget becomes forfeit out of necessity. Most life changing events are "budget emergencies", in the sense that you have to burn your budget and replace it entirely (hopefully because you now have more income). If you have to buy $2k of new suits, so be it, as long as your new budget can get you back to positive clothing savings; you still might need to "steal" from elsewhere to make it happen, because a self-loan may not be sufficient, but that's why such events are emergencies. I'm fairly certain this is all in the first five pages of the thread, maybe even the first page. Not remembering the details. It might be time for me to reread the first post.
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Jun 1, 2016 13:57
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Okay thread, impress us with the power of your words! SaveAGoon.
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Jun 1, 2016 23:24
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I'm in agreement on the "slow moves" approach for anything that isn't any emergency. Read the OP. The general idea is that you should feel comfortable holding up to at least one month's extra in each account. If your monthly grocery bill is $400, then you shouldn't be worried if your balance is in the 400-800 range. If it's below 200, you'd better hope the month is more than half over. If it's never below $800 and your monthly expenses have dropped for groceries, it's time to reduce the income in that category (by a tad). There are many reasons to have one to six months ahead in regular expense accounts. It certainly helps spread risk aversion, makes it easier to calculate how much emergency savings you have, and prevents flippant use from developing a pattern of moving things around without reason, as already mentioned. Food prices rise, sometimes unexpectedly due to shortage, so you want the buffer to cover seasonal cost variations and inflation. Once all accounts are one month ahead, it's time to aim for two, etc. Rent is always the worst. In any case, sometimes it's better use of your money to have an account in depletion, but most should be in accumulation.
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Aug 24, 2016 23:55
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If there's one reality to money, it's that dogma will always be broken and in most scenarios by a greater number of cases than originally anticipated. With a spreadsheet you get "you should add correctly" as your axiom. With Mint you additionally get "transactions that happened shouldn't go missing". YNAB is sold as an interface to a dogma, hence 
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Aug 31, 2016 23:30
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If you don't have time to be managing your money, your default position should be to not spend it, as opposed to dumping it all on restaurants and bling. As others have mentioned, the budget needs some more polishing; you have a few realities being masked by the categories you've chosen, which will make it more difficult to identify the silly. For example, you have a ton of food, and while $600 might well represent two nice evening meals plus some number of lunches or lighter evenings out for two people, it's sitting on top of $800 of groceries. That's burning 10% of your monthly just on keeping your stomach from growling. Now then, restaurant food is notoriously bad; with the sodium content alone, your doctor clipboards should be bursting into flames. You're also pulling the efficiency gambit when in fact most meals take the same prep time for a restaurant as for a family. Water takes the same time to boil, pasta the same time to hydrate, and if you just have to coat it in tomato glop, then you can dump that from a jar into a saucepan and it'll be warm in five. Compared to $15-20 at a restaurant, you'll save tons. Most tomato lovers find that plain makes a better sauce over time, and then you've cut out all the oil and karap from the jar. That's fifteen minutes you can spend with your spouse, your kid, or making tomorrow's lunch, setting up Netflix, etc. Another hidden inefficiency of restaurants is based on the schedule: If you are there during busy times, it takes longer, you stay longer, eat more, probably don't take stuff home (depends on the person obviously), and then get caught in traffic. (I rarely go to team lunches at noon, for example, because it takes twice as long.) More later.
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Sep 27, 2016 23:09
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Transactions should reflect reality as should account balances. If the Netflix account is currently at -$60 due to your recent purchase, it will return to zero in three months (or whatever). Meanwhile that account is negative to remind you that you shouldn't be spending related to that category. Budget and track net income and expenses. That represents the cash and capital you control. Tracking gross and worth is very complicated because you need to handle fluctuations in the 401k, in your commodities, and so forth. If you cannot determine how much withholding is coming out of your paycheck, say to within 4¢, then you shouldn't worry about accurate teaching of net worth.
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Oct 1, 2016 00:24
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Are these your credit card minima? If so that's really bad, and if not you're probably doing it wrong. As much as I concur with the others, I have to suggest that, with that much high interest debt, you only maintain enough emergency money to pay your bills. Think about it: You have $1k in savings and the furnace blows... onto the credit card it goes. Likewise for half of everything else. I'm sure there's pages past where we discussed this thoroughly (some moron needs to update the op hmmm), but having money in the bank isn't earning you any interest if there are cards to be paid. Always pay minima except on the highest interest card until it's gone, unless you have an intro period that will convert to a higher rate soon that should be paid off before then. Put new purchases on the lowest rate card if you must, though it's best to have a card that is paid off within grace monthly if you're buying new purchases (as budgeted!) with a card. In any case, run the numbers. $1k sitting versus paying down a card. If you're holding it in savings, just be aware of how much it's costing you each month to have that safety buffer.
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Oct 4, 2016 23:51
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Agreed stash a little to cover the bills then burn the high interest cards to the ground. 10% simple interest on 10k is $83/mo, which is your Internet and half water/garbage. At 15%, interest charges literally eat your food for you.
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Oct 5, 2016 23:27
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Take a look at the free Google spreadsheet templates to get started (e.g., budget tracker by Joao Geronimo). As you're hoping to get out of the paycheck to paycheck tragedy and already have done some planning ahead, and are willing to do the tracking, a spreadsheet should help you keep records while you work on your style a bit. Nothing prevents tracking some of your more active monies in YNAB later, for example. If you want something more tangible, you can print free ledger and budget sheets, or buy a $5 starter home budget ledger from an office supply store. Most of these are designed to permit you to budget the entire year.
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Oct 7, 2016 06:59
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At a glance that looks fairly well balanced, though I hope you don't have $100 in car repairs.  Make sure you use the leftover wisely, or save it for the automotive rainy day when you need a new radiator.
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Oct 24, 2016 23:24
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You'll save just as much maintaining good accelerator control and providing ample stopping distance. Brakes and burnt calipers and rotors get to be expensive, but you can run a good set of pads for 50kmi (instead of the 10kmi that some manage). Likewise it takes less fuel to keep it going, which you can't do if you're +-10mph because you're not leaving enough room and are constantly slamming your brakes. If you want to be completely  you can drive the same speed and still ride your brakes. People in Seattle do this all the time (both feet I guess)... uphill ffs.
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Oct 25, 2016 23:31
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Pay down the student loans first IF they don't penalize for prepayment (unlikely) and if they don't advance your next payment due date. That is, if you pay Nov+Dec now, ensure that your next due is still Jan. This permits you to chomp off the interest accrual without losing your buffer. If you have an emergency, you'll have all those spare months to skip loan payments. 0% CCs you should still pay a bit extra to make you look like a good debitor, but should otherwise merely ensure it's empty before going above zero apr, unless there are annual fees, in which case drop it immediately.
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Nov 11, 2016 00:27
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Tamba posted:The idea behind YNAB isn't assigning some fixed values to each month, ... 
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Dec 22, 2016 00:24
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It's not just the 44% income allocated to rent that's scaring people, it's the unlisted, potentially hidden expenses: Electricity, heating and cooling, water, sewage, garbage.
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Feb 15, 2017 00:45
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Ornithology, I don't think anyone is really scared, but there are some little things hiding here that always turn out to be the elephants when people end up in the Bad With Money thread or Personal Finance. You have a budget, which is awesome! It contains most of the typical expenses, so it seems rather safe. It's certainly doable. But we like to play at  s advocacy here
None of these things necessarily apply to you, but, if they do, you'll want to determine their potential impact to your security for the next year.
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Feb 15, 2017 17:33
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Checked for templates in Google Sheets?
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Feb 20, 2017 08:14
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Mordiceius posted:A month later and no one answered my question. This thread has kinda turned into a YNAB confab so there's unfortunately little discussion of full budgets that properly include income planning. I'm not terribly comfortable revealing my "technique" beyond what's elsewhere posted in the thread, but I'll let you know when I build the app (not in 2017). Now then, your best bet is to start with a spreadsheet because you can easily build summary views that allow you to plan income and expenses separately, handle very active or high priority categories by including more detail, schedule distant transactions into higher interest accounts, and so forth. Until you have a better idea of which items are actually important, it will be difficult for you to evaluate packaged software solutions. There is a subtle point here that everyone should start with their annual budget. It is a simple matter to estimate income and expenses for the entire year. Before you all get scared about "changing heating costs", I'll point out that the exercise is most useful in determining risk categories, and those should guide your monthly budgeted overages and long term savings plans. As reluctant as I am to ever admit any utility to spreadsheet software, this is one circumstance where the short term benefits are apparent. This type of thing, and budgeting in general, requires a database to be done correctly, but most are not comfortable sitting down with a good DB. Unfortunately, forecasting and financial planning software tend to cost money, and is mostly targeted to small business owners.
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Mar 28, 2017 23:46
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Look at all that whitespace. 
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Mar 31, 2017 23:22
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One of the best reasons to plan for variable expenses is because they are... variable. The challenge is thus having the funds available, but also to maintain some semblance of moderation and personal control in spending. The extremes are given in the two previous approaches, either a lump sum plan it having to flop around stuff every four weeks as you changing your mind about how to waste your money. There is, fortunately, a very convenient way to achieve this with percentage budgeting and saving ahead in individual categories. See the first few pages of the thread.
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Apr 3, 2017 23:29
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A three month average is a start, modify it a bit based on your recent changes, and leave a bit of buffer since food is important. If you ever have to borrow to cover food, increase your monthly food budget by that amount. You should accrue savings monthly in your food category, up until you reach your savings goal. If you find you're falling behind in reaching that savings goal, it means you're buying too much karap, or that food prices have gone up and you need to budget more. It should be rare for a budget category to change by more than a few percent without some associated life change event.
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May 4, 2017 00:26
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Per category, of course. Renter's insurance, save a bit each month and identify it as such. Just as you shouldn't steal food money for toys, so also should you not steal insurance monies for bling. Of course, every category also has its own extra to get six months ahead, and some even have 2% inflation savings. I have a five year license renewal that I save for monthly. $1. 
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May 30, 2017 23:31
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H110Hawk posted:Given we currently don't have a budget just a cashflow spreadsheet which shows if we're spending more than we make (which includes lines for savings and all that) I won't be doing $1 accruals. I just want to get it a little closer to "true" so the monthly mystery expenses are fewer and further between. I think I will break it into two lines, necessary (insurance x 4, sewer/trash, TiVo Now if you need to plan for something three months out, you'll be able to see where the money has to be thieved!
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May 31, 2017 14:02
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, crashplan ) and nice to have (charity, Amazon Prime, etc.)
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Any reasonable credit card has a "grace period" during which no interest is charged in purchases. It's typically 30 days, or at least until the first due date after the transaction posts. If you don't have a grave period, get a different card. You can easily post your budget here: Option one, build your percentage budget and post that (see OP). Option two, pick a random number between 0.5 and 1.5, multiply all values by that number, post fake budget. Option one is better because the latter may be undermined by regional information (housing, electric, fuel prices, etc). You might have no car payment, but that doesn't mean you're free of maintenance costs.
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Sep 6, 2017 01:22
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The excess of food things cannot be overstated. You're running 12.7% on groceries, lunches, and entertainment. That's a lot. You'd be better dropping that 2% and doubling your student loan payments. More later.
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Sep 11, 2017 17:39
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Percentages are easy and good, as you learned instantly when you ran the numbers and saw how much of your life is going to entertainment. It's the goon readers responsibility to put their monthly in and see how it compares to their life. You might need more for the car if there's maintenance coming up, particularly if it's an old car and you put so many miles on it. Dropping entertainment is tough but that money can be better used elsewhere for a while. Don't bottom savings to pay a student loan. If your loan interest is good and double payments delay your next payment (check paperwork or try it with a single extra payment) then you can delay payments in an emergency, but you still need your savings during the emergency. If burning 20% of your savings drops your lifetime interest considerably, it may be worth it. (To be clear, when I was paying student loans, in January I sent double and didn't owe until March. In February I sent double and didn't owe until May. Right before I paid it off my next due date was fifteen years away.)
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Sep 12, 2017 01:30
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For those that failed their multiplication tables in first grade:code: `awk '{print $0"\t"int($NF*600/12)"\t"int($NF*675/12)"\t"int($NF*750/12)}'` and a couple of minor editsEdit: Well you wanted monthly amounts probably, haha. PhantomOfTheCopier fucked around with this message at 13:17 on Sep 12, 2017 |
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Sep 12, 2017 13:06
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And I don't like to double post, but instead of making that 'table' twice as wide and offending more cellular phone users, I'll go ahead and post this separately.Magnetic North posted:Here is my percentage budget. Here's a different way to think about this: code:As to possibly-missing categories: No pets? Extra, routine health expenses not covered by insurance? Hobbies not covered under miscellaneous? Monthly parking fees for the commute? Just as a note, I find the dollar values make this evaluation harder because they confuse the relative differences between items.
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Sep 12, 2017 13:31
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Too hard to quote/edit right now, but in terms of interest: $40k at 5% for 10yr is nearly $11k lifetime interest. $40k at 5% for 5yr is just above $5k lifetime interest. $19k at 5% for 10yr is also just above $5k lifetime interest. Pay double routinely to cut your interest by 50%, or pay off more than half of it right now to save the same amount. Check loan calculators for your best choices.
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Sep 13, 2017 15:01
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New year approaching! NYE weekend is a great time to do your taxes, check your 2018 withholding, and start up a shiny new budget and personal savings/investment plan!
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Dec 27, 2017 04:27
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Plan for the year. Incomes in higher months must be allocated to the future to ensure coverage, and all accounts must be filled in excess of the lowest/poorest consecutive months of earnings before any income can be considered "spare" or movable. It's no surprise that I'd advocate a percentage budget here. Income may rise or fall, but the percentage allocated to rent will remain the same. One must have an honest estimate for the year, include the necessary savings buffers per expense account to create breathing room, and have the willpower to leave money untouched when committed to a future purpose.
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Feb 10, 2018 17:39
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Annual taxes are specifically levied based on a past circumstance, but those transactions take place now. If you incur an expense it may reflect a past failure, but the transactions occur today, and account reconciliation demands that you enter it accordingly. Likewise, a refund is income today. A mortgage payment is officially guaranteed to appear, but surely it's not a representation of money paid out (or negative income) on the date the mortgage was signed. On the other hand it is a creditor/debitor transaction, so it would appear in proper double entry. Officially, yes, you should stuff the amount (positive or negative) through your monthly percentage budget and update all accounts directly. Later you should review available funds for toys, capital expenses, and the like. It's safer than just "tally ho free money woo!!". (For certain short term situations, I actually track debits; that is, from my point of view I have loaned them the money. Later they pay me back with interest. (These are not people and I am not a bank)).
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Feb 21, 2018 20:55
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This is the right place to get started. In fact, the thread has been so quiet I was just thinking of posting something myself. Responses might be a bit slow to get started since people aren't here daily, but there should be some good ideas. So then, first step is to file for unemployment as soon as possible. For your budget, start with your needs (food, shelter) and figure out how long you have with current emergency savings before you're in big(ger) trouble. Next start in on the resume; I'm guessing you have nothing lined up nor any job conversations from the last three months since you didn't mention them. Also start using coupons again. Depending on your expected length of unemployment, some here will suggest you start your own thread. This may be necessary if there are particularly extenuating circumstances or you otherwise intend to be unemployed forever.
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May 12, 2018 15:40
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