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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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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 00:13 |
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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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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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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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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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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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Shadowhand00 posted:
I think that helped a little bit? Thanks! I feel a bit self-conscious over what's in our budget now that I actually publicly posted it. You know, things like beer money or that I didn't include anything for home maintenance or medical expenses. My husband likes to unwind with a six pack at the end of each week, so I didn't want to not account for that at all--I mean, it might not cost $60 but since this is our first budget I figured we were better off overestimating. We rent so we don't have to pay for any house repairs/issues, and we don't have medical bills because the Army takes care of all his medical issues and on my end I'm double-insured by both my full time job and by the Army (yes, I realize how incredibly lucky we are, given how health care is for most people in the US). So we don't need a medical line, not even an emergency medical fund to meet a deductible. The only thing they don't cover fully is the "eye stuff" category--for some reason they won't give soldiers contact lenses, but he wanted them, and he told me that the lenses are going to be $64 per month. I also am hoping we won't wind up spending $450 on groceries for a month for just two of us. I did a huge shop yesterday and I spent $186, but I have enough meat now to last the entire month, plus some other staples, and we had quite a bit of stuff at home too. The only things we will need to buy for the rest of the month will be dairy products and produce. So I think we will come in well under that, but I figured for the first month it would be better to have too much than not enough, and then in September we can adjust to a more realistic number. Blah, blah, blah etc. We really want to get out from the debt bills, because we are making pretty good money together right now, and we don't want to piss it all away by accident and have nothing if he gets separated from the military (he shouldn't be at this point, but we have no certainty with all the budget cuts).
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Jul 31, 2013 18:32
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and examples
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OK, so I played with YNAB yet again, and started completely over with a blank budget on it. This time I did something differently. My husband gets paid on the first and 15th each month. I only get paid on the first. So this time, I only entered what we have gotten paid for the first, rather than the whole month. I filled in everything that is getting paid the first half of the month, which seems to have worked a lot better. Then come the 15th, I'll put his other check as an inflow and fill in the rest. Yes, it means I'll have to do this twice each month, but then at least whenever I look at it, I'm only looking at money we actually have instead of hoping what I put for his mid-month check is accurate. Usually it's the same as what we get on the first, but sometimes it isn't, like if he gets a clothing allowance tacked on or something. Also, rather than put $450 for groceries, I put $220 (since that's what I withdrew from the ATM) and then on the 15th I will change it to $450 and withdraw the rest...if I don't use it I'll adjust it to whatever category I move it to instead, which will probably be paying extra on debt. I think I'm finally getting the hang of this now. I read some of their forum posts, and those people were saying don't use it like Quicken with projected numbers; rather, only use what you have right this second. That kinda made things click for me. 
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Aug 1, 2013 21:22
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Briantist posted:This might be nitpicking, but I'd rather you put $450 for groceries if you think it's reasonable and the amount is available. If you don't use that much, you can allocate less next month, like if you spend $300, then next month if you budget nothing for groceries you'd still have $150 to spend in that category. At that point you can budget $150 and have $300 total to spend. If you want to pull money out, you can (budget negative) but that hardly ever happens, usually better to let it carry over. Hope I'm not adding confusion with this. Yeah, I'd put $450 on the first, but right now while we are still paying off debt, I need to split that amount between the first and 15th or it won't work right. Sigh.
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Aug 2, 2013 01:25
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OK, so I've mentioned earlier about my husband's iMac loan. The balance is now down to $1850. I plan on putting $400/month extra on it starting next month, but there's also a $147 payment that comes directly out of his check for it. Since we don't see the check allotment, how would I account for that on YNAB? If I only enter $400 as the payment, then the decrease to $1450 would be incorrect, but if I include the $147 tacked onto the $400, it will put us over budget by $147 every time. Could I just enter the $147 payment in under the iMac account as an inflow to make it right? I wouldn't have to put down where the inflow comes from, right?
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Aug 3, 2013 01:44
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signalnoise posted:Something you should be able to do though is find out how much money he's getting base on his paycheck and manually enter that amount and keep track of it. Any company that can take money out of a check should be able to tell you how much you'd be getting before that happens. Does he not get check statements? No, he does. He had to change the password (since it's on the federal government MyPay website and they make you change it every so often) so I need to get the new one from him so I can look at his pay stubs ahead of time on there. But the statement shows his gross pay, then taxes/deductions/allotments and then his net pay. The allotment comes out of the net though, since it's for a loan.
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Aug 3, 2013 02:32
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Welp, last night my husband managed to lose my debit card that is linked to all our bills. Fantastic. Thankfully, nothing else comes out until the 15th, and I should get my new card by then, but I'm super annoyed because now I have to change debit card info on literally everything. We bank with USAA, but I also have a local credit union account where I can deposit a check to get through until the new card comes. And I can transfer funds between the main USAA account and my husband's account too, in a pinch. I'm almost considering going old school and getting bills in the mail and sending a check for each one, rather than emailed statements and online bill pay, so that I don't have to worry about hiccups like this if a debit card gets lost.
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Aug 4, 2013 19:18
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tuyop posted:
Oh yeah, I forgot about the bank service for that!  Good idea. I'm gonna look into that this week.
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Aug 4, 2013 23:17
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Have you considered automating your finances online, like, through your bank's bill payment client thingy? For variable bills, we have them set up using blank cheques for automatic withdrawals. The bank card number may change, but our transit and account numbers don't. I spend like four minutes a month making sure the estatement is accurate and won't destroy our account balance and then forget about it.
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Briantist posted:Is the iMac account in YNAB on-budget or off-budget? If it's on-budget, what is the category (I would assume it's "Pre-YNAB Debt")? Yes, it's on-budget as Pre-YNAB debt.
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Aug 6, 2013 14:53
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More budget frustration: My husband just told me he was accidentally overpaid by the military for the past 3 months. He dropped jump status (which is him jumping out of planes) so that should have decreased his pay by $150/month. However, his direct supervisor didn't turn in the paperwork 3 months ago like he should have, so he got the pay, and now they want to take it all out of the check coming on the 15th, so a total amount of $450. The reason he dropped jumping is because of some medical back problems. The good is, I put $700 in various savings accounts on the first, so we can cover this by pulling from savings, either by directly writing a check the Army to cover the overpay, or by letting them just take it and moving from savings to get through the rest of this month. The bad is, that $700 was the first we had saved in a long time. So I feel like this $450 thing is like one step forward, two steps back, you know? I guess it could be worse. Had I not made a budget at all this month, then we'd really be in a world of hurt, and probably would wind up charging the $450 in bills not covered (like our cell phone bill, car insurance, utilities that all get paid between the 15th and end of month). So at least there's that. It'll all be covered in cash, somehow. I really hope that in September there are no hideous surprises like this waiting--I really would like to put money in savings that actually stays there more than a week.
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Aug 7, 2013 20:38
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 00:13 |
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I might need to make my own thread here soon. I'm not going to get into too much e/n, but my dog was acting funny yesterday and I noticed he couldn't pee when he asked to go out, so I took him to the vet. That turned into finding out he has bladder stones and needs surgery to remove them. I had to take him to a specialty hospital 60 miles away yesterday, so they could do more tests to see if the stones in his kidneys would pose a problem. Thankfully, they don't, but the bill for this whole fiasco is going to be around $4,500. We have Trupanion insurance so that actual bite of this isn't going to be $4,500 (probably more like $850 or so), but I'm kind of in budget panic mode right now because we have to front the money and wait for reimbursement so it's all going to have to go on credit card(s). Anyways I had a thread on here in the past which really helped, so I guess expect to see one after the dust settles and I have actual numbers to work with after his surgery.
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Aug 14, 2013 21:12
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