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PhantomOfTheCopier posted:Based on observing many pages of YNAB complaints, here and elsewhere, I think it's best to avoid thinking "plan for income" when you use YNAB. It's an "expense tracker" that happens to permit you to identify how much you're expecting to spend, and you can't spend what you don't have. These posts on YNAB confuse the hell out of me. So if my rent is the entirety of my first paycheck, am I just "in debt" for everything else I buy for those two weeks? Or am I perfectly a-okay because I have a plenty of money in savings that is not my emergency fund so you know... i can spend what I have? If I just spent what I had, there'd be no real budget because what I have is far greater than my monthly salary.
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Aug 2, 2013 05:17
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tuyop posted:What you have is categorized as whatever you've saved it for. If it's not categorized that way, then it's categorized for some other spending like annual insurance or something. Well, I'm giving the free trial a go. We'll see how it goes. I'm already living on last month's paycheck but I'm hoping the manual entering of things will make me a little more aware of what I'm spending than Mint's more passive tracking.
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Aug 6, 2013 02:01
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Okay, so this was my first month of YNAB. We've come to the end of the month and it's pretty obvious that I was overly cautious in some categories and didn't spend anywhere near the budgeted amount. I'm just curious how most people handle this or if it really matters how I treat it. There are a few categories that I want to roll over and add up, but some that I dont think really needs to.
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Aug 26, 2013 23:33
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:Just take money out of some categories and put it in others? This is like one of the basic YNAB rules. I just wanted to make sure there was no real disadvantage to changing all my budgets to match my actual outflows and zeroing things out. I can't really think of a time where I would want to know what my budget numbers were in August 2013 vs. what I actually spent, but I wasn't sure if anyone had any views on that. I was just going to make the budgets match the actual spending and then move the leftover money to my savings categories.
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Aug 26, 2013 23:56
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SiGmA_X posted:Disclaimer: I have yet to use YNAB. Every dollar has to have a job. I had a wedding this month, a vacation, some birthdays - just a lot of odds and ends that I wasn't sure how much they were going to cost. I was about $500 too generous overall in those categories so I now have a lot of freed up cash this month that didn't actually go towards its assigned job. I could let them all roll over to those categories next month but it's not really necessary for me to have that much money in gifts and travel at the moment so I was planning on changing my August budgeted numbers to match my August spending and freeing up the $500. When most people do that, do you just move that money into savings and kind of take it out of the equation, in a sense? I've already budgeted for September but I could use that $500 to begin budgeting for October... do people generally like to have more than one month budgeted out or just one month ahead? I don't think it really matters but sometimes people feel things have a psychological advantage or they do things a particular way because they feel its beneficial in some way. Wasn't sure if anyone had any insight.
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Aug 27, 2013 00:15
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Kenny Rogers posted:Lots of people recommend you use YNAB "as designed" and only work with "from now until next payday", and not "until the end of the month" or even "this whole month". Well, I'm only budgeting with cash in hand like YNAB suggested. I applied my paychecks in August as "Income for September" so it all got added there, so now I've divvied it up for September and I think I'm fine to cover September with cash in hand. Do you find having a general buffer category makes it easy to drawn upon that category when you're overbudget in another category? I worry if I'm overbudget in groceries one month or something, it might be easier to pull from "buffer" than it is to pull from "Fun Money" "vacation savings" or even "October rent" -- like it kind of negates the purpose of every dollar having a job, and therefore a consequence from spending it. How big do you let your buffer get? It looks like from the post you linked, you touched on the matter though. I was just kind of wondering if people felt it was good to get more than a month in a buffer account. Or if that's just silly (I have an emergency fund) and I should just move it out of the picture into savings (I don't really use YNAB to track my savings accounts) (and I love that you budget $1.89 each month) 
HooKars fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Aug 27, 2013 |
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Aug 27, 2013 03:25
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tuyop posted:I use mint, YNAB, and Excel for all the budgeting we do. I used to love Mint because it really captured my networth of all accounts in one place. I could kind of see it all go up and down with the stock market and stuff and that was just kind of interesting. Lately, it has pretty much sucked at that, but I don't think it's Mint's fault. I think a lot of investment accounts and savings accounts have tightened up their security so you need a unique code or you get a text with a unique code every single time and it kind of ruins it all. Also, Mint trying to auto connect with my 401k actually locks my account every single time. It's just gotten a little frustrating than when I first started. I use Mint a similar way as I use YNAB in that I'm pretty flexible with it. I don't really care if some categories are over so long as other categories are under and my overall budget bar is looking okay. But YNAB helps me more with the "Goals" portion of it all and what I'm really doing with the money that I dont spend or what I'm taking from if I go overbudget in another category. I used to think I had a ton of extra cash in my checking account but now that I've assigned each of those a job, I can see that really, if I want to be on track to put $5k in my IRA, I really dont have quite as much as I thought to go on vacation or for miscellaneous wants and needs, which kind of got lost before. But I didn't use the goal portion of Mint. I also like the manual tracking. It definitely has made a difference, though I still like Mint's automated version as well. I check both often and Mint will notice when automatic payments like Netflix, Cable, etc. have gone through, whereas I might not check my credit card statement everyday and realize that it's happened. I'm still terrible at keeping trash of where my cash spending goes in both YNAB and Mint.
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Aug 28, 2013 02:01
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Old Fart posted:I don't keep track of cash spending. I do have a cash "account" because part of my income is cash, but I treat it like my banking accounts. I keep it put away in my apartment, not in my wallet. I've been trying to get better about it just because I know that most of my cash spending is at bars or restaurants (we have a lot of cash only places - even nice, rather expensive BYOBs can be cash only) so while I budget $200 for restaurants and bars, I probably spend more like $300-$400 because that's where a large part of my cash spending allowance goes as well. It just feels like I'm being a little dishonest with myself and I'm not sure I really want to be throwing that much onto restaurants and bars even if it fits in my budget. Same goes for when I realize that a not insignificant amount of my cash spending is on stupid things like starbucks or soda during work. It just feels like a bad habit I'm ignoring because it's cash and because it fits within my decided "I get $200 cash to spend on whatever the hell I want", but if it was on my credit card - I wouldn't be quite so nonchalant about it. It's really just something I want to be more aware of going forward. I think it's important to not be judgmental about your partner's fun money (so long as it's not disruptive in some other way) but I dont think there's anything wrong with being judgmental about my own and being aware of what it's going to and I think it's actually important. If I were to change my "Fun Money" categorization to "Booze and Munchies," I start feeling a little bad about the fact it can creep up to $200. In addition to restaurants. Right now, I try to categorize it in YNAB as I withdraw it from the ATM by the main reason I've gone to the ATM -- so "Bar Money," "BYOB Money" and then I don't bother dividing it up if I take out $20 but spend $15 on Bar and $5 on Starbucks. I also occasionally make the mistake of not paying attention to what I do with my cash and budgeting twice. Like if I get a haircut and tip $10 cash, I occasionally forget when entering the information and add Haircut and Tip to personal care, when really the tip is already accounted for when I recorded taking the cash out of the ATM.
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Aug 28, 2013 04:13
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First real month using YNAB:: I'm not sure I'm really using it right but I think it's doing it's job. And yes, I spend a decent amount of money on not much of anything. HooKars fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Oct 1, 2013 |
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Oct 1, 2013 23:36
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tuyop posted:Well it's really supposed to be sliced deeper than that, like sure you spend 100 on groceries, but if you want to optimize that, look at how much goes to veggies, meat, etc. The same goes for everything else. I don't know anyone who does this unless you're really trying to specifically change some particular habit, like your diet. I can't imagine doing this for each category each month.
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Oct 8, 2013 22:20
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tuyop posted:It's kind of confusing because many things tell you to calculate spending based on gross salary. I never really got that, why care about gross salary when it comes to your mortgage/rent and poo poo? Well your net salary wouldn't take into account something like 401k savings. If I look at my take home pay, I only save 5-10% per month and spend 50% on rent, but that completely discounts the fact that 20% of each of my paychecks goes into my 401k for retirement, which completely changes my spending to savings ratio.
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Oct 15, 2013 15:24
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EN Bullshit posted:I figure that the little costs that occur infrequently, or maybe once ever, don't really need to be planned for, since "in the limit", they're nothing. The little things are often what put most people over budget each month. Does your estimated $1300 for rent include utilities/cable/rent? You mention a gym but then I dont see it in the budget.
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Feb 26, 2014 13:53
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tuyop posted:Do some research to get an appropriate estimate of the costs and add like 10% to be conservative. Figure out the time until you want that thing, divide amount by time to figure out savings amount. Depending on where you live, it could be first and last month's rent plus security deposit -- so three month's rent total. That's the standard for around where I live.
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Mar 28, 2014 22:08
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Hand of the King posted:If I can get some advice on how to approach our finances, I'd appreciate it! My wife and I recently got married and we'd like to share our finance situation. Our questions are: how should we spend our current savings? Should we use it to pay off our two smaller credit cards or just one? How should we spend the cash we save each month? It looks like there's another $24,000 in car debt and another $20-25,000 in student loan debt. What should you be doing with your "savings"??? Paying back the over $70,000 in debt you've accumulated. Seriously, that's a lot. Especially since it's mostly car and card debt. That is a staggering amount of debt for someone who seems to think they are just fine. How did you get over $30,000 into credit card debt? Was it some major emergency like a medical emergency/house burned down/etc. or is this just from normal spending accumulating? How long have you guys been making your current salaries/saving $1,000 - $1300 each month? If you haven't already, I would definitely sign up for something like Mint.com. Like someone pointed out, you guys have nothing like a clothing budget or a maintenance budget or a gift/christmas or a travel budget, so while you may *think* you're saving $1000 - $1300, it is likely that you're actually saving less. Make sure you know where your money is going. If you do have a mint account or you've been budgeting -- have you guys been successfully and consistently under budget? If so, by how much on average? What percentage of your salary are you currently contributing to your 401k? Is it just up the match or are you contributing more? Do you guys currently only have one car? If your wife's car is off the table. I know you said you don't have a car loan, but do you have a car? You need to sit down with your wife and get a handle on your finances as a whole. There are a lot of places in your budget that you can cut down on and you really should. You've dug yourself into a hug hole. Since you guys are interested in combining finances and figuring out how that works, you should at least know how much you've got in your 401ks and you should know how much student loan debt you guys have and what their rates are, etc. You need to sit down and get the big picture on your finances now that you're a married couple.
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Apr 8, 2014 02:31
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If you've had your car since high school and it runs reliably, then it's yours to keep. Your wife does however have a very expensive car and I can't think of any reason why someone would need a particularly expensive car aside from *I want* that would put the car off the table (with the exception of perhaps certain handicaps). If there's no wiggle room in the cars, is there any wiggle room in your commutes (eg biking, carpooling together or with coworkers, public transportation). You spend way too much on food - esp considering that $850 of groceries and eating out is separate from personal care items like mouthwash and your entertainment budget. Eating out IS entertainment. It's much better to group restaurants and fast food and lunches in with entertainment so you can see how much is just discretionary spending vs. food needed to live. If you're not already bringing In lunch to work, that is always a good place to start and really does save a lot. Similarly if anyone has a daily Starbucks/fast food habit, that's an easy and painless cut as well. Get together and talk about your goals. You asked us what you should do with your savings and you should put it towards debt but it can make it easier if you have talked about long term goals (a house, kids, travel) and you see in your head how your current debt and little things you don't want to sacrifice may impede on your larger goals that actually mean something to you.
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Apr 8, 2014 14:43
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