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Yeah that's exactly what I did when I started in July. I just made sure I paid my credit card off before so I wouldn't even have to deal with that nonsense. Looking back, my first couple months were rough, I went over budget every month until October when I got my poo poo together and decided to just pull some money out of my emergency fund to complete my buffer instead of waiting several more months to maybe finish it and also figured out my actual monthly expenses instead of guessing all the time. Since then it's been smooth sailing.
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Jan 3, 2014 02:19
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 10:10 |
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I've been using YNAB since September. I paid full price for it (minus 6 bucks) and I don't regret that at all. It's enabled me to use my savings in a more practical way. Instead of just chucking a set amount of money in there per month and dipping into it for all sorts of reasons (and sometimes no reason), it allows me to earmark that money for different things: car insurance, emergency fund, Christmas presents, car maintenance, vacation, and moving expenses for a possible upcoming move. I also appreciate the benefit of having off-budget accounts. Accounts that I keep off-budget: 401(a), Roth IRA, Auto Loan, Auto Value (for net worth purposes), FSA, and HSA. It's definitely made me keep a better eye on my retirement funds and spurred me to make a few changes in how my funds are invested! Since I am a salaried employee, my monthly paychecks are pretty much exactly the same. So - I do budget a month or two out - which I know they discourage. I budget what I know my base pay will be - and then add in the extra hours when I see what my paycheck will be. I also get paid on the last day of the month only, so it makes planning a bit easier in that regard. I also love the Reports feature. Watching my net worth go up since I've started using YNAB has made the sometimes painful process worth it: 
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Jan 3, 2014 02:26
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Better than mine. At least it's going up. 
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Jan 3, 2014 02:31
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Does YNAB let you import QIF files or do you have to enter everything manually?
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Jan 3, 2014 03:05
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newtestleper posted:Does YNAB let you import QIF files or do you have to enter everything manually? Yes, QFX is ideal, they say. But it's not encouraged because there's value in consciously recording your spending as you do it. Importing leads to tracking, which is not what the program is designed for.
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Jan 3, 2014 03:20
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I have been using Mint for about 2 months, and saw YNAB on the steam sale so I grabbed it. The first thing I did was download the past year of data from my bank and credit card and imported it in. Then I watched the new to YNAB video and pretty much flattened the whole thing and started over and just going to use it from now on and not worry about the past as they said. I set up my budgets and it looks like my savings is getting decimated this month due to me budgeting my estimated taxes this month plus some one-time stuff since I am getting married at the start of next month, but after I take the draws out of my business to cover those things, it will go back to normal and I can refill my savings "envelope". Now as soon as Mint comes back from maintenance I am going to get my off-budget assets I got saved there (mortgage payoff, car payoff, home value, car value, etc.) then I am going to stop using mint except as a centralized location to pull transactions from. At first, I thought I wasn't going to like manually inputting every transaction, but now I see its going to help me see what I spend money on and make more conscience about my spending habits.
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Jan 3, 2014 03:49
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Jumping on the bandwagon here with YNAB as well. I picked it up over Christmas, (was a gift from my parents...they got it for themselves too!!!), as well as Quicken. Starting to mess around with them both and see how they all work. So far I like it, but YNAB is a still a tad confusing so I will sit with it tomorrow and over the weekend and get it and Quicken actually all plugged in and working. I'm quite excited about it to be honest. Never thought I would be interested in this kind of stuff but, well, it's really interesting to see how things can be twiddle twaddled to make things work in a budget. I do like them better than Mint so far.
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Jan 3, 2014 04:09
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I just wish let me set it so things were per week. Here in Australia, I get paid weekely, wife gets paid fortnightly, we pay rent weekly and utilities quarterly. And at the end of all that, we work thing's out weekly. Basically, YNAB has let us double the amount we save from $500 too $1000 a week, just by virtue of pointing out how much we spent on eating out, when I'm apparently a pretty decent cook (wife's words, not mine).
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Jan 3, 2014 08:52
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Just picked this up. I've been using Mint for a while but felt overwhelmed by all of the transactions and historical data and that I put every single account in there. I got married back in the fall and I'm looking to get our finances on better standing so we know where all of our money is going. Looking forward to getting it running.
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Jan 3, 2014 17:10
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Steam sale is over in an hour and 45 minutes, last chance for MEGA savings if anyone is on the fence.
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Jan 3, 2014 17:17
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:It's amazing how much less stress I have when I can sit down on the first of the month and budget out my entire month with money I already have. I could literally pay all my bills on the first and I would be ok. Hell, my paychecks could be a couple weeks late one month and I wouldn't even give a poo poo. I Love Topanga posted:Side note, I've been using YNAB for about 6 months and love it. It's a game changer when you get to Step 4. Quoted for motherfucking truth. We got a month ahead about six months ago, and the difference is incredible. We've been able to weather unexpected poo poo (such as a debit card being compromised and used for $800) with no stress whatsoever. Getting a month ahead is the tits. Life is so much easier and less stressful now. 100 HOGS AGREE posted:a credit transaction hits your budget immediately and reflects itself in the amount of money you actually have available to budget in your categories. This was also an eye-opener for me. I used to view credit cards as being able to afford the minimum payment. Now I realize they're merely a tool for spending money that I already have. If it's not budgeted, then it doesn't get bought. Period. A credit card will never again be used by me to borrow from the future. I did and do find the "pre-YNAB debt" to be confusing, especially for cards still in use. It gets a lot easier once that's gone. Even still, when I started using it I only had a few grand left on my car note, so I didn't include it. It seems to make a bit more sense now, but for someone going into this fresh, I can see how it's confusing and frustrating. Power through!
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Jan 3, 2014 20:07
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If you can't do a webinar they have recordings of everything: http://vimeo.com/youneedabudget/review/46219167/5eca795444
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Jan 3, 2014 20:32
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Seems like a good spot for a brag post. This is what YNAB has done for us: Granted this is about 20 years behind schedule, but it's the first time in our individual or married lives that we've had this much in the bank. The graph is not wholly accurate, since we had some outstanding debt (car, taxes, personal loan) that we didn't categorize as debt. Those were finally cleared around June. And during that time we also planned for an expensive vacation, but YNAB helped us earn and put away enough to pay for it up front without credit cards. Then in August we had saved enough to get a month ahead (Rule 4), and it's been all gravy ever since. In December is when we stopped paying the credit card balance every week, since we learned that the statement balance is what's reported for credit scores. So that's why the red has shown up again. We pay the bill the day it comes out, because everything has already been budgeted. We still use debit for most things, since we like how it instantly shows on the bank statement, but we use credit for anything online since a debit card was compromised last month. Eventually, though, once we get a bit more comfortable, we should probably use credit for most things, since cards have reward benefits. We just don't quite trust ourselves enough yet, and everything always takes a few days to show up on the statement.
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Jan 3, 2014 20:36
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I've used quicken since 2005 and I still use it, but I never liked how budgeting worked. I love quicken for analysis of spending and tracking all accounts reasonably easily. YNAB had let me get a far better handle on my spending, and I'm actually setting a budget and changing it as the month progresses as needed. 2014 should show how effective it is for me, but I love it thus far. Now to get my gf to use it..!
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Jan 3, 2014 21:31
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edit: whoops wrong topic.
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Jan 3, 2014 23:00
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My student loans enter repayment in March, so I'm trying to figure out how to handle them in YNAB. I have two loans, currently listed as off-budget accounts. How do I go about budgeting/paying for these in YNAB, and how do I account for interest accrued, and payments toward principal/interest? I'm thinking of making a 'Debt' master category, but don't really know where to go from there. I figure I should budget the minimum payments, but I'm going to be paying over the minimums aggressively, and the accounts are off-budget... Grouco fucked around with this message at 06:44 on Jan 8, 2014 |
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Jan 8, 2014 06:41
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Here's how I do my auto loan, maybe this will help you: Auto Loan itself is an off-budget account. Payment to Auto Loan is under my Monthly Bills budget master category as Car Payment. I budget for it what I actually plan on paying. Payment is $299, but I pay $400. So I budget for $400. When I pay my bill, it is as a "Transfer" from my Checking to the Auto Loan account. Because the Auto Loan is off-budget, you are allowed to assign it a category. Thus it subtracts from the Car Payment category when you transfer the money. To account for accrued interest, the way I do it is I go to my auto loan provider's website and look for the payoff amount. And make my account in YNAB match it by adding the difference as an outflow transaction I note as Interest in the memo area. Hope that makes sense.
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Jan 8, 2014 07:23
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For both my and my wife's student loans, I just have a monthly category budgeted for how much we will be paying, with the actual loan listed as an off-budget account. Since the loans are long term, I don't bother entering them as an actual balance transfer, just an outflow. I plan to just manually update the amounts every so often.
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Jan 8, 2014 10:35
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I have a budget category just for the overpayments because I wanted to track how much extra I'm paying every month in the reports easily compared to my total debt expenditures. But pretty much what everyone else said aside from that. I just reconcile all my loans on the last of the month to adjust the balance to include new interest.
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Jan 8, 2014 13:17
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I'm new to YNAB, but right now I have my monthly student loans under the "Debt" category. I just listed all three of my lenders, and the budgeted amount is currently just my min. monthly payment rounded up to the next dollar, since I can't really afford to pay more than that. I don't even have my loans in as an off-budget account, yet, because seeing my actual loan totals and the tiny, insignificant dent I put in them makes me sad. 
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Jan 8, 2014 18:00
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Thanks, I think I'll try to come up with a combination of spinst and 100 HOGS AGREE, since I'd like to track the overpayments.
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Jan 8, 2014 19:09
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Anyone have any suggestions for how to budget with a payday near the end of the month? I get paid on the 25th so if I budget for rent etc. it puts me as over budgeted since I don't have enough in my account to cover the various transfers I'll be making out of my account on the 26th.
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Jan 8, 2014 22:42
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Do you have a YNAB account right now? If so, how are you handling it? If not do what they say. Everything previous to your next paycheck is in the past. Put your paycheck in and budget what you pay. If the money already has purpose you won't be re budgeting it.
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Jan 8, 2014 22:58
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Lady Gaza posted:Anyone have any suggestions for how to budget with a payday near the end of the month? I get paid on the 25th so if I budget for rent etc. it puts me as over budgeted since I don't have enough in my account to cover the various transfers I'll be making out of my account on the 26th. You get paid on the 25th, and then you write a check for the next month's rent (I assume due on the 1st) on the 26th?
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Jan 8, 2014 23:01
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A really handy trick for not using ynab through steam. If you open the steam version and go to I believe help -> about ynab, you can get your serial. If you then download the stand alone version from the ynab site you can plug that serial into it. voila. no more firing up steam every time you want to budget and it doesn't end up as one of your most played games. YNAB was a game changer for me. I did ... ok with spreadsheets, but always slip on something or another. Now I always know what I have put aside for what. My strategy is to have a ton of categories for all sorts of things that I put 20-50$ into every paycheque. I have a category for dog food, one for steam games, one for costco. Any semi regularly happening purchase that doesn't happen on a schedule. Edit: Here are all my different categories. Things and stuff were my weekly spending funds in my old spreadsheet system. I tried having week 1 groceries, week 2 groceries, but I didn't like it. I also tried combining gas and car, but since I want to keep the car fund in savings it seemed like it would get confusing fast. The goal of all the rainy day categories is to reduce/remove the generic other category and get better reporting on where my money is actually going. I added a buffer savings goal, because I like to spend down to 0 every month, so socking the money away in there until I have a full months income set aside seemed like the way to go .  
Demon_Corsair fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Jan 8, 2014 |
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Jan 8, 2014 23:19
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Lady Gaza posted:Anyone have any suggestions for how to budget with a payday near the end of the month? I get paid on the 25th so if I budget for rent etc. it puts me as over budgeted since I don't have enough in my account to cover the various transfers I'll be making out of my account on the 26th. When is your rent due? If not until the 1st, you can start using this month's income to budget for next month. It should be easy, since it will only require shifting your budgeting by a week. That's the ultimate goal of YNAB, and it's a great place to be. Until you reach that point, you shouldn't budget anything until you have the money in your account. So just leave things blank until you get paid. It's a bit of a hassle, which is why living paycheck to paycheck is a hassle, which is why getting a month ahead is Step 4.
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Jan 8, 2014 23:22
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Thanks for the replies. I get paid on the 25th, and on the 26th/27th I have various fixed standing orders set up. Rent is due on the 10th but I transfer money to joint account I share with my girlfriend on the 27th. I suppose I won't budget until I get paid this month, and let anything I don't use roll into the next month for eg my phone bill that comes out on the 4th. Normally I would have enough of a buffer but with various transfers and expenses in the last month my balance is a little lower than normal.
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Jan 9, 2014 07:45
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Yeah, I would start by doing the rent transfer on the first, and don't pay any bill or make any transfer that you don't need to until the 1st. Then just keep saving until a point when you can log your entire paycheck as income for the following month. You can budget what you can into a "buffer" line item, and then the month you finally make the full switch, budget a negative number in the buffer category and log your paycheck as next month's income. Boom, now you can budget the entire month at once, done and done. It should be pretty easy in your case, since you only have a week of discretionary spending to absorb, and most utility bills tend to come due the first couple of weeks. Then once you get there, keep building an emergency buffer. I like to budget mine as its own line item. Old Fart fucked around with this message at 11:31 on Jan 9, 2014 |
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Jan 9, 2014 11:28
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Yeah, the nebulous "buffer/slush fund" that I always had sloshing around in my bank account kind of didn't factor in well to YNAB at first and I found myself being a bit frustrated at how to account for that. However, I think getting rid of the uncertain nature of that kind of accounting is part of why I like the tool. I ended up putting in whatever I had "unbudgeted" for January into my savings goals, and plan to put all our actual income in January as "income for February". That way it will take away the currently red "Overbudgeted by $XXXX" number I have sitting on top of the February column. I have ample savings to cover expenses for next month, but I would rather pay next month's bills with this month's income. That way if I overreach it's easy to just not budget extra money for spending/entertainment, while maintaining savings for the emergency fund, home down payment, etc. It really is about "assigning every dollar a job". When you have a dollar come in, you give it a job. What I will probably do long term is assign income from the current month to the next month. Then, any overrun from planned budget items at the beginning of next month will be distributed to various categories on the first, and start the process over again for the next month. That way you don't have to monitor some undefined buffer and just have an emergency account, and categories earmarked for mid-term savings.
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Jan 9, 2014 11:51
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I keep getting an error on my iPhone 5 when I try to sync:quote:Cloud Sync Error It happens both on Wifi and over LTE. Anybody else ever experience this? I'm on iOS 6.1.2, jailbroken, if that matters. I noticed this notice on YNAB's website when I googled it, but that was yesterday, and I can log into the Dropbox website just fine. Anybody experiencing this?
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Jan 11, 2014 22:10
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There's currently some issue with dropbox in general, it's happening for me too, and my dropbox client on my computer is endlessly spinning. It'll get fixed eventually.
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Jan 11, 2014 22:25
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Spend away, guys! Your budget will never know, I'm buying an iPad!
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Jan 11, 2014 22:26
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:There's currently some issue with dropbox in general, it's happening for me too, and my dropbox client on my computer is endlessly spinning. Cool; haven't been using YNAB long, so didn't know if there was something I was missing.
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Jan 11, 2014 22:26
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Ugh, one week in and my car dies and fucks my budget to the moon. At least now I can use YNAB to budget responsibly for a new car.
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Jan 12, 2014 03:47
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I recently got my iPhone 5S ( ), but had bought YNAB during Steam's summer sale last year. I always dreaded entering receipts at the end of the day, and often fell prey to just not keeping my register up to date. I had no idea the app existed until I found this thread, and I'm hoping that it will keep me on the horse this time.
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Jan 12, 2014 23:32
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Why wait until the end of the day? I usually just do it immediately after a purchase/expense, or if that's not convenient, when I get back to my car or office or whatever. It maybe takes 20 seconds. vvv Whoops, nevermind. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Jan 13, 2014 |
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Jan 12, 2014 23:42
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LogisticEarth posted:Why wait until the end of the day? I usually just do it immediately after a purchase/expense, or if that's not convenient, when I get back to my car or office or whatever. It maybe takes 20 seconds. Because he didn't have a smartphone or the app before.
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Jan 12, 2014 23:47
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For you married / cohabitant goons how do you handle joint and separate expenses? Basically the wife and I use spreadsheets but I have personal accounting and joint stuff for bills. I skimmed through their guides but didn't see anything on this. How would I set it up?
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Jan 12, 2014 23:47
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Consolidate the income and bills and divide the discretionary into his and her allowances.
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Jan 13, 2014 00:10
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 10:10 |
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Hed posted:For you married / cohabitant goons how do you handle joint and separate expenses? Basically the wife and I use spreadsheets but I have personal accounting and joint stuff for bills. I skimmed through their guides but didn't see anything on this. How would I set it up?
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Jan 13, 2014 00:30
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