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If the money is a sure thing and you have enough in your account to cover it now, I would just enter the ticket into your budget, have the category in the red and zero it out when you get your refund.
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Jan 31, 2014 16:26
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Eegah posted:Buying a plane ticket next week. I just got my monthly salary and covering it from my checking account's side is zero problem, but from YNAB's point of view I've already given every dollar from my take-home a job this month. This is exactly the kind of thing YNAB doesn't want you to do, as it goes against the whole point of YNAB, which is to get us to stop spending to the bank account and start spending to the budget. You want to borrow from the future, which is against the idea of budgeting money you currently have, and against the idea of building up a buffer to start living on last month's income. That said, you're not the first person in the world to do that, although I wouldn't make a habit out of it. Demon_Corsair posted:If the money is a sure thing and you have enough in your account to cover it now, I would just enter the ticket into your budget, have the category in the red and zero it out when you get your refund. I'd do this. Or just wait until you get the money, and then buy the plane ticket.
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Jan 31, 2014 17:01
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Demon_Corsair posted:If the money is a sure thing and you have enough in your account to cover it now, I would just enter the ticket into your budget, have the category in the red and zero it out when you get your refund. Yeah this is probably what I'll do. I have enough elbow room in my cash buffer that I can afford the ticket even if I don't get my refund this month so I'm not particularly worried, but the thoughts of "in my mind I'm paying for this with my refund" and "I want to lock in the seat reservation and ticket price before I get my refund" kindof conflict in YNAB's world. Thanks all for the help.
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Jan 31, 2014 18:25
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Eegah posted:Yeah this is probably what I'll do. I have enough elbow room in my cash buffer that I can afford the ticket even if I don't get my refund this month so I'm not particularly worried, but the thoughts of "in my mind I'm paying for this with my refund" and "I want to lock in the seat reservation and ticket price before I get my refund" kindof conflict in YNAB's world. Technically you are paying for the ticket with your own cash not the refund. You purchase the ticket, record the expense in YNAB, and go negative in the Vacation category. So you remove some cash from your reserves right now to 0 out the balance. When you get the refund you can increase the categories that you borrowed from. For a really contrived example. Let's say you have $1000 to your name which is exactly how much money you need for February except all of your bills are due 2/28. So for 2/1-2/27 you have $1000 in your checking account that can be spent but is earmarked for your bills on 2/28. However, Uncle Sam is going to send you a tax rebate of $200 which is how much you need to purchase your plane ticket. So you spend the $200 on the plane ticket from your checking account right now. You'll just use the tax rebate to get you back to $1000 so you can afford your 2/28 bills. Except the government is behind and won't get you your money until March (or April). Now you are behind on your February bills by $200. This is why YNAB wants you to only spend the cash you currently have access to. Plus when you open your budget you know exactly where all of your money is sitting. I have a confession. I started using YNAB at the beginning of January but I didn't get a chance to actually budget until last night. I saw my January Available to Budget was like "that's a large pile of money I'm good!". So I budgeted out January and I had a bunch left over even after giving myself an OK emergency fund. So I deferred all of my paychecks from January to February and started to budget February. This is awesome I'm in step 4! Except when I was done I had a negative balance for February. Not good. I'm not living paycheck-to-paycheck but that "huge" buffer I thought I had was not there and I was living month-to-month. Much better than most people but not financially stable in the long term. gariig fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Jan 31, 2014 |
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Jan 31, 2014 18:41
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Why not just start over, at this exact moment if you didn't use YNAB in Jan at all? The program is pretty forgiving about that. I redid my budget like 3 times after figuring out the software. Took me a week or two to adjust my brain enough to where I was spending the budget money and not my future planned money or bank account money.
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Jan 31, 2014 20:31
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Veskit posted:Why not just start over, at this exact moment if you didn't use YNAB in Jan at all? The program is pretty forgiving about that. I redid my budget like 3 times after figuring out the software. Took me a week or two to adjust my brain enough to where I was spending the budget money and not my future planned money or bank account money. While I didn't budget I did record everything. Last night I just zeroed out all of the categories for January and since I looked flush with cash I deferred all of my January income to February. So when I started budgeting February with my January paychecks I realized I over spent in January. Over the long term it evens out with bonuses, gifts, and leaner months. However, I don't want to do that and want to have all of the money ready to go for vacations and emergencies. February is the first month on a real budget and I'm excited.
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Jan 31, 2014 20:51
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Anyone have any ideas how I would YNAB a flex account? Money gets put in paycheck to pay check, but it's used for medical expenses and you have an obligation to pay it back over the course of the year. I'd like to track my medical stuffs that way.
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Feb 3, 2014 07:04
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Veskit posted:Anyone have any ideas how I would YNAB a flex account? Money gets put in paycheck to pay check, but it's used for medical expenses and you have an obligation to pay it back over the course of the year. I'd like to track my medical stuffs that way. I would think just setting it up as a savings/checking account would work. Then have a separate budget line for the flex account inputs. As your medical costs come in, just log them as medical costs, having them come out of the flex account. Unless I'm missing something there.
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Feb 3, 2014 12:28
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I have an FSA, which I contribute to out of my paycheck. Since I don't put money in it from my bank account, I have it as an off-budget account. All of my money for the year became available on Jan. 1, so I did that as an inflow to that account. Then I just log my purchases as normal. 
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Feb 3, 2014 15:35
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LogisticEarth posted:I would think just setting it up as a savings/checking account would work. Then have a separate budget line for the flex account inputs. As your medical costs come in, just log them as medical costs, having them come out of the flex account. Unless I'm missing something there. LogisticEarth posted:I would think just setting it up as a savings/checking account would work. Then have a separate budget line for the flex account inputs. As your medical costs come in, just log them as medical costs, having them come out of the flex account. Unless I'm missing something there. Thanks! Both these things work, but it's not 100% showing of how a flex account works because there's no way to show that your paychecks go into it, and then figure out how much money left you owe into paying it. Great for tracking how much is left in the account itself, but it doesn't show how much "obligation" you have to paying into it.
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Feb 3, 2014 16:33
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spinst posted:I have an FSA, which I contribute to out of my paycheck. Since I don't put money in it from my bank account, I have it as an off-budget account.
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Feb 3, 2014 16:40
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How do people handle small yearly bills? Like every year I buy a State Park pass for $36. Should I be budgeting $3/month for that? I can see needing a bunch of categories for this and it being annoying to fill out constantly.
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Feb 3, 2014 16:44
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gariig posted:How do people handle small yearly bills? Like every year I buy a State Park pass for $36. Should I be budgeting $3/month for that? I can see needing a bunch of categories for this and it being annoying to fill out constantly. You could lump all of your yearly payments into one category and put the specific prices of each item in the note. That way you put away one consolidated chunk of money each month towards those things, but don't have to put $3 or 1.50 into 5-6 different categories.
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Feb 3, 2014 16:55
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gariig posted:How do people handle small yearly bills? Like every year I buy a State Park pass for $36. Should I be budgeting $3/month for that? I can see needing a bunch of categories for this and it being annoying to fill out constantly. If you want to keep it clean, you can add them together into one or two "annual expenses" line items. Just put a note on the line item breaking down how the total is derived.
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Feb 3, 2014 16:55
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Question about a discretionary savings account... Let's say I have a main checking account, where my direct deposit goes and from which I pay all bills. I have an on-budget credit card that I use for monthly expenses, which I pay off every week from that checking account. I also have a savings account linked to the checking account, which is where I would have my fun money. But I'm getting a bit confused and would appreciate someone looking over the flow of actual cash for me to keep me honest. Scenario: I buy a book from Amazon, marking it on my credit card account as a hit against the discretionary budget. I then transfer funds from the savings account to the checking account, and then use those funds to pay for the book as a transfer from checking to credit card.
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Feb 3, 2014 17:01
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Omne posted:Scenario: I buy a book from Amazon, marking it on my credit card account as a hit against the discretionary budget. I then transfer funds from the savings account to the checking account, and then use those funds to pay for the book as a transfer from checking to credit card. That's exactly right, YNAB doesn't give a poo poo where the money actually is when you buy stuff and make categorized transactions, all the transfers are bookkeeping for you to keep account balances how you want them.
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Feb 3, 2014 17:08
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:That's exactly right, YNAB doesn't give a poo poo where the money actually is when you buy stuff and make categorized transactions, all the transfers are bookkeeping for you to keep account balances how you want them. That's what I thought, it's just a pain. The balance on the savings account doesn't match the balance in the budget category until you actually transfer the funds from savings to checking (to then pay off the credit card). I am open to other ideas if anyone has them.
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Feb 3, 2014 17:21
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There's not really much else you can do if that's your workflow. You might be able to use the account number specific to the savings account to make the transfer directly from your savings to the credit card on their website maybe?
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Feb 3, 2014 17:31
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If you're budgeting right, just pay the credit card when you get your statement. You don't have to do it every week. In YNAB, mark the purchase from your credit card account. Then when you make a transfer, mark that in YNAB. It takes two seconds. That way all your account balances are accurate.
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Feb 3, 2014 17:44
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Old Fart posted:If you're budgeting right, just pay the credit card when you get your statement. You don't have to do it every week. Bingo. I had similar confusion when I started with the program, but it makes total sense. It's easier if you stop thinking about anything in the budget "balance" categories as linked to an actual bank account. It's just the amount of money in your virtual money jars that you can spend on any given category. Don't even worry about the credit card bill after the first statement. If you're keeping your credit card as an "on budget" account, it will only show a negative category on-budget until you paid off the statement that covers purchases before you started using YNAB. That is, "pre-YNAB debt", even though if you're paying the card off in full every month it's not really a credit card debt as most people think of it. After that, if you log it properly, then just pay your CC bill as it comes in, and log the payment as a transfer. That is, when you pay the CC bill, it's a "transfer" of money from checking to the balance of the card. The payment will be reflected in your overall assets and balances, but it won't actually change your budget categories at all. The money from the CC bill will have already been taken out of whatever categories you had already assigned money to.
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Feb 3, 2014 18:16
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Check to see if your CC provider has automatic payments for your full statement balance. Set that up to draw from your main account and never think about it again.
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Feb 3, 2014 18:35
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I get that, and that's exactly how I use it for most spending. When I get gas, that goes on my CC, which has a negative balance until I transfer from checking to CC. It's just with my savings account, it gets weird because there's an added step. Let's say I have a $500 budget in a category called Spending. My savings account balance is also $500. I buy a $20 book from Amazon, which is recorded on my credit card against that Spending category, which is now at $480. I would need to transfer $20 from my savings account to checking, and then from checking to CC to zero out the credit card and balance savings and Spending. It's not spending to the balance, it's still spending to the budget category. There's a multi-step transfer that accomplishes balancing the account to the budget category and zeroing out the credit card balance. It would be easier if I didn't have the savings account and just kept everything in checking, but I'd prefer to keep it separate for now. Paying the credit card from the savings account could work, but now I'm splitting payments. I need to see what portion of the balance is normal spending, and which is from the Spending category EDIT: I like paying it off every week. It keeps things honest and I can better see if my CC balance matches what I have in YNAB.
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Feb 3, 2014 18:42
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Omne posted:I get that, and that's exactly how I use it for most spending. When I get gas, that goes on my CC, which has a negative balance until I transfer from checking to CC. It's just with my savings account, it gets weird because there's an added step. You could just get rid of the savings account. What's the point of transferring Spending money to a savings account before spending it?
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Feb 3, 2014 18:51
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Are you getting a fantastical interest rate on your savings account?
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Feb 3, 2014 18:54
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How well does YNAB reconcile? I'm trying to track down a one dollar disparity between my YNAB register and my Bank register, but doing it by hand isn't working so hot. In fact it doesn't look like there is any disparities anywhere. It's made harder by the fact that my bank dates transactions at different times from when I enter them (at point of sale). So I'll have a transaction entered a day or more before it is dated on my bank account. If there isn't a real easy way to do this, what is the best way to handle a "Reconciliation" category? Just create said category and add income/expenses to it as you need?
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Feb 3, 2014 20:49
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Warmachine posted:How well does YNAB reconcile? I'm trying to track down a one dollar disparity between my YNAB register and my Bank register, but doing it by hand isn't working so hot. In fact it doesn't look like there is any disparities anywhere. It's made harder by the fact that my bank dates transactions at different times from when I enter them (at point of sale). So I'll have a transaction entered a day or more before it is dated on my bank account. Just click the reconcile button and have YNAB enter an item for it. It subtracts/adds the reconciliation amount from/to your income so you can just get on with your life. You can always take a buck or two from one of your categories to make up the difference if you like.
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Feb 3, 2014 20:57
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Omne posted:There's a multi-step transfer that accomplishes balancing the account to the budget category and zeroing out the credit card balance. Your budget has nothing to do with your bank accounts. It doesn't matter if your spending budget has $480 left in it, and your savings account has $500. You spend to your budget, not to your bank account. This mindset becomes very helpful when your monthly budget is $3000 and your savings account has $15,000 in it.
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Feb 4, 2014 00:31
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http://www.youneedabudget.com/blog/...rly-next-month/ You know, after reading this, I'm realizing my Rule 4 buffer is technically short by one month's rent. I pay my rent on the first, so usually there's a $0 balance in my rent category. A big clue is that my on-budget account total is currently below the total of two normal paychecks. Also, for off-budget asset or liability accounts like car loans or 401k, I just make one auto-adjustment with Reconcile and call it a day. crimedog fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 01:40
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Old Fart posted:See, you're still looking at your bank accounts. It takes a while to kick this habit. And I get wanting to have the credit card paid off all the time. I used to pay it weekly, too. It was a difficult step to let that go. I am not spending to the account, I am spending to the budget. It just so happens that my savings account balance IS my spending budget overflow. I get paid, I budget out money for bills, buffer, short-term savings, etc., and some into the savings account, which is my spending budget. Say my balance in the budget is $500. I get paid and I budget $200 to spending money, transfer the funds from checking to savings. Now my savings account/spending budget is $700. I have $700 to spend, because my budget has $700 in it. This just so happens to be the same amount of the savings account. Obviously this is too complicated for anyone, including me, to do correctly, so I'll just move the balance of the savings account into checking and put it all into that spending budget line. Otherwise it's just unnecessary transferring of funds and YNAB doesn't like it
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Feb 4, 2014 16:57
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I'm still kind of confused as to where your problem is. Are you saying that you're the big green "available for month" amount at the top if the budget is equal to your savings? If so then just make a line item for "savings" and allocate any overflow there to zero it out. Edit: maybe it would help if you posted a screenshot. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 17:04
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What are the numbers that aren't reconciling?
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Feb 4, 2014 17:22
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Omne posted:I am not spending to the account, I am spending to the budget. It just so happens that my savings account balance IS my spending budget overflow. I get paid, I budget out money for bills, buffer, short-term savings, etc., and some into the savings account, which is my spending budget. Say my balance in the budget is $500. I get paid and I budget $200 to spending money, transfer the funds from checking to savings. Now my savings account/spending budget is $700. I have $700 to spend, because my budget has $700 in it. This just so happens to be the same amount of the savings account. I think you're over complicating things here. If you're putting $200 into your savings and you're budgeting for that, and then you spend $300 on whatever, then you shouldn't be moving ANY money out unless it's an emergency or you overspent. The only reason you should be moving money out of your savings account is if you spend over your budget (and don't have a buffer in your checking). Then you move money out of savings, otherwise, ALL Money should be coming your checking. If all of these accounts are "on budget" it doesn't matter where you're moving money to. 500 = 500 (checking) + 0 Savings = 200 (checking) + 300 (savings). Moving 300 from checking to savings didn't touch your "total budget". It just changed what was available in each account.
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Feb 4, 2014 19:16
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Yes but it can cause problems if too much money is in savings and not enough is in checking because you could inadvertently overdraft even though you technically have enough money to cover everything. Just leave any money that you spend in the short term budget categories in checking and put long term budget categories in your savings account and make transfers as needed, then don't worry if it's a little off cause there's usually plenty of wiggle room. That's what I do. And if you're fully buffered you should always have plenty extra floating around in checking anyway.
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Feb 4, 2014 19:19
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Really, if he's in the US there's no reason to keep anything but his emergency cash fund in a savings account. Interest rates are hilariously low. I've heard they're higher in developing nations, so disregard if you actually get decent interest.
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Feb 4, 2014 20:29
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LogisticEarth posted:Really, if he's in the US there's no reason to keep anything but his emergency cash fund in a savings account. Interest rates are hilariously low. I've heard they're higher in developing nations, so disregard if you actually get decent interest. I am to the point where I just keep all my cash on hand in my checking at this point. So my 6 month emergency fund is in my checking, who cares, it was doing nothing for me in a savings account.
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Feb 4, 2014 20:37
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LogisticEarth posted:Really, if he's in the US there's no reason to keep anything but his emergency cash fund in a savings account. Interest rates are hilariously low. I've heard they're higher in developing nations, so disregard if you actually get decent interest. The interest rate on my savings account is 0.1%
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Feb 4, 2014 20:40
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:The interest rate on my savings account is 0.1% I put my emergency fund into an ING/CapitalOne 360 account, earning a sweet 0.75%. I remember when it was 4%. Anyway, I decided to just keep a long-term savings account off-budget, and kill the on-budget short-term savings/slush fund and just keep all of that in my checking. Makes it easier.
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Feb 4, 2014 22:36
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:The interest rate on my savings account is 0.1% That's ten times higher than mine 
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Feb 5, 2014 01:29
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spwrozek posted:I am to the point where I just keep all my cash on hand in my checking at this point. So my 6 month emergency fund is in my checking, who cares, it was doing nothing for me in a savings account. Up here in Canada, we get 1% savings! Woohoo!
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Feb 5, 2014 05:58
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Old Fart posted:My debit card was compromised a few months ago. They got $800. It was cleared up and credit back within a week, but still. That's a reason not to keep an emergency fund in checking.  I've been using YNAB for a while. You can get the free Andriod/Iphone app. It uses dropbox to sync your budget. It's fantastic but my only complaint is that I can't see my untouched budget categories or modify them.
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Feb 5, 2014 09:41
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