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It's true that YNAB (the software alone, not counting the classes and support material) doesn't do anything that a sufficiently well-designed spreadsheet couldn't do for free. But, embarrassing though it is to admit, if I were the kind of person who could make that spreadsheet and stick with it, I wouldn't have loused up my finances the way I did. I was never someone who overspent as a habit. I lived below the poverty line for years and had a knack for keeping to a budget and stretching out a dollar. But when my income finally went up, I found I had a hard time seeing that additional cash as anything but an amorphous blob of "savings" and "free spending money" - which meant that when three major life emergencies hit in a row, I ended up in debt to the tune of just over $5000, which could have been avoided with the proper planning. YNAB makes the principle of giving every dollar a job simple and flexible, and ever since I started using it, I've made major strides in paying off my debt while building back up my emergency savings and setting clear amounts aside for specific savings goals. TL;DR - if you've ever been stupid with money, YNAB is worth a shot.
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Jan 2, 2014 01:44
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Bloody Queef posted:How do people handle investments in the budget side of things? I get that you can add a line item under savings for "investments" but the balance of investments will change due to gains/losses etc. Is there a way to track that in the budget portion, or is that budget investment number (overall, not monthly addition) a made up number? I keep my investments and my RSP as their own accounts in the off-budget section. These aren't tapped for my daily spending, so they shouldn't affect the pool of money I'm drawing from each month. I update them manually every quarter.
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Jan 2, 2014 19:57
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SimpleCoax posted:Looks like YNAB is 50% off at http://www.macupdate.com today. It depends on the category. I overbudget a little for groceries to allow for the weeks when I inevitably run out of three or four staples at the same time, or when I'm called upon to bake something for work or have a guest over at mealtimes. In that case, I use the extra for debt repayment once I know whether I'm going to use it all. For most of my other categories, I roll over to use them as a combined budget and short-term savings thing - for instance, whatever's left over in my household category just goes towards bigger household purchases like new curtains or a new lamp, and whatever's left over after paying my phone bill goes towards saving up for a new phone. There's no reason not to do things the way you propose, although long-term you'll probably want to adjust your budgeting if you're consistently overestimating your expenses.
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Jan 29, 2014 23:43
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tuyop posted:What the gently caress? http://ine.scripts.mit.edu/blog/2011/06/the-rule-of-9s/
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May 4, 2014 21:35
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