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Not a Children posted:What should I do if I find myself continually underspending my budget? Obviously a good problem to have, but it looks like everything is a bit out of whack. For example, when I started, I budgeted about $150/mo for fuel. Now that I live close enough to work to bike/walk, that expense has gone down quite a lot, but the balance in that category is hanging around the mid $200s. Across all categories, my balance column totals to about double what my actual budget is. This is exactly how you are supposed to do it. If one category gets ridiculously buffered (like 6 months of gas or something) you can divert money for next month to another category instead of adding the same amount again. One way to think of it, if you had 6 months buffered in every category that isn't long term, that is a 6 month emergency fund right there (ignoring even whatever is in your "savings"). Definitely do long term categories, that is what shows the rewards of budgeting this way. Now you can actually justify doing big things like vacations because you have planned for it.
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Dec 1, 2014 16:38
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Am I the only one that doesn't keep separate accounts and just lumps checking and credit cards all together? In order to get real balances I just use mint. I don't bother with off balance accounts either. Again I just use mint. Only issue is cash purchases can slip through but those are rare for me anyway.
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Jan 2, 2015 19:20
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How do you guys budget an FSA account? You sign up for how much is coming out of your account before the start of the year, and at the start of the year you get the entire annual amount available to spend, even though it is only coming out of your paycheck in biweekly payments. Since it is available immediately, should I just budget it as one big funding for January 1st? The deductions from my paycheck happen automatically, so I'm not worried about tracking that. Second, how do I account for the fact that the FSA money is not fungible like other accounts? Since I can only spend it on medical stuff, I do not want to be able to reduce the amount there in my budget to add else where. I suppose I just make "FSA Medical (DO NOT TRANSFER FROM)" as the category name and just put the entire year payment in that.
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Jan 8, 2015 15:05
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HSA I would agree with you, but FSA has an impetus to spend or lose so I need to keep a closer eye on it. Thanks for the link, that gives me options.
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Jan 8, 2015 16:07
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CCs and checking accounts are easy to reconcile and see if they are matching statements. Cash accounts aren't. Having a cash account lets you see that you are logging your cash transactions correctly. One slight modification that helps me enter things easily, I round up to the nearest dollar when paying with cash, and just throw change into a jar. Whenever I cash that jar out it is marked as income. This way I only need to remember that I spent $2 on a soda instead $1.83 or whatever.
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Feb 5, 2015 20:08
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YNAB just posted on their blog that they have been working on a web app. Does this mean the next iteration of YNAB is going to be subscription based? I hope not.
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Feb 5, 2015 20:23
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They've explicitly said that YNAB 4 will not go away in any form no matter what YNAB 5 is. So I wouldn't worry too much about it. You can still stick with YNAB 4 if you want.
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Feb 6, 2015 14:25
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dreesemonkey posted:I've been using YNAB for a month, and I think it's going "OK". My wife and I were talking about it on some lengthy car trips this weekend and we need to make adjustments. I mean don't remove the buffer (always keep that around for fixed expenses). So all your Feb. income should still be able to go towards March and you should still be budgeting March's fixed expenses from that. But beyond that sure. I always have 0 in my fixed expense categories at the end of the month. Monthly but variable required spending like electricity and groceries has extra balance because they can fluctuate a lot from month to month. They tend to be small buffers though. For bursty things like unexpected medical costs we keep bigger buffers. We have big buffers for medical and pet costs (we have lots of pets and vet visits are expensive). Really the biggest parts that matter for carrying over a balance are rainy day funds and recurring expenses that only happen annually or every six months or whatever (so you can make sure you are putting enough aside monthly for those).
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Feb 9, 2015 15:14
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dreesemonkey posted:OK, glad my thinking makes sense then. I also like the idea of a "buffer" category to soak up minor overages. Obviously after we do this a while the need for that should be diminished since we'll have built a balance on discretionary type accounts, but until then it seems like it will be an ok solution as opposed to constantly pulling from "emergency savings" IMO you should get to a point where "emergency savings" can actually be hidden as a category, so that you can only see it if you truly truly need to hit it. One thing that has helped for the first year for us so far is having a "crap we've forgotten about the first year" category that we throw things in for new categories we have yet to remember.
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Feb 9, 2015 19:40
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Gothmog1065 posted:Why would you not put in a payee? If you don't want to see who you're paying, do something more general like "Gas" or "restaurants" or something like that. That would be what the categories are for. It is repetitious if that is all he is using it for.
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Mar 4, 2015 13:58
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Anyone have any good rules of thumb for maximum values on a rainy day fund? Like we have some maintenance categories like "Home Maintenance", "Car Maintenance", etc where we add decent amounts every month, but I figure there must be a point where enough is enough and I can redirect to other items. These funds are different from our actual emergency fund. Should we just be aiming for "what is the biggest one time expense we could reasonably expect" level?
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Jul 1, 2015 13:45
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I don't see how sub categories are killer? You can already have multiple different master categories with categories inside there. Isn't that enough? I want cloud because I'm often wanting to update my budget while not at a windows or mac computer. Most of my interaction with YNAB is through a remote desktop session to my home PC.
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Oct 28, 2015 14:07
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ilkhan posted:Phone app. Phone app doesn't let me edit the budget, and it is significantly slower for entering 5-10 transactions in a row (I don't add immediately unless it is a cash purchase, I just add the next day using mint to see all my accounts).
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Oct 28, 2015 17:02
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If you make Rule 4 without an emergency fund drawdown, you have essentially buffed up your emergency fund by another month's worth of expenses. Not a bad thing at all, mind you, but that is what happens.
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Nov 17, 2015 21:09
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Dustoph posted:Or the worst. I think I need to graduate to something else at this point. I budget monthly, but get paid biweekly. This doesn't work too great with YNAB when I'm well beyond step 4. I mean, I guess I could do something like reduce my monthly Roth IRA allocations to match 2 paychecks per month, and toss those 3rd paychecks completely in there when I get them. Maybe that's the easiest solution since I like the envelope system to help me keep my spending in check. I just budget for two paychecks a month and treat the random third as a bonus to top off categories
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Mar 30, 2016 13:24
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It insists that you are 8k over budget because you are. The reality of your situation is that you created 8k more debt. You should reflect that reality by creating the debt on budget and log it like it actually happened. The whole reason for getting rid of the right arrow is that the right arrow would fool you into thinking your numbers are something other than they are. It wouldn't matter for people with reasonable buffers but for others living more day to day it is essential that your budget reflect your actual situation. I used to use the right arrow for exactly one thing, my fun money category where one month I might overspend and borrow from the next. Now I just budget less next month instead and cover my overspending in the current month. It is the reality of what happens.
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Jul 29, 2016 17:15
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dreesemonkey posted:I was not aware nYNAB didn't allow you to carry over negative balances. We're rule 4 and most categories (and I have a lot) are discretionary spending, so I like knowing that I overspent last month and I have to make that up when planning the next month's budget. I think that losing that kind of information obfuscates that there was overspending (not planning well enough). You can still make up for it next month, it just forces you to take it out of *somewhere* in your current budget for now. So you overspend 200 in a category, you have to make up for it out of another category (emergency fund or vacation fund or whatever), because you really honestly do not have that money any more. Next month you can budget 200 less in the category you overspent on and put that 200 back in wherever you took it out from. This is reflecting reality and not making temporary money out of nowhere like the right arrow does.
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Jul 29, 2016 18:40
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dreesemonkey posted:Yea but with Rule 4, I DO have the money since I'm budgeting a month ahead. I get it, I guess I'm just too much in the classic YNAB mindset. Or just go to the next month, take 100 out of groceries, and then you have 100 more to put towards the current months groceries instead. It is just a slightly more manual way. For one day it is a bit annoying yes, but for longer time stretches lots of people were getting really in a bind with the right arrow making them think they had more than they did.
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Aug 1, 2016 12:26
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Anything that Financier is missing that is big compared to nynab with the toolkit?
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Nov 6, 2016 01:14
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Combat Pretzel posted:Start with 130$ then keep filling it up to that amount each month. You'll actually be topping it up by the amount of your bill each month, yet have a full 130$ budgeted. Yep if you can afford this do it. I have lots of categories like this, and it has basically made it so that I am buffered an extra month in variable categories, and I never get caught off guard when a bigger expense happens.
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Nov 10, 2016 14:22
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dreesemonkey posted:Financier But then you aren't actually rule 4 any more because you didn't rely solely on the month before for all your budget. nYNAB is just making you be honest about that fact.
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Feb 8, 2017 14:16
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TraderStav posted:You got it, some categories or broad. Home maintenance can include both my annual fertilizer service as well as weekly lawn service. Both are costs go to maintain my home (so if I ever need to calculate the cost of owning versus renting) but I don't want to see line items for both. I also include funds in here for emergent maintenance too. That's why you'd do home maintenance as a top category and lawn maintenance as a sub category
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Apr 28, 2017 11:56
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I have a real first world problem question. Lets say I have certain categories that I am funding for very long term, like college savings etc. This is on top of a large emergency fund. It is getting to the point where it feels ridiculous to have this much stuff in a savings account without investing any of it, but investing it will mean random fluctuations to keep tracking. How do others handle this? Like college savings we are talking about 15 years out, so I clearly shouldn't be just keeping it in cash. But I want my budget to show a steadily increasing amount I've set aside for my kids college. I guess I could have a buffer category for market fluctuations, and do all the plus and minuses from there? I don't know.
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May 18, 2017 14:52
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If you subscribe before tomorrow you can grandfather in to the old price.
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Nov 14, 2017 14:51
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Set date goals is really designed for fixed payments by a certain date, like insurance and taxes and the like. A monthly funding goal would make more sense for gifts
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Dec 5, 2017 13:16
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Mikey Purp posted:Figured I'd give ynab a try since I've gotten completely fed up with Mint's marketing poo poo and crappy syncing while also realizing that it doesn't actually help me keep a budget as much as it just let's me watch in real time as I blow past all of my budgeted categories. Figure out what you actually want to do with that. Make an emergency fund category but just savings isn't giving your money a job.
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Jan 10, 2018 22:25
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A lot also depends on how strict your budgeting is. I use it more for the long term goals and have generous limits on monthly things because we make much more than we spend.
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Jan 17, 2020 19:56
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Giant Metal Robot posted:Not sure if this is the right thread, but I'm in a stable budget now with YNAB and have some money budgeted for just in case things like furniture, weekend trips, my next cell phone, etc. Why make it on budget? On budget money is money that you know will be there when you need it. Just make it off budget if you want to keep tracking it.
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Jan 27, 2020 19:41
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So I just tried a fresh start on my account and it is saying I have a ton of left over money that is not set aside somewhere and this is after I set aside similar amounts to what I had in my old budget. I am confused.
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Jan 5, 2021 16:34
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FateFree posted:If you had any goals you were slowly building up, their history might be wiped out and reset. Like if you had a 900/1000 goal for Christmas and it was November, the goal would suggest you put 500 now and 500 next month, 'freeing up' 400 dollars in the current month. I already fixed those cases but I think what it was was that my fresh start didn't include any pending payments to my credit cards (which I pay off every month). Once I made my pending payments match up with the negative balances on my cards it looked correct again.
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Jan 5, 2021 17:32
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I mean you can add it up, take it out of the amount budgeted to Guest's share and then put that in the relevant categories (you don't have to actually make a transaction there just change the amount budgeted). But yes the right way is to just track it in a separate spreadsheet. Do that.
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Oct 13, 2021 16:03
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 14:53 |
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So whats a good idea for an alternative if I've really only been using YNAB to track (I have the good problem of not having a tight budget whatsoever, I just like knowing how I'm spending each month). I don't like Mint's monetization strategy. Is Quicken the way to go? EDIT: Looks I just annual renewed in Sept so I have some breathing room. Chin Strap fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Nov 1, 2021 |
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Nov 1, 2021 17:51
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