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I just picked this up in the Steam sale and am loving it so far, however I'm fuzzy on the credit card issue. I have a couple cards, but only use them because I get points. I pay them off at the end of every month and don't carry a balance. If coming into the month of January 2013, I have 700 from December, then I want to budget for that THIS month? And then NEXT month budget for the January balance? My only question is that that I will be linking the credit card purchases via the Quicken reports to various already-budgeted expenses, and I want to make sure I'm not double-counting that money. So, say in January I start with -$700 on my Bank of America card from December. I budget $700 because that money will be coming out of my checking account. However, at the end of January, when I budget for February, (assume another $700 on the card) do I just budget another $700? This is confusing me because I will have subtracted the budgeted funds from various subcategories as funds are spent.
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Jan 3, 2014 01:30
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tuyop posted:Edit: say I go to the grocery store and spend $100 from my credit card. I enter that as 100 in my groceries category on my CC. When the time comes, I transfer $100 from my bank account to my CC so that the balances reconcile correctly. That transfer is not categorized because it's not spending, the spending was from the CC when I bought the groceries. The money was gone from the budget at that point, the rest is just reconciliation. Ok, so this month I budget funds for the December bill, but next month budget nothing as the money will have already been subtracted from other categories? If I allocate all the expenditures on the credit card's account page then the "outflows" column for February should read $0.00?
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Jan 3, 2014 01:54
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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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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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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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I handle my retirement accounts as an off-budget account that I plan to update monthly or quarterly. It's still there, just not 100% up to date.
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Jan 24, 2014 18:18
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Yeah, I'm in the "let it accumulate" camp. That way you build up a buffer in any one category.
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Jan 29, 2014 22:10
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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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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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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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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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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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Yeah, a while ago I just stopped using my debit card all together, except at a few places that only take debit and not credit. Just pay off the credit at the end of the month. Since this is the YNAB thread, I assume you're following a budget and not grossly overspending what you have available. Get a rewards card too. I get a point for every dollar spent, which translates into an effective 1% discount on every purchase.
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Feb 5, 2014 14:51
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For the scope of YNAB, I just deal with my final take-home pay (i.e. what actually makes it to the bank account) and just have my retirement funds as off budget accounts that I manually update quarterly. They're really only there as net worth contributors. I suppose you could make a line item for benefits like health insurance, you'd just have to add that to monthly income, even though it never goes into an account though. That could get tricky, and might be better handled as a desperate spreadsheet.
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Feb 6, 2014 17:53
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Transactions you log on the card after you started using YNAB don't get added to the "pre-YNAB Debt" category. They just get added to the card's balance. Since you've already budgeted money in other categories for the new card transactions, you would be double counting if you also assigned more money again in the debt item.
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Feb 6, 2014 22:01
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Suspicious Lump posted:How do you reconcile? What does it actually do? Ive been using YNAB for ages now but I never stick to it. I still save a lot but I really want to track every single dollar to see where my money is going. What usually happens is either my actual balance is more than YNAB balance or vis versa. So I usually make a fresh start. Basically, you take your bank and credit card statements, plug in the cleared balance on the statement at the date it was issued, and then figure out where the difference comes from by going through the transactions. It's not really meant to be done up to the moment, but to double check your accounting by comparing YNAB's values versus the official amounts from your bank.
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Feb 13, 2014 16:27
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^^^^ It's to mark that the transaction has cleared the bank or card, that is, it's been confirmed, as opposed to "pending" or something like that. Day to day this really doesn't matter if you keep a bit of a buffer in the accounts being charged. But if you're broke, or your card is nearly maxed or something, then those pending transactions are more important to pay attention to.Suspicious Lump posted:Thanks guys in regards to reconciliation. I was actually clearing everything as I entered it in. I thought the green C meant the transaction had gone through. I was doing poo poo wrong. Technically, you're correct there. If you clear them as they go along, when you actually reconcile, all it will do is tell you if there's a discrepancy between the statement and the cleared transactions in YNAB. If there is, then go back and see where the problem is. If the numbers match, then you're good. After you confirm that the YNAB account matches the statement, it'll lock all cleared transactions up to the date of the statement. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Feb 13, 2014 |
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Feb 13, 2014 23:53
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Suspicious Lump posted:Can people critique my budget categories? I'm wondering how specific I should get for everyday expenses. Should I have a different category for eating out/market food/cash on hand vs restaurants/incidentals? A few things that might be missing: Clothing, Gifts (Christmas, Birthdays, Weddings/etc.), Computer replacement/maintenance, Home Maintenance*. "Incidentals" is kind of a broad category depending on what you want it to cover. Generally I have mine broken up into "Spending money", "Entertainment", "Beer/Wine/Spirits" (separate from drinking/eating out), and a "Misc. expenses" for everything else. *You may not think you need a home maintenance category because you rent, but I've found that it still helps in case you need to pick up a new appliance, furniture, small repairs, etc. Also, I don't see a category for renter's insurance there. Get some if you don't have any. It's like $10/month.
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Feb 17, 2014 17:49
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tuckfard posted:Business expenses (this one changes a lot. My wife makes a decent amount of money on Etsy, but it requires some expenses, we just mark them here and adjust the budget. I'm sure there's a better way to do this.) How much are we talking about here? If it's regularly significant, I would say just keep it off the family budget and treat it like a separate business entity, with a separate off budget bank account. Depending on how involved you get with it, she might want to only pay out "income" to your YNAB budget as it's available, and keep the rest as capital for future business stuff. Any "investment" in the business from your checking or whatever would be an outflow from YNAB.
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Feb 19, 2014 01:16
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Kenny Rogers posted:Depends on the company, mostly. Same here, I have both our cars, plus renter's insurance through State Farm. The monthly charge was about the same rate, $1-2, with it directly drawing from my checking account. Having it monthly, easier to track, and no physical bills to worry about is worth the convenience fee in my opinion.
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Feb 19, 2014 10:47
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Cuddlebottom posted:If that account is money you might spend, like an emergency account, just budget money towards it and let the budgeted balance accrue. Don't worry about it not showing up as an expense, because you've already accounted for it by budgeting it. As long as you don't go over the rest of your budget, of course This. Just let the money build up in the category, and don't log it as an outflow. If you ever need to withdraw money from it, you can enter a negative amount for the month, and it will add that money from the balance to your available cash. If you already have a chunk of change in the money market account, the first month's "input" into the account should be the balance of it. So Month 1 might have $10,000 or whatever as inflow, but Month 2 (and each going forward) will have $200, or whatever you put into it. Just remember to also log the transfer so your account balances stay accurate. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Mar 4, 2014 |
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Mar 4, 2014 00:44
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Outflows for the credit cards should be what you actually pay when the bill comes due. If you're slowly paying off the balance with minimum payments plus current purchases, then any overrun should be forwarded to the category next month. Continue until the debt is done. You don't need to budget anything aside from the minimum payment. All other current purchases should have already been accounted for. If you're paying it off there should be a positive flow into the card balance over time. So, basically, just budget for the minimum payment, and if you're tracking the rest of the purchases on the card properly, it should all work out.
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Mar 4, 2014 03:03
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Henrik Zetterberg posted:Ok, I think I got this now. Looks correct, just remember to also make the transfer from checking to savings, and log that transfer in YNAB. Also, for the first month you might want to also include your monthly input on top of the initial balance, otherwise you're skipping your savings input this month. So if you have $22,600 on March 1, and want to save $400 this month, then log $23,000 as the input.
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Mar 4, 2014 18:09
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Grouco posted:Does anyone have suggestions on how to handle splitting a dinner bill? What I do is charge whatever goes on the card to the Restaurants category. Then, I make a separate transaction for the cash, however instead of logging it as income, I log it as an inflow in Restaurants rather than an outflow. This has the benefit of not only keeping your actual spending in the category accurate, but also keeping your cash balance and card balances accurate too.
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Mar 5, 2014 22:12
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monsieur fatso posted:One thing that I like to do that just simplifies things for me (and some of you may cringe at this) is I basically put all of my discretionary money in one big category and call it a day. I don't break it down into things like game, drinking, eating out, spending money, etc. I've tried breaking up the categories before, but I find I always end up going over in one or two of the categories, but the others will barely be touched. Then the next month other ones will go over. This is probably not the best way to handle it, because it makes tracking and controlling what you spend on each category tricky. Instead of just lumping it all together, just let a category run over (if you're ok with that) as long as you have funds to cover it in other categories. Then, at the end of the month, week, when you get home, whatever, reallocate the money from the categories with unspent money to those with a deficit. That way you can actually see how much you're spending in each category, and adjust your budget accordingly. If you're under-spending on your discretionary expenses in general (a good idea), then eventually each category will grow a bit of a buffer so you don't have to shuffle everything around to avoid going negative.
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Apr 4, 2014 12:21
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I have a bad habit of keeping YNAB open in the background on my desktop, and since I bought it through Steam, it shows me as "playing" YNAB constantly. I'm starting to get inquiries from random steam friends about "What the gently caress is this YNAB thing that you've been playing for 800 hours?" Then I have to do a little evangelical spiel about the program, and inevitably I see the person add YNAB to their wishlist for the next Steam Sale. 
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Apr 6, 2014 14:04
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Yeah, for me that would go under Misc. Expenses with a note describing the large purchase. Although maybe just make a catchall "unexpected/irregular large purchases" category that you keep around but don't fund every month, just for ease of tracking.
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Jun 13, 2014 19:18
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Wait, toyup, are you putting you paychecks as income for this month, or income for next month? If you have your budget in the green for this month, then start logging it for the following month to "get a month ahead" after you get to a point where the month's budget is paid for on Day 1, start building up an emergency fund in it's own budget item. It sounds like you're paying next month's bills out of a budget item buffer fund, which is kind if inefficient. And as you noted makes it easier to cheat.
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Jun 13, 2014 21:47
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spwrozek posted:Your savings are not really lower. Your money is just in different places. The best way to get a fuzzy feeling about your nominal wealth is to ignore your individual budget items and look in the summary column on the left. The Budget Accounts item gives you a number for your total "cash" assets, and the All Accounts number factors in your off budget items. Then the money budgeted for next month doesn't seem to "disappear".
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Jun 14, 2014 16:20
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The upside is that YNAB will probably help you save enough from tracking random purchases in the first 1-3 months to cover it's cost of purchase. I still say go for it.
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Jun 27, 2014 03:15
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SiGmA_X posted:This is my biggest complaint with YNAB. It's somewhat annoying but also saves them the trouble of needing to implement any kind of real security. Right now if someone gets into your YNAB, the worst that happens is they see a bunch of numbers.
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Jul 2, 2014 20:48
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HonorableTB posted:Why would I move my auto loan off budget? I thought things like that were "absolute" bills and had to be budgeted for. The loan PAYMENT is the absolute thing that should be in your budget. The total loan AMOUNT as an account is more easily handled off-budget. Make a category to budget money for the loan payment, which will be a simple outflow transaction. Then just have a separate account that you adjust every so often to keep track of your total assets/liabilities. A loan like a car payment is a bit of a pain to track as a regular budget item, because part of each payment is interest, and part goes towards principle. You can't just dump your monthly bill on your total loan in YNAB, because the interest portion of the loan doesn't affect the principle. Also (and this is general budget advice, non-YNAB) you should probably rework your budget. $100 for groceries is pretty goddamn low unless you're eating ramen for every meal. Other things you don't have budgeted: -Clothing -Medical/Dental (should build up a bit of a buffer) -Gifts (Birthdays, holidays, weddings/funerals/etc) -Vacation/Travel -Computer replacement -Misc. Expenses -Other Savings goals (home down payment, additional retirement, etc.) Once you figure those in, that extra $300 will dry up quickly. Then those car payments will hurt a bit more. EDIT: HonorableTB posted:I also moved my credit cards, loans, and debts to off-budget accounts according to advice I got earlier in this thread. Let me restate it for clarification: I moved those to off-budget because they don't directly impact my day to day spending, correct? They're one-time payments I make each month and aren't things I need to watch my spending on to avoid going over budget since they are a static cost each month? That's still a bit confusing to me. Actively used credit cards should absolutely be on the budget. You're using them for daily expenditures and monthly bills. Everything else, keep off. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Jul 15, 2014 |
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Jul 15, 2014 21:46
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HonorableTB posted:- Groceries are split between me and my girlfriend; we each put in half for each payment, but I raised it to $200. These things are not really top priority but they still are common things that you will eventually need a budget for. Maybe not weddings and home down payments but gifts and travel (like having to get a hotel room for a friends wedding or something) are probably in your relatively near future. While hitting the debt hard is a great idea, it's not so great an idea to totally lock yourself out of everything and not have any spending money. While you do have "spending money" budgeted, that's a big nebulous category, and you'll find it can be really easy to accidentally fritter it away. Breaking it up into a few other categories might help. Even if you're only sticking $5-10 a month into those categories, they're there. So when your girlfriend's birthday comes around you have $20 in the gift category to take her to Taco Bell or something.  As for opening up multiple savings accounts, unless you have no self control, there's really no need. Just have checking, savings (with whatever piddly interest you can find). Keep the YNAB categories as the "individual" savings accounts. EDIT: VVVV Yeah, that's WAD. If you don't have it, don't budget it. YNAB is not for forecasting. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 15, 2014 23:19
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Suspicious Lump posted:In YNAB if I budget $200 for education in July and end up spending $300, in August if I again budget $200 will education have $200 or $100? It can do one of two things. By default, overspending in any one category will subtract from your total amount available for next month. However, if you click on the overspent item value, the program will give you the option to roll over the overspent amount specifically to the item's budget for next month, while leaving the overall monthly available budget unchanged. I recommend just going with the default option and taking it out of you overall available budget. That will better represent the money you have available. I only use the "rollover" option for work expenses that will be reimbursed. I don't see those as real personal expenses that influence my budget.
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Jul 23, 2014 15:12
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Henrik Zetterberg posted:I always carried the negative balance forward to the same category. Go $40 over in Restaurants? I get $40 less next month. Never really thought about doing it the other way. Intuitively it makes sense to take the money out of next month's category. However, if you roll it all into next month, then it makes it easy to accidentally overdraft. If you have enough liquidity, it works fine, but if you're on a tight budget it can be dangerous. I'm lucky enough that my household income is more than my current budget, so for now I just leave some extra money in "available to budget" and use that to round out the categories towards the end of the month.
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Jul 23, 2014 17:35
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Suspicious Lump posted:I have a massive buffer in the form of a savings goal just sitting there. The issue is not availability of money, it's more about setting up an ideal budgeting scenario which, after initial tweaking and modification of categories and their limits, I would not have to touch again. Currently I find myself having to go back in and reenter my budget because I haven't found an optimal way of using YNAB. So your frustration is already having a static budget made up, but just having to reenter it in YNAB every month? Have you used the Quick Budget option up top in them monthly summary box? It's the lightining bolt symbol. You can auto-populate all fields with the previous month's budget. So, for example, on August 1st, I have my "standard" budget entered in. Before I've fiddled with adjusting it for the month, I go to September and auto-fill all categories with the "use last month's values" option. Bingo, my "standard" budget is now entered for September. I repeat this process on the first of each month, so the standard budget is always carried forward with a few mouse clicks. I've also made a note on each category item with the standard budget amount for said item. So if anything gets out of order, it's right there and I can reference the note and correct it. Of course, this also means I always have a big red -$X,XXX in the next month until our paychecks come in and are logged as next month's income. But that's not biggie, and is good for making sure your monthly income is enough to actually covering all your expenses.
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Aug 5, 2014 11:17
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I think that would really come down to personal preference. Once you have your basics and savings goals covered, whatever you do with the rest is really not set in stone. Personally I have set dollar amounts, not percentages, for "fun money", and the extra is distributed to wherever it makes sense at the end of the month. Maybe sit down and think about what longer term discretionary purchases you'd like to make. A nice suit, a significant vacation, etc. Make a category for these expenditures and put the "extra" in there. Edit: to put it another way, break up your "fun money" into everyday and one-off/long term categories. Like, you know you go the bar regularly so many times a month, but you're not buying a bespoke suit or flying to New Zealand that often. The "everyday" stuff should be built into your basic budget, while the long term things are a "if I can afford it" category where extra cash ends up. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Sep 24, 2014 |
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Sep 24, 2014 15:57
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Take a look at your savings categories versus your savings account itself. You have $263.26 in your savings category but $303.90 in your account. The "extra" money in the savings account are allocated to your expenses category. To be honest, unless you have some crazy interest rate right now, a dedicated "savings" account isn't worth it until you've got at least a few grand packed away. Ditch the savings account and build your (at least) one-month buffer in your checking account. You've also spent three times as much on restaraunts as you have on groceries. Something is amiss there. And ditch the snus.
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Oct 9, 2014 01:20
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chupacabraTERROR posted:Maybe you never had any money because you've spent thousands of potential savings over the years on your bad habit? I think that was his point.
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Oct 9, 2014 15:41
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So I finally got around to reconciling out accounts for December 2014, which concluded the first year using YNAB, as we started last January. In May we had a totaled car, and in July/August two expensive pet hospitalizations, but we still managed to increase our net worth by 40% pay off my wife's student loans. This is in large part because my wife and I are lucky to be DINKs with decent jobs, however the program absolutely helped us quantify and cope with these big financial hits. Our savings rate exploded at the beginning of 2014 as using YNAB allowed us to trim huge chunks of fat from our discretionary spending. This helped absorb the financial stresses we had mid year, and put us on the path to rebounding in the fall. It's not only for trying to escape credit card debt or get beyond paycheck-to-paycheck living. It's great for just getting your monthly finances in order, visualizing where your money is going, and experiment with different budgets to see what works. If anyone is on the fence about YNAB or similar programs, it will easily pay for itself.
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Jan 6, 2015 03:00
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