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ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

spinst posted:

Those are all of my savings goals. You can see how much I budgeted and how much I have saved up for each goal. The number on the top left ($485.35) is how much I need to move into my savings account that month. The number on the top right ($4529.38) is the total balance of my savings account.

It's really helped me out as I have always just thrown money into savings and then used it for whatever. Now all of the money in my savings account has purpose.
Indeed.
its been said before, but its worth repeating. YNAB doesn't care which account the money is in. You shouldn't need more than one savings account (or you can make do with just a checking just fine), YNAB splits it into virtual accounts regardless of how many accounts/banks its actually put into.

And as someone not on salary, I fill in the budget for the month based on expected income, and adjust as needed when I know actual amounts. Just remember to spend "fun money" after everything else so the bills get paid. Its not quite how YNAB is designed, but it works fine.

ilkhan fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Jul 16, 2014

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ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

Grouco posted:

I forgot about a refer-a-friend promotion on my credit card, and noticed a $100 credit was posted this morning. How should I handle this in YNAB? Just a $100 inflow to my CC as income available for August?
I have a general interest/fees catagory that it would fall into, but your way sounds fine.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.
Mileage reimbursements. Should I enter them as "income for [month]" or as a positive transaction for the gas category?

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

Pinball posted:

Is there a way to get YNAB to not carry underspending or overspending in categories forward from month to month? I use it to track spending, and as long as I stay below my total budgeted amount for the month, I don't really care whether I overspent in certain categories. Essentially, is there a way to have it start fresh every month?
Adjust your budget to zero out each category. Part of YNAB is giving each dollar a job, and then not being afraid to adjust things as you go. If you are overspending in a category you should identify that and either correct it or adjust your budget for it.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

HonorableTB posted:

This thread has been inactive for a while, but I hope someone will see this and give me some help:


I have a serious problem with my balances. My checking and savings accounts are totally accurate, as I logexpenses and transfers whenever I make them. However, the category balances are seriously off. The balances look like I have $54.58 available, but this isn't true. My accounts are accurate, so how do I make my category balances reflect reality? I've done a few savings transfers over the past few months, but I've always logged them as transfers, so it shouldn't be a problem. Can someone help? I don't want to have to re-do five months worth of work and start over from scratch.
What they said, your balances are fine. The money isn't in the account to you think it is, but the numbers are correct. You can transfer funds from savings to checking to balance the differences, but it's all there.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.
Is there a way in YNAB to graph money allocated to pre-YNAB debt? Since it doesn't have a transaction its an invisible factor for all the graphs in reports, but something I want to see. I suppose I could mark them off budget and change to transactions, but that would have kinds of repercussions everywhere else.

HonorableTB posted:

So if I transfer the money from my savings over to checking, it'll balance out as long as I bring over the correct balances for each category?
Yes. $40.64 transferred from savings to checking puts the "correct" amount in savings and the "correct amount in checking.
If you add up all the balances in each category (right column) it totals what you have in savings+checking. Again, YNAB doesn't care which account the money is in.

It only tracks income, total balance, and output.
As long as you don't overdraft, your actual checking account balance is irrelevant. The amount you have allocated to that category is the limit, not what you have in checking.

ilkhan fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Oct 9, 2014

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

HardDisk posted:

Say I made a $200 purchase, but the store offers to divvy it up in four installments of $50 each. Each installment of the purchase will appear on my CC statement in the same day, but each with a month between them.

Should I:

1) Put four transactions in the same day as the purchase, $50 each, but each one month apart, and mark them as cleared when I see the installment on the credit statement?

2) Put one $200 transaction in the appropriate category and mark it as cleared

3) Set up automatic payment as per Old Fart suggested and remove that when I see that the entire thing has been paid off.
Set up a recurring payment for it on whatever account it's being paid with. Or do 4 payments of 50 with the proper dates, then move them to the scheduler so they show up on the proper day without having to cancel it after 4.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

Gothmog1065 posted:

If you have an account that has a "job" then you want it as an on account.

Car loans are NOT an on budget account, since you're just paying into it. I have all of my installment loans (Cars, house, misc installments) as off accounts, as the money goes into it and that's it.

Credit cards can be either off or on accounts. If you are not going to use them AT ALL, they can be off budget accounts (treat them as installments). Realistically, however, they're going to be on budget, as you can assign any spending on them a "job" which should be paid back at each statement. This will create some fun times as your "pre-ynab debt" (the red number in the budget) is not the same number as the current balance of your credit card if you have used it. If you have NOT used it, they should be the same, however, you have to keep adding interest and whatnot as a "pre-ynab" category.

For instance, you have a credit card. You start off with 5,000 as the initial Pre-YNAB balance. Each month, you make a payment of $100. The red amount in the budgeting section would go down by $100, as well as the amount in the Budget section. This is all well and good, until you have interest. I always categorize them as Pre-YNAB debt, because that's the interest on it. So each month, the budget screen and the accounts screen on the left will reflect a $50 decrease.

When you use the credit card, you have to add up all of your spending, AND the minimum amount (which will include your interest) and pay that off each month. If you don't add up your current spending, your numbers will get very off and things will start to get wonky.
Interest should have its own category, it shouldn't be added to pre-YNAB debt (as its not pre-YNAB debt, its a current transaction). Anything you are going to make purchases on should be on-budget.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

Easychair Bootson posted:

I'm just getting started with YNAB with the immediate goal of paying off all credit card and student loan debt ASAP. The CC is set up as a Budget Account and the student loan as an Off-Budget Account. I'm going to still be using the credit card for upcoming purchases (for which I'll budget), and I've watched the video on handling credit cards in YNAB.

If I know I'll have a $400 auto insurance bill in April (paid every 6 months) should I be budgeting $400/5 for the month of December? Or should I budget $0 for auto insurance and put that money towards the pre-YNAB credit card debt?

edit: working through the videos and it seems that my question is answered by asking myself "What does this money need to do before I get paid next" as well as the idea of budgeting only what you have available by prioritizing: immediate needs, bills, then rainy day funds
$400/5 gets that bill paid with minimal fuss. Or you can scramble to come up with $400 in April.

YNAB is all about the former. Its not all about what the money needs to do before you get paid next (thats short term thinking). Its about planning ahead so that when the bill comes you have the money ready without even having to check balances or even really think about it. Bill arrives, bill gets paid, move on.

Pretty much what the above said. Take your net income, subtract the categories you know you have to pay (including interest), subtract the relevant portion of known upcoming expenses, subtract an amount to cover savings and unknown costs, and put the rest into the principal balances.

ilkhan fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Nov 30, 2014

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

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.

Now, this is primarily because I budget for long-term expenses that haven't actually come up yet -- $50/month toward car repairs, $100/month towards a vacation, $25/month for holiday purchases, etc. Is this a good way to maintain things? It just seems that the balances are getting awfully high, yet if they all came due at once, I'd be barely able to cover them with my non-savings liquid funds. Is this the way good budgeting is actually supposed to turn out, or should I be worried that I'm doing it wrong? Is it reasonable that I budgeted expenses that are a long way (like, years) off, like vacation savings and car repairs?
Adjust your budget to zero out the categories that are monthly expenses. You aren't saving for a big gas purchase, for example. Put the excess into a rule 4 category or into a dedicated category for a future big purchase. Car repairs should be a category, but if you think you have enough in there to cover a major repair stop putting money towards it.

You can be as detailed or general with categories as you want to be. Some have a repair category for each car, some just have a general car category for everything car related. Sum of your category balances should equal your actual account balances. You want to have enough to pay out every category balance at once, so you are fine with that.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

HonorableTB posted:

I have a question about credit cards:

I spent $68.76 using a credit card, and today was payday. I wanted to budget for that expense - paying off the balance - so I made a category for it and put the balance due there. However, my credit card account is marked as an on-budget, so I did a transfer payment. The money was transferred and the bill is paid, but how do I represent the money I used to budget for the payment? It looks like I have an extra $68.96 to re-categorize, but that money has been spent. There's no outflow for it, so what do I do? I don't want to accidentally overbudget myself and mess up big time.
You budget the spending in the category fow aht you bought. The payment to the card company is considered automatic, just do the transfer. You aren't spending money when doing the transfer, you are just moving it around.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.
I do a repeated scheduled for stuff that varies but is around the same time each month and just adjust the amount.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.
reports->net worth.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.
Anybody have a $15 steam key for YNAB floating around? I want to get a copy for my sister.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

Madbullogna posted:

I've been patiently (not) watching each day to see if steam offers something better than the current sale, as I've finally decided to pick up a copy for myself. (As usual, I decide these things when there's not an awesome sale at that exact moment, ugh). Come on New Year's steam sale! I'm thinking they'll knock more of the price prior to the 2nd.
I bought it for myself a year ago at $15 and its been hugely beneficial for me. I just dont want to shred my x-mas budget by buying it not on sale for her.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

Eight Is Legend posted:

Do you guys use the scheduled transactions option at all? I know I'll be transferring some money from my checking account to my credit card at the beginning of January, but can't I just input the transfer in the main transactions/transfer field instead and put in the date I know they'll be transferred?
I put stuff under scheduled when I know something is going to occur, but haven't done what is needed for it to occur (e.g. I know I'll be paying a bill on date x, but don't know the exact amount). It gets moved to the transactions list when I initiate the transfer, and cleared when I see it has gone through.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.
Up to you how detailed you want to be.
You can just create an off-budget "investments" account, and reconcile the balances each month along with to/from that account if you'd like. Or you can go whole hog and track each transaction. Investment accounts are going to be off budget unless you are spending from them, however.

Dividends you would want to enter if they get sent to your main accounts, if they stay within the investments group and get reinvested I wouldn't bother. They aren't income in that sense, just an increase in your portfolio. Much like my student loan, but negative. I don't need to track how much interest I pay, I just send $X to it each month, and reconcile the balance to account for the interest as needed.

ilkhan fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Dec 31, 2014

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

jon joe posted:

Sometimes I leave YNAB open all day, occasionally glancing at it, as if doing so will give me some financial eureka.
poo poo I never close the damned thing.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.
You need to switch the category to carryover instead of the default (which takes it off the top of the available balance the next month). Don't know the iPad version, in Windows you click on the red part of the category and it pops up a box with the 2 options.

Chin Strap posted:

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.
So What *DO* you use YNAB for?

ilkhan fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Jan 3, 2015

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.
Make a "minimum balance" category, stick 2500 in it, and hide that category.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

GreatGreen posted:

Also, if you run YNAB directly from it's installation directory, or just point the shortcut there instead of using the one Steam places on the desktop, you can bypass the Steam requirement altogether.
Hell, you can pull the CD-key out of steam and install it from the website just fine.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

spincube posted:

...that should be '-20' entered in 'spending', instead of +50 like it is now. The +70 difference can be added to the +75 currently budgeted in 'clothing', making this month's clothing budget figure +145 - which should bring the total 'clothing' category balance to +155. I'm a functional adult :downs:
If you highlight the category in question you can do math in the cell. so if it starts at 20 you can simply press [+][1][0][enter] and it will change to 30.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.
People still carry cash?
Cash that comes out of a machine gets logged as a purchase to a misc income category, cash that gets spent doesn't need to be logged.

ilkhan fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Jan 7, 2015

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.
Put the excess in an emergency fund category, you always want to have a category assigned for every dollar.

Use a negative number in the emergency category to pull money out and into your general budget.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.
So you've created a "budgeting is hard" category. That works, but the idea is to either assign enough that you don't go over in a category or discipline yourself into not going over. If your e-fund runs out you won't be able just assign more each month.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

Gripen5 posted:

I kinda want to close out the transaction one way or the other. Is past 30 days pretty much mean I did get a free lunch?
I have an online transaction from black Friday that still hasn't gone through yet. I finally added a note to the transaction of the amount, flipped it to 0 out, and reconciled it that way.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

baby puzzle posted:

I bought this when it was $15 on steam, but I'm just getting around to trying to use it. I was struggling with how to handle expenses that only happen every 6 months. I'm not totally sure that I've got it. I have yet to actually do anything but try to estimate a budget.

The next thing I'm stuck on is how to handle this situation.. I have a savings account and a checking account, and my paycheck gets split into both accounts. When I need more money in the checking account, I just transfer more from savings. I usually need to do this when I pay rent (since I just pay off my lease every 6 months). So, it is hard to make a budget for my checking account when I can just put more money into it whenever I like. How should I be doing this instead to make it easier to actually budget?
First divide the amounts by 6 and budget that amount each month into their respective categories. Dont put the money into savings since you know you are going to spend it. The idea is the have a fairly constant budget each month regardless of how your actual income/expensive line up. Mostly so you don't have to scramble on the expensive months.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

Easychair Bootson posted:

I've watched the "handling credit cards" video a couple of times but I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around things. We use the card day-to-day and currently can't pay the full balance. Well, we could, but that money is budgeted for other things in YNAB. My statement begins/ends around the 15th of the month. The statement that I just received looks like:

Previous balance: $6257
Payments/credits: $(4355)
Purchases: $2177
Interest: $9.64
New balance: $4088

I must not have calculated the December payment amount correctly because otherwise I wouldn't have been charged interest on purchases, since I would have been paying for purchases plus some to pay the balance down, right?

I've got $750 allocated to pre-YNAB debt for January. The YNAB method to calculate my payment says to take the balance and subtract the pre-YNAB debt balance, aka the amount I can't afford to pay: $4088-2344=$1744. This is way too low and obviously doesn't include the purchases (which have been budgeted for) that will be made for the rest of January. What am I doing wrong here?
Paying for your new purchases doesnt avoid paying interest. The interest gets recorded like any other purchase. The amount you send should be purchases for the month plus interest for the month plus whatever your budgeted pay down amount is.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.
Legally they can do whatever they choose up to your minimum payment, everything beyond the minimum is on the highest interest rate first.
One of the few good things Obama has signed.</derail>

And if there is a balance, even a 0% balance, they probably get to charge you interest immediately instead of having a period before it starts to accrue.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

Lblitzer posted:

I just started using YNAB so please bare with me if I'm overly complicating things!

So how I do it now is this: I budget $100 for my bill, I pay the $100 using a debit card and file that transaction under that budgeted amount. Friend gives me $50 cash although what confuses me is if I want to even include cash as an inflow on YNAB. I guess maybe that's where I sit right now is needing to figure out if I'm going to track cash.
Personally I don't track cash. Some people do.

If you deposit the $50, mark is as inflow on that category, and budget your normal $50. When you pay the bill it will balance out at $0 category balance (-$100 payment, +$50 budgeted, +$50 inflow).

Otherwise, spend the $50 cash wherever, decrease your food or entertainment budget amount by the $50, and budget $100 towards the category.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.
Why do you have an outflow under pre-ynab debt?
And do I want to know what "meUndies" category it for?

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

Teeter posted:

Probably easier than buying 365 pairs of underwear in bulk.

https://meundies.com/products/The-365-Pack

Must be nice to never wash underwear, ever. Wear it once and burn it.
SaltLick probably appreciates that. So much easier than having to remember to stuff them in her purse each morning

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

Grouco posted:

I have a "Cash" account, which I'll just transfer into from my chequing. I do track cash spending (groceries, household goods, alcohol, etc.) because I'm anal like that.
I don't have a cash account because I don't carry cash. If they accept credit they get credit, if they don't accept credit they get debit, and if they don't accept debit either they get to watch me walk back out.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

Teeter posted:

I'm the same way, though I tend to keep $20 on me at all times because it's not uncommon that I need to pay for parking or something. I round up for cash transactions like Chin Strap does as well, but that's partly because it's easier to enter in YNAB and partly because I'd rather throw 17 cents to the curb or leave it in whatever tip/charity jar is near the register than carry it around.

LogisticEarth posted:

Considering how easy it is to carry a few bills if you're already carrying cards, I never get this. Why not just use a simple and ubiquitous tool? I always have cash on me, and it makes my life so much easier.

Credit card machine down? Cash. Sharing a bill with a friend? Cash. Non-restaurant tipping? Cash. Forgot your EZPass on the highway? Cash. It's a backup, and hard to see how useful it is until you make a habit of carrying it so it's there when you need it.
I've had a single $5 bill in my wallet for the last 3 months. :shrug:
Splitting a bill gets sent through paypal, I hardly ever need to tip, my area doesn't have toll roads...
If I lived in that kind of area I would carry some, but I like my wallet being just ID, insurance cards (health/auto), 1 debit card, 1 credit card, and 1 piece of cash. Its nice and thin.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.
budget 750 in rent, write check for 1500, split her check as +750 income in the rent category and -x output in the other categories it goes towards.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.
Id like to see cross platform, and not so damned slow. But YNAB4 is pretty drat good overall.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.
You are overthinking this. Once or twice a month just pay off enough to make the balance owed correct.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.
Feature request submitted to the company: Recurring frequency of every 30 days (because some services bill by the day instead of monthly).
grrr t-mo prepaid.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.
Spincube- this is why you should have both a buffer (rule 4) and savings. The buffer covers irregularities in pay and lets you ignore when you get paid, the savings is for longer or bigger issues.

Radbot posted:

I think I get that, but that still doesn't seem all that different from a two month emergency fund and otherwise living paycheck-to-paycheck - right?


I don't get this. How so?
Theres no difference.
What you want is to have an entire months income sitting ready to go on the 31st for all normal expenses, PLUS an emergency fund for expenses you don't anticipate. In practice you pay bills as they come in, and you don't have to worry about when you get paid or how your paycheck(s) align with your bills. The funds are there because you had them on the 1st of the month.

As to the original question from Karthe. Do it. The buffer is great for peace of mind. Functionally theres no difference, and you'll rebuild the emergency fund to where it was easily enough. Which account the money is in is primarily psychological anyway.

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ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

Karthe posted:

So YNAB will know to go back and retroactively apply inflows to certain categories? I just don't want any visible red negative-balances on the Budget screen for those categories (I don't even budget for them because I know they'll zero out) when I've already been reimbursed.
No, they'll be red until you get reimbursed. Normally red categories just come off the top of the next month, setting the arrow to carry over means it stays in the category instead.

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