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Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

I paid rent for this month on Oct 3. I've already paid for next month's, so now I've got two instances of rent within October and don't know which is the best method for handling it.

Do I up this month's budget to double and leave Nov at $0? Or if I leave this month as the regular amount, do I subtract the overage from next month's 'Available to Budget' or from next month's category balance? Can I split my paycheck between income for Oct and income for Nov so that my budget available isn't so high this month? I'm trying to assign everything but it makes Nov go into the red.

e: I ended up doing a split transaction for the inflow of my paycheck I just received, putting the amount that I pay for rent as income for Nov and the rest as income for Oct. That allowed me to budget next month's rent in Nov, and I fixed the overspending by changing some of my categories that I'm over in to subtract from next month's balance. I still don't know if this is "correct," but I have a nice $0 available to budget for both this month and next so it looks clean and feels good at least.

Teeter fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Oct 24, 2014

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Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

Gothmog1065 posted:

I would subtract it from the category balance, it'll ride over and next month will even it out.

This was the solution, along with splitting the income. My issue was that everything looked so messy because I still had ~$300 available to budget for this month but assigning it to categories was making my Nov budget dip into the red.

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

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.

I'd make a separate account for the cash and do it as an inflow there. Then you can either spend it as normal or transfer it to checking if you end up depositing. I rarely use cash but it's still necessary to track in YNAB because it comes up often enough. The only reason why this wouldn't be the case is if you immediately deposit that $50 so that it's part of your checking but even then I think it's inevitable at some point that a cash account in YNAB will be helpful.

My reasoning here is that you really won't want that $100 all as a single outflow for your bill because that's not what it's actually being used for. Only $50 is for the bill while the other $50 is spent on weed and tacos or whatever. To me, it's important that the categories are used properly because half of the power of YNAB is to be able to quickly see that you're spending too much on tacos for the month and while that money may not be significant compared to your entire budget, it can certainly swing individual categories.

HonorableTB posted:

Okay I'm confused about how to do this. I got paid today, but January isn't over, and I still have expenses for January (last rent payment for Feb plus groceries and such). How do I categorize this income? Income for January or February? If I do it for February, will I have to fudge the transaction dates for everything I buy today to make it jive? I don't want to put another rent payment in February because I'm already going to have two of them that month to pay for March and it will throw my numbers off. Do I set it as income for January? But the problem with that is that I have bills that need to be paid *in February*, but are due before my next check comes in, so they need to be paid this pay period. But I've already paid those bills for January, and adding more money to the categories for January means my numbers for Feb will be off.

Goddamn I hate not being paid on the 15th and 30th/31st of the month like I used to. I get paid every second Friday now, no matter when that date falls, and it makes this a lot harder than it should be.

Splitting the inflow can sometimes be helpful. Categorize it as "Income for January" with just enough to cover the rest of your expenses, then the remainder is "Income for February" and is freed up to be assigned for next month's budget. This works if you want to micromanage but really isn't necessary because you can dump all of the extra money wherever it needs and they will retain a positive balance to be used next month. February will have less $ available to budget but it won't matter because you've already got it left over from the month before.

i.e. I spend $200/mo on groceries, but if I bump it up to $300 because of payday today then that balance carries over and I can work off that until mid-Feb when I get another paycheck and only need to add $100 to have a net $200 grocery budget for Feb. Splitting as I described above makes it a bit cleaner because you have 200 budgeted for each month rather than 300/100 but it's the same thing in the end. This becomes less and less an issue as you break into step 4 because by that point you're operating almost entirely off of the positive balance and not assigning to categories as you need it. Eventually you'll be marking every inflow as income available for future months.

Teeter fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Jan 30, 2015

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

Bread Set Jettison posted:

Lol but why is it a monthly bill

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.

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

beedeebee posted:

Do you guys split cash and other accounts? I do, but yesterday I was doing a transfer (because I did a withdrawal) and then entered my expenses in my budget. Then I thought: why? Why does it matter where my money comes from? If I pay cash, use my card, as long as I use my budget, it doesn't matter. Right? Or am I missing something here?

My cash account is probably unnecessary because 95% of the transactions listed are for buying weed or adjustments in YNAB because cash mysteriously disappears when I've been drinking. Still, I keep it around because it's nice to stick to YNAB's mantra of "follow where the money goes." It keeps my checking account balance accurate and makes reconciling a bit easier when all transactions match up perfectly with my various account statements.

ilkhan posted:

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.

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.

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

A one-month emergency fund is money on top of last month's income. You want to use last month's income for your normal expenses in an upcoming month but have an extra amount available for any time or unknown unexpected expenses beyond that.

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

Anybody have some tips for reconciling?

YNAB only has options to filter by month and not a specific date so it never matches up with my credit card statement. Additionally, I enter many transactions right as they occur but their statement date is usually a day or two later. My current method is to sort by outflow and compare every dollar amount to see where things were missed but the inability to set YNAB to the same start/end date as my credit card is a little annoying.

Teeter fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Apr 8, 2015

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

100 HOGS AGREE posted:

You can search by date range by using the following format:


After:MM/DD/YYYY, Before:MM/DD/YYYY

Which will return all transactions between those two dates.

wonderful, thanks!


re: the CC rewards. I get a lot from the Sallie Mae barclaycard and do it exactly how Amused Frog describes. YNAB doesn't care where your money is in the grand scheme of things so it doesn't matter that you can't "spend" it. Decreasing the amount you need to transfer to your CC by $50 frees up that much money in your other accounts to spend how you wish so the net effect is the same. Enter it as "Income for April" or whatever in your CC account and then you're free to allot it around your budget as you wish.

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

The ability to fully operate the program through Android would be worth an upgrade to me as I could really use the ability to set my budgets from anywhere. I used to do a lot of my YNAB stuff at work but I switched jobs a few months ago. The new work PC I'm on is heavily locked down so no programs or dropbox are accessible. If I could access everything via web or had more freedom to use YNAB on mobile then I'd upgrade because as it stands I just haven't used it at all since the job switch.

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

IllegallySober posted:

Thanks- I watched all the videos already and did take the live Intro course. I'm just trying to confirm my understanding of it :) I thought YNAB was really obtuse when I saw other BFC'ers using it before but after digging into it more it seems like a really useful tool- I think the hardest part is just getting everything set up.

As of right now I think I have everything added into it except for my IRA accounts. Is there a reason or benefit to adding these? I'm not going to be budgeting outflows from them or anything but I guess they are part of my net worth so according to YNAB they would be useful to have in there? How does one reconcile these with the value changing?

I leave my IRA as an off-budget account and update it with my quarterly statements. It does nothing for me, but like you said it can be factored in to net worth and it makes me feel good to pretend like I have money somewhere even when my checking account is empty.

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

I think the way I see it is that emergency funds are a part of your budget, but maybe this is just a difference in how you and I want to approach it. If you have $1000 in a savings account for emergencies, there should be a $1000 line item in your budget for an emergency fund. Hiding it from myself doesn't let me see how much of a safety net I actually have within my budget. This also gets applied to other savings goals. If I have $2000 for a new car, $500 for a vacation, and a $2500 emergency fund then I would transfer that entire $5000 to a separate savings account and let YNAB break down the sum in to smaller parts. The account balance will say $5000 but the "rainy day goals" section of my budget will show me the details of how the money is assigned.

In your case, your method does seem a bit convoluted to me but it would still work. It sounds like maybe you made a savings account on budget and put $500 in there but didn't match that value in your actual budget originally? Just allocate all of your funds up to your budget amount and if it's really necessary then you've got the account balances listed to help decide where you can pay each bill from. That should be a non-issue as you get closer to rule 4, as you've said

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

Rule 4 just means that payday comes but you already have everything covered for this month. Rent, utilities, groceries, etc all have enough in their budget to last for the month so your choices are to either dump all that that new income in to rent/utilities/groceries for the next month or add it to whatever savings goals you have.

You can also just add it to the current month because values roll over, ie if you put 300 in to groceries and only spend 200 then you're starting the next month with 100 in that category already. Point being, rule 4 is that fun time when you get money and everything is already paid/accounted for so you don't know where to place it.

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

Do any of you bother keeping an HSA on-budget? (YNAB4)

I occasionally use my card for some OTC item like contact solution or condoms but for the most part it just sits there and requires effort to add inflow and keep the budget equal. I'm weighing out whether it's worth it or if I should leave it off budget and ignore tracking those sort of items and doctor visits altogether.

Teeter fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Mar 15, 2016

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

SaltLick posted:

I'm still using YNAB 4 but is there a way to send the rest of available monies to the next month? I know that it does it automatically but I'd like that "Available to Budget" to read zero.

Just assign it in this month to whatever category you'd be using it for next month and it will carry over the positive balance while lowering your available to budget amount. I either put it in a particular savings category or I'll add it to something substantial like my rent. If I have $300 extra then I can "overbudget" my rent for this month and it will retain that balance so that next month I don't have to budget as much.

Remember that it's all flexible so even if you decide to dump all of that extra money into your hookers category for this month for the time being, you can still do a negative budgeted amount the following month and it will appear again in your available to budget.

Teeter fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Apr 8, 2016

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

The only downside to YNAB 4 is that I can't edit my budget using the app, and the desktop version requires an install so I can't run it at work when I'm much more inclined to push around numbers.

Now that I think of it, is it possible to run off of a flash drive? Maybe I can just copy program files over and get by without needing admin privileges.

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

Ignoranus posted:


When it comes to the "payee" field, do you guys treat it like a checkbook with literal entries or in a more abstract way? That is to say, would you write "Price Chopper on Street X" or would you write just "Price Chopper" or just "Groceries"? The latter seems to be abstract enough that it's just restating the categories, but I feel like I want to differentiate between "I ate at Zachary's because I ordered food to eat during work like a piece of poo poo :smith:" and "I ate at Zachary's because my fiance and I wanted to get some pizza together tonight". I suppose that's better handled through the "memo" field?

I'm still trying to get my head around an effective way to use this for myself.

I tend to be pretty specific with payees because the autocomplete makes it easy to enter new transactions, though there are a few I generalize because the category is way more important than the specific payee ie Food Trucks or Parking. Don't drill down to details like "7-11 on 1st" vs "7-11 on Main St", just put "7-11" and it's enough. Enable GPS and it will know which one specifically if you enter the transaction on the spot, then next time you make a new record while nearby it will autocomplete with the details. E.G. Whenever I get gas, I hit new transaction and it knows if I'm at a 76, Chevron, or Shell and auto-populates the Fuel category as well as the payment method I use. Super easy.

My food categories are similar to how others have set it up.
Lunch = things I purchase while at work.
Fast food = food I get when I'm too lazy to cook.
Restaurants = food I get with others, or is otherwise the only option because I'm away from home.
Groceries = nearly everything else.

By doing it this way, I can look at reports (I'm on YNAB 4) and watch trends for where my overall food spending is at. If my overall food spending is up then it's typically because I'm spending inefficiently and it's easy to see what the breakdown is in case I need to bring lunch to work a few days or buy extra groceries to avoid fast food.

Zamujasa posted:

I just use the place name (e.g. "Albertsons") and if I need to differentiate more than that I use the memo field.

I use the memo field for gas, too (eg. 14.229 @ $2.319, 258.1mi = 18.1mpg). It doesn't mean much for my budget but if I ever wanted to look back at it the information is there.

I highly recommend the app aCar. I've been using it for years in conjunction with YNAB and it gives a very clear picture of your car expenses and details. Every time you fill up gas it takes like 10 seconds to log odometer, fuel $/gal, and total gallons purchased. It's just as simple to type in the same thing whenever you have repairs and services done. Using just that info it can calculate stats and generate a timeline for your vehicle to report things like running costs, MPG, or give you awesome alerts for things such as 3,000 miles driven since your last oil change or 6,000 since your last tire rotation.

Teeter fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Oct 2, 2016

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

Credit cards often list pending charges where payments you've made will show up, but they haven't actually been processed/cleared yet. Same with something like rent; you may physically write a check and hand it off so you've done the transaction on your end but it still takes a few days before the money actually leaves your account. In this case, the transaction can be logged for budgeting purposes but you don't need to mark it clear until the money actually moves in/out of your account.

Having both Cleared and Uncleared balance displayed helps when I am comparing it to my credit card transactions. The cleared balance should always match up with whatever my credit card's website displays as balance, as long as these are equal then I know all of my transactions are logged correctly. The uncleared balance lets me know how much my budget and accounts actually contain for working purposes.

In practice, I will log a transaction on my phone as I make it and leave it uncleared (unless it's cash and "clears" instantly). Once every week or two I will log in to my CC accounts and can easily compare with YNAB because the uncleared transactions stick out. I tick them off as cleared where appropriate and can easily tell if I've missed a transaction if that "cleared balance" doesn't match up in both places. In YNAB, this also feeds in to reconciliation. You can reconcile an account according to a particular statement date and it will only show cleared transactions. If it all looks good and is accurate then you approve the reconciliation and all of those transactions become hidden so that things are much more manageable from then on out. Not sure if Financier does reconciliations yet.

This way there's little to slog through when reviewing because only a handful of transactions are shown, and of those only a few may be uncleared at a given time. I used to take forever to reconcile accounts because one stupid $5.13 charge would throw things off and force me to go line by line but using cleared/uncleared knocks that work down to just a few minutes by making it easier to check in on periodically.

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

rotaryfun posted:

Is there really a reason to reconcile ynab? I use ynab v4 and just mark things clear as they clear the account. In the years I've used the program, I've never once reconciled. What's the benefit?

If you're super organized then I suppose there's little benefit, but it's nearly zero effort to pick a reconciliation date (use your statement date) and then use YNAB's recommended value which should match up with your statement balance. If it doesn't match then this is your opportunity to correct any errors. If it does then you're already done, just two clicks needed. Super easy. The power in reconciliation is knowing that your balance should be X dollars for Y dates and being able to sign off that it is correct.

After you reconcile, the green C symbol for "cleared" changes to a lock and reconciled entries become hidden so the account view is much tidier. It's almost like a default "current month only" view, making it a bit easier to visually see cleared/uncleared items that should match your current statement. My method for finding missed entries is to sort by descending outflow value so it's nice that reconciled items are excluded and all that's shown are the relevant transactions.

I suppose it's also an indicator of what credit card items have been billed to you but have not yet been paid if you're juggling payments.


Tldr: If you've missed an entry, reconciling can help you find it. If you haven't missed any then reconciling takes 2 seconds and filters out past entries so that your account view is much cleaner and easier to sort through.

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

I usually go through about once every week or two to mark transactions as cleared so this is when I catch any missed entries. Most spot-checking is done by comparing YNAB with Mint as it compiles all of my accounts in to one place and I don't need to log in to separate bank websites.

Reconciliation itself I do monthly, whenever I get an email saying a new statement is ready. I just open that statement pdf, set YNAB to reconcile on statement date, and verify that my statement balance is the same as the YNAB balance. Most of my errors have been corrected in my previous reviews so it's almost always accurate and takes two seconds. If not then sort by outflow and go down the list until I find discrepancies, usually just taking a minute or so.



rotaryfun posted:

Yeah that would probably be nice. Maybe I'll play with it. I'm afraid of it messing something up though.

You don't even need to go back to catch up or anything because your statement will include payments as well as transactions so everything would balance out. Just open your most recent statement and verify that YNAB matches on that date (+/- a day or so if your posted transaction dates don't match), then it'll do its magic and apply it to all previous transactions.

It's so nice that I can shuffle through my account views and only see ~10 transactions for the current month instead of a huge list of every purchase since the account was opened.

Teeter fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Dec 28, 2016

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

BaseballPCHiker posted:

I've been dutifully entering in all of my bank transactions into YNAB4 for about 3 years or so now and it's starting to get bogged down quite a bit. I dont want to have a fresh start and loose the ability to pull up all of the reporting information but I'm afraid I may need to. Does anyone know if I went back and reconciled every transaction and then set the budget account to hide reconciled transactions would that speed it up any more?

Have you tried compacting things?

Here are instructions taken from the YNAB forum:

quote:

We're looking into cleaning these up automatically, but for now you can shrink your budget size by doing the following:
  • Sync with all your devices.
  • Make an innocuous change (change a memo somewhere).
  • Go to File->Save a version
  • Now go to FIle->Load another version and load the version you just saved.
  • Now open your explorer/finder. Open your budget folder (In Dropbox/YNAB).
  • If you're on a Mac, right-click on the budget file and click "Show Package Contents".
  • The current folder is defined in the file budget.ymeta, look at this file in a text editor.
  • In the budget folder you will see a series of "data~ABCDE" looking folders.
  • Delete all of them except the one mentioned in the budget.ymeta file.

Apparently you can also hit ctrl+alt+shift+C in YNAB to compress a bit.

Also, you don't really need to "go back" and reconcile anything. If it is reconciled to the current date then it is essentially reconciled for all dates. Just make sure that your account values match your most recent statements and it will apply to every past transaction. Not everybody bothers with reconciling but I find that it's very handy to hide away previous transactions, though I don't know if it will lead to any performance boosts. Couldn't hurt to try.

Teeter fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Mar 23, 2017

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

BAE OF PIGS posted:

I keep reading about how once you guys reconcile that previous transactions are deleted. Are you guys going in and deleting the transactions after reconciliation? Because mine stay there.

They're hidden, not deleted. The "cleared" icon turns in to a lock after they are reconciled and in YNAB4 there is a filter button that shows/hides all locked transactions. They still factor in to all of your reports and budget, they're just hidden from the transaction log so it becomes much neater and easier to navigate.

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

Is there still fear of YNAB4 quitting out on us once the Dropbox API changes? Or did that already switch over and everything is fine?

I haven't really kept up with that, I've just hoped that it would either all blow over or the Financier.io guy would be up to feature parity by the time dropbox breaks things.

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

Most people waiting on Financier to have scheduled transactions are doing so from the comfort of YNAB4 and want to skip over nYNAB entirely. For these people, automatic imports aren't really a thing. Recurring transactions are the only way to go for the whole mess of repeat bills we're all stuck with.

I also set up all of my off-budget accounts with recurring transactions so that they gradually increase in YNAB as contributions get made. I only go in to update the balance manually a few times a year.

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

Just saw this on reddit, re: the YNAB4 update

YNAB posted:

Hey YNABers!
Tami, YNAB Community Manager here. Just wanted to drop a quick note in here to clarify the changes in this update. As most of you know, Dropbox has API changes coming in June that would have rendered YNAB 4 unable to sync. With today's app store update, YNAB Classic (iOS & Android) will now use the new Dropbox API, meaning that it will continue working after the Dropbox changes go live. Woohoo!
Let us know (help@ynab.com) if you have any problems with it, but you shouldn't have to reauthenticate. It should "just work". :-)

Stay tuned for a full-length blog post coming soon for more details.

Nice to see confirmation come in. I just recently got my terrible-with-money girlfriend to start using YNAB and it's been an extremely positive change so far. I'm glad that we'll be able to continue.

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

BAE OF PIGS posted:

My girlfriend who has recently moved in with me wants me to help her set up a budget (and I'm way more excited about it than I should be). Right now I'm helping her input everything into financier, but is it possible to share YNAB with another person so she can just have her own budget on her laptop? That way if financier decides to just stop existing since it's basically abandonware now, she still can budget.

I just did exactly this with my girlfriend and YNAB4. Check out this link for installing YNAB on another computer. It's a household license so you can set her up with the full version and she can make her own budget or share one together quite easily.

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

Defenestration posted:

Should I update mobile App if I'm still on 4?

Curious about this as well. I'd like to check it out but am waiting for initial impressions of others before I jump in.

How much transfers over from 4? Could I import my current data just to check out how everything looks on the new system, or would I have to re-do things manually? I don't intend to link any bank accounts to it so I'm hoping to tour the new app using my existing YNAB 4 data.



e: their announcement video is pretty spot on.


Teeter fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Aug 9, 2017

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

skull mask mcgee posted:

There’s a free trial for YNAB so you could do an import into that and see how it looks.

I decided to give this a shot and the answer is that it's very much a manual effort.

The upgrade from 4 to nYNAB really bungled things up and my resulting budget was -$5000 with all sorts of things thrown out of wack from how recurring transactions and future allotments now work. I had to do a fresh start but I have 25 active accounts so that's kind of an ordeal. Connecting accounts and importing is simple enough but it doesn't do previous transactions so I have no payment history and can't do a direct comparison of YNAB4 vs nYNAB. In the end, all I'm able to do is poke around on the surface and see how the interface works but I really need more data to determine how it compares to YNAB4.

+ Web interface is great for me personally as I spend a lot of time on a work laptop that can't install YNAB4 desktop version.
+ Mobile app 2.0 is wonderful as well.
+ I love the addition of Goals and more interactive elements.
+ I think I like auto-import. I've been a proponent of manually entering transactions but I'm almost 100% rule 4 now so it's easier to get away with overseeing everything rather than being directly hands-on.
- Red arrow right. I've read all about how people miss it and I'm no different. I have many reimbursements that I don't like affecting my budget in the way that nYNAB does.


I suppose I can run both versions in parallel for a bit to give it a chance but at the moment I'm leaning toward the status quo. It's still great software that I would recommend people start using, but considering I paid in full a few years ago and can continue using YNAB4 for $0/mo I just don't think it can be justified. If it ain't broke...

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

I have a master category called "Savings Goals" with a handful of sub-categories that go in to specifics. If I keep the category collapsed then I see how much I've got budgeted total for long-term goals but if I expand it then it shows more precisely how I've got it allocated.

It looks like this:

Savings Goals - $6500
$5000 - Emergency fund
$500 - Puppy
$500 - New PC
$500 - Vacation

I try to ensure that the true balance of my savings account matches the amount I have budgeted in my Savings Goals category. This isn't necessary and you could keep all of the money in a checking account if you want but I like it to be neat. Each time I get paid, I increase each category by $X and then do a corresponding transfer of $X from checking to savings. If I end up drawing money out of any of these categories then I do the opposite and simply subtract from the budget line so that it goes back into To Be Budgeted and can be re-assigned elsewhere.

Teeter fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Jan 10, 2018

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

Mikey Purp posted:

Cool, thanks for the tips everyone.

Here's another question that just came up - what do you do about specialized accounts like HSA accounts? Not every dollar in there needs to have a "job" per se, but I can't really allocate it to somewhere else.

I keep my HSA off-budget since it's essentially another investment account for me. It shows up in reports and factors into my total net worth but I rarely use it so it's got no impact on my budget or spending.

I do have a healthcare category in my budget but I don't really keep money in that bucket. Whenever I do have an occasional Dr visit or reimbursable purchase then I log the transaction normally and then do a transfer from my off-budget HSA account to checking with Healthcare as the category so that the two entries offset.

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

Combat Pretzel posted:

Maybe so, but they had a certain price for two years, and now they raised it without adding any new features to it.

They did add the new app, which I like quite a bit but still isn't enough on its own. I'd gladly purchase it standalone if that was an option but will not subscribe to nYNAB just to get it.

Here's my take on it: I use YNAB4 because it's been wonderful despite the lack of updates or support. I don't need this as a service, it's a product that I purchased because I liked how it works. If I had upgraded back when nYNAB came out then the period from then to now would have cost me what... $100 at least? All I'd have to show for it is the ability to tweak my budget on the go but would be in exactly the same position otherwise. It's just not worth it.

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

One of life's greatest joys is making a purchase, manually logging it in the app, then watching as the category balance drops down to juuuuuust above $0.

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

Chaotic Flame posted:

So, I'm moving from a job that pays semi-monthly to one that pays bi-weekly. How do people normally budget when they get paid bi-weekly? Since some months you get paid three times, do you budget as if each month you only get two checks and then the third is a "bonus" or do you budget as if it was paid out semi-monthly?

I do the two-check type thing, with a few awesome bonus months each year. My categories are labeled according to how much I fill them up each pay period, essentially the monthly amount needed divided by two.

e.g.
Rent - $450/pp
Car - $175/pp
Insurance + Reg - $85/pp

Every time I get paid, I first add those listed amounts to each category. I then take the remainder of my paycheck and fill out my discretionary categories. On bonus months with three paychecks I've already hit my monthly totals so that money goes wherever (typically emergency fund and long-term savings goals).

I use YNAB4 so this system works well but I believe it's even better with nYNAB since you can leverage the monthly goals feature.

Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

TraderStav posted:

You’re entering the world all of us personal finance geeks dream of, total control over the budget. Congratulations, no more random poo poo popping up after you perfected the numbers!

I recently came quite close to shredding a credit card because my SO, as an authorized user, kept making small purchases with it and I didn't want to keep manually logging her lunch and shopping trips with YNAB4.

I told her it was for important purchases only! **Dunkin Donuts $6.47** **Habit Grill $13.37** :doh:

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Teeter
Jul 21, 2005

Hey guys! I'm having a good time, what about you?

DrNewton posted:

...The app was nice when shopping (I could look up how much I had)....


YNAB4 has a mobile app too (YNAB Classic). It's a little trickier to get on iPhone these days but I have been using the Android app daily for years. Everything syncs via dropbox, no issues.

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