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I suppose there's no real answer. Instead of entering my fixed monthly bills (e.g. broadband) as their exact to-the-penny amount in the budget, I've rounded them up to the nearest pound. That way there's a nice round figure in the budget, and should prices go up I'll have a little bit put by to absorb the initial price increase. Worst comes to the worst, in about eight, nine years' time I get one bill for free... and I suppose, in a perfect world, you should be spending from the Balance column anyway. Budget £200 for food, spend £175? I only need to budget £175 next month, so I can assign that spare £25 elsewhere. spincube fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Jan 29, 2014 |
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Jan 29, 2014 21:24
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so I could say that I finally figured out what this god damned cube is doing. Get well Lowtax.
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SimpleCoax posted:I don't think I have the best grasp on YNAB yet. On the contrary: I think you've found a system that works for you. All I'd suggest is that, while challenging yourself to save money is an admirable goal, you take a look at whether you're setting realistic budget amounts in the first place  SimpleCoax posted:if you base budgeting off the balance, then if you underspend like I always try to do, then your budget numbers would slowly fall and that is weird to me to wind up budgeting negative amounts for groceries, etc. It's just a matter of perspective. For example, the 'Balance' could be the maximum you'd allow yourself to spend on something each month, that you subtract from during the month and top off at the start of the next - or it could be something you'd rather see grow and grow, like your holiday savings fund. I've got a 'Savings Goals' master category with everything I'm putting money away for - obviously I want those balance numbers to go up as much as possible. I've also got more mundane, obvious categories like 'food', where I keep a set amount allowed per month in the balance: whatever I spend, I 'put back' in the next month's budget, so there's always a fixed amount available to spend. If I spend it, fine; if I don't, whatever, it's a little bit left over for next month.
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Jan 29, 2014 23:06
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DrBouvenstein posted:I still don't like how YNAB works with pre-existing CC debt. I might be misunderstanding; but the point of the Pre-YNAB debt category is that it doesn't have a purpose in your current budget: it's just a negative lump of money that you owe the issuer. All you need to do every month is budget to reduce this outstanding category by X amount, plus anything you put on the card in the meantime from your budgeted expenses. So on your card statement for February you might have: -500 outstanding card balance (pre-YNAB debt) -150 groceries Total balance: -650 You budgeted that 150's worth of groceries, and also 100 is budgeted to reduce the outstanding balance. Therefore, you make payment of 250 to your card issuer. As it's 'spent' in your budget anyway, all you do then is transfer 250 from your bank account to the card account in YNAB - the CC account then updates to reflect the new value of 400, and vice versa with your main bank account. You don't need to categorise the transfer or anything, maybe just enter the date of the transaction in the Memo field.
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Feb 6, 2014 19:26
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Your Dead Gay Son posted:Yeah if it's money you have on hand, it's ok and within the philosophy. They just don't want you entering paychecks ahead of time. I'd avoid doing this, personally. Another YNAB rule is to 'roll with the punches', so if the poo poo does hit the fan you can say 'no problem!' and shuffle your budget for that month around to suit. If you're allocating your cash beyond the next month, each alteration you need to make will have a butterfly effect on everything you've planned for down the line. Hence why you can't allocate income in YNAB beyond the next month: even if you're not living from payday to payday, you're still building a pile of cash to live on for next month, every month. ...which is why I'm mystified that the periodic feature request threads on the YNAB forums seem to miss the point of the software and method so spectacularly. You Probably Need Slightly More Advanced Financial Software To Track Your Investment Portfolio doesn't roll off the tongue though
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Mar 5, 2014 00:13
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Stephen Smith posted:How do you guys handle investments in YNAB? I have my investment accounts as non-budget accounts, so when I do a transfer from my checking account to an investment account, it shows up as an expense which just doesn't sit right with me. However, if I include investment accounts as budget accounts, then unrealized gains/losses will count as income/expenses, which also seems weird. I handle it by keeping my investment account off-budget. In my monthly budget, there's a category simply called 'Investments' - each month I fill it from the 'available to budget' figure like I would anything else. Each month I look over the account and reconcile the value as appropriate. This way it'll count towards your net worth; but as it doesn't affect your budget, the up and down-swings in value won't appear as an expense or income on the 'monthly spending' reports, either. [e] Also, using this method, any contributions you make from your bank to the investment account should naturally match your budgeted amount - the only expenditure you'll see is you 'paying' the investors. In effect, your investment contributions disappear into a black hole - but when you later reconcile the investment account value, it will have increased with your contribution. spincube fucked around with this message at 17:34 on May 29, 2014 |
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May 29, 2014 17:29
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Dantu posted:So basically, the categories are like little virtual accounts, right? I've been getting really hung up on where the money physically is, for example I'd transfer to a savings account and it wouldn't let me assign it to a category unless I moved the savings account off budget, and I'd get frustrated. Exactly right. It doesn't matter where your money is - if you've got ^5000 in a savings account, all that means is ^3000 of that is set aside for disco powder and ^2000 is for rent boys, as per your budget. If you were to close that savings account and stuff all the cash into your mattress, you'd still have that ^5000 left to spend on
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Jun 2, 2014 20:12
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You can still use the mobile app, you just need to sync it manually.
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Jun 2, 2014 21:03
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Rule 4 is about peace of mind more than anything else - enjoy being outside the payday cycle and not having to firefight your budget! The three months' expenses you can start accruing afterwards gives you a cushion, in case something comes along and pokes a hole in your little zen bubble of Enlightenment.
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Jun 5, 2014 18:58
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On-budget accounts directly affect your spending (your everyday bank account and credit card), off-budget accounts affect your net worth (pension pot, investment account). I think that's what it boils down to. Remember, YNAB is all about giving your money a purpose. If you don't want to give it a specific purpose - I'm not in any hurry to grab my pension fund, for instance - then it doesn't form part of your budget, and therefore won't affect your Available to Budget figure.
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Jun 9, 2014 18:19
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I'm not sure I understand the question: in theory, July's Available to Budget figure shouldn't increase at all, what are you doing to make this alter? If you've got income coming in in July, it either wants to be assigned to August's Available to Budget figure (Rule 4), used to fund July's budget (not Rule 4), or locked away in your 'buffer' category (almost Rule 4). If it's assigned to August, it won't appear in July's A2B figure, it will appear in August's A2B figure instead. You can then play around with August's A2B figure as much as you like - whether it's left as an un-categorised A2B lump sum, or actually entered into your budget categories, it doesn't really matter as the money's there waiting for August to roll around! If it's assigned as income in July, that's fine - I'd just budget for your current expenses as needed, and place anything extra into a 'buffer' category. You only need the 'buffer' category once, so that one happy day you can pay for all of that month's expenses, while saving any earnt income for the following month's A2B figure. Then you're in a cycle where this month was paid for in advance last month - and this month you're pushing any income forward into next month.
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Jul 13, 2014 11:03
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I'm absolutely happy with YNAB the way it is: I've got an installer of the current version stashed away for when they inevitably start with the bloaty feature creep 
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Aug 23, 2014 10:44
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There've been similar noises coming from the YNAB blog as of late. I think it's simply frustration coming to the surface that people are coming to them looking for 'how much should I spend on x' answers, rather than using YNAB as a tool to help them figure it out for themselves. Maybe there should be a 'Rule Zero' for having a plan thought out in your head of what you actually want from YNAB - rather than treating it as some cargo-cult 'if I have a budget I will be good with money' idea, blindly following the Rule 1-4 philosophy, and offloading the actual gap-filling and decision-making to strangers on the Internet.
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Aug 30, 2014 10:42
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The Android companion app is free; the key you can dig out from the Steam version lets you activate other installations (e.g. downloaded from ynab.com).
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Dec 31, 2014 10:25
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Lanky Coconut Tree posted:Awesome, thanks. Any catches I should keep in mind, like say 5 total device activations or something like that? No, none at all. The trial demo uses some kind of magic to track your #-day time limit, but that's it.
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Dec 31, 2014 10:51
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If you have (say) 40 groats budgeted in a discretionary category, but only spend 15 groats, then whatever you do with the leftover 25 groats depends entirely on your needs. You can either suck them out at the end of January to use elsewhere, or leave them be and let them roll over into February - the lesson is that you start anticipating your expenses and budgeting to suit (or at least being able to fight money-fires without digging yourself into debt).
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Jan 5, 2015 18:57
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Don't touch previous months. Try taking the money from somewhere else: got any other savings goals you won't miss for a few weeks? You could also enter -80 in 'spending', which will move 80 out of that category and into your Available to Budget figure. Then add this 80 to your 'clothing' budget for this month and voilą: what you've just done is knowingly shuffle money around in your budget to suit your needs, so you can then work out what to do next month (refill clothing budget? tighten your strings elsewhere to refill 'spending' too, or let that slide for a while?) - which is absolutely what YNAB is for. [e] wait, let me just check my sums here ...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 
spincube fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Jan 6, 2015 |
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Jan 6, 2015 22:31
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Feature creep  ...and given the tone of the YNAB blog lately ('for gently caress's sake, don't steal from your groceries to pay off your gigantic home and third motorcycle and claim you're getting ahead'), isn't moving to a subscription-based scheme kind of uh? [e] VV my point is, given the kind of habits you'd expect of a person who could benefit from the YNAB method, having a payment model that implies you'd lose access/progress data if you missed or were unable to make a payment seems at best foolish and at worst, well, predatory. spincube fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 20:04
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Radbot posted:What's the difference between having a one-month emergency fund and living on last month's income? If poo poo hits the fan on the 31st, you're hosed.
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Mar 25, 2015 18:51
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Radbot posted:I don't get this. How so? If you're only living on last month's income, you've only ever got a month's worth of expenses before your budget runs dry: if you lose your job at the end of March, although April would be funded you'd be using up your budget faster than it could be replaced. Having a one-month emergency fund means that you have a little extra time to pay the bills if the worst happens, without worrying about where the next rent payment is coming from. Honestly, I think it's down to semantics and your own risk tolerance: my aim is to have, on April 1st, enough put by to cover April's bills, so that the money I earn in April can be used to fund May's budget. That's entirely separate from my 'emergency fund' of a few months, which I'll only use in case I get into a car wreck or the company I work for collapses or something. Maybe it'd be less confusing to call it a 'gently caress you, I quit' fund instead? That way it'd avoid trapping people into thinking of an 'emergency fund' in terms of lasting a specific period of time - one month, six months, whether it's expenses or income, and so on.
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Mar 25, 2015 20:18
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ilkhan posted: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. I understand - all I'm saying is that the definitions of a few terms sound a little muddied. As I currently understand it, when starting from scratch with YNAB you gradually build up a buffer category to store one month's expenses: this one month's expenses then eventually frees you to live on last month's income, thus achieving a Rule 4 state. Having an emergency fund is entirely separate from this process - once you're out of the payday-to-payday cycle it's a safety net you can then start to build underneath yourself, depending on how much of a safety net you feel you need.
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Mar 25, 2015 20:43
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Of course you can: once the credit's applied to your card, putting you into positive balance, enter an inflow on your card in YNAB. The payee is your card company, and the category can be whatever you like (although common sense suggests the Discretionary that you used in the first place). [e] to chime in with Mr. HOGS: if you take a taxi and cover the full fare, and your buddy pays you their share, you can assign that 'income' to your 'taxi' category. You'll only have spent your share, and you've been reimbursed the other person's share too. spincube fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Mar 30, 2015 |
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Mar 30, 2015 20:37
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Teeter posted:Anybody have some tips for reconciling? I'm not sure I understand. Here's what appears when you hit 'Reconcile Account':  Enter the statement date, enter the amount your card company says you owe, and YNAB displays all the transactions you haven't cleared since last time (presumably on your previous statement). You then clear/unclear lines in YNAB, add anything you missed and so forth, until both YNAB and your statement balance match.
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Apr 8, 2015 20:17
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Slimchandi posted:Is there any benefit to doing my monthly spending on a credit card as opposed to a debit card? It doesn't carry a balance after paying it off a few months ago. As my current account balance increases with RDFs I'm worried about security carrying it around. Only thing is, I'm in the UK so don't enjoy all those cash back benefits you seem to get in the US! If your debit card is pinched, it's your money being taken; if your credit card is stolen, it's your card issuer's money. The former's generally a hassle as it's your money you'll need to reclaim after the fact from your bank, whereas your card issuer has departments full of people whose sole 24/7 job is to look after 'their' money. Proving you're Good With Money enough to use a credit card responsibly (pay in full, on time, every time) also helps prove you're credit-worthy for things like favourable interest rates on loans, or a mortgage. [e] in YNAB terms, there's no difference, you're still 'spending' money - you just actually transfer the money a little later after the purchase. ...and if you're after a cashback card, start with the usual comparison sites. Best I've seen without an annual fee or other strings attached is like 0.5% on purchases. spincube fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Jun 30, 2015 |
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Jun 30, 2015 19:33
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SpaceCadetBob posted:Just started using this program this week and it looks like it will totally rock, once I get a hang of it at least. My big question today is; I'm trying to account for my yearly big bills like insurances and property taxes. My wife and I have decided we will open a separate savings account and dump in the monthly budgeted amounts for the above into it. How do I apply that to the budget screen in YNAB? Do I leave the outflow fields empty each month and allow the balances to build? I think this is right because then I could compare the category's total balance to my savings account balance on a monthly basis. However I have this annoying urge to fill in the fields to zero everything out so I just wanted to make sure I'm following the right procedure. This is what I'd do:
Only real 'pain point' would be checking that I was adding up the correct amount to transfer per month!
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Aug 29, 2015 23:02
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sparkmaster posted:This new ability to directly import from banks without any effort doesn't appeal much to me. Personally, I feel that having to manually put in every transaction makes me more on top of what I'm spending and when. I can see its value for people, starting out, who are in a mess and sinking deeper - the kind of people who open accounts to hide money from themselves, or are throwing their hands in the air because they're just SO in a muddle WHERE IS MY MONEY GOING i could have sworn I paid that bill weeks ago AAARGH. However, I can also see people using this as a crutch - nYNAB and your bank are talking to each other now, why spend the time to sit down for half an hour at the weekend to glance over the figures? It'll wait until tomorrow, next week, well any time you get a free moment because you're so BUSY these days, [accept all transactions] what the hell it all looks good.
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Dec 30, 2015 10:55
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Irritated Goat posted:there's a small chance I could end up using some of it if things get out of balance. ...isn't that the point? Last thing you want to do is miss the forest for the trees and SAVE while holes appear elsewhere in your budget. There's no one-size-fits-all answer, as YNAB can handle both the 'account' and 'category' method equally well; I suppose the method you choose depends on your mental bandwidth. If you get favourable interest rates then I'd go with the former - in which case, why not keep everything besides your average monthly spend in there? - but otherwise I'd just say gently caress it and treat it like any other YNAB category, without worrying about where the money's kept.
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Feb 2, 2016 19:05
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I've been using YNAB since early 2014, and I think I'm butting up against the edges of its capabilities: once you're comfortably Rule 4 and able to simply 'roll over' month to month, there's no further lands to conquer. I'd just like a little more flesh on the Reports screen bones - like being able to review your spending as a proportion of your income, instead of 'this is what you spent'. Stuff you don't need but would be useful simply for curiosity, or for fiddling's sake. A 'goal seek' mode, where you specify your end goal ('2500 in Horse Candles category by February') and the software works backwards to your current situation, would be fantastic.
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Sep 23, 2016 18:13
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Zamujasa posted:You can sort of get this too, with the income v. expense tab (as slow as it is), but you have to do the math again of $Expenses ÷ $Income. (Alternatively, you could export it and import it into something like Excel/Google Sheets that might be able to format it better) I suppose: it's just a shame that the data's there, but YNAB doesn't do anything with it. In fact, its weird date-and-time-based versioning system - hosed if I can remember when I recorded my last horse candle resupply - combined with the lack of an Undo option, means it seems to discourage 'what if' experimentation. What's my average grocery spend, per trip? I can already view my total and average spend for the month, and yeah I could export my expenses to play with the data elsewhere, but come on YNAB work with me here.
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Sep 24, 2016 09:56
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I wouldn't get hung up on payees, as starting out it's better to get into a routine of creating and sticking to a budget: worst case scenario, you just start over in a few weeks knowing more about what you're doing and how it can suit you better this time.Ignoranus posted: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 Sounds like a category difference - where you spend your money isn't as important as whether it's going out of your 'work lunches' category, or the 'eating out / can't be bothered to cook' category, or whatever. I keep 'groceries' and 'household bits' separate for this reason, so I can stock up on paper towels and detergent without it coming out of my food money!
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Sep 25, 2016 08:52
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" and "I ate at Zachary's because my fiance and I wanted to get some pizza together tonight".
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:Financier is great, but I'm having trouble understanding cleared versus uncleared line items? 'Cleared' items are things you've bought and paid for, and that match up with an entry on your bank account or credit card statement. 'Uncleared' items have been paid for, but there's no entry on your statement yet. It's there to make sure both your records and your bank's records match up. For example, if a mystery item shows up on your statement that doesn't match up with one of your recorded purchases, you can either query it with the bank or slap your forehead for forgetting to record a purchase.
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Oct 6, 2016 19:31
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I suppose you can only sell the YNAB4 software once, and then you're left with weeks (months, years) of having to babysit the HELP HOW DO MONEY AHHHH customers for free. If they just did a Financier and hosted budgets in the cloud - we do backups for you!, no more Dropbox workarounds! - I could understand, but walking back on the method they'd built YNAB4 around leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
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Nov 5, 2016 11:04
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George H.W. oval office posted:I'm unemployed at the moment and will start pulling from my savings. Do you do that transfer from savings to checking as an income even though it isnt really true income? Money going from an off-budget account into an on-budget account counts as income, as the money's purpose is changing from generic, figure-out-a-purpose-later SAVINGS into a more useful, directed purpose - i.e. rent money, food money, utilities money, etc.
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Jan 6, 2018 21:37
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Turns out that their reasons for not doing it in the first place are still valid today, and that the only reason they went with it in the first place was to justify the subscription model. I'm not surprised, or angry, just sad that they had a good thing and spoiled it.
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Jan 14, 2018 10:11
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BAE OF PIGS posted:How do you get YNAB4 to run on it's own without Steam being open if it was bought on Steam? I know there's a way, but I can't seem to remember/figure it out. IIRC, you can copy the serial number of your copy from the About screen (found from the help menu). You can then download the 'classic' YNAB4 installer - buried in a Google search, I think, but still online - and use your Steam copy's key to activate it.
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Feb 18, 2018 18:43
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I get that there's room for variance, individual preferences, etc., and the exact conditions of being 'Rule 4' pre-nYNAB could be argued about and picked over ad nauseum. Still, I wouldn't feel comfortable having six months' budget laid out in advance, because it breaks the 'roll with the punches' rule. If poo poo hits the fan today, in a big enough way that it's going to affect you into next month (hospital visit, job fuckery, Dire Straits reunion tour tickets), it'll invalidate the plans you made and budgeted for beyond next month. Better to simply budget for month 2 once you receive month 1's salary imo. Even if it's mostly the same month-by-month, you can still be flexible enough to duck and dive as needed, when needed.
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Dec 4, 2018 20:40
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This is sad to watch. I just don't see the logic behind any of their choices other than 'more money for us, gently caress you', like there's no fig leaf they're hiding behind. Pure greed.
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Nov 5, 2021 23:11
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