A good budgeting app???

Laconic wrote: »

It's not fun staying up til 1am for the webinars but it is definitely worth the effort.

I watched about 10 minutes of one once...got bored and just played with the programme for I while until I sussed it out. It's not brain surgery. Income and expenses go in the registers, budget goes in the budget screen. Stick to the budget by not spending too much and if you do spend, enter it into the register with the correct category. The whole thing practically balances itself.

Budgets are all about the planning HOW you want to spend your money.

get that right and the rest falls into place,

Not in the plan don't spend it.

MSMoney has a great planning tool can do loads of really good stuff
does not have real time tracking but that is not really needed if you budget properly.

timbstoke wrote: »

YNAB is great if that's how you work - it relies on you "pre-spending" all your money, which is fantastic for forcing those "If I spend more here, where do I take the money from" decisions.

I'm back to using an Excel spreadsheet, but this years design has been influenced a little by YNAB. It's still a work in progress, but when I've made my own budget's before, I find they're much better suited to my needs.

That's what a budget is the plan for how you want to allocate your money.

It is the fundamental foundation to a budget, don't have a plan you don't have a budget.

timbstoke wrote: »

I agree, but your budget has to work around you, not the other way round.

And that is potentially what is wrong here. You work to a budget, not the budget work around you....that's why people overspend. If the budget is sound, then all future transactions will have been pre-accounted for and the money is ready to be spent when the time comes. Budgeting after the fact is pointless and ultimately self defeating as you fail again and again to stay within a 'budget' plan.

timbstoke wrote: »

YNAB is designed around monthly budgets. If you get paid monthly, or have already built your buffer fund enough that you budget monthly and your payday is a mere irrelevance, then it works brilliantly well.

The principle works for any income frequency.

timbstoke wrote: »

But I get paid every 4 weeks, and I'm still living payday to payday.

Therefore you get 13 paydays a year. Allocate 12 nominal months and put the 13th into a buffer.

timbstoke wrote: »

That means I find myself running a separate mental budget to try and reconcile YNAB with the realities of my bank account.

The realities of your bank account are irrelevant. Trust your budget. You cant overspend if you only spend what is in your category. If you dont have a category to cover a spend, dont spent it...save into a category until you do. You cannot go overdrawn if you are only spending money you physically have on hand.

timbstoke wrote: »

"I have £300 in the budget for groceries in December, but I can't do a big shop yet because I don't get paid until next week".

You dont have £300 in the budget...not yet. You have nothing. Next week, you will have £300 in the budget. You'll have to wait until next week to do the shopping. Make do with what you have.

Meanwhile, allocate 12 'paydays' to a nominal month and ignore the 13th.

timbstoke wrote: »

I also don't like the way YNAB keeps everything in one place. For my day-to-day budget, I only want to see the things I can actually budget - "I need some new jeans, so I'll have to skip the pub quiz this week so I can afford them".

My rent isn't part of that budget, and I don't want to see it there. I want it on a completely separate sheet, already pre-entered in the ledger for the entire year, so I don't have to concern myself with it.

Use master and sub-categories for this purpose and maximise/minimise as necessary. For instance, I have a master category for 'Monthly Bills'. These bills cannot be avoided, their payments are non-negotiable. Money is allocated every month to those categories. When the payment actually happens is reconciled against the bank, but as far as I am concerned, everything in that master category is pre-allocated and pre-spent. I dont need to have it maximised.

timbstoke wrote: »

This is primarily why I've gone back to Excel. My Excel budget runs payday to payday, so it's on the same wavelength as my real life. It keeps all my fixed bills out of the way, and deducts them from my income automatically so my budget dashboard only shows me what I can actually spend. It's designed around the way I look at my finances, so it shows me only the things I actually care about, which suits the way I work. It's not perfect yet, but it's evolving, and that's what I like about it.

That's probably more or less the problem. YNAB requires a fundimental change of perspective. When you have it running correctly, your actual bank balance becomes utterly irrelevant. When you go to the shops (before you even open the door) you should have said, "what do I want to buy", "how much do I have to spend, what is my top price" and "is there money in the apropriate category for this purpose". If the answers are positive, go buy it. If negative, dont. It's that simple. YNAB forces you to think about every transaction. You are no longer playing catch-up with your life because you already planned every spend no matter how small way ahead of time. You may not know that you intend to spend £2.85 one morning on a coffee, but you do know that there is £10 in a category for that purpose and you 'could' if you wanted to without having to do any mental gymnastics to determine who you are going to rob to do it. In fact, robbing Peter to pay Paul also becomes a thing of the past, because in setting up the budget in the first place, you have already considered which are the most important categories and assigned all your AVAILABLE money to those ahead of time. Everything else in order is assigned as you have it. Gradually, you will just find yourself building a buffer and eventually, even your payment cycle will become irrelevant when you are fully buffered as you will be spending last month's money while you have this months money in the bank. The bigger buffer you have, the better. After a year or so, you will be so well buffered you will effectively be spending money earned months previously. It wont matter when you get paid at all.

FireWyrm wrote: »

And that is potentially what is wrong here. You work to a budget, not the budget work around you....that's why people overspend.

You LIVE to the budget, but your method of managing your budget varies from person to person. Some people use the envelope system, others use YNAB, others use MS Money. YNAB isn't the only budget product out there, and it doesn't work for everyone. For me, it's most of the way there, but the insistence on calendar months made it too complex for my situation.

FireWyrm wrote: »

The principle works for any income frequency.

I agree, the principle does work for any frequency....and yet YNAB insists on using calendar months. I don't *want* to operate my finances on a calendar month basis. My shifts at work and my salary operate on a 4 weekly basis, and since the rest of my life is organised around my work shifts, it makes no sense to have my budget on a calendar month basis. It throws that one vital element of my life out of kilter with everything else.

FireWyrm wrote: »

Allocate 12 nominal months and put the 13th into a buffer.

Right now, my "buffer" is my credit card, which doesn't get used except for an emergency. It makes zero sense to try and save a cash buffer while that credit card is still charging me interest, and the idea that you can simply "put the 13th in a buffer" is far too simplistic. You might as well say "Just earn more money so you have a buffer"

FireWyrm wrote: »

The realities of your bank account are irrelevant. Trust your budget. You cant overspend if you only spend what is in your category. If you dont have a category to cover a spend, dont spent it...save into a category until you do. You cannot go overdrawn if you are only spending money you physically have on hand.

I do trust my budget, when it matches my income period. Having my income on a different schedule to my budget adds additional complexity where it just isn't needed.

FireWyrm wrote: »

You dont have £300 in the budget...not yet. You have nothing. Next week, you will have £300 in the budget. You'll have to wait until next week to do the shopping. Make do with what you have.

This is the problem. YNAB groups things by the month, which means that at the beginning of the month, I don't have enough in the budget to account for everything that needs to be done in January. I have to revisit the budget and finish the job when I get paid, and then I need to figure out how much of January's salary is actually allocated to February. It's additional complexity which just isn't needed.

FireWyrm wrote: »

Meanwhile, allocate 12 'paydays' to a nominal month and ignore the 13th.

I already do this, in a sense. I have one pay period a month which has no rent or any of the other "first of the month" expenses going out of it. I don't budget for that in advance because I don't need to. I just live normally, and when I review my balances for the next month, the excess gets put towards a debt which incurs interest.

FireWyrm wrote: »

Use master and sub-categories for this purpose and maximise/minimise as necessary. For instance, I have a master category for 'Monthly Bills'. These bills cannot be avoided, their payments are non-negotiable. Money is allocated every month to those categories. When the payment actually happens is reconciled against the bank, but as far as I am concerned, everything in that master category is pre-allocated and pre-spent. I dont need to have it maximised.

I did this when I was playing with YNAB. To be honest, it's a minor niggle, but I prefer these costs to be completely removed from my budget. It's tidier that way, and again, this is what works for me.

FireWyrm wrote: »

That's probably more or less the problem. YNAB requires a fundimental change of perspective. When you have it running correctly, your actual bank balance becomes utterly irrelevant.

My bank balance is irrelevant now, and I am pretty much a convert to the YNAB way of doing things, which is why my current excel spreadsheet borrows heavily from YNAB. What I'm not a convert to, and don't want to be a convert to, is being forced to manage my budget on a calendar month basis. If YNAB released an update which allowed me to set the budget period, I'd love to give it another try. As it stands, it's just not QUITE what I'm after.