You need a budget (YNAB) advice thread

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  • Hi All
    I currently have my 0% credit card debt on budget. It had not crossed my mind to put it off budget but it sounds like that could work for me. Does anyone know how to transfer the credit cards from being on budget to being off budget? I've tried searching for advice but it's not very clear.

    As for cash I just transfer money from my current account to my purse account. I then record transactions against my purse account .
    Desperately trying to get debt free!
  • I have now solved this problem, I think.
    Desperately trying to get debt free!
  • FireWyrm
    FireWyrm Posts: 6,557
    First Anniversary Combo Breaker Debt-free and Proud!
    Forumite
    MakeOffBudget.PNG

    The opposite goes for OffBudget accounts. Right click on the account and press the button.
    Debt Free! Long road, but we did it
    Meet my best friend : YNAB (you need a budget)
    My other best friend is a filofax.
    Do or do not, there is no try....Yoda.

    [/COLOR]
  • kattikitti wrote: »
    Hi had to come out from lurkdom to reply,

    the way we handle cash in YNAB is that we have an on budget account called "cash". when we take money out at a cash point we put this in as a transfer to "cash". Then we would list the transactions as normal but the account used would be "cash" rather than the joint or indivdual account. we usually round these tranactions as any change goes into the jar at the end of the week.

    As is said often YNAB doesn't care where your money is.

    I do exactly what kattikitti does and it works fine. After all, if you have withdrawn the money in cash but not yet spent it, you still have the money - it's just in cash rather than in electronic form. As the cash is spent, then this is recorded from the 'cash' account and allocated against budget categories as normal.

    My personal monthly spends are almost all in cash - helps me keep an eye on myself. :)

    On a related note, my pre-existing credit card debt (and other debts :o) are in the pre-YNAB on-budget section and it has no affect on my budget totals, it doesn't make the big top total red, so I am not sure what the problem is there for other people's setup.
  • FireWyrm wrote: »
    As it happens, there is a slight flaw in their design in that it is geared to having one checking account (as the Americans do), not many. The flaw is that I have to be careful which account I make a payment from because although overall, I have plenty of money for the purpose, that money is spread across many banks and it is possible to go individually overdrawn if I make a mistake and pay with the wrong account.

    Not sure what you mean here - you can set up an account in YNAB for several current accounts if needed (I have a sole account and a joint account set up on mine). When you spend money, you just add the transaction to the relevant current account. The account balances are shown on the accounts summary on the left hand side so you can always see what the balance is (or is going to be if there are uncleared trans waiting to come out) and therefore can be sure you are not going to overdraw.
  • FireWyrm wrote: »
    You ought to add all credit cards as OnBudget, but honestly, I dont. I like to keep my running OnBudget accounts separated from the nasty off budget debts. This is because otherwise, you would end up with a nasty big minus number in the Budget page and it wouldnt be clear at all what you actually have to spend.

    Again, I'm not sure what you mean. I have all my debts as on-budget pre-YNAB debts. The debts obviously affect my overall account balance in the left-hand summary but for each monthly budget, they have no impact whatsover and it is crystal clear what I have to spend. Any payments made towards the debts obviously affect the budget but that would be the case wherever the debts live. The debts themselves do not affect the monthly budget at all.

    I think if you add a debt account and don't specify 'Pre YNAB debt' when you create the account, then it does indeed mess up the budget. But if you call it a Pre YNAB debt in the very first instance, it works fine.

    If you move a credit card debt from off-budget to on-budget, it likewise affects the budget. It only works properly when you CREATE the account as a pre-YNAB debt.

    This confused me a lot when I first did the trial of YNAB but once I realised what the problem was, I sorted it all out and all is well with the world.

    (I am still over budget but that's because I'm over budget not because of the debts - have some juggling to do. :o )
  • edinburghlad
    edinburghlad Posts: 127
    First Anniversary Combo Breaker
    Forumite
    Lots and lots of good advice on here, thanks you to everyone for there contributions. :-)

    Having watched the startup videos (all 6 of them) it seems (for the moment) like I not have ynab setup the way I want. Eg loans are off budget and credit card on budget.

    The one feature that I really like is the ability to input recurring transaction and leave the amount blank for variable bills. As soon as I receive the bill, I will then input the amount. The recurring transaction is already set up for the date so all good :-)

    As it's been said on here, there are more than one way to record / setup things which I have began to notice myself. I forsee the next couple of months to be trial and error until it's just how I like it !

    My next question relates to the buffer. Reading through the FAQ's it seems there are 2 ways to do this.

    1. Set up and savings goal for buffer and allocate money to it every payday.

    2. Say you get £1000 to budget in July. You only use £900 to budget and leave a surplus to roll over to august. In august you do the same so when septembers budget comes you have £200 in the "buffer"
  • Ninno820
    Ninno820 Posts: 765 Forumite
    edpvito wrote: »
    I have found YNAB a really impressive piece of software. It takes some getting used to but its a pleasure to use and when I spend some money I actually look forward to putting it into YNAB. I find a couple of things a bit confusing, the debt issue, as discussed is offputting and Im not sure whether I should be counting debt in my budget - which means I am virtually automatically over budget. I also dont like not being able to choose arbitrary dates as my budget period. I get paid on the 28th and therefore surely my budget month runs from the 28th to the 28th, otherwise I have nothing to spend after the 31st from my pay! Im sure this is something that can be passed into the next month if you havent spent it but I havent got that far in my understanding. At the moment I have changed the pay date manually to the 1st of August and every transaction I have made since the 28th I have manually altered to the 1st August so that I know where I am with August's money. That seems logical to me that I am paid to feed and water me during August at the end of July and my costs come from that amount at the end of July and throughout most of August. Another thing that I cant quite figure out is that if i take out cash, say £50, thats a transaction - 'payment to cash', my YNAB balance is obviously £50 less. However I wish to record what I spend with that £50 - £10 groceries, £8 booze etc. - and that would obviously count as if I was spending the same money twice. I decided to not record the cash withdrawal but then that means my actual bank balance doesnt tally with my YNAB balance, so its not really reflective of reality unless I added another account 'In my pocket' and added transactions to that 'account' - which seems a bit excessive. The debt stuff is quite confusing, I paid £200 off my credit card - which was a transfer from one budget account to another...I cant quite fathom what the pre-ynab sections should be saying in the budget...


    Hi - I had the same problem - I was paid on the 23rd so had a week of bills before the next month. I tackled this by splitting the income - some for the current month and the rest for the forthcoming month. I worked out how much I would need in the first week (most of my DD's come out of here ) plus petrol etc and assigned that to this months income.


    In terms of cash I created a purse account and "withdraw" cash from my checking account to my purse. When I then use my phone app to track my spending I just need to remember which account to assign to the payment - purse / checking.


    Like others here I love YNAB - I have even created a budget to track my holiday spending abroad!
    44 day challenge


    1. Pay £650 off overdraft (£ 288/ £650)
    2. Lose 12 lbs (4.5/ 12)
    3. Use YNAB everyday (6/44)
  • FireWyrm
    FireWyrm Posts: 6,557
    First Anniversary Combo Breaker Debt-free and Proud!
    Forumite
    edited 31 July 2014 at 9:51AM
    My next question relates to the buffer. Reading through the FAQ's it seems there are 2 ways to do this.

    1. Set up and savings goal for buffer and allocate money to it every payday.

    2. Say you get £1000 to budget in July. You only use £900 to budget and leave a surplus to roll over to august. In august you do the same so when septembers budget comes you have £200 in the "buffer"

    Personally, I have a 'buffer' category (actually several) which collectively are the buffer. I am for instance saving to go to to a show next spring at the NEC which I have learned can be quite expensive. I either add budget to that category directly, or zero out categories that are under budget on the last day of the month and stick it there. Although that money is notionally earmarked for that purpose, it does actually form part of the buffer since if I lost my job, then attending an entirely optional event would be the last thing I would do with the money. I have just been awarded a quarterly bonus, so I categorised my income using a split transaction, one transaction is base income for August and the other is the bonus. They are both income for August as they are for use in August, but I have made sure that I can account for the money. I can choose to spend from that bonus and all transactions will be logged against that category thereby reducing the 'buffer' but it is notionally there.

    JulyAugustBuffer.PNG

    This is a screenshot of July and August. As you can see, 115.69 was allocated to the main Buffer in July because that was the amount of money left over after all obligations were serviced.

    I spent £43.47 of the buffer on discretionary spending in July (I know, naughty, but it couldnt be helped, I'm still havnt completely killed all non-budgeted spending) but overall, £313 is actually left in the buffer that could be used for other things.

    In August, I only have £63 left over after all obligations are satisfied, but a £435 is incomming from the Bonus. I have allocated £40 to a category for Ooops spending and as you can see, there is still £13.93 left over from last months' category and combined, that gives me £53 in that category if something goes really wrong during August. Overall, I have £852.32 in the buffer (it is building nicely).

    Now, I intend to spend some of my bonus on pots and pans in August. When I make those transactions, I will allocate them to that category and I have a the rest of the bonus sitting there if all goes well between now and spring when I want to go to the NEC.

    Finally, I have an AC interest category which does get a little bit of income from all the accounts I have. I notionally would like to buy a Journal early next year and so, I have allocated that category for that purpose. I havnt actually received any money for that category yet, because AC Interest transactions dont appear in the bank until tomorrow. If the world fell apart today, I could only add £18 to the firefighting fund, but tomorrow, I am 'likely' to have about another £10 and those transactions will appear as credits there. Periodically, Quidco pays me and those transactions are allocated there too. Since such bonuses are transient, I dont want to use them as part of the general income pot.
    Debt Free! Long road, but we did it
    Meet my best friend : YNAB (you need a budget)
    My other best friend is a filofax.
    Do or do not, there is no try....Yoda.

    [/COLOR]
  • Back again

    We are buffering in a slightly different way.

    More like when you stream a video kind of buffer.

    As we get paid in the last week of the month there are a few bills that need to be paid before the 1st. We are both paid monthly at about the same time. We kind of know how much we spend per month but we generally need to top up on pay day and fill these end of month bills.

    What I do every month is try to strech the money for another end of the month bill either by completely filling it or partially. We have found if we have a buffer savings catagory we tend to Wack A Mole (WAM) from it, where as if it is given a "proper" job we tend not to touch it.

    So each month we need to top up less and can send more to the following month.

    It may be a slower process but I can see what our money is doing more easily.

    I hope you understand that.
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