You need a budget (YNAB) advice thread

greensalad

lambda wrote: »

It hasn't been spent, that's right.

Think of you 'budget' as the 'plan' - you are telling your money where to go; you are giving it a job. So that £10 was given a 'job' - it was put into savings. You marked the job by making a new category and recording the £10 against it. Now that £10 is already assigned a job. You have simply just put it away in the box, but it is effectively 'spoken for'. Now, when you spend from your savings, that is when you put what you have spent against the 'savings category'. If you put £10 in savings, and budget the £10, and then you spend, say, £5 on something, you record the £5. You still have £5 left in the budget. Make sense?

No, I'm totally and utterly lost.

I had £70.04 in my holiday savings account when I added it to YNAB.
I transferred £13.50 from my current account into the holiday pot. It's balance went up to £83.54.

Now here's where I'm stuck. If I budget £13.50 in the "holiday savings" category then it's fine. But where did that original £70.04 go? My budget doesn't know it exists. I can't use it.

Let's say tomorrow I decide to spend the lot. I have the cash in my holiday savings pot. But I don't have the cash in my budget, so I can't budget that money to be spent. And the whole thing falls apart.

I'm actually having this exact issue in real life now. I did a transfer from current acc to "home maintenance" pot of £50 so the balance on that pot was £50. I recorded £50 in the budget for it. Then I spent £27.98 on some home bits, so I transferred £27.98 out of savings back into current acc and then put down an Amazon transaction on the current acc. Now it says I'm down £12.99 on my budget.

lambda

Ah I see.

OK.

The mindset you have to remember with a budget is that the budget tells you where your money is going to go.

OK. So, you want to move £13.50 out of your everday spending into your savings? And now you probably have a negative budget? Is that right?

In that case, you haven't 'released' the £13.50 from another category. When you transfer, YNAB doesn't do that, as it doesn't care where the money sits. So choose a category you can afford to lose £13.50 from, deduct it, and then use that to go into the savings budget.

Once I started using YNAB, after a few months I just didn't bother with savings accounts anymore, as there was no point. I just keep everything in one account. The budget tells me where my money is going, not the accounts. Much easier to manage.

lambda

Take a look at this:

http://www.youneedabudget.com/blog/post/the-relationship-between-your-budget-your-accounts-its-complicated

greensalad

lambda wrote: »

Ah I see.

OK.

The mindset you have to remember with a budget is that the budget tells you where your money is going to go.

OK. So, you want to move £13.50 out of your everday spending into your savings? And now you probably have a negative budget? Is that right?

In that case, you haven't 'released' the £13.50 from another category. When you transfer, YNAB doesn't do that, as it doesn't care where the money sits. So choose a category you can afford to lose £13.50 from, deduct it, and then use that to go into the savings budget.

Once I started using YNAB, after a few months I just didn't bother with savings accounts anymore, as there was no point. I just keep everything in one account. The budget tells me where my money is going, not the accounts. Much easier to manage.

But I don't want to remove it from anywhere else. Everything else is budgeted to the exact amount I have available. There is no room for movement. I KNOW that it's correct as well as I keep a separate spreadsheet which si what I've based these initial deductions on.

Basically, if you don't start with zero in a savings account you lose your starting balance.

I give up. Again. Thought I'd manage to keep it going once my overdraft was cleared but I just cannot make YNAB work for the life of me. I restart it up every few months and it just doesn't ever work. I guess at least I can save cash on the subscription I bought now. Back to trusty spreadsheets.

lambda

I don't understand.

Is this money income? If it is not, you HAVE to move it. You can't just setup a new category with more budget then you have available. You have to take it from somewhere else to make it balanced, that's how a budget works...

Not sure I understand what you are doing in all honesty.

greensalad

lambda wrote: »

I don't understand.

Is this money income? If it is not, you HAVE to move it. You can't just setup a new category with more budget then you have available. You have to take it from somewhere else to make it balanced, that's how a budget works...

Not sure I understand what you are doing in all honesty.

Why do I have to take it from somewhere? I already had it in my account before I tried to set up YNAB.

Pixie5740

You don't lose your starting balance. When you set up nYNAB then all your money in your current and savings accounts should have been income to budget. At the moment you've only budgeted £13.50 to holidays so you must have budgeted your savings account opening balance somewhere else.

lambda

Was this amount already in your budget somewhere before you tried to move it to the savings account?

Was your budget at 0 before you transferred the amount?

If it was, it means the amount you transferred was already given a job. You already assigned it to a category (possibly without realising). If so, you have to work out which category you can release the money from. This will give you the £13 available to budget again. Then you put that into the savings budget after you transfer. Effectively giving your £13 a new job....

MuffinTops

greensalad wrote: »

I don't know this never works for me. I'm considering giving up again. I wish nYNAB let you have off-budget accounts! It used to work so well!

If you want an "off budget" account then create it as a tracking account.

I do that for some accounts I have (which are investments and not for spending) as I don't want that to be included in money I have to budget.

I'm afraid I've not been able to read your dilemma properly yet which is why I'm only answering that specific area.

greensalad

MuffinTops wrote: »

If you want an "off budget" account then create it as a tracking account.

I do that for some accounts I have (which are investments and not for spending) as I don't want that to be included in money I have to budget.

I'm afraid I've not been able to read your dilemma properly yet which is why I'm only answering that specific area.

Ah that's good to hear. I thought they'd got rid of the off-budget style accounts completely.

I think I'll just stick with my own spreadsheet as it's far more flexible than YNAB. I do like that nYNAB gives you things like goals and such, and it's useful for mobile, but I'm already doing fine with my spreadsheet. I just wanted to give YNAB a go so I could look at the reporting on it but it's not worth the hassle of setting it up, feel like you need to have a totally blank slate or it doesn't work. Maybe if I ever have £0 in all my accounts it'll work!