You need a budget (YNAB) advice thread

PollyWollyDoodle

I am happy with the 'old' YNAB and don't want to pay a subscription. However I've had a problem today - I looked at the budget on my mobile phone, and discovered that it's not up to date. Attempts to refresh it produced a message giving a code which it says should be entered on the desktop app under 'File' 'Sync with Mobile Device'. Guess what - there's no such option under 'File' on my desktop ... is this something to do with the new system?

Now I'm trying to use the budget, I like to enter transactions from my phone as soon as I've made them - this isn't going to work too well for me. Anyone else had this?

hiddenshadow

Hm, I haven't seen that message, but I have had problems syncing before. Generally it's sorted itself out eventually (within a day). I think I remember having luck restarting the phone, opening YNAB, putting the phone in airplane mode, and then turning airplane mode back off - usually this makes YNAB realise that it has internet and can sync.

If that doesn't work I'd contact support, they're officially still supporting YNAB4 so they should be able to help with your exact phone/computer models.

stinky_daddy

Quick question

Have got a copy of YNAB4, however, not too sure whether to put pre-YNAB debt (the full amount e.g. £5000 (should it be -£5000) or the monthly repayments) under the pre-YNAB headings or whether to create a new account (and set up as a credit card)?

TIA

s_d

hiddenshadow

If you create a new account, balance -5000, type credit card, it will create the pre-ynab debt category for you.

Then if you want to spend on the card, just add transactions to that account - this will update the account value in the accounts list on the left, but leave the pre-ynab debt number alone.

If you want to pay off part/all of the current balance on the card, allocate money from Available To Budget into the pre-ynab debt category. You'll see that number go down as you pay off the card over time. Once it's 0 you can hide that category or even the entire pre-ynab debt category altogether.

http://classic.youneedabudget.com/support/video/handling-credit-cards-in-ynab has a lot of detailed info.

stinky_daddy

Hi All

Have been playing with YNAB4 and can't seem to make my loose cash category work, unless of course I add it as a budget account - is this what I should be doing?

I have it (loose cash category) set up as an everyday expense only at this moment in time.


After writing this out, it looks more logical to have it as an account, as, after all, YNAB doesn't mind where you have the money, it just cares about what you do with it.

On a side note, t took me forever to realize that after doing a transfer (from my main account to the cc), that I still had to show it as being paid within YNAB - as I couldn't work out why my budget accounts showed the correct figures (after transferring) and yet the transaction wasn't visible when I clicked on the outflows for any particular category!!!

TIA

s_d

hiddenshadow

It depends on how you want to track it, really. I think some people just have it as a category, e.g. £20 for allowance each month so when you withdraw the money at the start of the month, you count it as £20 spent in that category and don't track what you actually buy with the cash itself.

We have our cash as an account only - what it gets spent on goes in categories (travel, allowance, etc). It works better for us to actually track the spending, so we can tell how much our spending is going up on average when the bus fares get more expensive, for example.

Forgetting to do a transfer in YNAB has caught me out a couple of times too.

determined_new_ms

Do you think YNAB is just as useful for someone on a low income? Wondering if it's worth the expenditure? I only earn £800 a month and am pretty good at keeping my expenses low, most months I come in on budget but sometimes over by a few £, and put some into savings. I live with my partner and we have a joint account which we both pay into for all house related expenses including groceries. So I have 2 accounts. My savings are split into yearly expenditure " pots" and then I have a pot that is just long term savings (but in reality everything is in 1 account including joint money as it was in our interests to have 1 account with 1 fee) Is it worth it?

hiddenshadow

I think it depends on what you're looking for. If you're already good at keeping to a budget and keeping your savings pots as-is (not raiding them for non-essentials), YNAB is just a nice interface for managing your budget online/on your phone/etc.

You achieve the same effect with a spreadsheet (I've seen a couple of good ones floating around), or pen and notebook.

FWIW, having a different way of looking at our money incentivised us to save (OP our mortgage) way more than we expected to be able to the last couple of years. We didn't really have a formal budgeting system in place before we tried YNAB, though, so we could have done the same thing without it...YNAB caused us to re-analyse our income/expenses, and be a bit more aware of them (via the phone app).

If it were me, on £800/mo I'd find a free solution rather than paying for software, unless I knew I really needed to overhaul our finances.

determined_new_ms

I've traditionally found it hard to track my incidental spending. But for the last 3 months have kept a spending diary up to date (well occasionally when I reconcile my credit card spending there is 1 or 2 spends I haven't input in the diary). The problem I've been having is keeping both joint account and various pots in one account has been a headache! Our laptop got a virus and died so I couldn't access the spreadsheet and then having to try to figure it all out was a nightmare. I managed to find an old version that was 3 months old and painstakingly figured out roughly what was in each "pot", but it was such a pain.

I really like the idea of bringing your accounts to the point where you are spending last months money. I think I will work towards this, but on such a low income I can imagine this will take forever!

hiddenshadow

determined_new_ms wrote: »

I've traditionally found it hard to track my incidental spending. But for the last 3 months have kept a spending diary up to date (well occasionally when I reconcile my credit card spending there is 1 or 2 spends I haven't input in the diary). The problem I've been having is keeping both joint account and various pots in one account has been a headache! Our laptop got a virus and died so I couldn't access the spreadsheet and then having to try to figure it all out was a nightmare. I managed to find an old version that was 3 months old and painstakingly figured out roughly what was in each "pot", but it was such a pain.

I really like the idea of bringing your accounts to the point where you are spending last months money. I think I will work towards this, but on such a low income I can imagine this will take forever!

Spending last month's money is definitely amazing. I got paid this month early but DH hasn't been paid yet (likely to happen today). As we're spending November's income for January we're not bothered since we've got a full month before we'll need to actually use DH's pay for this month.

You could always open another bank account for the savings - pre-YNAB I did this so that my everyday spends account was always lean (encouraging me to keep spending low), but my savings could be off earning interest elsewhere out of sight (and mostly out of mind ).