You need a budget (YNAB) advice thread

tempus_fugit

You have to step them up as non-tracking (can't remember the exact term they use). If you have set them up as tracking accounts, ie the transactions are included in the budget, from what I remember you can't just switch them over to non-tracking, you have to start again with them and set them as non-tracking. It's a pain and I fell foul of it too when I first started using the new YNAB.

hiddenshadow

I'd also only put your CCs in as non-tracking if you're only counting them as debt to repay, e.g. you don't add any new spending to them. If you spend against them, they should go into the budget to reflect that spending.

megwump

I am completely and totally in love with YNAB! After being on here in May asking for advice, I went with YNAB and I'm using it almost daily.

In just 12 weeks I have already got to the point where 60% of my savings for Christmas shopping is already allocated, I was able to pay my car tax for the year up front (not my old thing of sticking it on CC and paying it off in 12 months and repeat!), and get ahead on a bunch of other categories.

I tend to add transactions manually either on my phone or on the webpage, but I also download my statements from online banking and import them if the numbers ever get out of sync.

I love love LOVE the goals section. I know when my CCs will be paid off and how much money I've got available for other things. I know that we spent more than we intended on food in July, but we covered it from a non-priority category.

I have an £800 'allowance' per month which covers my personal bills, credit card payment, shopping and socialising. Historically I've had less than £100 left at the end of any given month, but after just 12 weeks I know that by the time I get to the end of August I'll still have £400 in the bank (and that's allocated for the bigger annual expenses, so it's got a 'job' to do). My cc is tracking to be paid off in July 2020, but I reckon that will end up coming forwards quite a lot.

This is exactly what I needed & it's what I've always wanted but didn't know how to describe

louby40

I love YNAB too! I've been using it for about a year and have paid off my overdraft, £900 on my credit card (although I have since had to use my cc) I've saved £3k towards my kitchen, saved and paid for Christmas and weekends away. And paid my parents back £3k that I owed them.

My plan now is to stay within my budget and get my emergency fund back up!

missmental123

Thank you for the replies, I'm still very confused with it all.
Sounds fabulous though, so I have deleted my 3 credit cards & loan as I found it so complicated with them in the budget. I will definitely be overdrawn soon, usually up to about £1000 a month. My aim is to obliterate this by 3 months. How will YNAB cope with me being minus balance with nothing left to budget?


Will it work for me?

tempus_fugit

It will work but you will have big red warnings all over the place.

hiddenshadow

missmental123 wrote: »

Thank you for the replies, I'm still very confused with it all.
Sounds fabulous though, so I have deleted my 3 credit cards & loan as I found it so complicated with them in the budget. I will definitely be overdrawn soon, usually up to about £1000 a month. My aim is to obliterate this by 3 months. How will YNAB cope with me being minus balance with nothing left to budget?


Will it work for me?

I think the easiest setup is to create a category called Overdraft. When you go overdrawn, negative budget money in this category. (e.g. put -100 in the budget field) This should free up £100 to your budget for other spending, and Overdraft will show as a red 100.

Then as you pay it off, you can budget money regularly into the category which will bring that negative number down. (So if OD category is -100 from last month, and you budget 50 into it, it should show as -50.)

The only catch is you'll need to carry over the negative number from month to month if you're not clearing the OD that month, as YNAB assumes that you'll start fresh with no red numbers each month (and removes it from your income for that month, so if OD category was -100 in August and you claim £1k income in Sept, it would reset the OD category to 0 and leave you with £900 to spend in Sept).

Hope that makes sense.

megwump

Same, so it would start off looking like this:

Current account: 0.00 (this is where I'd enter my income)
Credit card 1: -2500.00
Credit card 2: -3000.00
Overdraft: -1000 (set this at whatever your balance is on the day you start, then you effectively pay it off in the same way as other debts - so you'd put a certain amount from your current account line into this, so you'd be reducing your o/d, even if it's only £1 a month)

mizmir

I have started using YNAB and am still on the trial but I love it. I have set goals for all the things I need to cover in the future so it is great allocating money to those and seeing the goals building up. I already feel so much more in control of spending.

But i have a question. Age of money? Does this assume you are paid monthly? I am self employed and money comes in all over the place, pretty much every week day. I add this to YNAB and allocate it - but does this mean my money will never age?!

tempus_fugit

It's kind of a measure of how long you have had your money for. If you spend more than you earn it will go down, and if you spend less than you earn it will go up. The aim is to build a buffer of at least a month so that you will eventually be paying this month's bills with last month's money instead of this month's. If you get to that point then theoretically you have an age of money of 30 days.