You need a budget (YNAB) advice thread

DrSpendLittle

ragz wrote: »

Drspendlittle how did you go about doing a forecast without messing up your current budget? Did you do it separately? I'm desperate to try it, but I know it's against the rules of the method and I don't want to mess up my lovely reconciled and budgeted to zero budget!

On the desktop version, I simply went to the next month and inputted ££s into my categories until they equalled in total my expected salary for that month. So, right now, looking at my November budget, it shows £-2251,61 to be budgeted, which is lit up red (as the income isn't technically there). And, in each of my categories, the budgeted amount is the amount I intend to spend that month. This hasn't affected my October budget whatsoever. EDIT: For December, this will be slightly different......read on below....

For each future month, the trick here is to ignore the green 'available' funds as they will include last months funds that are not yet spent. All you need to do is fill in the 'budgeted' amount for each category and make sure the 'Budgeted in [insert month]' bit totals your expected salary for that month. Each month is an isolated budget when it comes to 'Budgeted in [insert month]'.

Do this for each month for as far ahead as you want to. The beauty of this is that for credit cards, you'll see the green 'payment' tab starts to increase as you progressively do the budget for each successive future month - this is important as it reflects the total money you will be allocating to paying the card and thus if you select the little box to the left, it'll show you what your remaining balance is. Its quite smart, really.

Hope this makes sense!

DrSpendLittle

p.s. I have my credit cards and car finance set up as accounts, which all have negative balances as they are debts. It gives me my proper net worth, which is horribly red and a frightful figure of £-10,132.84

Also, as you build the successive future months budgets, your red 'to be budgeted' will become bigger and increasingly negative. So, for example, my 'to be budgeted' in Feb 2018 is £-9,059.78 but that month's Budgeted in Feb is £2,304.95, which is my salary. Its a case of playing with inputting spends into the budgeted column of each category in a particular month until the total 'Budgeted in Feb' equals your salary for that month.

hiddenshadow

You can also create a separate budget for forecasting as well, so that your real life budget stays "happy" (in line with YNAB functionality, anyway!) and you can play around with numbers as much as you want in a "fake" budget for forecasting. I do this quite a bit - one forecast budget for if we do x, one forecast budget for if we do y, etc.

(I don't think there's a limit on how many budgets you can have, though presumably if you have hundreds they'll notice/question.)

ragz_2

Thanks both. If I start a new budget to play with do I have to do my categories all over again?
I've already got some of October's money covering November costs, so don't want to mess it up. I get money at random points in the month. I'd like to do an experimental budget to see if we can survive without DH's self employed income. Likely to be a no, but would be interesting to see how much he needs to earn...

hiddenshadow

You should be able to use Fresh Start. It will copy all your categories/payees from your budget but remove transactions.

I think it will also rename your main budget to something like "[Budget] Oct 27 2017", so you'll want to rename the fresh start budget to something like "Play Budget" so that you can rename your "old" (main) budget back to "[Budget]".

(Docs for fresh start: https://docs.youneedabudget.com/article/200-making-a-fresh-start, and renaming budgets: https://docs.youneedabudget.com/article/159-budget-settings)

ragz_2

Ahh, I assumed fresh start deleted everything... Thank you.
Introduced DH to the app this evening so he can track transactions and income. Not sure I explained the principles very well, he wasn't too interested. But it's a start.

parsniphead

Can I get a bit of advice. I have a tablet and know that I can't just use it with that. Can I get it on a laptop or do I need a desktop type pc? I would love to give it a go.

Thanks

poddle911

The new YNAB is web-based so no reason you can’t access full version on laptop - or tablet - but download the app for mobile use too. I love it, it’s saved us £££ over the last few years and it’s such a relief seeing exactly how much is available - well worth the subscription fee for us. Good luck!

parsniphead

Thanks poddle911. I will try to download it now. I've used everydollar for a while but cannot access it on my phone so end up missing stuff off.

parsniphead

Hi. Sorry. It's me again.

I have just set up yeah...It's seems great so far.

I have thought about linking my account to it but I'm a little unsure. Does anyone else do this and has their been any issues with security.

Sorry for all the questions.