You need a budget (YNAB) advice thread

peaceandfreedom

kattikitti wrote: »

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.

That makes sense to me. I kind of did that myself when I first set up YNAB but I need to work harder on my budgeting because I am simply still over-spending.

I have to say though that YNAB is excellent at highlighting where I am spending and where I can make budget savings. I think I will soon have a surplus every month and may well start doing things the way you do.

It's fascinating isn't it how everyone arranges YNAB in a way that suits them, there are lots of ways to set it up. I find myself endlessly tweaking it.

edinburghlad

FireWyrn & KIttiKitti thanks for the advice.

I think I will give the buffer a go via the savings goal for the first couple of months. If that fails, I might rethink my strategy and look to make the dollar do something :-)

japmis

I downloaded the YNAB software yesterday as I'm finding spreadsheets aren't really helping me.


I watched the basic tutorial video but nowhere did it mention about entering pay day / salary / pay checks; it was 100% on budgeting.


Do I have to wait for pay day before entering data? How do I enter income?


Unfortunately I have started YNAB with a -ve account balance as I made some embarrassing errors when setting up a direct debit


Sorry if you have all collectively gone *face palm*

Giraffeseeker

Enter income as a new transaction. The payee is your employer, the category is "income for August", and make sure the figure is in the inflow column.

You can only budget what you have "on hand". What will you live on between now and payday?

If you started with a minus figure (overdraft) you should have automatically created a "pre-ynab debt" category. To make money "available to budget" by increasing this overdraft you need to budget a negative figure into the budget column for pre-ynab debt. So if you enter "-50" you will see the "available to budget" becomes £50 and you can then give that £50 a job (or jobs).

edinburghlad

Got my first webinar booked with YNAB at 02:00am tomorrow, might go for a wee snooze so I am awake for it

edinburghlad

Well it's been a couple of weeks that I have been using YNAB and I have attended 2 webinars and watched the online tutorial videos. I've got to say I LOVE YNAB.

I am really looking forward to getting paid on 18th just so I can give every dollar a job lol. Also need to ensure £30 of my budget is spent on paying for YNAB so I can continue to use it :-)

~Beanie~

edinburghlad wrote: »

Well it's been a couple of weeks that I have been using YNAB and I have attended 2 webinars and watched the online tutorial videos. I've got to say I LOVE YNAB.

I am really looking forward to getting paid on 18th just so I can give every dollar a job lol. Also need to ensure £30 of my budget is spent on paying for YNAB so I can continue to use it :-)

I know what you mean, I used to look forward to payday simply because I had no money and needed it but now I look forward so that I can open YNAB and get giving all my dollars jobs to do:rotfl:

edinburghlad

YNAB membership bought :-)

[Deleted User]

What happens if you get some income weekly, some fortnightly and some monthly??? and also transfer money to side accounts for car repairs, savings etc.....

speakingofart

Csarina, I'd really recommend having a look at the YNAB website and their free webinars, but essentially the idea is that you budget when income arrives, asking yourself what it will need to do before you get more money - so for example, I've got £500, £100 needs to go to rent, £200 to food etc. Then when you get more money, you do more budgeting, rather than budgeting future money.

Longer term, the idea is to build a buffer - one month's worth of expenses so that you do all your budgeting at the same time, and then your various income through the month tops this back up again.

Try the free trial and the website - it's very friendly. I can honestly say that I wouldn't be going to be debt free this month without YNAB!