You need a budget (YNAB) advice thread

MoneyMission2015 · 17 June 2015 at 3:39PM

Personally the way I would deal with this is

Savings account (off budget) £2k
Current account (on budget) salary which is categorised as Income for the month

Budget your salary for the month.

If you had to use money from savings transfer the amount from Savings account over to current account, putting it in to the Income for the month category.

This way the savings you have spent are included as part of your monthly budget.

This way everything will be at 0 because that overspend has been compensated by the transfer of savings in to your normal account.

Then I would start budgeting to put money back into savings every month to get back to £2k (and more with YNAB).

Oh and the red arrow is on any category that has been overspent on. So if your overspend was on groceries, there should be a red arrow with a minus figure (showing the overspend). If you click on this red arrow it gives you the option to subtract the overspend from your next months budget, or next months category. This means that next month you would have less in that budget.

So if my grocery budget is £150 but I spend £175, next month I would still budget £150 for groceries but my actual available to spend would be £125.

LannieDuck · 17 June 2015 at 4:25PM

Yeah, I actually started off by pretending that £2k didn't exist when I set up YNAB the first time, but it wasn't actually a nice round number (something more like £2136 rather than a nice round £2k), so it got quite confusing when I was trying to reconcile YNAB with my bank account.

I couldn't physically transfer the money elsewhere (so YNAB would match up with my bank account) because I wanted a buffer just in case unexpected bills went out, as did end up happening (I've just moved house and my bills are alllll changing - hence the couple of months of uncertainty - on this occasion, three months of nursery fees went out in one month, but I have a DD set up now so that shouldn't happen again). So I reset YNAB and started again with the £2k included.

I might just do a reset again if none of these suggested solutions work for me, and hope that this time there won't be any big unexpected bills - hereonin everything should be accounted for. And if it's not then I think I would be happy to deal with it as overspend that I would want to make up.

SeduLOUs · 17 June 2015 at 6:03PM

LannieDuck wrote: »

Yeah, I actually started off by pretending that £2k didn't exist when I set up YNAB the first time, but it wasn't actually a nice round number (something more like £2136 rather than a nice round £2k), so it got quite confusing when I was trying to reconcile YNAB with my bank account.

I couldn't physically transfer the money elsewhere (so YNAB would match up with my bank account) because I wanted a buffer just in case unexpected bills went out, as did end up happening (I've just moved house and my bills are alllll changing - hence the couple of months of uncertainty - on this occasion, three months of nursery fees went out in one month, but I have a DD set up now so that shouldn't happen again). So I reset YNAB and started again with the £2k included.

I might just do a reset again if none of these suggested solutions work for me, and hope that this time there won't be any big unexpected bills - hereonin everything should be accounted for. And if it's not then I think I would be happy to deal with it as overspend that I would want to make up.

OK, first you need to make sure your bank reconciles. Get all of your existing money into YNAB, and get the bank matched up.

Then you need to give all of that money a job. If you are overbudgeted, then you have given more jobs than you have money, so you have either budgeted too far into the future, or you are keeping money in a buffer category that you can't afford.

You need to remove budgeted amounts until the figures match up. If you are budgeted into next month, but can't afford to be, then remove those budgets.

If you aren't, check all of your category balances carefully for any large amounts that shouldn't be there - check any hidden categories aswell. If you have a buffer category with the money in, then take it out - YNAB is telling you that you can't afford a buffer with the current amount of money you have at hand and the other bills you have told it you want to pay.

If it's getting messy or difficult to find where it's gone wrong, just zero out every single category out until your available to budget matches your bank account exactly - you can do this by clicking the lightning bolt in the top of the month column and choosing "0.00 (Zero all budgeted amounts for this month" followed by "balance to 0.00". Do this for any future months that have info in until every month going forward is empty. Then you can start again deciding what you need to do with that money without starting all over from scratch.

LannieDuck · 17 June 2015 at 6:39PM

My bank account has £600 left in it, it's definitely not overdrawn. Hmm... my paper statement is due through the post today or tomorrow. I think I'll find it easier to go through that and reconcile YNAB rather than switching back and forth between screens on my Mac and trying to stop my bank account timing out :P

I'll report back in a day or two

Red-Squirrel_2 · 17 June 2015 at 6:46PM

YNAB tip, download the mobile banking apps for whoever you have accounts with, and do your reconciling/matching transactions from that, much easier than paper statements or multiple screens on laptop, and you can do it anywhere too if you have the YNAB as well.

LannieDuck · 17 June 2015 at 6:47PM

Omg, I've worked it out. I'm being so silly. I allocated the savings as my spending money in April! There was no income in April because I'd pushed it forward to May.

D'oh!

I think I have some readjustment to do tonight.... :P

LannieDuck · 17 June 2015 at 6:47PM

Red-Squirrel wrote: »

YNAB tip, download the mobile banking apps for whoever you have accounts with, and do your reconciling/matching transactions from that, much easier than paper statements or multiple screens on laptop, and you can do it anywhere too if you have the YNAB as well.

I tried to do that as soon as I got the steam app, but I couldn't find any option for my make of android phone. I think I just didn't try hard enough. Will look again

Westie983 · 17 June 2015 at 7:34PM

sounds like the issue may be sorted, keep us all posted though :-)

LannieDuck · 17 June 2015 at 10:06PM

Well, I've readjusted my incomings to the same month rather than one in advance, and I still end up with an overspend in June which I shouldn't have (my account is currently £600 in credit). I think I must have got my transaction entries wrong. Will reconcile as soon as I get my statement.