You need a budget (YNAB) advice thread

LannieDuck

Pixie5740 wrote: »

I download my statements from my online banking and upload them to YNAB. YNAB manages to match most transactions for me and the rest I do manually.

I've looked at that button and wondered...

Trouble is that because i'm still working out how everything works, I don't want to accidentally mess things up! Maybe I'll get brave and try it out later

Dandytf

Think i'll try downloading statements.

Not sure what format rbs statements are.

Dandytf

Thanks

I've been typing manually.didn't realise I could download statements from rbs

Going to start YNAB with statements..should make interesting reading;)

Westie983

I found this way quite hard to reconcile, I still do it manually and the teachers of the webinars say to do it this way for about six months to a year before you try and do the importing of statements,

if it works for you, do it, but dont be disheartened if you find it harder..

Money_mayhem

I have a question if you don't mind helping me with please.

I've been using YNAB for a few months now but I've always made my tax credit payment available to use from next month when in actual fact I use it straight away. So, I've changed all of the past months to make the payments available for the actual month it was received.

Do you think this is the best way to do it? Before I made the changes, I had about £5 available to budget but now I have much more available. So, it's just making me think whether or not I should stick to recording it for the next available month.

Any advice welcome.

Thanks.

Pixie5740

Do you mean that you use your tax credit income over two months? If so just split the categories and assign £X for July and £X for August.

Money_mayhem

No, what it mean is that I was getting a payment in June for example, but assigning it to July. So I've stopped doing that and have assigned the payment I received in June to be available for June. I'm sure there's nothing wrong with that, but just wondering if that's what other people did. I've been doing it the ore way for the past five months and have now decided to change it, which has confused me slightly as it means I have more available to budget.

Pixie5740

You assign the income to the month you are going to use the income in so if you get a payment in June then you categorise it as "Income for June." If that's what you are doing then that is the right way to do it.

Westie983

I put all the money I receive for the month in that month, then once I have budgeted all the bills, anything left over stays in my DD category so when the next months come out I will affectively be budgeting on last months money....

I get paid on the 20th and I use that to pay for my bills on the 1st, but then I get paid again on the 20th so I get the money in say June but its paying for the bills on 1st July... then Julys wages pays for August...

japmis

Just found out I'm pregnant!!! :happylove :grinheart So glad I got my finances sorted out with YNAB..... I've created a new pot called "Baby Fund" and I've rejigged my finances to allocate £300/month :T (major cut backs in other areas, but thats ok).

Q: I could clear all my 0% cc debt with my current account bank balance but I would be left with nil savings. I really want to do this because having debt hanging over me is so frustrating; plus once the CCs are paid off I reckon I could save nearly £1,000 a month. But I like the security of having money in the bank and not resorting to CCs when there is an emergency. What's best to do? Maybe I could meet half way and do a bit of both? I just feel like my savings aren't mine because I owe money.