You need a budget (YNAB) advice thread

SeduLOUs

LavenderGrove wrote: »

Patzer's formula has worked for me before, but not now. My bank balance (blue l/h column) is down by £3.92. So the only way I can get my income, outflows and budget to reflect what's in my bank balance is by leaving £3.92 as available to budget.

Thank you
LG:)

Budget the £3.92 into one of your categories.

Sounds like in May you budgeted £3.92 less than what you had available, so you have never given that money a job and it has just been carrying forward since.

Stick it into a category, the ATB will reduce, and your bank balance won't change.

LavenderGrove

SeduLOUs wrote: »

Budget the £3.92 into one of your categories.

Sounds like in May you budgeted £3.92 less than what you had available, so you have never given that money a job and it has just been carrying forward since.

Stick it into a category, the ATB will reduce, and your bank balance won't change.

Thank you SeduLOUs. Yes, you are right, it all went wrong when I had an amount carried over then decided I wanted £0 ATB so I added it as an outflow - I just made up an outflow transaction for £3.92.

As you suggested I tried sticking it in category and so now my bank balance is down by £3.92. Only way to get my Outflows and Budgeted amount to balance with my Bank Balance is to leave the big green ATB £3.92. Shame as I was doing so well!

Can't believe how frustrated I'm feeling about this. I'm not sure what to do now:(

Thank you anyway for taking time to help.

LG

peaceandfreedom

LavenderGrove wrote: »

Thank you SeduLOUs. Yes, you are right, it all went wrong when I had an amount carried over then decided I wanted £0 ATB so I added it as an outflow - I just made up an outflow transaction for £3.92.

As you suggested I tried sticking it in category and so now my bank balance is down by £3.92. Only way to get my Outflows and Budgeted amount to balance with my Bank Balance is to leave the big green ATB £3.92. Shame as I was doing so well!

I am not 100% sure if I understand the problem but it seems to me that you have £3.92 left over from an earlier budget. You have not spent this £3.92 so therefore it should not be entered as an outflow transaction.

All you need to do is add £3.92 to one of your budget categories for this month - choose any category you like - groceries, personal spending money, savings, whatever. That will reduce your ATB to zero and won't affect your bank account at all.

SeduLOUs

'Available to Budget' means available to put into your categories (the left hand column). This bit has no effect whatsoever on your bank balances.

You only post outflows/inflows (middle column) when money is actually leaving or entering your bank account.

If you have budgeted every £ you have into categories, then the total of the category balances (the right hand column) will be the same as the total of all of your bank balances - yours probably doesn't now, but should in a minute...

Pick a category, any category, and add £3.92 to it. NOT as an outflow, just increase the amount budgeted in the left hand column on the main budget screen. Your ATB will reduce, your bank balance will stay the same and everything should then be hunky dory.

If it's still not right beyond that, then please post a screenshot showing May onwards if possible.

LavenderGrove

peaceandfreedom wrote: »

I am not 100% sure if I understand the problem but it seems to me that you have £3.92 left over from an earlier budget. You have not spent this £3.92 so therefore it should not be entered as an outflow transaction.

All you need to do is add £3.92 to one of your budget categories for this month - choose any category you like - groceries, personal spending money, savings, whatever. That will reduce your ATB to zero and won't affect your bank account at all.

Hi Peaceandfreedom thank you for your suggestion. I'm going to have a play around and see what happens.

Many thanks.
LG:)

LavenderGrove

SeduLOUs wrote: »

'Available to Budget' means available to put into your categories (the left hand column). This bit has no effect whatsoever on your bank balances.

You only post outflows/inflows (middle column) when money is actually leaving or entering your bank account.

If you have budgeted every £ you have into categories, then the total of the category balances (the right hand column) will be the same as the total of all of your bank balances - yours probably doesn't now, but should in a minute...

Pick a category, any category, and add £3.92 to it. NOT as an outflow, just increase the amount budgeted in the left hand column on the main budget screen. Your ATB will reduce, your bank balance will stay the same and everything should then be hunky dory.

If it's still not right beyond that, then please post a screenshot showing May onwards if possible.

Hi SeduLOUs - thanks for coming back.
Ok, have done as you suggested. So now my Balance column on the right shows totals £127.60 (apart from my preYNAB debt) and my account balance on the left side (blue) is £123.63 - it's £3.92 down. At the top it shows not budgeted in July £3.92, income for August figure and budgeted for August figure is income +£3.92 ATB is £0.

Not quite sure how to do screen shot?

Thank you so much, I do feel a bit daft not being able to sort this.

Kind regards
LG:)

greensalad

Edit: Got there in the end. Don't know how. Had to delete everything I had done and try again. Now everything balances up OK.

Here's what I did the second time, mainly for my own sanity:

Created a transfer from offbudget pot > current account. Cleared it. Gave it category 'income for August' on current account.

Added the amount to my budget sheet, I think this is the important step, I actually need to budget the funds to make it reduce on the budget screen.

Made a transfer from current account to Barclaycard. No category needed. Cleared it.

---

I'm having trouble with credit cards. I've watched the video but I'm still so stuck.

I wanted to pay £99.27 off my Barclaycard. It had a balance of £1549.27.

I had an off-budget account with some cash in it. So I transferred like so (in real life) offbudget > current account > barclaycard (because I pay my bill from my current account.

Great, so in YNAB I:

Transferred from offbudget > current account, cleared the transaction. Funds now available in current account

Transferred from current account > barclaycard account. Now current account balance is restored to what it should be, and Barclaycard account shows reduced amount. All great.

Except when it comes to the budget screen, which has the 'pre-YNAB debt' category and still shows as £1574.59. Eh?

It also shows I have £134.19 available to budget. What? I only have £9.60 in my current account.

Why is my Barclaycard balance more than it ever was?

And where has this extra money come from? I should only have £9.60 to budget with. That's all I have, it clearly shows that as the balance. Why does it show the balance as £9.60 but available to budget as £134.19? Where on earth is this extra money?

Screenshot

Kelxx

greensalad wrote: »

Edit: Got there in the end. Don't know how. Had to delete everything I had done and try again. Now everything balances up OK.

Here's what I did the second time, mainly for my own sanity:

Created a transfer from offbudget pot > current account. Cleared it. Gave it category 'income for August' on current account.

Added the amount to my budget sheet, I think this is the important step, I actually need to budget the funds to make it reduce on the budget screen.

Made a transfer from current account to Barclaycard. No category needed. Cleared it.

---

I'm having trouble with credit cards. I've watched the video but I'm still so stuck.

I wanted to pay £99.27 off my Barclaycard. It had a balance of £1549.27.

I had an off-budget account with some cash in it. So I transferred like so (in real life) offbudget > current account > barclaycard (because I pay my bill from my current account.

Great, so in YNAB I:

Transferred from offbudget > current account, cleared the transaction. Funds now available in current account

Transferred from current account > barclaycard account. Now current account balance is restored to what it should be, and Barclaycard account shows reduced amount. All great.

Except when it comes to the budget screen, which has the 'pre-YNAB debt' category and still shows as £1574.59. Eh?

It also shows I have £134.19 available to budget. What? I only have £9.60 in my current account.

Why is my Barclaycard balance more than it ever was?

And where has this extra money come from? I should only have £9.60 to budget with. That's all I have, it clearly shows that as the balance. Why does it show the balance as £9.60 but available to budget as £134.19? Where on earth is this extra money?

Screenshot

EDIT: [STRIKE]Sorry I've just looked at the figures, I'm going out now, I'll have a proper look when I get back.[/STRIKE] See next post

Kelxx

type £124.59 into the Barclaycard budget & you should then have £9.60 ATB

greensalad

Kelxx wrote: »

type £124.59 into the Barclaycard budget & you should then have £9.60 ATB

Yeah that's where I went wrong. I was doing the transfer offbudget > current > barclaycard but I wasn't budgeting it out of my current account. I think that was the missing step. Got there now.