You need a budget (YNAB) advice thread

andyfromotley

Thats right i do yes.

I think the initial idea was to put in the category whilst i worked out my budget then transfer from one account to the other?? (iirc)

Anyway its obviously gone to rats. Just unsure what to do about it. I'm happy to mail you a screenshot i can't post images i don't think.

andyfromotley

Ok i think i've sorted it.

i had forgotten that the budget just shows what money you have and what for. it doesn't care what account it is in. (provided that it is an on budget account)

So i have moved money around the categories so that the category Christmas savings now matches the savings account amount. I think i'm good.

***update****

Just for any who have the same problem, i'll explain it as i see it should be done because i think its quite an important principle of YNAB.

When doing my budget for the month i decide to save £50 for Christmas.
I add it to the Category CHRISTMAS this will show the running total of everything i have saved for christmas.
I then Transfer the £50 from my real current account to my savings account.
I then Transfer it from my current account to my savings account on YNAB. The category amount will still stay the same because i have saved that money for christmas. The money will move on YNAB from my Bank Account to my savings account.

The important point, which i forgot, was that the budget screen shows all of your money and what its for. It doesn't care where the actual money is!

Hope this helps.

SeduLOUs

Correct Andy,

If you want to have a category that 'matches' a savings account, then if you put money into or take money out of that account, you also have to budget for the transfer to keep the balances aligned. Posting the money transfer between your accounts is only one side of the coin and has no effect on your budget screen.

It works similarly with debt accounts that have a pre-YNAB debt category. If you make a payment to the debt card, then that payment also needs to be budgeted in the category. Interest applied to the account also needs to be budgeted, as it is an 'expense' that changes the balance of the account.

To put it simply, if the bank account is reconciled and correct, then just budget more or less as required on the budget screen until the balances match up.

hanb

Hi all,

Wondering if anyone can help my pickled brain!

After raving about YNAB to OH, he got it too. He just saw me reconcile and pointed out his looks nothing like it and that everything is in red.. So I had a look..

He's been recording all of his spends but hadn't fully allocated his money or rolled with the punches along the way. He's only done the month.

His account balances are all correct (he's done manual adjustments when the weren't) however YNAB is saying he's over budgeted and overspent leaving him £500 in the red.

Now I'm no expert but have no problems with mine and have worked out anything that's cropped out ok. I could be missing something really obvious but I can't see how if you look at YNAB he's in debt by £500 but all the spends have been made from accounts that were, and still are, in credit. So he has spent that £500 but he had it to spend..

Can this be fixed or should he scrap this month and start again now (he's just been paid). I don't know if he started with incorrect opening balances but al the balances now are correct so I just don't know how to deal with this red number

Apologies if it's really straight forward but I just don't get it

SeduLOUs

hanb wrote: »

Hi all,

Wondering if anyone can help my pickled brain!

After raving about YNAB to OH, he got it too. He just saw me reconcile and pointed out his looks nothing like it and that everything is in red.. So I had a look..

He's been recording all of his spends but hadn't fully allocated his money or rolled with the punches along the way. He's only done the month.

His account balances are all correct (he's done manual adjustments when the weren't) however YNAB is saying he's over budgeted and overspent leaving him £500 in the red.

Now I'm no expert but have no problems with mine and have worked out anything that's cropped out ok. I could be missing something really obvious but I can't see how if you look at YNAB he's in debt by £500 but all the spends have been made from accounts that were, and still are, in credit. So he has spent that £500 but he had it to spend..

Can this be fixed or should he scrap this month and start again now (he's just been paid). I don't know if he started with incorrect opening balances but al the balances now are correct so I just don't know how to deal with this red number

Apologies if it's really straight forward but I just don't get it

Go through each line in the budget one at a time and budget whatever it needs to make the category balance zero. Check if any categories are hidden aswell and do the same for those. You can do it automatically by clicking the lightning bolt in the month header and clicking 'balance to zero'.

Once all of the categories are zero'd your right hand column 'Balance' should be zero.

Basically what you are doing is budgeting now for everything he has already spent, and once you've finished, you will get a new available to budget figure which should match the total money in the bank, and he can then start putting it into any categories he needs for the remainder of September and start budgeting for next month.

What's probably happened is he's overbudgeted somewhere in a category so has allocated more money then he has (as opposed to actually spending too much) - so it appears red but in reality everything is probably fine and just needs a good tidying up.

Then when it's all sorted you need to give him a bit of a reminder tutorial about how it works, making sure he knows how to budget properly and how to adjust the budget for a category if he decides to spend more than he'd originally put (remembering that to increase the category balance he will have to reduce another category). As you'll know from your own budget the vast majority of categories should either be zero or positive - red is usually only acceptable for paying down debt, or a small overspend that is budgeted and rectified in the following month.

If all else fails, try a fresh start. I'm a meddler and think it's best to at least attempt to fix a problem first though, because that's the best way to learn.

Good luck!

Rosylee

Please could you tell me where I can buy the programme in the UK and the cheapest place to get it. Thanks

andyfromotley

Steam is usually the cheapest. The price goes up and down on there but its usually about £30.

If you have the free trial and do the wbinars you can win a copy, they give one away on each one. You get it for free if you are a Student.

oneC

So I'm about 3 months in with YNAB and everything going well.
I struggled with a couple of things at first -

- Getting paid on the 25th/26th every month : I tried to allocate all my money in advance (and let the balance roll over into the new month) but I found this much too difficult at present. Perhaps when I'm able to build up enough of a buffer to allocate funds for next months bills it may become easier. I've recently tried splitting my income between both months (one quarter for the remaining month and the rest into next month) and I found this works so much better

- Unexpected outgoings: What I mean by this are things that basically don't fit into any of my other categories. How do you guys cope with this? Do you keep adding categories onto your list?

- One thing I wish that the mobile app would do would be to allow me to update budgets on the fly as well. By this I mean move reduce or increase my monthly allocated money in a particular category. To me this would be a super useful feature and I think it would be very much in line with their "Roll with the punches" ethos

C

Pixie5740

oneC wrote: »

- Getting paid on the 25th/26th every month : I tried to allocate all my money in advance (and let the balance roll over into the new month) but I found this much too difficult at present. Perhaps when I'm able to build up enough of a buffer to allocate funds for next months bills it may become easier. I've recently tried splitting my income between both months (one quarter for the remaining month and the rest into next month) and I found this works so much better

Are you categorising the income you receive 25th/26th as Income for the same month you receive the payment or the following month? If it's the former then are you spending money throughout the month on categories that having nothing allocated to them or do you have a lot of outgoings between 25th and the end of the month?

I get paid on the 28th so today I categorised my salary payment as "income for October". It will only be used in October even though I have a couple of payments due out 30th September as those were allocated money on my last pay day.

oneC wrote: »

- Unexpected outgoings: What I mean by this are things that basically don't fit into any of my other categories. How do you guys cope with this? Do you keep adding categories onto your list?

My budget isn't set in stone so I do add and hide categories as required. What sort of things do you count as unexpected? I have a fund building up in my car category to cover me in case I need to buy new tyres, windscreen wipers, etc.

oneC wrote: »

- One thing I wish that the mobile app would do would be to allow me to update budgets on the fly as well. By this I mean move reduce or increase my monthly allocated money in a particular category. To me this would be a super useful feature and I think it would be very much in line with their "Roll with the punches" ethos

I would also find that feature useful, especially when I am away travelling and trying to decide if I can really afford that hot air balloon ride over the Masai Mara.

uncreative

oneC wrote: »

- Unexpected outgoings: What I mean by this are things that basically don't fit into any of my other categories. How do you guys cope with this? Do you keep adding categories onto your list?

C

I tried this but it was getting to much so i created a single line called General. then I put unexpected costs into this code and use the notes function and the memo text box to record what it was. That way I can roll with the punches in the month by taking budget from somewhere else. 5 months later using the General category and I am actually budgeting £40 here for October as that is my rolling average spend on such items.