You need a budget (YNAB) advice thread

SeduLOUs

uncreative wrote: »

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.

For me, £40 per month would be too much for a 'misc' category.

I do have a general category for small things that don't fit anywhere else, but there's only £38 been put to it so far for the year.

It's whatever works for you, but bunching up £480 of annual 'misc' spending is going to have an impact on how useful your spending reports are. Whether that matters is entirely up to you of course!

lisa110rry

Hello all you YNAB converts. I have read the first two pages, dipped in an out of the others and read the last page.

I'm after your advice on this. I'm an older lady, breadwinner in the family as my husband has a serious heart condition, our son is independent of us completely (financially), living abroad. I have no debts at all, mortgage paid off years ago. My salary covers my monthly spending with savings at the end of the month.

With this in mind, do you think there would be any benefit to me in using this software? I am fully Excel Spreadsheet-friendly and use spreadsheets to monitor my elec/gas costs. I feel drawn to YNAB, but wouldn't it be a pointless expense for me that I should avoid if I want be truly "money saving"?

joedenise

lisa110rry - I started with YNAB about a year ago. Money coming in covered all outgoings with some but not much money left to save but since using YNAB my savings have increased far quicker than they did before.

Download the trial and give it a go. Also worth watching the webinars if your can, although most on at silly o'clock! Every webinar you watch you'll have a chance to win a free copy of YNAB.

Denise

SeduLOUs

I agree, I think one of the real benefits to be had from YNAB is having much more control over the pennies, and knowing exactly what every penny in your bank account at any given time is earmarked to do.

I could have got where I am without YNAB, but I certainly would have done it much more slowly - the software has paid for itself several times over in my case.

It does sound like you do have good control over your money, so only you can figure out whether YNAB will help you to improve the amount of savings you have and whether the effort of tracking everything is worth it when you're in a good position - the first 30 days are free, so perhaps it's an idea to start a trial from the day when you have the most money available in a month and see how you go?

uncreative

Totally agree, free trial and see how you go. The only discipline it enforces is tracking EVERY penny. If you feel up to that, then it may be worth it. It also looks and feels much better than a spreadsheet and the analysis tools if thats what you need are quicker, with preset graphs, piecharts, reports etc.. You can also export into a spreadsheet if you want to do more fancy stuff.

parsniphead

A quick question.

Do you need a laptop or desktop to have ynab. I only have a tablet.

Thanks

hanb

Parsniphead - I'm sure someone more knowledgeable than me will be along soon but I'd imagine that would be ok. I know that I can set my budget on my ipad in the same way I do on my laptop but not sure about the android version.


Just an update on my earlier issue - well OH's issue that I was sticking my nose in to - I managed to sort him out, not entirely sure how but everything is now correct! However, he announced afterwards that he just wanted to use it as spend diary to see where he spends his money rather than allocating money and because he didn't like having to split his pay between months as income (he gets paid mid month) it looks like he's now going to stop using it anyway(!!) I'll keep working on him!

nyermen

parsniphead - as far as I'm aware, you do unfortunately. The initial budget is created on windows/mac os. You can then do a lot on ipad (changing budget etc) that can't be done on the iphone version, but without the initial budget on windows/mac, the ipad wouldn't be able to start.

ps. When you say tablet, I know you can make changes via iPad, not sure if Android tablets support the same.

parsniphead

Thanks hanb and nyermen.

Back to the spreadsheet then.

Iwani

Hello all... I've been using YNAB for a month and I absolutely love it. I've had to make several adjustments along the way but can actually say for the first time in my adult life I am not overdrawn and it's payday tomorrow! Which includes a lot of car repairs this month I hadn't planned on.

I do have a question though, and I'd probably know the answer if I'd done the webinars but haven't managed to stay up late enough for that yet.

What is the correct thing to do if you overspend in a category? For example, if I spend £5 more than I budgeted for groceries - what I've been doing is taking £5 out of another category, say fuel, and adding it to the total budgeted for groceries, so I am no longer over budget.
Is that right, or should I be taking the money out of fuel but leaving the original groceries figure alone, to show as having gone over budget?