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You need a budget (YNAB) advice thread
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Hi, I'm a recent YNAB convert with a couple of questions - I've had a read up but can't work out the following -
I have a groceries category, into which I record mostly supermarket food spends. When I look at the pie chart, it shows it by individual supermarkets, not as a total grocery spend - where am I going wrong? And should I be recording what I spend on exactly; IE: fruit and veg etc? Is there a benefit to doing that?
Secondly, I've come to YNAB with multiple savings accounts, ostensibly for better interest. I've now put these On Budget and made savings categories. How can I put this money into savings accounts without YNAB getting confused?
e.g.
I started the month with £658.42 in my Car account. When I got paid, I allocated £710 to this category. Do I need to put this as £710 in the Outflows part? As I haven't spent it, I just want to move it? I'm SO confused by this!
It would be lovely to hear from others how they manage their categories, I've become a bit obsessed with moving things around and also spending less, so I can put more into my preferred categories like Holidays! Which can only be a good thing!
Blue
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Hi, I'm a recent YNAB convert with a couple of questions - I've had a read up but can't work out the following -
I have a groceries category, into which I record mostly supermarket food spends. When I look at the pie chart, it shows it by individual supermarkets, not as a total grocery spend - where am I going wrong? And should I be recording what I spend on exactly; IE: fruit and veg etc? Is there a benefit to doing that?
You're probably looking at Spending By Payee. You want Spending By Category (if you want to compare your grocery spend to other categories over time) or Spending Trends (if you want to see how your grocery spend has changed over time).
You could track what you spend if you want (either via the memo field, which would only be useful for viewing the transactions in the register and reading the memo fields; or via subcategories and split transactions but that sounds like a nightmare to enter). YMMV.Secondly, I've come to YNAB with multiple savings accounts, ostensibly for better interest. I've now put these On Budget and made savings categories. How can I put this money into savings accounts without YNAB getting confused?
e.g.
I started the month with £658.42 in my Car account. When I got paid, I allocated £710 to this category. Do I need to put this as £710 in the Outflows part? As I haven't spent it, I just want to move it? I'm SO confused by this!
It would be lovely to hear from others how they manage their categories, I've become a bit obsessed with moving things around and also spending less, so I can put more into my preferred categories like Holidays! Which can only be a good thing!
Blue
When you open a new savings account, assuming that you're funding it from another bank account you own (e.g. existing money, not income) set a starting balance of 0. Then do a Transfer : [savings account] from your other bank account and YNAB will update the balances accordingly. If you want to set aside £710 for future car spends (e.g. savings towards car stuff) just enter £710 in the budget so that it's allocated to that savings category and then add outflows as spending happens (petrol, repairs, MOT, etc). Your £710 (and anything else you add) will just sit in the available money for that category until it's spent against.
If it helps, our categories are currently:
Variable
- Groceries
- Veg box (will likely combine this and Groceries into "Food")
- Household
- Pets
- Travel
Fun
- Eating Out
- Allowances
- Misc
- Culture and Sh*t (because we joke that we should do more of that, so it became the category name!)
Direct Debits
- Mortgage
- Council Tax
- Internet
- Elec/Gas
- Mobile
- TV
- Insurance
- Charity
Non-Monthly Bills
- Water
- Home Insurance (paid annually)
- Subscriptions (Amazon Prime, etc)
Rainy Day Funds
- Emergency Fund
- Home Maintenance
- Home Improvements
- Medical
- Vet
- Clothing
- Electronics
- Gifts
Savings Goals
- Car
We may tweak these further, but for now it works. I've thought about consolidating our Direct Debits stuff a bit, but it's helpful to see exactly what we're spending in each area for comparison shopping/renewing things.0 -
Hi, I'm a recent YNAB convert with a couple of questions - I've had a read up but can't work out the following -
I have a groceries category, into which I record mostly supermarket food spends. When I look at the pie chart, it shows it by individual supermarkets, not as a total grocery spend - where am I going wrong? And should I be recording what I spend on exactly; IE: fruit and veg etc? Is there a benefit to doing that?
When looking at your reports click "spending by category" rather than "spending by payee" as that will lump all your grocery spending together.
I don't think there's any benefit in splitting your grocery shopping into further categories. Whilst it gives you more information it's really just noise and not that useful.Secondly, I've come to YNAB with multiple savings accounts, ostensibly for better interest. I've now put these On Budget and made savings categories. How can I put this money into savings accounts without YNAB getting confused?
e.g.
I started the month with £658.42 in my Car account. When I got paid, I allocated £710 to this category. Do I need to put this as £710 in the Outflows part? As I haven't spent it, I just want to move it? I'm SO confused by this!
No you only end up with something in the outflows column if you actually spend something in that category. I also have a car category and it has a balance building up in it each month so that come February when my VED is due I can just pay it in one go, the same as my insurance which is due for renewal in April.
It doesn't matter what account your car money is in. If you want to move the £710 from your current account to your savings account then you just enter the transaction in your current account. Transfer transactions don't require a category as you are not spending the money.It would be lovely to hear from others how they manage their categories, I've become a bit obsessed with moving things around and also spending less, so I can put more into my preferred categories like Holidays! Which can only be a good thing!
Blue
I've been using YNAB for about 2 years now and I'm on my 3rd incarnation of my budget. In the beginning my categories were too specific which meant I ended up creating more and more categories as I went on. Now I have less categories, for example I just have a category called Utilities rather than a category for gas, a category for electricity, another for broadband etc.
My budgeting problem before I started using YNAB was that I was just swinging from month to month, looking at monthly bills rather than looking at the year as a whole. Now I realise I have less disposable income that I thought but I'm not caught out by things which used to end up on my credit card.0 -
uncreative wrote: »Yes this is rolling with the punches, probably the key to the system. Before you used YNAB, I bet you simply accepted the fact that you overspent by £5. Now you have to change your budget so that it still balances to £0. So that overspend of £5 on groceries has to come from a dropped budget of £5 for something else in a different category.
Therefore when you get to the end of the month, overall, you have not overspent; its just that overspends in some categories are "paid for" by underspending in others, as opposed to paid for by an increase in debt....
Hey Uncreative,
:T
Just wanted to thank you for this post as I think you've absolutely captured the essence of YNAB's philosophy in an incredibly accessible way. I'm sure a lot of people will read this and have a light bulb moment and a massive jump in understanding.
Thistle:D
Ps you need to change your name to Creative:rotfl:Mortgage at end 05/2007: £90200
Mortgage at end 08/2018: £71646 paid £18354 (20.5%)
MFD: :eek:Original:05/2042:eek:
Car Finance: £8225 : £6392 (22.2% paid off)
CC Debt (0% until 06/2020): £5640 : £4400 (21.7% paid off)
Age of Money at 31/08/2018 = 23 days
YNAB is changing the way I live my life....and spend my money!!0 -
hehe, thanks, its a great system isn't it.
I remember when I had this moment of realisation, a truly defining moment in my life without being overly melodramatic. And I originally thought I would use it just because it worked well at recording data and also looked quite good.....
The act of giving up something else in the month to pay for an overspend makes you really feel the pain and think more proactively about your budgeting going forward. Constantly learning and improving is key!Total Credit Used...=........£9,000 / £52,700
Mortgage..............=........£138,000 , 20 Years left.
:starmod:CC cashback for this year..=........£112.88 £205.81 banked in 2015
:starmod:YNAB User & Mortgage Free Wannabe
:starmod::A19/03/160 -
uncreative wrote: »The act of giving up something else in the month to pay for an overspend makes you really feel the pain and think more proactively about your budgeting going forward. Constantly learning and improving is key!
THIS! SO MUCH! I was so of the ''it'll be okay'' mindset, I always had enough, or nearly enough for whatever I needed. Ok, so I wasn't buying Jimmy Choo's and stuff, but I spent with abandon knowing I'd be ok with my steady job but not thinking about the future. Now I'm more excited to save than spend!When looking at your reports click "spending by category" rather than "spending by payee" as that will lump all your grocery spending together.
I don't think there's any benefit in splitting your grocery shopping into further categories. Whilst it gives you more information it's really just noise and not that useful.
No you only end up with something in the outflows column if you actually spend something in that category. I also have a car category and it has a balance building up in it each month so that come February when my VED is due I can just pay it in one go, the same as my insurance which is due for renewal in April.
It doesn't matter what account your car money is in. If you want to move the £710 from your current account to your savings account then you just enter the transaction in your current account. Transfer transactions don't require a category as you are not spending the money.
I've been using YNAB for about 2 years now and I'm on my 3rd incarnation of my budget. In the beginning my categories were too specific which meant I ended up creating more and more categories as I went on. Now I have less categories, for example I just have a category called Utilities rather than a category for gas, a category for electricity, another for broadband etc.
My budgeting problem before I started using YNAB was that I was just swinging from month to month, looking at monthly bills rather than looking at the year as a whole. Now I realise I have less disposable income that I thought but I'm not caught out by things which used to end up on my credit card.
Thank you, this post was really helpful! I'm keen not to get too detailed, as like you say, it's just noise. I am keen to figure out what is a sensible budget though. At the moment I'm just plucking a figure from thin air and spending up to it, particularly for groceries and fuel. Hopefully when I start menu planning/actually looking in the cupboards before the 'Big Shop' I'll be able to make some reductions.hiddenshadow wrote: »You're probably looking at Spending By Payee. You want Spending By Category (if you want to compare your grocery spend to other categories over time) or Spending Trends (if you want to see how your grocery spend has changed over time).
You could track what you spend if you want (either via the memo field, which would only be useful for viewing the transactions in the register and reading the memo fields; or via subcategories and split transactions but that sounds like a nightmare to enter). YMMV.
When you open a new savings account, assuming that you're funding it from another bank account you own (e.g. existing money, not income) set a starting balance of 0. Then do a Transfer : [savings account] from your other bank account and YNAB will update the balances accordingly. If you want to set aside £710 for future car spends (e.g. savings towards car stuff) just enter £710 in the budget so that it's allocated to that savings category and then add outflows as spending happens (petrol, repairs, MOT, etc). Your £710 (and anything else you add) will just sit in the available money for that category until it's spent against.
If it helps, our categories are currently:
Variable
- Groceries
- Veg box (will likely combine this and Groceries into "Food")
- Household
- Pets
- Travel
Fun
- Eating Out
- Allowances
- Misc
- Culture and Sh*t (because we joke that we should do more of that, so it became the category name!)
Direct Debits
- Mortgage
- Council Tax
- Internet
- Elec/Gas
- Mobile
- TV
- Insurance
- Charity
Non-Monthly Bills
- Water
- Home Insurance (paid annually)
- Subscriptions (Amazon Prime, etc)
Rainy Day Funds
- Emergency Fund
- Home Maintenance
- Home Improvements
- Medical
- Vet
- Clothing
- Electronics
- Gifts
Savings Goals
- Car
We may tweak these further, but for now it works. I've thought about consolidating our Direct Debits stuff a bit, but it's helpful to see exactly what we're spending in each area for comparison shopping/renewing things.
Thanks for the insight, that's really helpful. I particularly like the 'Culture and Sh*t one :rotfl:I definitely need to introduce that!
Thanks all,
Blue0 -
THIS! SO MUCH! I was so of the ''it'll be okay'' mindset, I always had enough, or nearly enough for whatever I needed. Ok, so I wasn't buying Jimmy Choo's and stuff, but I spent with abandon knowing I'd be ok with my steady job but not thinking about the future. Now I'm more excited to save than spend!
Us too. We make good money and it was really easy to just say "oh well, I don't buy things too often, so I deserve [x]". Now I know whether I've committed the money to buy X beforehand or whether it's worth it to me to consciously (key for me!) choose to shuffle things around to make money for X or not.At the moment I'm just plucking a figure from thin air and spending up to it, particularly for groceries and fuel. Hopefully when I start menu planning/actually looking in the cupboards before the 'Big Shop' I'll be able to make some reductions.
I spent a weekend importing about a year of bank transactions into a throwaway budget to figure out what we spent (roughly). I didn't do every single item, and I used pretty broad categories, but it gave a good sense of what numbers we should start with for our categories.
We've cut our grocery budget by £75 over the last year or so. We intentionally set it pretty high originally, and every few months I've dropped it by £25 and checked if we felt strained by the cut. So far, no, but we'll see how many more times it can trim down!0 -
hiddenshadow wrote: »Us too. We make good money and it was really easy to just say "oh well, I don't buy things too often, so I deserve [x]". Now I know whether I've committed the money to buy X beforehand or whether it's worth it to me to consciously (key for me!) choose to shuffle things around to make money for X or not.
I spent a weekend importing about a year of bank transactions into a throwaway budget to figure out what we spent (roughly). I didn't do every single item, and I used pretty broad categories, but it gave a good sense of what numbers we should start with for our categories.
We've cut our grocery budget by £75 over the last year or so. We intentionally set it pretty high originally, and every few months I've dropped it by £25 and checked if we felt strained by the cut. So far, no, but we'll see how many more times it can trim down!
I'm another who is wont to feel like I "deserve" things fairly frequently! And a few quid or a new top here and there doesn't seem like much. And it isn't. But then it adds up. I think it really helps you make better choices "I can go to that restaurant, but am I going to take the money from the holiday or the house deposit to do it?" usually gets me deciding to stay in :rotfl:
I think seeing what I spend on groceries for a couple of months and then dropping it is a good idea. I have quite limited choices due to my accommodation as to what I can cook, but I definitely buy (and waste, to my shame) way more than I need.
Blue0 -
I think it really helps you make better choices "I can go to that restaurant, but am I going to take the money from the holiday or the house deposit to do it?" usually gets me deciding to stay in :rotfl:
Definitely. I think my favourite feature is the source-independent aspect of money. It doesn't matter if I suddenly found £100 on the street - if I didn't allocate that to Eating Out it has to do something else. I try never to carry cash because I will just spend it mindlessly, but now that I have to enter every transaction and account for it in the budget, it's not an issue for me. 0 -
I am still on the free trial...13 days left, but I have set aside the money to purchase the software as I really love it.
I had such a dilemma the other day thinking about RDF and whether I should be using spare money to fund these or snowball my credit card debt. I have just managed to transfer all my CC debt to 3 years 0% interest. I had worked out the plan with the snowball calculator for my debt you see below (including Littlewoods and Argos but excluding the loan) and managed to work out to pay it all within 36 months without a stitch of interest. BUT there would be absolutely nothing to fund the RDF.
I didn't know what to do...the whole point of the 0% was to give me that opportunity to get out of debt BUT if I spent all my surplus income on debt, I would have to go back into debt to pay for other things eg the 40000 mile car service due next month. So I decided to pay the minimum for the next 3 to 4 months on the CC and use the surplus to fund the RDF as best I can. A token amount to the buffer at this point as I think the RDF trumps buffer right now.
If I do well then may be a couple of months before the 0% ends I can transfer the small amount left
Do you think my plan is a sound one, or is there something I have not thought of?0
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