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You need a budget (YNAB) advice thread

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  • You should be able to make the payment in YNAB from the christmas savings account. Transfer: Clarity CC, outflow: £157. Then that account's balance should go down by 157, Clarity CC should go up by 157 (to 0, presumably), and you should have 157 and -157 in your budget screen (with 0 available).
  • Thanks hidden,

    i couldn't get that the £157 i had in there already had 'disappeared'!! of course it hadn't as non had come out of my Christmas category. I do sometimes get confused between categories - which do not care where the actual money is, and accounts - which very much care. I have had this problem before!!!
    £1000 Emergency fund No90 £1000/1000
    LBM 28/1/15 total debt - [STRIKE]£23,410[/STRIKE] 24/3/16 total debt - £7,298
    !
  • hiddenshadow
    hiddenshadow Posts: 2,525 Forumite
    Yeah, it's a bit counter-intuitive at first. (And I really wish there were some sort of big alert of "your planned spending will put you in overdraft!!!!" because we've gone overdrawn once when we had loads in savings because we didn't catch that the balance had dropped so much.)

    Once you get used to it (aside from the potential overdrawn problem), I really like that accounts and budgets are separate - if I feel like buying lunch with £5 in my pocket, that's cool, if I feel like buying it with a credit card, that's also cool. For us it frees us up to chase whatever rewards make sense (cashback, points, etc).
  • FireWyrm
    FireWyrm Posts: 6,557 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker Debt-free and Proud!
    YNAB mind bending results.

    After 2 years of using YNAB and tracking everything I still cant get my head around how I can be £15000 in the black and still not afford a McDonalds. Seriously, that is just messed up.

    On the plus side, I have never seen bank accounts with that much money in them and never thought that I would. It gives me a thrill every month when I log into MoneyDashboard and see the combined total of all my accounts and that I am completely solvent.

    Keep it up people. Now I'm just waiting for the new web based version so that I can do a fresh start for the new year.
    Debt Free! Long road, but we did it
    Meet my best friend : YNAB (you need a budget)
    My other best friend is a filofax.
    Do or do not, there is no try....Yoda.

    [/COLOR]
  • FireWyrm wrote: »
    After 2 years of using YNAB and tracking everything I still cant get my head around how I can be £15000 in the black and still not afford a McDonalds. Seriously, that is just messed up.

    Do you allocate to a category that would allow for McDonalds? (DH puts it in his allowance because he views it as a treat above and beyond normal lunch spending, I don't eat there but would probably put it under Eating Out)
    On the plus side, I have never seen bank accounts with that much money in them and never thought that I would. It gives me a thrill every month when I log into MoneyDashboard and see the combined total of all my accounts and that I am completely solvent.

    I love that feeling :)
    Keep it up people. Now I'm just waiting for the new web based version so that I can do a fresh start for the new year.

    I just got into the web based version last night - looking forward to trying it out this month (though it seems pretty different from the current version, judging by the YNAB forums).
  • FireWyrm
    FireWyrm Posts: 6,557 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker Debt-free and Proud!
    Do you allocate to a category that would allow for McDonalds? (DH puts it in his allowance because he views it as a treat above and beyond normal lunch spending, I don't eat there but would probably put it under Eating Out)

    <cough>Yes/No/sometimes</cough>

    I have a category for such spends and I *should* fund it in anticipation of spending it...the reality is rather more dull...

    Take the other day...

    Eldest daughter says "It would be great mum if I had some casual shoes for going out in instead of wearing my PE trainers". Fair enough. I have money in the kids clothes category for that (actually, it's split by child and allocated so that I dont end up spending more on one that the other and consigning the younger to permanent hand-me-downs, I try to be fair(ish)).

    So, trip to Brantanos, along with the weekly shopping (also budgeted and listed before we enter the shop). Of course, everyone wants to go out because Hubby is stir crazy and the 2.5 year old boy is bouncing off the walls, so heck, lets all go out. Daughter No 2 then shows me the state of her trainers..Oh my god...really? You couldnt say anything earlier before you had the massive great hole in the sole and what the hell did you do to those? So, shoes number 2 as well to the list, not to worry, all budgeted.

    After walking around various shops for 2 hours, I'm in serious pain (I have No 4 on the way and SPD is making my life hellish) it's 12.01 and the kids want to know what is for lunch. OK, fine. McDonalds. Yes, we have bread, cheese, ham and stuff in the back of the car, but frankly, I cant be bothered right now.

    So, McDonalds. I put it on the main account (where the buffer is) but you know what? I have never managed to be good enough to budget money for these little excursions (yeah, I know) and so, I just end up taking it out of the buffer at the end of the month. The idea of the category was to make me acknowledge how many of these little side-excursions we do and not to do too many, but in reality, it just kinda gets taken out of the buffer because hey, we have £15K in the bank so really, why cant we afford £20 for McDonalds? As I said, nuts.

    BTW, eldest daughter informs me that she doesnt like McDonalds anymore, they're greasy, horrible, terrible value for money. I glow with pride...

    "Can we get a cheese burger from the market in future Mum?" :wall:
    Debt Free! Long road, but we did it
    Meet my best friend : YNAB (you need a budget)
    My other best friend is a filofax.
    Do or do not, there is no try....Yoda.

    [/COLOR]
  • tempus_fugit
    tempus_fugit Posts: 1,189 Forumite
    Eighth Anniversary 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    I have been using YNAB for a few months now and am getting used to how it works. I think the main thing to remember is that you only budget new income, not existing funds. I have existing funds in some sort of savings pot or other and anything that is transferred from there just reduces that fund rather than having to be additional, budgeted funds.
    Retired at age 56 after having "light bulb moment" due to reading MSE and its forums. Have been converted to the "budget to zero" concept and use YNAB for all monthly budgeting and long term goals.
  • hiddenshadow
    hiddenshadow Posts: 2,525 Forumite
    FireWyrm wrote: »
    BTW, eldest daughter informs me that she doesnt like McDonalds anymore, they're greasy, horrible, terrible value for money. I glow with pride...

    "Can we get a cheese burger from the market in future Mum?" :wall:

    :rotfl: Sounds familiar. ;)

    I suppose at the end of the day it's whether you want to specifically budget for/categorise the spending you know you'll do (re: incidentals/McDonalds) and have it slowly eat away at your buffer; or whether you want that spending "hidden" within your buffer. We've (really I, since DH doesn't really mess with the budget) gone with more granular categories because that motivates me to be more MSE about things when I can see that we're spending £X on utilities and £Y on insurance, as opposed to one massive category with £Z in it for "household direct debits". (I also like that I can see at-a-glance on the budget screen which DDs have cleared and which are still outstanding.)

    I used to "turn the arrow to the right" a lot with categories where I knew I'd make up the difference the next month, but I'm trying to make all the categories non-red at the end of the month now. It does pain me to take money out of savings pots to account for overspending elsewhere, but it reflects reality more (and, I hope, encourages me to be more strict about what I budget for/spend in my categories!)

    I also like to periodically use the lightning bolt "Average outflows for last year" in the upcoming month (so it leaves the current month alone) to sanity check my budgeting. Sometimes it's an eye-opener when I think we can get by with £100 in a category but our average spending is actually £283!
  • FireWyrm
    FireWyrm Posts: 6,557 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker Debt-free and Proud!
    I have a question that has been nagging though and anyone playing with nYNAB might be able to answer it.

    I have been running the same budget for 2 years. I want to re-evaluate categories and the online version would be a good time to do this. However, because I have been running a budget for two years, I have some heavily funded categories and I dont want to lose those splits and the money in the general reshuffle. How do you go about moving this 'money' from existing pots in YNAB4 into nYNAB and still have all the accounts balance? When I started, I just set a day, took the starting balance of the accounts and went from there, but the categories were empty. I now have some categories that I want to move to nYNAB but they have money in them. How do I do this?
    Debt Free! Long road, but we did it
    Meet my best friend : YNAB (you need a budget)
    My other best friend is a filofax.
    Do or do not, there is no try....Yoda.

    [/COLOR]
  • FireWyrm
    FireWyrm Posts: 6,557 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker Debt-free and Proud!

    I suppose at the end of the day it's whether you want to specifically budget for/categorise the spending you know you'll do (re: incidentals/McDonalds) and have it slowly eat away at your buffer; or whether you want that spending "hidden" within your buffer. We've (really I, since DH doesn't really mess with the budget) gone with more granular categories because that motivates me to be more MSE about things when I can see that we're spending £X on utilities and £Y on insurance, as opposed to one massive category with £Z in it for "household direct debits". (I also like that I can see at-a-glance on the budget screen which DDs have cleared and which are still outstanding.)

    That's where the 'sometimes' bit of my answer came in. I do have a category for 'eating out' but it is rarely funded in advance. Effectively, I just put the transaction in there, get a red tally and then just WAM out of the buffer to cover it. I shouldnt, it's naughty, I should be finding and spending in advance, but I dont. It is on my to-do list of goals for the next year...try to be more true to the yNAB method.
    I used to "turn the arrow to the right" a lot with categories where I knew I'd make up the difference the next month, but I'm trying to make all the categories non-red at the end of the month now.

    When I first started YNAB I made a pact with myself that I simply wouldnt do that. It leads to creeping errors that I will never find and so, I close out the budget at the end of the month with WAM and that is that. I never do that 'arrow to the right' thing except in debt categories. It is the equivalent to me of a PDL in my mind.
    It does pain me to take money out of savings pots to account for overspending elsewhere, but it reflects reality more (and, I hope, encourages me to be more strict about what I budget for/spend in my categories!)

    Yes, that's how I ended up with this McDonalds habit. I do the same thing for that and WAMing out of Buffer to cover the spend in 'eating out' hurts, I agree. It does tend to make me think but it is also not in the spirit of YNAB and I shouldnt be doing it.
    I also like to periodically use the lightning bolt "Average outflows for last year" in the upcoming month (so it leaves the current month alone) to sanity check my budgeting. Sometimes it's an eye-opener when I think we can get by with £100 in a category but our average spending is actually £283!

    Never used that facility but perhaps I should. I really ought to do it with Petrol but I never do. Perhaps with some track history in the nYNAB next year, I'll do that and see what the year comes out as, or even, do it in YNAB4 just before I move everything over to nYNAB to see what would have happened in January.
    Debt Free! Long road, but we did it
    Meet my best friend : YNAB (you need a budget)
    My other best friend is a filofax.
    Do or do not, there is no try....Yoda.

    [/COLOR]
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