You need a budget (YNAB) advice thread

greensalad

OK so I've scrubbed it clean and started again. It's just getting too confusing.

I've made two separate accounts for my Barclays account with overdraft. Instead I've got £1000 OD as a line of credit, and then the actually Barclays account separate.

However, I'm now having an issue with savings. I don't know how to make a savings category associate with a savings account? The same way debt accounts show up on my budget sheet.

I made an account "car savings" and did a transfer from Barclays to Car Savings. Shows as car savings now having a balance of £66. Cool.

But when I look at my budget sheet, there is no Car Savings category line. So I make one. My budget says I still have £66 left to budget... but how do I make it associate the category line and the account together?

I've had to stick £66 in the budgeted column for the savings account but shows as £66 available. Ugh. I feel like I'm going round in circles.

hiddenshadow

nYNAB doesn't really have a handle on overdrafts yet - their entire system seems to be geared towards debt only being on credit cards, and checking (current) accounts always having a positive (or zero) balance. I think they're working on this, but they don't seem too bothered about international customers so not sure when they'll implement a real solution (where you don't need separate accounts).

YNAB won't automatically link your category and the account - the whole philosophy is that it doesn't matter where your money is physically, you go based on what you have in the budget. (They also encourage everyone to simplify their banking down to one current account and one credit card, but that seems too basic to me, and ignores the fact that you could earn money with multiple/different accounts or credit cards.)

You'll need to manually take care of the budgeted amount in your Car Savings category - doing transfers between accounts won't update your budget screen (as YNAB treats all your on-budget accounts as available to spend from - you could pay your council tax bill from that car savings account just as easily as a car, in YNAB's mind).

Not sure why £66 would show as available to budget still - if the savings account was setup as "tracking" it won't count against the budget at all, but that would show you as £66 overbudgeted, not £66 left. Will play around with it in a bit.

hiddenshadow

I've tried it with both on-budget and tracking accounts and the transfer works ok, budget remains unaffected (£66 to car savings category, TBB at £0).

SeduLOUs

greensalad wrote: »

OK so I've scrubbed it clean and started again. It's just getting too confusing.

I've made two separate accounts for my Barclays account with overdraft. Instead I've got £1000 OD as a line of credit, and then the actually Barclays account separate.

However, I'm now having an issue with savings. I don't know how to make a savings category associate with a savings account? The same way debt accounts show up on my budget sheet.

I made an account "car savings" and did a transfer from Barclays to Car Savings. Shows as car savings now having a balance of £66. Cool.

But when I look at my budget sheet, there is no Car Savings category line. So I make one. My budget says I still have £66 left to budget... but how do I make it associate the category line and the account together?

I've had to stick £66 in the budgeted column for the savings account but shows as £66 available. Ugh. I feel like I'm going round in circles.

Do you have a physical bank account specifically for the car savings? If so, the account should really be called "TSB Savings Acc" or whatever it is on the accounts list on the left hand side so that it is identifiable (although this is entirely up to you of course). This account needs to be 'on budget'.

You then create a budget category called 'Car Savings' on the main screen of the budget.

If you transfer money from one account to another (i.e. from main account to the savings account) it won't make a jot of difference to your available to budget figure because the amount of money you physically have hasn't actually changed, you've just moved it around.

If you want the budget category to tally up with the savings, then budget the £66 in the budgeted column of the new category you made, and your ATB will reduce by £66.

greensalad

SeduLOUs wrote: »

Do you have a physical bank account specifically for the car savings? If so, the account should really be called "TSB Savings Acc" or whatever it is on the accounts list on the left hand side so that it is identifiable (although this is entirely up to you of course). This account needs to be 'on budget'.

You then create a budget category called 'Car Savings' on the main screen of the budget.

If you transfer money from one account to another (i.e. from main account to the savings account) it won't make a jot of difference to your available to budget figure because the amount of money you physically have hasn't actually changed, you've just moved it around.

If you want the budget category to tally up with the savings, then budget the £66 in the budgeted column of the new category you made, and your ATB will reduce by £66.

Yep it's an ISA which is labelled "Car Savings in my Barclays online banking. I only use it for that at present as I don't save for anything else (but when I was better at budgeting and using YNAB I had multiple "savings" pots in YNAB and then lumped them all in the ISA).

I've put £66 in my budget col and it does indeed reduce the ATB amount but it also gives me a green light on that category saying I have £66 that I haven't spent. I know it's true, but it seems odd to me. In my mind that money isn't available to spend, it's stashed away for a specific bill. I guess I'll have to learn to ignore it.

hiddenshadow

greensalad wrote: »

I've put £66 in my budget col and it does indeed reduce the ATB amount but it also gives me a green light on that category saying I have £66 that I haven't spent. I know it's true, but it seems odd to me. In my mind that money isn't available to spend, it's stashed away for a specific bill. I guess I'll have to learn to ignore it.

If you truly don't want it to count in your budget, set the account up as a tracking account ("other asset"). Then you know that whatever is in that account is what you have to buy a car with, and don't need to mess with updating category balances and so on.

This works best if you know you'll only transfer money to the ISA (and only spend from the ISA for the car). Obviously you can move money back out (both in real life and YNAB) but it gets a bit trickier to categorise in YNAB if/when you do.

getmore4less

Everything people are saying points to this being a cash flow tool not a proper budget tool

paying annual bills and saving for things should not be this hard to do.

hiddenshadow

getmore4less wrote: »

Everything people are saying points to this being a cash flow tool not a proper budget tool

paying annual bills and saving for things should not be this hard to do.

Depends on what you mean by a "proper" budget tool. It does budgeting quite well, but you also have to buy in to the methodology a bit for it to work best (using zero-based budgeting to "give every pound a job").

Also, there's lots of confusion at the moment as they've just rolled out a whole new system (web-based vs standalone app) that has a lot of different workflows (and, one could argue, some pretty big shifts in methodology compared to the old version).

Like so many things with money, it's what works for you. YNAB4 just "clicked" with me really quickly - so far the new version hasn't, even though it has a few nice bells and whistles.

greensalad

I think the biggest downfall of YNAB is (and always has been) it's reluctance to accept overdraft. Overdrafts are a pretty big thing for people trying to budget. I hate having to have separate accounts in YNAB because it can't understand that yes, I can be £1000 overdrawn and still use my remaining overdraft and no, I don't want to have my entire possible budget wiped out by my overdraft every month.

hiddenshadow

greensalad wrote: »

I think the biggest downfall of YNAB is (and always has been) it's reluctance to accept overdraft. Overdrafts are a pretty big thing for people trying to budget. I hate having to have separate accounts in YNAB because it can't understand that yes, I can be £1000 overdrawn and still use my remaining overdraft and no, I don't want to have my entire possible budget wiped out by my overdraft every month.

Yeah, unfortunately that's an issue with YNAB being US-based (and US-focused), and it's only gotten more focused with this new app.

Not sure if this will help, but it does highlight what they think (thought?) you should do with overdrafts: http://classic.youneedabudget.com/support/article/overdrawn-checking-accounts

(From what I've seen on the YNAB forums they now seem to think that you should "just spend less" when you're overdrawn until you're no longer overdrawn, and then you can use YNAB to budget...which seems really backwards. Hoping their mentality towards this shifts once they get past this launch phase.)