You need a budget (YNAB) advice thread

Pinkwhisk

Ahh OK thank you!

chiram2015

A couple of the lads at work swear by their YNAB4.

When we set up the staff pension plan the adviser said the biggest demon in retirement is debt and we tell this to the young uns all the time.

Pinkwhisk

Me again. So with YNAB4, how do you add a transaction on laptop? Like, I have spent money today on food but its Feb's budget and it needs to come off that. Does it need to wait till Monday?

Thanks

LondonGirl252

lazer-zxr wrote: »

YNAB has been a massive tool for me over the last 11 months. It has helped me restructure my finances, learn valueable principles, and help me cope with my lightbulb moment through to my current state, (25% paid off 51k).

But today, I have started my move away from YNAB.

Why?
I'm on a student version (free), and intended to purchase the full $60 version in July when my student status runs out. This I saw as a great investment.

I don't want to pay $60 for a product that will soon be unsupported.

The principle behind my debt free journey, has been to minimise regular outgoings. The new YNAB price structure doesn't fit with my strategy. I wouldn't have minded a one off $60 outlay as it has a finality about it, however a perpetual $5 (or discounted value) ... I do my utmost to reduce the smallest regular outgoing.

My alternative.
I've used a Google spreadsheet to recreate the YNAB budget screen, together with balance accounts down the left, and income / expense in the main area. Months along the top with three columns for each month (budgeted / actual / balance) and an available to budget green or pink number at the top.... it all works really well and is recognisable as the YNAB budget screen.

I have also recreated the net worth report, with bar charts and line graph. Looks better than YNAB one ;p

There is myself and my wife who use YNAB on mobile devices. This is where it becomes a little less convenient. With a "GoodBudget" account, and the apps on both both phones, I've setup 10 envelopes to act as monthly budget envelopes. It appears to work really well so far.
The inconvenience comes from manually updating my excel sheet, with the data from the "GoodBudget" account. No hardship, as I find myself with spare minutes at work to do this.

Conclusion: I can apply the principles, layout, approach and transactions as I did with YNAB. There's a little more manual intervention, and the proof will be in the pudding when used full time. At the moment, I've run January on both YNAB and the new system, and will do the same in Feb, with the view that in March, I'll stop using YNAB.

Any thoughts from my fellow YNABers welcome.

I am kind of with you on this one, YNAB has helped me immensly and completley changed how I look at and deal with money and I will keep using it until they take it away but I absolutley will not be paying a subscription to use a product I have already paid for.


I am also working on a spreadsheet that works in the same way so if they ever take it away completely then i will have something to use

hiddenshadow

Pinkwhisk wrote: »

Me again. So with YNAB4, how do you add a transaction on laptop? Like, I have spent money today on food but its Feb's budget and it needs to come off that. Does it need to wait till Monday?

Thanks

No, you can enter the transaction today. You have a variety of ways to handle that.

Assumptions:
1. January's available balance for food is £0
2. February's available balance for food is £100
3. You've spent £20 today and want to count it in February

To enter the transaction (just in case you don't know):
- click on the relevant account (current, credit card, etc) in the accounts list on the right to bring up its register
- click "Add a new transaction" at the bottom of the list of transactions in the register
- fill in the relevant info with the Category as Food (or whatever you've named that)

The transaction can affect your budget different ways depending on how you set it up.

Method 1: WAM (whack-a-mole) from another category
Enter the transaction today, with today's date.
January Food category will show Balance of -20.00
Find a category that has a Balance of 20.00+ that you can shift money out of (e.g. you don't need that money right away)
Lower the Budgeted amount for that category by 20.00
Raise the Budgeted amount for Food by 20.00
January Food category will show Balance of 0.00
In February, set Food's Budgeted amount to be 80.00
In February, add 20.00 to the Budgeted amount for whatever category you used to remove money from in January

Method 2: Red Arrow
Enter the transaction today, with today's date.
January Food category will show Balance of -20.00 (highlighted in red)
Click on that -20.00 for the Food category and select "Subtract it from next month's category balance"
January Food category Balance will show a right arrow on it
February's Food category Activity will show -20.00
February's Food category Balance will be 80.00

Method 3: Date Fudging
Enter the transaction today, with Monday's date
February's Food category Activity will show -20.00
February's Food category Balance will be 80.00
The only trick with this is that reconciling your account balance will look weird as it won't treat that 20.00 as part of your balance until Monday. So if you reconcile and it says your account balance is 150.00, your actual account balance in your bank would be 130.00 today (or -150 and -170 if it's a credit card/debt)

Hope that helps!

Pinkwhisk

Hiddenshadow - thank you so much!

Thistlewhistle

I don't think I'll be linking my bank accounts for a couple of important reasons:

1. I'm not happy about giving out login information as it's asking for trouble with potentially disastrous results.

2. By making me look at my statements regularly, I get a much better handle on what's actually happening with my money. I can speed things up by inputting recurring transactions on YNAB.

Also, I feel that the amount of money YNAB helps me to save, is worth the £3 a month it'll cost to subscribe. It's a great tool and if the monthly subscription helps them to finance future versions then it's worth paying. At the end of the day, they have bills to pay too. It's one less cup of Starbucks coffee a month.

Tx

bobobski

I'm about to come to the end of my free trial of nYNAB so I've bought the annual subscription. However, I am angry, because I did not see anywhere that the subscription auto-renews every year and I HATE auto-renewing subscriptions/policies. I was only told this on the "confirmed" screen. I may well want to renew in 12 months, but it was a bit of a jump to decide I want to continue to use it for a year, and I had not decided that I want it indefinitely (unless I take action otherwise).

I have emailed them and asked them to turn off the auto-renewal. I'll let you know if I have any success.

Is there some sort of campaign against auto-renewals??? Honestly, bane of my life.

hiddenshadow

bobobski, apparently there is a "Pause Subscription" button in the settings so that it will not auto-renew.

I don't know if this will affect the reminder e-mail that has been promised to go out when your subscription period is ending - I would think not, but if you do pause the subscription it might be worth noting in your diary the date to re-evaluate whether you want to subscribe again.

bobobski

I'd assumed the "pause subscription" option was akin to deactivating FB, i.e. you can't use YNAB while paused, but you may be right. I'll see how they respond to my email I guess.