You need a budget (YNAB) advice thread

MoneyMission2015

Hi All


Wondering if anybody can help. I've used YNAB4 for a long time, just trialling the online version now which I signed up for about a week ago.


The problem I'm having today is I've logged in and have input some transactions that left my bank account on 29/01/16. I've put this date in YNAB so that it's all correct on my statement and in YNAB. When I've gone to the budget page it's showing these transactions coming out of my February budget instead of my January budget.


Any ideas? I know technically it doesn't make a difference because the money I budgeted in January has just carried over to February availability, but honestly, it's just annoying me because it's not doing what it should be doing.


Thanks to anybody that might be able to offer some advice or a solution to the problem.




EDIT: I've just closed it down, logged back in and edited the date to 28/01/16 then back to 29/01/16 and it is now in the right month. No idea what the problem was, but it's fixed itself so I'm happy.

hiddenshadow

MoneyMission2015 wrote: »

EDIT: I've just closed it down, logged back in and edited the date to 28/01/16 then back to 29/01/16 and it is now in the right month. No idea what the problem was, but it's fixed itself so I'm happy.

The few times I've played around with the web version I've noticed a pretty severe (regularly 3-5 seconds, extreme: 30+ seconds) delay to update all the numbers.

My guess is that it defaulted the date for your new transactions to today, then updated the budget screen to reflect them in February, and never got around to updating it when you changed the date. When you updated the date again then it triggered a new update to the budget which put it in the right month.

(This is my hypothesis based on how I understand the backend code to work, not based on any actual knowledge of how they coded it all to behave.)

MoneyMission2015

Another query now. I can't get the d&mn thing to store the settings I want.I've changed it 3 times to UK Pound sterling and changed the date format to dd/mm/yy instead of mm/dd/yy, but it just doesn't store it. I click to apply settings, it seems to do something but nothing changes.


Any ideas??


I have to be honest, I'm a little bit peeved that I bought the software last year and what attracted me to it was that it was a one off cost but now inevitably at some point I'll have to switch over to the subscription based version. I definitely won't be signing up to anything at the moment, especially while it still seems to have some problems. I'm going to keep using YNAB4 until end of this year while the support is still offered and will just decide then what I want to do at the end of December

hiddenshadow

Does it switch to the splash screen saying "Loading YNAB" after you click to save settings? Mine did, and the currency swapped to £ rather than $.

(Having said that, my budget screen is now flickering a few times per second, no idea why, but clearly the app is having issues. This is a fresh budget, all I did was set it up with default settings including $ and changed the options to use £, so no data to wrestle with.)

Of course, they haven't fixed the bug for the date settings, so today (and Jan 1, Mar 3, April 4, etc) it's impossible to tell what you're changing the date format setting to from that menu as it mm is equal to dd on Feb 2. You can still tell by saving the setting (assuming it saves for you) and looking at the date format of existing transactions (or adding a new one for a day where the month and day aren't equal)..bit cumbersome though.

matchboxfull

Evening peeps. Happy weekend.

I'm a spreadsheets person, but I wanted to try YNAB so I have been fiddling with it for the last couple of days. I have had a look at the 'old' version and, today, I've been having a look at the new version.

Specifically with the new version I have a couple of questions. I don't know if anyone can help:

1) The system seems to have a bit of a problem with cashflow, but maybe I am doing it wrong?

As an example - say I have £500 in the bank now, and I know I have £300 coming half way through the month. Some of my bills come out before the £300 payment and some come out after it. I know that I will not go overdrawn, but YNAB seems to want me to base my entire month's outgoings on the existing £500 and then adjust things later.

Even when I give it a future incoming of £300 on a specific date it's not including it, presumably because it's not actually in the bank yet??

2) With regards to savings pots. The new YNAB has a function whereby you can give each pot a goal that you need to achieve before a certain date.

Outside of YNAB, we've put together a spreadsheet that creates multiple pots out of one monthly chunk of savings. The pots are for things like birthdays, christmas, insurance renewals and so on so they are all withdrawable at different times of the year.

Because it's one physical uber-pot, the spreadsheet can account for the fact that although in April, say, the car insurance pot might be spent and go overdrawn, it doesn't matter because it's 'borrowing' from another pot and it all evens out after a 12 month cycle.

Is there a workaround in YNAB for this kind of thing, or is it a case of not setting goals and just keeping track of it in the separate spreadsheet?

Going to have a bit more of a fiddle with it now, but those are the first issues that pop up for me, compared to my usual way of doing things.

hiddenshadow

matchboxfull wrote: »

1) The system seems to have a bit of a problem with cashflow, but maybe I am doing it wrong?

As an example - say I have £500 in the bank now, and I know I have £300 coming half way through the month. Some of my bills come out before the £300 payment and some come out after it. I know that I will not go overdrawn, but YNAB seems to want me to base my entire month's outgoings on the existing £500 and then adjust things later.

Even when I give it a future incoming of £300 on a specific date it's not including it, presumably because it's not actually in the bank yet??

Yes, one of YNAB's core methodologies is that you only budget what you have. And you ask yourself "what does this £500 (in this case) need to do before I get paid again?" So you enter your plan for the £500 now, and when you get the £300 in a couple of weeks you allocate that to what it needs to do.

2) With regards to savings pots. The new YNAB has a function whereby you can give each pot a goal that you need to achieve before a certain date.

You can set goals by balance (car insurance will cost £200, don't care when it's due) or by date (need £200 in the car insurance pot by May). If you do the former, the goal indicator won't mind if you don't fund it for a month and will just show you the progress towards £200 for that given month. If you do the latter, the goal indicator will change colour if you don't fund it - it will also adjust the math for you based on what you choose to fund..e.g. if you put £50 in this month it will show that you need to put £50 in each month through May to have £200 by that time. If you're short this month and only put in £20 this month, next month the goal will tell you to put in £60 to make up the difference. Likewise if you put in £70 this month, next month you'll be prompted to put in £43.33.

There's no way to assign a goal to a category group (like your example of making up the difference from a different pot).

Hope that helps. It's definitely different from using a spreadsheet, but if it works for the way you want to plan your money, it could be a great tool.

hiddenshadow

matchboxfull wrote: »

1) The system seems to have a bit of a problem with cashflow, but maybe I am doing it wrong?

As an example - say I have £500 in the bank now, and I know I have £300 coming half way through the month. Some of my bills come out before the £300 payment and some come out after it. I know that I will not go overdrawn, but YNAB seems to want me to base my entire month's outgoings on the existing £500 and then adjust things later.

Even when I give it a future incoming of £300 on a specific date it's not including it, presumably because it's not actually in the bank yet??

Yes, one of YNAB's core methodologies is that you only budget what you have. And you ask yourself "what does this £500 (in this case) need to do before I get paid again?" So you enter your plan for the £500 now, and when you get the £300 in a couple of weeks you allocate that to what it needs to do.

Even when I give it a future incoming of £300 on a specific date it's not including it, presumably because it's not actually in the bank yet??

Yes, it doesn't count anything that has a date beyond today - it will display it in the transaction list, but greyed out to show that it's not active yet.

2) With regards to savings pots. The new YNAB has a function whereby you can give each pot a goal that you need to achieve before a certain date.

You can set goals by balance (car insurance will cost £200, don't care when it's due) or by date (need £200 in the car insurance pot by May). If you do the former, the goal indicator won't mind if you don't fund it for a month and will just show you the progress towards £200 for that given month. If you do the latter, the goal indicator will change colour if you don't fund it - it will also adjust the math for you based on what you choose to fund..e.g. if you put £50 in this month it will show that you need to put £50 in each month through May to have £200 by that time. If you're short this month and only put in £20 this month, next month the goal will tell you to put in £60 to make up the difference. Likewise if you put in £70 this month, next month you'll be prompted to put in £43.33.

There's no way to assign a goal to a category group (like your example of making up the difference from a different pot).

Hope that helps. It's definitely different from using a spreadsheet, but if it works for the way you want to plan your money, it could be a great tool.

matchboxfull

Thanks Hiddenshadow.

Glad that I'm correct with my observations and not just doing it wrong. Your explanations really help.

The method I've been using is a simple line-per-transaction spreadsheet, with predicted transactions going forward for the next six months or so. I then use a credit card for everyday spending so I just have to enter one predicted figure for the credit card bill each month (and then I have another SS tracking CC spends).

The downside of my method is that I don't 'give every dollar a job', which is quite an attractive idea. The downside of YNAB's method (for me) is that I can't budget my mid-month income until it comes (although I guess when you get a month ahead of yourself this is less problematic). Hmmm, stuff to think about!

getmore4less

Those seem like fundemental flaws to basic budgeting which is planning ahead.

If you have to wait for money to come in before allocating then you can't forward plan passed what you allready have.
You want to be looking at cash flow months ahead not just based on what you have now.

As long as you have allocated that future £300 to things that get paid after it comes in that should just work if the day comes and the amount changes the system should cope.

Grouping savings goals for cashflow reasons is a part of budgeting there are multiple future payment and they come out of the same big pot*, fairly easy to do in your head and a forcasting tool could be written to give a forward visiblity of what needs to be allocated from the money coming in to make sure all the payments can be made on time.

* the reality is everything comes out of one pot the income and cashflow visibility for at least a year ahead is IMO an essential feature of a budgeting tool. We split things up to make it easier to focus on smaller bits.

edit just reread as saw this.
one of YNAB's core methodologies is that you only budget what you have

that is not budgeting thats short term cashflow management.

Budgeting is planning ahead by the time the money comes in you should know exactly where it is going and all the future money as well

hiddenshadow

matchboxfull wrote: »

The downside of my method is that I don't 'give every dollar a job', which is quite an attractive idea. The downside of YNAB's method (for me) is that I can't budget my mid-month income until it comes (although I guess when you get a month ahead of yourself this is less problematic). Hmmm, stuff to think about!

Yes, this is where YNAB (especially version 4) really shines. When you get to the point where you can allocate an entire month's budget in one sitting it really provides clarity as far as "oh yeah, this month there's no council tax, so I can pad my car repair/holiday/emergency fund savings" or "this month the annual home insurance is due so need to account for that". It also gives a great "big picture" view of "here is my pot of money that needs to last a month, what can it do?", which smaller dribbles of money can obscure.

I think the main reason behind only dealing with money you have on hand is to prevent overoptimistic thinking. Sure, if you continue to get paid the exact same every month indefinitely, you could plan years out (and there is some use in doing that as far as projecting savings/debt payoff timeframes, factor in saving for long-term/large goals, etc). However, if either your income or your expenses (more likely) change, then your forecast is meaningless because it's based on £X coming in and £Y going out and now you're dealing with £A and £B. By working only with funds you know you have, you know £X is stable and thus you can figure out what £Y should be.

That said, I do "forecast" a bit with YNAB (v4, nYNAB really hampers this IMO with its one-month view). We have a month's income sitting in savings (as an emergency fund), so I can use that to fund next month without it being over budgeted. (When we get paid, I zero-out the emergency fund category again so that its funds are untouched and treat the new income as the funds for the following month.) That lets me plan March during February, which is handy for handling things like buying extra household supplies on offer this month and decreasing the household category accordingly for next month; figuring out what extra debt OPs I can make (and when); planning any upcoming birthdays/extra expenses to cater for in advance, etc.

I really make use of YNAB4's multi-month view. I can view 4 months at a time on my laptop, and on my big screen at work I can see 7-8. With that flexibility I start with last month so that I can see the previous month, current month, next month, and 1+ months beyond that. I find this handy for planning purposes because last month can give you insight into anything you need to adjust for this month (like the household expense example above), next month can be planning ahead a bit, and (if you want) you can use following months to mark any specific goals/spending there (annual bill, holiday, whatever). I also use 2 months (generally current month +2/3, so right now it would be April/May) as data storage - at the end of a month I update those months with the averages from the past 3 months and 1 year. That way (when viewing 5+ months at a time) I can see previous month, current month, next month plan, 3mo rolling average, and 1yr rolling average - this provides insight on whether I'm improving my spending, need to factor in an expense I might have forgotten (if the 1yr number is much higher than the 3mo number), etc.

Hope that helps, sorry it's a bit of a novel!