You need a budget (YNAB) advice thread

still_hopeful

We get a discount too. What I do depends on the card. The B&Q card is always spent on household/home repair, so when we top it up I just show it as a one-off spend in that category. I then use the memo or split category functions to show what the money was actually spent on.

For M&S and Sainsburys however, the spend could be on groceries, clothing, gifts, household etc, and they are topped up more often. So each of those cards is shown as an on-budget account, so I will transfer say £48 to the card, and also add an inflow of £2 to the card for the 'bonus', so it shows the right total. Then, transactions are entered as normal for each account and assigned to the right categories.

Works for us.

Newme2014

Thanks guys, will have a play around with it and add it all in tomo

Forward_thinking

Just starting my trial with YNAB. I see I have to put all our bank log in details onto the page. My husband is very protective of these and it feels risky.......surely I shouldn't be putting all our access details onto an unknown website!!!!!!!! Help - am I getting this wrong?

hiddenshadow

Forward_thinking wrote: »

Just starting my trial with YNAB. I see I have to put all our bank log in details onto the page. My husband is very protective of these and it feels risky.......surely I shouldn't be putting all our access details onto an unknown website!!!!!!!! Help - am I getting this wrong?

If you deselect "Use your bank login to import transactions"you don't have to enter any login info. You'll have to enter transactions manually until they roll out the ability to import from a statement downloaded from your bank.

(It's arguably irrelevant anyway, as very few UK banks work with transaction import, but it's not required to enter it, either.)

Forward_thinking

Thanks hiddenshadow. Will I be missing out if I don't do this importing or do most people manually put in the details anyway? Appreciate your help!

Forward_thinking

Ah, ok. So it's not an automatic process and simply speeds things up/makes it easier - am I right? I had visions of YNAB pulling in the data on an automatic rolling basis.... which would have been helpful.

hiddenshadow

Forward_thinking wrote: »

Ah, ok. So it's not an automatic process and simply speeds things up/makes it easier - am I right? I had visions of YNAB pulling in the data on an automatic rolling basis.... which would have been helpful.

That is what it does for the banks it supports (primarily US/Canadian banks, though some UK folks have had luck with Natwest accounts). It does lag behind your online banking a bit because the transactions have to move out of "pending" state to be imported into YNAB automatically.

Forward_thinking

Sorry, I'm back! Probably will be back again tomorrow too!!!

I'm just starting out and really enjoyed inputting all our budget figures tonight. I have put in our account details and reconciled the accounts. I have a grand total of -£4,000 _pale_

So now it is time to budget all our pennies. So how does that work then? : (( There's nothing left. We will get another 2k into the accounts in the middle of the month but even then we still won't have anything to budget. So is there any point in going on? I have made a budget planner which is equal to what we earn but the money we bring in always pays for the last month. Am I getting this all wrong? We have never budgeted and I have a headache!!

I have included in our expenses on YNAB a minimum payment of £1,000 to our credit cards which is important to me.

I'm not sure if YNAB can do anything for us in this position as we will always be paying for the previous month until circumstances change. Sorry, hope this makes sense.

Frogletina

Forward_thinking wrote: »

Sorry, I'm back! Probably will be back again tomorrow too!!!

I'm just starting out and really enjoyed inputting all our budget figures tonight. I have put in our account details and reconciled the accounts. I have a grand total of -£4,000 _pale_

So now it is time to budget all our pennies. So how does that work then? : (( There's nothing left. We will get another 2k into the accounts in the middle of the month but even then we still won't have anything to budget. So is there any point in going on? I have made a budget planner which is equal to what we earn but the money we bring in always pays for the last month. Am I getting this all wrong? We have never budgeted and I have a headache!!

I have included in our expenses on YNAB a minimum payment of £1,000 to our credit cards which is important to me.

I'm not sure if YNAB can do anything for us in this position as we will always be paying for the previous month until circumstances change. Sorry, hope this makes sense.

Have you read the user handbook? This guides you in setting up your budget for the first time.

There is a special way of adding credit card debt to your budget, which will also create a category for payments to the credit card.

When you first set up your budget you list all of your accounts by type - including your credit card account. See link for full details including videos.

http://www.youneedabudget.com/learn/guide/user-handbook

hiddenshadow

If you add up your account balances, is the actual total -£4,000? e.g. are you using an overdraft?

If so, the workaround for this is to

create an extra account (type of checking or savings) with a positive balance of whatever your overdraft limit is. You won't ever use this account for transactions, but nYNAB will count it to figure out how much you have to budget and you should have money to budget. For instance, if your overdraft limit is £5,000, then you should have £1,000 available to budget until you get paid the £2,000 later this month.