You need a budget (YNAB) advice thread

Forward_thinking

Hi Hiddenshadow - sorry to be so rubbish at this!!! No, we are not in debit. I am incredibly confused. So our bank balance on the left side of YNAB adds up to £1859. But then it lists a credit card which is in the minus (we use this card each month and pay it off) with a balance of -£725. So the final figure on the left side is £1134 after deducting the credit card debit. This isn't a credit card payment - it's just that we use it like an everyday bank account.

Our costs each month are £6600. So after deducting what we need to spend this month on 'life' in the provided chart and then adding in the £1134 we are given an overall balance of -£4,739.

This probably make no sense at all and why should you spend time trying to fathom it? It's my problem. Perhaps it's going to be too tecchy for me.

hiddenshadow

Forward_thinking wrote: »

Our costs each month are £6600. So after deducting what we need to spend this month on 'life' in the provided chart and then adding in the £1134 we are given an overall balance of -£4,739.

Here is the problem, I think. You may spend £6,600 each month, but YNAB doesn't want you to plan to spend it all until you have the money in hand.

So if you have £1,859 in your current accounts, that should be what you have available to budget. Budget whatever you need to spend until you get the £2,000 payment later this month at which point you can budget then. Also, if you're starting your budget today/this week, you can ignore anything you've already paid prior to your starting balances (e.g. if you paid £1,000 rent on Feb 1, that's already been taken out of your current account before reaching the £1,859 balance, so you don't need to re-budget £1,000 rent in February unless you need to pay it before March 1).

If you haven't watched the youtube vidoes I'd definitely recommend those. This one covers the old version of the app, but the budgeting principles (starting around 39min in) are still the same - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvL8OTBYqqo. It's about budgeting what you need to cover until you get paid again, and no more.

Hope that helps!

hiddenshadow

Also, if you use the credit card like a debit card (pay the full statement balance every month), it's much easier to tell nYNAB that it's a checking account. nYNAB does all sorts of weird things with credit cards on the assumption that they're always debt that will be carried over from month to month (and paid down gradually), so it's a lot simpler to skip that if you don't need the debt hand holding that nYNAB does.

Forward_thinking

Thanks hiddenshadow. I get what you say and have just realised that although we are -£4,000 we have paid about £3.5k already this month on debt repayments, direct debits, groceries. So I think I am right in saying I can go on tonight and put all these transactions in on the February spreadsheet. Then that should bring the total figure of debt down. Am I right? Hopefully someone else will help me rather than me rely on you all the time. I am so so grateful to you.

Forward_thinking

And thanks for your comment about the credit card. I didn't put it down as a checking card and it totally ignored that card in the overall picture - I wondered why.

Forward_thinking

No. I'm wrong. Totally wrong. Wishful thinking whilst it lasted. I can't take off all those transactions as the balance has done that for me. Hiddenshadow - although I have £1859 in the accounts my overall big figure on YNAB is -£4k. And I know that's because it thinks I need to take out another lot of 3.5k which has already been paid but how do I go any further? According to YNAB there is no money to allocate. I'm not up to doing this am I? So frustrating as I really like the layout and polished look of YNAB. I bet it's excellent if you can get to grips with it.

Forward_thinking

Or can I put in the recent transactions for February - perhaps it will just bring down the -£4k and not skew the balance. My brain doesn't work in this sphere. It's so frustrating.

hiddenshadow

Forward_thinking wrote: »

So I think I am right in saying I can go on tonight and put all these transactions in on the February spreadsheet. Then that should bring the total figure of debt down. Am I right?

It depends. If you want YNAB to show the full February picture, you could enter all your February transactions in there, but you'd have to adjust your starting balances to be whatever they were as of January 31.

Otherwise you could keep the starting balances as they are for whatever date you started using YNAB and only enter transactions from that date forward (and not budget for whatever transactions were placed pre-YNAB, like the hypothetical rent example above). Then March would be a regular month where you'd budget all your normal expenses.

Hopefully someone else will help me rather than me rely on you all the time. I am so so grateful to you.

No worries, happy to help.

Frogletina

Forward_thinking wrote: »

Thanks hiddenshadow. I get what you say and have just realised that although we are -£4,000 we have paid about £3.5k already this month on debt repayments, direct debits, groceries. So I think I am right in saying I can go on tonight and put all these transactions in on the February spreadsheet. Then that should bring the total figure of debt down. Am I right? Hopefully someone else will help me rather than me rely on you all the time. I am so so grateful to you.

Hi

Did you check the user handbook as per my post last night?

Also, are you on the Ynab forum? There are a lot of helpful people over there. Sorry I can't help you more but I am still on ynab4.

http://forum.youneedabudget.com

hiddenshadow

Here's a screenshot illustrating what I mean about the partial month. With the current account and credit card (entered as a checking account type rather than current account), the To be Budgeted amount in February is £1,134.00. I budgeted that amount in various categories (assumed rent/council tax was already paid for at the start of the month) until there was 0.00 left to be budgeted.

Assuming you get paid again before the end of the month, then you would budget to other categories, and/or add to any existing category budgets (if you wanted £500 in transportation for February, for example).

Note that you don't have to budget for paying off the £725 on the credit card. As your To Be Budgeted number takes that into account already, you can just enter a transaction (Transfer: Card) in the current account whenever you make the payment for it.