You need a budget (YNAB) advice thread

hiddenshadow

LPMS wrote: »

Thanks, I tend to withdraw all my money and use the envelope method of budgeting (well I use pencil cases so I don't have to keep buying envelopes). Will it work with a cash budget rather than it coming out the bank account?

Yes, YNAB doesn't mind what sort of method you use to spend your money. So you could just use one pencil case and YNAB will tell you how much of the money in there is for groceries vs transport vs eating out, etc.

lilahloo

I've got myself a bit confused this month.

I use ynab4 and I set up an account for odds n ends savings. I also had a category called the same thing and the balance was the same in each.

This month I needed to use the money to pay towards a flight.

I transferred the money from odds n ends savings to my credit card - that bit is fine. I've just noticed though that my odd n ends category is still showing the £304 which I don't have any more. Should I just minus £304 from the category?

As I'm typing this and thinking about it I've realised I allocated all of the flight cost to my holiday category. Should I have entered £304 in odds n ends Category against my credit card and then transferred the £304 from odds n ends savings to my credit card? And then the balance of the flight should be in my holiday category.

I hope that makes sense to someone - I have got in a bit of a pickle!!

hiddenshadow

Yes, you would reduce your odds n ends category budget by £304 and increase your holiday category budget by £304. Assuming both started the month with £100 budgeted to them, odds n ends would have -£204 and holiday would have +£404.

We do this a lot with our home maintenance vs home improvements categories, since I usually can't make up my mind which one an expense applies to.

lilahloo

Thanks hiddenshadow. Because it's a savings category I completely forgot the whackamole principal applies just like all the other categories.

hiddenshadow

Yeah, I have to remind myself as well - feels "wrong" to steal from savings categories via negative-budgeting, even if it's to add to other ones.

andyfromotley

Spammer reported.

copperjar

My old version of YNAB seems to have completely crashed now and my computer is having its own problems! Won't sync anything to my phone/iPad apps and I just can't get it to work. Really gutted as it has helped me save more money than I've ever had over the past year or so. Are there any fixes to YNAB Classic or is it a matter of getting the new version?

hiddenshadow

Classic is being supported for this year so it's worth e-mailing help@youneedabudget.com to see if they can help get your copy back up and running.

Otherwise, standard advice applies: virus scan, free up disk space if needed, try a fresh install/fresh start with a new budget to see if your budget file is the problem, etc.

FWIW you can also use a virtual machine to run Classic indefinitely (on the computer, at least, phones are another story), even when it's no longer officially supported. While it's being supported, though, you may as well take advantage of that.

pennies_from_Heaven

copperjar wrote: »

My old version of YNAB seems to have completely crashed now and my computer is having its own problems! Won't sync anything to my phone/iPad apps and I just can't get it to work. Really gutted as it has helped me save more money than I've ever had over the past year or so. Are there any fixes to YNAB Classic or is it a matter of getting the new version?

Mine did that, I followed the instructions which tell you to delete the bugged budget and restore from dropbox. Proceed with caution though - I managed to delete it for good! I am tempted to replace it with the new version 😉

copperjar

Thank you! My computer now seems to have given up the ghost! Need to get it looked at and hope that my version of YNAB is still there. Before the computer went bang, I did manage to reload a version from Dropbox but it did very strange things to the phone app when I tried to sync it.

I'm now contemplating paying for the new version. Can I use the version just through a phone app?