A good budgeting app???

moments_of_sanity

Apologies for my absence, had to organise DD's return to Uni and take her!

So, I have come to the conclusion I am not of sane mind!!!! Today I got a payment of £86.00, I have input the amount on YNAB under my heading of DD payment account', 'Income for January'. I have various different accounts listed under the 'All Accounts' heading so transferred £59.45 to my DD savings account and the remaining £26.52 to my DH's savings account BUT the budget screen still says I have £86 to budget. Can someone please tell me what I am doing wrong as I have no idea where I should 'budget' this money too so that it is removed from the budget screen?

I am seriously considering going back to my excel spreadsheets as I can then keep track of exactly what is in my bank accounts/savings which is what I hoped this program would do but it doesn't seem to allow me to achieve that? :mad:

hohum

moments_of_sanity wrote: »

Apologies for my absence, had to organise DD's return to Uni and take her!

So, I have come to the conclusion I am not of sane mind!!!! Today I got a payment of £86.00, I have input the amount on YNAB under my heading of DD payment account', 'Income for January'. I have various different accounts listed under the 'All Accounts' heading so transferred £59.45 to my DD savings account and the remaining £26.52 to my DH's savings account BUT the budget screen still says I have £86 to budget. Can someone please tell me what I am doing wrong as I have no idea where I should 'budget' this money too so that it is removed from the budget screen?

I am seriously considering going back to my excel spreadsheets as I can then keep track of exactly what is in my bank accounts/savings which is what I hoped this program would do but it doesn't seem to allow me to achieve that? :mad:

I'm assuming your savings accounts are on budget?

In YNAB, it doesn't matter where your money is kept. Whether it is in your current bank account or your savings account, if they are on budget, they are all the funds available to you. When you make a transfer between your accounts you are not taking any money out of your budget, you are just moving it around.

When you budget in YNAB, you are giving a job to your money. You are not saying you will spend it. So you still need to tell YNAB what job you are giving that £86. If you want it to be savings, put £86 in the savings category. Or you could spread it around, putting £50 in savings and £36 in pre-ynab debt repayment. You still record the transfer between accounts as this will keep your account balances accurate, but this is moving money around not budgeting. Then when you want to buy something, you check your categories NOT your bank balance. If you haven't got the money in the category, you will either need to move money from another category or not buy it.

YNAB is a budgeting methodology which is supported by the software. It is a £0 based budgeting tool. That means you budget to £0, not spend to £0! The way to get the most out of YNAB is not to expect it to behave like your previous budgeting system.You have to invest a bit of time to understand how it is different. The YNAB support pages on their website are very good, and I recommend taking one of their classes if you can which are free. Sometimes it's a bit of stretch to get your head around it. It will click though if you stick with it. If what you know eg excel is serving it's purpose, then stick with it. However, if you are finding it difficult, why not give a different way of doing things a go? What's that line about the definition of insanity being keeping doing the same thing and expecting different results...? It's all about finding what suits AND works for you.

moments_of_sanity

hohum wrote: »

I'm assuming your savings accounts are on budget?

In YNAB, it doesn't matter where your money is kept. Whether it is in your current bank account or your savings account, if they are on budget, they are all the funds available to you. When you make a transfer between your accounts you are not taking any money out of your budget, you are just moving it around.

When you budget in YNAB, you are giving a job to your money. You are not saying you will spend it. So you still need to tell YNAB what job you are giving that £86. If you want it to be savings, put £86 in the savings category. Or you could spread it around, putting £50 in savings and £36 in pre-ynab debt repayment. You still record the transfer between accounts as this will keep your account balances accurate, but this is moving money around not budgeting. Then when you want to buy something, you check your categories NOT your bank balance. If you haven't got the money in the category, you will either need to move money from another category or not buy it.

YNAB is a budgeting methodology which is supported by the software. It is a £0 based budgeting tool. That means you budget to £0, not spend to £0! The way to get the most out of YNAB is not to expect it to behave like your previous budgeting system.You have to invest a bit of time to understand how it is different. The YNAB support pages on their website are very good, and I recommend taking one of their classes if you can which are free. Sometimes it's a bit of stretch to get your head around it. It will click though if you stick with it. If what you know eg excel is serving it's purpose, then stick with it. However, if you are finding it difficult, why not give a different way of doing things a go? What's that line about the definition of insanity being keeping doing the same thing and expecting different results...? It's all about finding what suits AND works for you.

Thank you, I understand the concept of YNAB but as I have budgeted for all bills during the month I can't seem to allocate this amount anywhere. Maybe I need to go back and check that I have set accounts up correctly as although I have a savings account on my accounts list.

All of the accounts listed under 'All accounts', 'Budget accounts' are correct as of this morning (reconciled with bank accounts) and having payed in the money to my YNAB account, I transferred the money to 2 different accounts, noted it on my YNAB info and did the manual version through my bank account, I am just confused as to where I allocate the £86 to on YNAB as it should have a 'purpose' but isn't actually 'needed' for anything?

SeduLOUs

moments_of_sanity wrote: »

I am just confused as to where I allocate the £86 to on YNAB as it should have a 'purpose' but isn't actually 'needed' for anything?

It's 'purpose' is savings.

Create a master category called savings, and create your savings goals subcategories underneath (these could be DD savings, DH savings, other general savings or whatever you want). Budget the £86 in there, and next month the balance will just roll over as you are not spending it.

If you add more money to 'savings' budget that money into your savings categories, which will give that money a job (of simply being savings!)

Over time, as you add to your savings, you will see your category balances grow - these are what tell you how much you have in savings, and do not necessarily have to match your savings bank balance.

YNAB doesn't care if you have 1 bank account or 20 - it sees it all as a single pot of money to be budgeted. You could keep all of your money in a single bank account, and just use YNAB to determine how much of it is ring fenced for DD or for other savings goals.

moments_of_sanity

SeduLOUs wrote: »

Exactly as the post above.

Moving money around in your accounts does not change the budget screen - YNAB thinks of all of your on-budget accounts as a single pool of money, and it doesn't matter whether you have 1 or 20 bank accounts. What matters is which 'envelope' or category the money is allocated to on your budget screen.

If you have different savings accounts for different people, it may be worth setting up matching categories. So for the £59.45 sent to DD savings, allocate that money to DD savings category.

Later you might decide that one savings account pays better interest than the others, and keep all of the savings money in one account. You can still see how that money is divided up (what jobs it has been given) by looking at how much of it has been placed in each of your savings categories.

Hopefully that makes sense?

I think it is starting to 'click', I don't think I have enough categories in my budget, so for things like car tax/insurance/mot, they should be split rather than dumping all the money into a savings account and just taking it out when we need to pay the bills!

SeduLOUs

Lol you quoted me, but I edited my post based on what you'd said.

It will all click into place eventually.

The key is to remember that when you move money from your main account to your savings account, you are not actually removing money from your household, you are just putting it somewhere else. That is why the available to budget doesn't reduce.

Savings, MOT, general emergency fund, house deposit fund etc are all perfectly valid categories. You might not need to spend the money now, so put it in a category of your choice and just leave it there until you do need it.

Along those lines, many people will have a car insurance or similar category. They know car insurance is £300 and due in 10 months, so will budget £30 every month to that category. When the insurance is due, the £300 is sat there saved up and ready to be spent. Then you start the process over.

hohum

moments_of_sanity wrote: »

I think it is starting to 'click', I don't think I have enough categories in my budget, so for things like car tax/insurance/mot, they should be split rather than dumping all the money into a savings account and just taking it out when we need to pay the bills!

That sounds like a good place to put the money. Or savings. You can have as many categories as you want! I have quite a lot of rainy day categories and savings categories. To give you an idea here's my savings/ rainy day categories:

Car:
Car insurance monthly premiums
Car road tax
Car maintenance
Saving for annual car insurance

Self employment:
Tax
Expenses
National Insurance
Trade membership

Rainy day and future bills:
Emergency fund
White goods replacement
Birthdays
Christmas
Holidays and days out
Weddings

Savings goals:
Instrument repair
New bed
New iphone

You can also hide categories when you are done with them.

Another good tip I have is to put the amount you need to set aside in the title of the category eg my Christmas category is Christmas/£25 month and my car repair is Car repair and MOT/ £45 month. In the notes to each category I put the target amount and any other calculations.

This is one of YNAB's rules, save for a rainy day. It's one that has the biggest impact for me as it means when things like car tax come up, I have the money ready to pay it.

moments_of_sanity

I know my DH's car insurance is due this month and I already have the £240 needed so have split the savings category so that I can easily see what I have the savings for. This is the bit that was confusing me, lol, as I had £288 unbudgeted for and had no idea where to put it. This has now been sorted so hopefully going forward I will know what the amount of savings is for so things like Birthdays, Cristmas, Rainy Days etc will be listed separately rather than just 'savings' or the 'Miscellaneous account, no idea what to budget this too' that I had running! :rotfl:

SeduLOUs

moments_of_sanity wrote: »

I know my DH's car insurance is due this month and I already have the £240 needed so have split the savings category so that I can easily see what I have the savings for. This is the bit that was confusing me, lol, as I had £288 unbudgeted for and had no idea where to put it. This has now been sorted so hopefully going forward I will know what the amount of savings is for so things like Birthdays, Cristmas, Rainy Days etc will be listed separately rather than just 'savings' or the 'Miscellaneous account, no idea what to budget this too' that I had running! :rotfl:

I'm glad you got to the bottom of the miscellaneous money you thought you had!

It is a bit of a learning curve to get used to the system, but it's all very logical, and when you get your head around the basic ideas it's about as easy as it can get for a piece of finance software. You'll be getting creative with your categories in no time!

allthingsmustpass

If anyone is looking for a simpler option as an introduction to finance apps I recommend the Personal Finance Suite bundle, its only £3.99 and contains 6 apps. Buy them separately and its £6, so you save by buying them as a bundle. This is on iPhone.

They offer a simpler approach, with different apps for specific purposes rather than a huge expensive complicated thing like YNAB.