A good budgeting app???

getmore4less

The other thing people get wrong is mixing the cash flow with the budget.

Total up the income for a year and budget for a year, plan how you want to spend it on annual total.

Then do the cash flow analysis to match the income to the outgoings

It should be possible to have a full year mapped out not just the next week/month.

Working with a rolling year is the way to go with 5+ year forecasting for the bigger stuff.

nicedream_2

I use Spending Tracker, which is free, but you can pay £1.99 for additional features. I use a spreadsheet for my overall budget, but to keep track of monthly spending, it's really quite handy to have on the phone.

Toomuchdebt

I have money coming into my account 10 times a month and from January it'll be 11 (or maybe it won't as I won't be getting Income Support but I will be getting Working tax credit and I think that comes in with Child tax credit doesn't it?) and I use YNAB. I quite like entering the figures in and working out what needs to be paid when and out of which money. (Maybe that's just me?) For my last income of the month I split the transaction so part goes to fund whatever's left of the current month, and part goes towards the next month.

GrimJim

In my opinion if you're on an iPhone or Windows Phone you can't beat 'Account Tracker' by Graham Haley.

If you're on Android, 'My Budget Book' by OneTwoApps does much the same job but is perhaps a little more complicated to use.

Both are very good apps for the purpose though and allow you to very easily forecast months ahead even if you don't intend to make a full-on budget as such.

happybunny86

I use YNAB. I also get paid every 4 weeks and it works fine for me. I just treat the month as the month I get paid and roll anything over until I get paid again.

I allocated which bills are going to come out between now and next pay day as I get paid 13 times a year depending on the date some miss a pay packet. To be honest ynab has been the one thing to get my head around being paid every 4 weeks!!!

Money_Muppet

YNAB has changed my life. I have a budget for my personal account, and one for the household. I get paid in the middle of the month, my wife gets paid at the end. Everytime money gets added to the budget I allocate it to what I need to spend it on before I know the next lot of money will be coming in. For example, our monthly food budget is £200, but when I get paid, after covering mortgage and bills, we only have about £100 to put in the food budget, so thats what I do, until my wife gets paid. Then I add in the other £100. I'd use exactly the same principle if I was paid weekly. I can't stress enough how amazing it has been for me. I've gone from spending on credit cards every month for as long as I can remember, to not spending a penny on them since August. Some people complain that it requires too much thinking. Frankly, if you are in debt you should be thinking about every single penny.

Roundthebend_2

GrimJim wrote: »

In my opinion if you're on an iPhone or Windows Phone you can't beat 'Account Tracker' by Graham Haley.

If you're on Android, 'My Budget Book' by OneTwoApps does much the same job but is perhaps a little more complicated to use.

Both are very good apps for the purpose though and allow you to very easily forecast months ahead even if you don't intend to make a full-on budget as such.

I use this and totally agree :money:

StressedSteph

Laconic wrote: »

I started and scrapped YNAB twice before the third time I took the time to listen in on the basic webinar, understood its principles and the lightbulb went off. It's worth it -- it *will* change your life!

So true, you really do need to watch the video's but its well worth it.

copperjar

The thing with YNAB that I can't get my head round is how to record savings in the budget that go to another account. So I budget £300 for savings. My wage goes in - how do I record that the £300 budget has been "spent" as it were?

Also, I like to move any underspends at the end of the month to my savings account and it seems a right faff to do that per budget heading.

Got to admit I'm very new to it though! Have used my own spreadsheet to calaculate my monthly spends and then the iXpenselt app for a few years now.

Money_Muppet

copperjar wrote: »

The thing with YNAB that I can't get my head round is how to record savings in the budget that go to another account. So I budget £300 for savings. My wage goes in - how do I record that the £300 budget has been "spent" as it were?

You have a couple of options depending if you want the savings to be on budget or off. If they are on budget, you just create a category (for example; new car) budget £300 to that category then add a transaction as a transfer from the account your wages went into, to the account where your savings are. You are just telling YNAB exactly what is happening in real life. Your other option is that savings are off budget, in that case you'd still budget the £300 pounds to a category (ie savings) but when you actually transfer the money to your savings you would enter it in YNAB as a payment not a transfer.

copperjar wrote: »

Also, I like to move any underspends at the end of the month to my savings account and it seems a right faff to do that per budget heading.

Got to admit I'm very new to it though! Have used my own spreadsheet to calaculate my monthly spends and then the iXpenselt app for a few years now.

You have 2 options again. If you have underspent in YNAB the money would just remain in that category and roll over into the next month. You can take it out of the category by subtracting the amount left from the amount you budgeted. For example if you budgeted £10 to food, but only spent £5, you would change the budgeted amount to £5. This would then free up £5 to be budgeted, and you could then budget that to savings or whatever. Your other option, and much easier imo, is to let the underspend roll into next month. Then on payday just add enough to each category to bring them up to what you want to budget. When you have done that whatever you have left is what you can send to savings. For example, month 1 you budget £10 for food, but only spend £5. The remaining £5 rolls over to month 2. On payday you only have to add £5 to your food budget to get you back to £10. The other £5 will remain waiting to be given a job. Allocate it to savings or whatever then.

I hope that makes sense? The videos that YNAB do are well worth watching! They explain all of this and more. In some ways it is quite a big change. I used to be checking my bank all the time to check I had enough to cover bills, or if I could pay a bit more off my debt etc. Now I do the budget on payday and I know exactly how much extra I can pay off my debt there and then. I make the overpayment, and then that's it for anther month.