Spending diary

Willing2Learn · 4 September 2018 at 11:41AM

brila wrote: »

People who use YNAB - do you use a debit card for everything? Or cash for everything? How would you manage using both payment sources?

Account #1 is named "Wallet". All transactions are allocated to the correct budget category.

Account #2 is named TSB Current Plus". If ever I make debit card transaction, I allocate it to the correct budget category and mark it "Debit Card" in the memo field. That way I can do a search, if need be, for all transactions marked "Debit Card".

redmel1621 · 4 September 2018 at 1:54PM

This YNAB sounds pretty time consuming! Having to manually allocate every penny into different categories. I'm intrigued by it but really not sure I could keep up with it lol.

Willing2Learn · 4 September 2018 at 2:05PM

I spend about 5 minutes a day on YNAB entering transactions. I can enter individual transactions in about 20 seconds via the Android app. It is no more time consuming than entering transactions into a notebook or onto a spreadsheet. On the first of every month I reconcile YNAB against my bank statements, and that takes about 30 minutes.

MandM90 · 4 September 2018 at 2:24PM

Am also a YNAB user - spend max 2 mins per day, then probably 10-20 mins a month planning/assigning pay. I love it - has truly changed my life!

timefortea · 5 September 2018 at 1:07PM

I've very happily used YNAB for three years, but I'm making the switch to Yolt. It's less precise, but YNAB was making me a bit obsessed about entering and tracking, and I'm thankfully leaving the period of my life when I had to be that 'on it' all the time. Yolt syncs to your bank account(s) and credit card(s), so you can't track your cash expenses, but for me they all tend to be meals and drinks out anyway. The transactions it does track are automatically assigned to predefined categories, which are quite broad, but if you're happy with keeping it at the bigger picture level I think it's great.