Cheery's path to fulfilment - finishing the DIY, looking after myself, appreciating the garden 🌻

badmemory

As I said I only use spreadsheets but I can tell you what my bank balance should be every day for the next 4 months & what my savings will be to start the next tax year.  One lesson I learnt a lot of years ago is that if you have an error that is a multiple of 9 you have transposed 2 figures.

Cheery_Daff

Thank you all,  I'll respond p properly tomorrow when I'm on the computer and can look back properly xx

In the meantime,  I have had an exceptionally leisurely bath,  skim reading my first MSE diary from 2010 😱😂 gosh how things have changed 😂 

I was just starting my first 'big' job (as in what i'd been trained to do), two days a week, earning £780 a month 😂😂 I was living with Mr Cheery, but not sharing finances at that point - I refused until I'd done all the insurance comparisons etc because there was no way I was paying half of the extortionate amount he was paying (I seem to recall I actually SAVED him £800 on just the house insurance that year! 😱😂)

I was also finishing my PhD corrections, quite a roller coaster reading my race to the finish again 😬

Anyway,  I was budgeting weekly, 5 weeks a month ( and saving the extra week when there wasn't one). 
£25 a week food, Mr C paying the other half
£30 a month for our van (diesel and saving for insurance etc)
£10 a week unnecessary spends - clothes, bus fares, presents etc

Gosh, how times have changed! We did still sneak in some cafes though 😂 and I did later increase my unnecessary spends budget to £15 a week - positively extravagant! 

Anyway,  some useful things to re- learn. 

Also lamenting the loss of the old forum smileys... and the colourful fonts! Miss my rainbow stripey lists 😭

Cheery_Daff

rtandon27 said:

I switched from paper to YNAB in 2016 and have never looked back!  For years it cost 40 pounds and then suddenly it doubled and is now 80, but honestly I feel it is the best discretionary expenditure we have!  OH & I  pool our resources and I just tell OH (and myself) if there is anything left to fritter after all the bills and obligations have been accounted for.  We budget for holidays and treats, so after all is said and done, OH has around 8 pounds for the month and I get 13 (city frittering costs more) - we usually end up buying mostly lottery tickets with it - true frittering as we have not won anything of note yet!

Ha, you're doing a good sales pitch for keeping YNAB there 😂😂

Cheery_Daff

joedenise said:

I'm a YNABer like you and can't think of a better way to deal with finances.  I used to use pencil and paper but that was more tracking than budgeting.

I bought YNAB4 outright for about £60 years ago and used that up to about 2022 even though they stopped supporting it in 2016.  Never really wanted to change to the subscription version but not much choice when YNAB packed up!

I paid outright at first too, and I do find it useful...

Cheery_Daff

edinburgher said:

I used a homebrew budget spreadsheet for c. 10 years. It was detailed, thorough, had formulae and didn't work! The problem is you need a database to accurately shuttle things around and plan, spreadsheets only get you so far. Not a big fan of YNAB but now over a year back in and it works 🤷🏻‍♂️ Maybe not the answer you'd hoped for?

One spreadsheet issue was that I had periodic issues where something unexpected turned up and scared the crap out of me. I'm maybe being arrogant but I think that was a spreadsheet limitation (not a me limitation) as I was pretty damn diligent 

Lol you lot,  anyone would think I'd suddenly summoned the YNAB sales team! 😂😂

Cheery_Daff

PennysIntoPounds said:

My circumstances and budget aren't similar to yours but I have the zopa banking app that allows you to set up and name pots, so I can divide my money into those categories when funds come in.
For daily living I use my current account and have a set amount allocated for the month for essentials/going out/treats and I write the amount for the month and the week in my diary and subtract from it when money has been spent. That way I can see how tight I'm getting per week and if I choose to go over into the monthly budget, the amount remaining gets divided for the remaining weeks. If I happen to get to the last week with no money then that is tough luck for me, I gave myself enough warning! 

Ooh, I never thought about pots in the bank account itself, thank you! Will investigate if our bank does anything like that.  I did used to budget weekly a long time ago - like the idea of just rejigging if necessary for the remaining weeks (you talking to yourself sounds like me talking to myself!)

Cheery_Daff

Bargainhunter30 said:

I bank with RBS and Nationwide and both now have options for budgeting. I spend everything through RBS so use that one and I like it. Nationwide is personal spends, so haven't tried that one.

Thank you! Our main account is with the co-op, not sure if they do pots in the same way. We also have a separate easy access savings account which has a wodge in but I've got a bit lazy about leaving a fair bit in the current account....

Cheery_Daff

badmemory said:

As I said I only use spreadsheets but I can tell you what my bank balance should be every day for the next 4 months & what my savings will be to start the next tax year.  One lesson I learnt a lot of years ago is that if you have an error that is a multiple of 9 you have transposed 2 figures.

That's a useful thing to know!

KajiKita

I’ve read the YNAB book (a few times) and it sounds good, but I struggle with software anyway (a glitch in *my* head I think! 😉) and I just couldn’t bring myself to spend on a subscription when I was trying to bring my spends under control and down (at the time every penny counted). 

So I set up my own YNAB spreadsheet. It has broad categories such as car, self care, subscriptions etc with specific details of every cost within it. So my duol1ngo annual subs are in there divided by 12 and get added to by that value every month. If I get something I miss (cost of the chimney sweep last year!) I add a line and then divide it by the number of months remaining before it is likely to be due again. Once it’s reached a target value I stop filling that pot and restart when that fund is spent, so the chimney sweep might be a month later than last year - gets paused, spent when the bill comes in and restarts when the funds have gone. 

Shared costs (such as mortgage, utilities, breakdown subs) are under another tab, simply because we have our income divvied up into shared costs and personal and our accounts reflect that. I appreciate this is not wholly logical but it makes sense to me having evolved over time. I have another sheet that maps mine and Mr KK’s monthly income (his averaged over the year as being self employed he gets no holiday pay) and the proportions of our income we move to joint accounts (I earn more so contribute more). On that same sheet I have a list of all my outgoings with the joint costs as a big SO (as it’s broken down elsewhere). This I then map to my take home pay and make sure there is some slack! 😉 I’ve highlighted what in this are essentials (transfers to joint accounts, car insurance etc.) and what isn’t (personal pocket money, some subs) so if the sticky stuff hits the twirly thing, I already know where to cut my spending, what to cancel (it’s one less thing to think about in the panic of losing your job - happened too many times to me) so that my emergency fund v. minimum outgoings will stretch as I expect them to ... 

I suspect I’m not getting the full YNAB software experience but it’s very easy for me to see where I am over spending v. my intended budget … Just not so easy to stop! 😉 What I have started doing, is when I have overspent in a category (gardening for example … ahem! 😂) I limit what I can put in that pot for the new month I set up when I get paid, until that ‘debt’ is cleared. It highlights to me very quickly where the ‘leaks’ are (important for me) and if I really want to keep that pot full for spending in that category, I have to move it from somewhere else, such as our 2nd honeymoon fund ….

Does this help at all? I’m happy to share more details of the categories but they are so personal and specific to each of us, I suspect you have a good handle on what yours need to be already 😊

KK

themadvix

Having tried YNAB at the beginning of the year Cheery, I decided to stick with and expand the pots I have (with Starling, although ‘main’ account is nationwide). Everything (with very few exceptions) gets paid for by credit card and then once a week I transfer from the relevant pot to the holding pot for the appropriate credit card - so that amount matches the pending amount owed to the credit card. It’s worked well for me, although it is only me using it, so I remember what the transactions are and don’t double transfer things (I do tend to do them as separate transfers from pots so I can match the amounts, which could be fiddly).