Living the Good Life - mortgage free and living in line with our values

themadvix

Okay, I'm playing with YNAB... and I have questions (lots of them!).... I already have lots of separate savings pots in my Starling account - will I need to add each of them as an account and then assign the funds to the savings pots in YNAB? That's what I'm doing currently, but it's going to take a long time to set everything up... And it's not going to like that I don't actually have a food budget line is it (I mean, I'm pretty sure this might horrify quite a few people here, but I just know what or how much we need to not spend each month, depending on my variable income...).... So much complexity!!

After a conversation on RT's diary (I think), I've just changed our Council Tax to 12 monthly payments. I pay into the pot for it monthly, so it's just confusing and ridiculous to pay out over 10 months... this, of course, will be messed up now as I've just paid the last of this year's payments, so no idea when they'll be taking that!

You'll note I *should* be doing Cambridge work...

Cheery_Daff

I use YNAB too as you probably know (although not quite such an evangelist as La Plan!)

What do you mean you don't want to allocate all of your money the YNAB way? It's just a zero based budgeting system in essence - you can do it without the software if you like. You take the money you have right now, and allocate it where it needs to be, and when more comes in, you allocate that. Don't allocate what you don't have- that's the main difference with what people normally do, I think - and that's why it works well for people with irregular incomes. If you don't have enough in the pot for this month's rent yet, don't be spending on a takeaway, even if it looks like there's money in the bank! That might have been allocated to house insurance next month etc.

Don't need pots for every tiny thing if you don't want - you could theoretically have one YNAB pot called 'bills' and one called 'fun' if you like. The idea is just to acknowledge that you can't use the same £1 for several different things. For example, i theoretically have a few thousand in savings that I could call a generic emergency fund, but instead I break it down into 
- 1 months replacement income for me
- enough to replace one of the cars if necessary (I add to this each month)
- household emergency (eg something going wrong with the septic tank)

Then I also have YNAB savings pots for 
- holidays
-household maintenance (chimney sweeping, septic tank emptying, gutter cleaning etc)
- household improvements (eg stuff like paint, a new front door etc)

Etc etc

YNAB is a bit of a nuisance if you already have many different accounts set up for different things. I did at first, and eventually just left everything in the main current account and allocated to pots through YNAB. If you keep separate bank pots too, then yes, you'll spend a lot of time faffing. Bank accounts don't have to equate to YNAB pots though. Our savings account has some in, the rest has been distributed through regular savers, but it's not 'NW regular saver for a new car'  - the amount in YNAB car fund is independent to the amount in any particular account. 

Not sure I'm helping here 😂 Well worth watching their videos, and they do live ones sometimes where you can ask specific questions while you set up. 

Keep asking questions! I'll answer if I can (even if it doesn't help 😂) and I'm sure others will be along too 😊

LadyWithAPlan

themadvix said:

Morning all and thanks for the new diary wishes!

I am toying with trying YNAB... it seems the easiest way to keep track of spending. The problem is I don't want to allocate all of my money the YNAB way and I don't have budget pots for every single little thing, so I'm somewhat resistant. I would welcome thoughts. LaPlan is a total convert, I know, and given she has a varied income like me, that has made me a bit more curious....

I spent years saying no to YNAB. The amount of control, calm, focus, review power, and ability to spend in the areas I choose to  it has given me is mad especially given I have done a paper/excel budget for over a decade before. plus tried pots etc. i am already a budgeter/frugal(ish) YNAB has made me an Olympic champion who loves looking at her YNAB

In the last 13 months  of YNAB  I have spent so much less on certain areas, saved more where I wanted to.. and on months when nothing was coming in I have had peace and control. When I had extra cash I allocated it wisely and the concept of 'ynab poor' when you have loads money in your accounts but  its all allocated to future holidays/bills/wants/savings/ makes feel like you are constrained not to overspend - it makes you think do I want takeout more than my new bike etc.

The difference for me also has been that the immediacy of the reporting and the realisation X money cannot be split 10 ways. 13 months on and I am never going back Maybe go onto REDDIT and look up YNAB there are a whole 'cult' of us crazies. I only wish I had done it decades ago. 
It makes winning the super bowl of your finances doable every day and once you get used to it, it takes maybe 2 mins a day and then  30 mins once a month at the end  and it  is fun

I suggest you trial it as is a 34 day free trial  (you get an extra month free if you then sign up if you use a referral   code at the beginning - feel free to dm me or another ynaber on here for that ) 


Suggestions are
 Do watch some videos and get educated before you dive in.
Before you sign up watch Nick True on Youtube videos - he just done a  new 2025 video - you can literally watch and pause as you do the steps. I did last year.

2025 YNAB Getting Started Guide - Start To Finish

 Id also watch 'Heard It From Hanna' these are shorter ynab videos.
Start maybe middle or just before the end of a month - you dont have to start 1st Feb etc, Its good to see the movements
Start where you are - aka today - dont add in past transactions. Start with current balance in your checking and maybe add the cc the second week (Nick True has a video for that too)
Use direct import - banks link so its easy to then allocate payments in to your categories.
Set up using the web not the phone app - much easier,
Dont use targets for a month or so, they can confuse.
Dont over complicate it at the start with too many categories - so a grocery, entertainment, utilities category - you dont need a million to start - I like loads but its your budget you get to set it up
Do have a 'stuff I forgot to budget for' pot 
You can add lots of savings off budget (for tracking NAV etc) but wait til you done it a few weeks
Call the pots what you want and give them emojis
Can i suggest you try the ynab way for 34 days as a test then you can see if you like it - 

The YNAB software support is also great - if you send them a video of the issues they will send you one back on how to solve...
Feel free to dm me any queries.

debtfreeoneday

I dabbled with YNAB and it just didn’t work for me at all. Not everything fitted neatly in. But I know it’s worked wonders for others. 

Loving the nice new shiny diary and genuinely applaud you for the approach to travel. I actually dislike flying but for some reason hadn’t thought about other options but will now put that in my think tank for another day. 

@Sallyforth absolutely have a diary. I had a dfw and a mfw diary and now have a what’s next diary. Old habits die hard and I still save and budget and waffle about it. I find it super motivational. 

Suffolk_lass

Happy New Diary TMV! I'm with @debtfreeoneday and I don't use YNAB - I use in preference a simple spend and save tracking spreadsheet with sheets for household budget (regular things, including cars, insurance etc as well as monthly payments), savings trackers plus bonds & investments, I did have pensions and mortgage trackers too, tracking how much interest I saved by overpaying, plus debts, credit card balances and so on. I could not see that it offered me anything I don't already have, and logging in to bank accounts regularly means I Tilly-Tidy with a little pop of pleasure, rather than an automatic set up. Simple things for simple souls, with my much simplified life since debts, mortgage and pension planning.

rtandon27

@themadvix - Arrrrgh - somehow I managed not to subscribe properly & completely missed you were coming over to Winchester!  The city is about 20-ish minutes away from us & we'd have popped over to do the Mill with you - hope it was warm enough for you to have a walk along the river as well - it's gorgeous in all seasons & so much history intertwined in the buildings!

I'm glad to hear another of us is converting to 12 months - the 10 months is just not intuitive enough for me to cope with! (Though I'm still waiting to hear back from the council - grrrrrr!)

Cheery & Lady have given you lots of good advice!  I'm also a complete convert to YNAB having been introduced to it by my Mom across the pond, back when it wasn't an online platform but stand alone program on the computer.  I didn't bother with it then as I much preferred paper and pencil and then spreadsheets for budgeting - but of course then I did carry around debt like an extra appendage.  It was the power of the visual graphs that converted me over back in 2016 when we were left a small inheritance and didn't want us to fritter it away!   

Over the two years I was really ill, it gave us such peace of mind to visually see that the emergency fund was there and could be used until the insurance kicked in!  All the pots were at that point filled, and ready to be used for up to 12 months, so even though in reality our emergency pot was in the same savings account as the long term savings, it had actually been nominally ring-fenced and we could visualize this by using the software.

The tool makes it so easy to categorize - for instance Transportation, with separate lines for my train travel, our car petrol, MOT's, maintenance, tax, etc. - really helped me to understand after a few year's use, that my annual train ticket was equivalent to running a second car and as long as I needed that, we were going to be a one vehicle family!  Also helps me to categorize work related expenses and see what can be claimed back and what can't at a glance.  For instance I now say no to more of the working lunch meetings as I have no intention of footing those bills myself!  We can just discuss work projects in a meeting room during paid hours rather than over our unpaid lunch break.  On the other hand if it's actual networking I'll fork out for drinks/coffees as it benefits me in the long-term.  Amazing how intentionally choosing where you spend your money (or don't) can give you such peace of mind!

Don't worry about allocating everything - I always carry an unallocated amount from month to month which makes adding to lagging pots a lot easier.  Between OH & myself we have 3-5 separate incoming streams of money each month.  While the main one is my salary & the second one is his pension, the variability of the other ones works well within YNAB, as I don't allocate that money until it's in hand! I think the real beauty of the software is that you can make it your own  & if you commit to checking it for 5-10 mins a day, then after some time you have a habit and know exactly where you stand financially without giving it any brain power at all!

powerspowers

Happy new diary!
I spend a lot of time thinking about the tension between wanting to see the world and wanting to tread lightly on it. I also lead trips abroad for a youth organisation so have traveled slightly differently to most. 

Things I’ve learnt-
*short haul trips are usually more expensive to go by train than fly. This is ridiculous but it is what it is. I made the conscious decision in 2018 to not go on short haul flights without a real reason and have only flown once return since then. Sometimes this is hard. 

*but I’ve had loads of amazing short haul train trips- Switzerland, Barcelona and Budapest all by train. Barcelona we did outbound via Paris and the Pyrenees and back via the TGV passing lakes full of flamingos. The mountains and the flamingos were amazing and even though I’ve been to Barcelona before I had no idea they were there. I use www.seat61.com for planning. 

*longer trips in Europe tend to get cheaper as their train fares are lower and you can use things like interrail. The flip side is you need to take your time. I did 12 days to Budapest and back and it was exhausting. 

*don’t forget ferries. We’ve driven to France and Northern Ireland and scoped out a trip to Northern Spain. 

*my new travel obsession is by bike. We went to the Netherlands last year and have done some long distance routes in the uk. You definitely see more and are low impact on the world. 

*im not ruling out flying. We had the chance to go climbing in Italy and it wasn’t doable to go by train with the dates, so we flew because it was too good an opportunity to say no. And we’re planning a long haul trip in 2026 which will involve flying there but planning to deliberately avoid internal flights- so having to put a lot of though into what we want to do and see. 

Good luck and keep us updated on your adventures x

themadvix

Thanks for your detailed thoughts and comments Cheery, LaPlan and RT about YNAB. Cheery, looking back, I have no idea what I meant by 'not wanting to allocate all my money the YNAB way'! But I do currently have lots of actual separate pots in Starling and Tandem for savings (Starling tends to be monthly ongoing sinking funds, while Tandem is shorter-term specific goals) and I can see that dealing with these via YNAB is going to be tricky. And I don't want to give up that visibility by combining all my pots just to get YNAB working, in case it's not for me. This, I suspect will mean an awful lot of manual assigning of money to ensure that what goes into those pots matches what YNAB thinks has gone into those pots. I think Mr MV and I will have a play with it today and see where we get to. Otherwise, I think I'd just be happy doing a similar allocation for groceries and personal spends as YNAB suggests - have the pot, assign to cc pot as I spend and then pay off from the cc pot at the end of the month. I've taken a huge step and taken £500 out of a 'long-term savings' (cash pot) to fund this month ahead of time (usually I just pay cc with month's earnings and don't have it there ahead of time - bearing in mind that I always know what I'm paying myself from the business in advance and have a huge buffer fund should I need it). I do think some simplification of my finances may be in order - the council tax change will help and I think we'll probably let go of our Natwest Rewards current a/c - only I use it now for household bills and it would be easier to lose it and just use Starling (greater transparency for both of us there too as Mr MV never looks at the NW account. I like the idea of the visibility of YNAB, but I'm not entirely unhappy with the current set-up - just feel I need better accountability in the two aforementioned budget areas, which I am already feeling by having set fixed budgets for them. After all, we've got to where we are without YNAB, so I don't think I'm too terrible at budgeting - we've never been spenders rather than savers, so I think that helps - the natural inclination is not to spend rather than to spend. More thinking and playing required in any case.

Thanks DFOD and SL for partially confirming what I thought - that I may not need it/it won't work for my set up (without a lot of work in any case). And for also confirming that it's possible to run a tight ship without it!

Cheery_Daff

Definitely possible to run a tight ship without it! Yes, that's a good idea to just use it for part of your budget if the rest is working well anyway. I've found the credit card thing helpful - ours is paid off each month but it's good to see the pots diminish as they're being spent, rather than seeing money sitting in the bank and thinking it's available. 

themadvix

Onto travel -  thanks DFOD - I think considered travel is definitely the way forward for us. And I'm keen to use the ever improving rail network in Europe. If you don't like flying, I'd highly recommend it - and powerpowers is right - seat61.com is a brilliant website for all the details.

Powerspowers thanks for your thoughts - it sounds like we're thinking along very similar lines wrt flying - not ruling it out, but avoiding wherever possible is the plan for us. We're definitely at the beginning of our rail adventures, and you're right, it's certainly not cheap, but it's the future - financial cost isn't the only cost after all. That being said, Japan/America/South America are not train-able options and Mr MV doesn't sail well, so flights will be the only option for them, but not for a while yet. When we went to the States in 2022 we did fly internally but also got the train and drove to avoid other internal flights. If only their train network wasn't so poor! Where are you planning on going?

Thoughts have turned to holidays this year yesterday and this morning and we may well ferry to Ireland for our main holiday this year - it's somewhere we've only been briefly once and Mr MV has requested some good walking as his holiday requirement. We're also looking at a short break in Amsterdam - another place we've never been - particularly with the Eurostar sale on! All these are subject to change as we do more research!

Would love to take my bike on a holiday - and I know SL has ferried to Hook of  Holland and e-biked there, so it's a definite future possibility!