Anyone using you need a budget? I have a question

[YoureBeingASillyBilly]

Both my current accounts have overdrafts which i am permanently in (thats why i need the budget) but when i enter the balance onto the YNAB budget should i enter it as the negative balance or should i enter the available balance left of the overdraft? I am asking because i entered the negative balance and of course the ynab has worked out that i am already massively over budget so any spending puts it more over suggesting i have no money, when i do have some available to work with. So what should i do?

[Living]

There's a whole thread on money matters but to answer this you need to put your overdrafts in as pre-YNAB debt. Then it doesn't come off your available to budget and you can budget money against them to pay them off little by little.

It will still show you as nothing to work with so spending this month is increasing your debt. Might be worth starting after payday.

[YoureBeingASillyBilly]

Thanks living. That is great answer. Didnt realise there was a thread already so will check that out.

[MsAspreyDiamonds]

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/legal_money_matters/1987219-SPREADSHEETS-for-Debt-Control-Budgeting-Mortgages-etc?

[FruitSaladIsNotPudding]

What living said. When you set up your accounts, put in a minus starting balance, then it appears in red at the top as pre ynab debt, but doesn't affect that months' money. You can then start paying it off as fast as you can afford.

[BucketofDinosaurs]

The nice thing about the way YNAB handles pre-YNAB debt is it appears at the top of the budget screen and you can see at a glance each month how much you have whittled away at it.

[dementedma]

I have ynab but am really struggling to work it. Just can't get it to add up and make sense of it.

[Whatnamenext]

Oh demented I was struggling. I watched a webinar and it made sense. Try and book on one, and if you can't "attend" then you will be sent a link to watch it.

I'm only just getting started and I found it frustrating but I think I get it now. Good luck!

[dementedma]

I did what name but just cant do it. Trying now to split salaries between Feb and March as dh and I just got paid so we have to cover the last week in Feb and then 3 weeks in March.
I am either extremely thick, which is entirely possible, or you need some sort of accounting/book keeping skills to get this system to add up. I'm really gutted because I so wantednto be able to do it and keep track of our spend.I will try for one more month then have to give up as its taking me hours of frustration.

[ishesingle]

Demented, when you categorise the wages it will let you split as "income for feb" and "income for March".

Or, just let it go into feb, don't budget it all and it'll roll over into March anyway so you can start to budget some there as well.

[Whatnamenext]

I've fallen out of love with it again

[ishesingle]

Why whatname?

[CoolCadbury]

Why don't you post on the YNAB support thread or at least look through it.
YNAB support thread

[Whatnamenext]

I'm reading the support thread. I'm up to about September

I'm used to my own spreadsheet (which lets face it cAnt be great as otherwise I wouldn't be in debt...)

But I'm probably trying to do too many things that contradict each other. We agreed on X amount for food, entertainment, fuel; and to out them in cash envelopes. So I withdrew an amount from the cash point.

It doesn't all seem to tally up.

[Living]

If you put them in cash envelopes then you need to set up accounts for your envelopes themselves. so you would have eg current account, credit card 1, credit card 2, food envelope, secret wine fund hidden under mattress etc.

[tribpot]

Whatname, the way I would work it if you are actually using real envelopes with cash in (which you have no need to do with YNAB, although it helps make it more 'real') is:

You have two accounts, current and cash.
You have your budget categories as you've described - food, money, whatevs. Remember budget categories are not tied to accounts, they are 'envelopes'.

When you withdraw the cash, that is a transfer between your current account and your cash account. As these are both 'on budget' accounts, there's no need to give that a category. That's just a real-world movement of cash that doesn't affect the budget as you haven't spent anything.

Let's say you budgeted £100 to food and you also put £100 cash into the envelope. You spend £10 of it. You record that as a transaction in the cash account, with the category of 'food'. You can see both in the budget that your balance is £90 and looking in the envelope you have £90 left.

There is another way of doing it, which is what Living is describing. I'll put that in a separate post to make it easier to read.

[Whatnamenext]

That is really helpful. Thankyou both. I'm going to try again!

[tribpot]

No worries. Remember, you can always try things out in a test budget file until the idea makes more sense with simpler numbers, then re-load your main budget file.

I wouldn't create each envelope as a separate account, as it will mean any time you need to transfer money between the envelopes (which is essential in budgeting, roll with the punches is how YNAB describes it) you'll need to transfer money between the accounts and transfer money between the two budget categories. I would treat all cash as cash (i.e. record the transactions in a single account) but categorise the cash as it's spent. You will know from looking at the budget, or looking at your physical envelopes, how much is left to spend in each category.

[Whatnamenext]

I think the reason I wasted physical cash as it's between me and DP. He's on board but this is really alien thinking to him.

The visual aspect of cash has some "weight" behind it.

[tribpot]

Worth a try in the first month or two to see if it helps demonstrate that money is finite.

[Living]

yeah agreed with tripot - the cash account idea is a better way to work it if you have loads of envelopes. we only had one and have actually worn that down now that we 'trust' ourselves to spend based on the YNAB budget not the amount in the bank.