Does anyone else hate payday?

[cjt110]

I know it sounds random but I hate it. It gives me anxiety and makes me feel like it's a bloody military manouvere. Moving money to different accounts for things. Remembering if I have used my DD card in the last few days to account for it. Budgeting for the month ahead. And I always fall on my arse a few days before payday.

How do you all manage? I used to be great with finances but then it's all just gone a bit shit.

It is not payday you hate but your inability to budget and the fact that money burns a hole in your pocket.
Stop taking your purse out with you and just keep a couple of pound in a coin purse and avoid just popping into a shop to get one thing. If you want jacket potatoes buy them with your main shop and take them from home.

Ok, so YNAB. You've got two choices with how you start, really. You can either start today, which means that you'll start very slowly and learn as you go along, or you can start from the beginning of September, which will give you more transactions to work with, but might be a little bit more confusing to start with. I prefer the starting from the beginning of September, personally.

So starting from the beginning of September 2017:

Step 1:
1.Go to Accounts and Add Account Manually.
2.Type the Account name, which you can name however you choose.
3.Choose your currency and date format.
4.It says 'today's balance'. DO NOT type today's balance. Look at your bank account and find out what your balance was at the end of the 31st August 2017. Type that figure in.
5.Click ok.
6.You will see that in the account section, it will say today's date and the starting balance you stated. Double click on that line and change the date to 01/09/2017.

Meows That's good (in some ways!) that you've sorted your spending habit. I hope I can follow suit.

CantSpell2 Good idea regarding leaving purse at home.

@cjt110
Start off by watching the tutorials.

You add all your accounts - and select type according eg checking(current) savings, line of credit(credit card/store cards) and can add tracking accounts which don't affect your budget.

Use the balance as it appears on your banking app now, then add transactions which are pending, I use recurring transactions a lot to take the effort out of budgeting eg every week car payment will come out of my current account - come off my tracked balance at credit union etc.

You only budget money you actually have.

You set up categories which suit you and delete ones that don't.

There's an app for your phone to record transactions as you go. I can give you a referral code if you wish, think it enters me into a draw to win a free month and gives you an extra free month.

I use a budget for my own accounts and another one for joint account and spends, it works well for me. Like I might have cash in my purse but some may be for joint spends/ some for personal - if I overspend on one I just transfer it online to other bank account and record that transaction as a transfer between bank and purse

Step 2 Importing Transactions

1. Go to your bank account and see if it has the option to export to CSV or QIF files. If so, export to CSV.
2. In YNAB, click 'import from Bank' and navigate to the file you exported from your bank.
3. Click ok to the box it brings up. It will import all transactions since 01/09/2017. Don't worry about the budget categories yet, we'll come back to that.

Lukcy you to get a pay day! I work for myself so it's entirely random when and if a client chooses to pay and when. Was chasing two bills from June first thing this morning.

Oh gosh it all looks very complicated.

I think I'll stick to a simple budget app on my phone .

Step 3 Budget categorising

1. Click Budget. Look at the Categories. Blue Categories are 'Main categories' and white ones are subcategories within the main categories. You can edit them by clicking on them and retyping them. You can drag subcategories into different main categories. You can delete categories, and create categories.
2. Play until you have everything where you want it and a category for everything you want. I have a category for each direct debit, in the order they come out of my account, for example, and the category name is '1st -DVLA- car tax lougle, £20.12' which means that I know exactly how much I need to budget each month for that expense, by when, without consulting the bank account first.

Step 3: Allocating expenses to budget categories

1. Go back to the account and allocate each expense to a category in your budget.
2. If you find an expense doesn't fit in a category, don't panic, go to your budget, create a new category, then return to your account and resume allocating the expenses to your budget categories.

Step 4: Reconciling your account

1. Check that all the transactions that were imported have a green 'c' next to them.
2. Check that the 'cleared balance' matches your balance on your actual bank account.
3. If it does, click 'Reconcile Account's in the top right hand corner. If it doesn't, look for what is different between you YNAB account and your bank account. It will be a missing transaction, a duplicate transaction, or a transaction with the wrong amount assigned to it.

A lot of people here saying "just budget and stop spending so much", like it's that easy for some of us.

OP- I used to be like you, wouldn't keep a track of what I was spending, always broke before payday, no idea where my money was going.

I would hugely recommend getting a Monzo card- it's a debit card linked to an app on your phone, whenever you spend on it you get a notification and it's immediately on the app... get a text to say "£4 in Starbucks!" (or wherever) has certainly helped me not be so frivolous.

Now I get paid into one account, all direct debits and savings go out, then whatever I'm left with I divide by weeks in the month and transfer that amount onto my Monzo at the start of each week. Really helps me keep a track, and I find it much easier than my bank's internet banking/app as it's instant, and it also divides and colour codes stuff into 'food shopping' 'eating out' etc so I can see at a glance what I'm spending where. You can even set yourself budgets for specific categories, and it'll warn you when you're approaching that. It's changed my life, now I always have money at the end of each month (admittedly, not much, but better than before where I'd be broke for a week before payday!) and I feel so much more in control. Definitely feels like I've got more money as well. Would 100% recommend to everyone!

YNAB is brilliant. I've been using it for two years and it's transformed how I think about money. But I'd recommend watching all the videos they offer as to how to set it up, how it works. I think you can get training sessions too IIRC. The forums are helpful. It's a brilliant product.

I took apple pay off my phone, I found that very useful stopped me wasting money when I left my purse at home

DD1 has recently starting working (apprenticeship, low wage).
We have helped her set up as:

Account 1 - pay comes in, monthly spending, entertainment, clothes, fuel
Account 2 - fed from account 1 by standing order day after payday, used for big bills like car, holidays, Christmas
Account 3 - fed from account 1, standing order after payday, long term savings e.g. newer car, future rental deposit

We helped her set up a budget spreadsheet covering all 3 accounts so she could see how her money was planned to be spent, and to ensure that when car insurance time comes around she has money saved.

cjt110 ynab is just a simple budget app on your phone but opens up so much more possibilities and tracking when you go on to your pc, it's worth trying out the free trial and seeing if you like it or not. I did free trial twice with two different email addresses before I got stuck in properly.

We've got a frugaleering thread on credit crunch also if you need help with money making decision or just camaraderie of people in the same boat link

Put a bit by into a savings account as soon as you get paid. Then you won't be tempted to spend it all on bits and bobs.

mammymammyIRL Thank you. I'll have a look.

carjacker Monzo looks good!

Step 5: Budgeting Here's the real bit

1. Go to your budget. You'll see a large figure in the 'To be budgeted' spot at the top. Don't be fooled. This is because it's telling you all the money you've had since the beginning of September, and it doesn't take account of expenditure.
2. You'll see that many of your categories are red. That's because you've spent money but didn't budget for them. On the right hand side of the budget, midway down the screen' you'll see some 'easy budget tools'. You can correct each 'red' by allocating the exact amount of money that you've spent so far to that category. So if you've spent £145 on groceries, then typing £145 in the groceries budget box will bring that available amount to £0, which is grey, not red. That's quite time consuming. One of the budget tools is 'underfunded'. If you click that button, it will automatically allocate the correct amount to every overspent category, to bring all categories to £0. Do this.
3. Now, look at your 'To be Budgeted' (TBB) value and think 'What does this have to do until I'm next paid?' Always prioritise fixed costs (mortgage or rent, council tax, utility bills, direct debits) then move on to essential bills (groceries, fuel, etc.,) then non-essential but important (extra-curricular activities, etc., Saving for Christmas, saving towards annual bills, etc.) then fun stuff.
4. Allocate your money to those things until it is all gone. You can put categories such as 'unspecified savings' if you have a surplus of money which you don't have a plan for just yet, but you must put it somewhere. Don't leave it in 'to be Budgeted', because then in just disappears and gets spent on rubbish.

Once you've done that, you'll see that if you deviate from your plan, say you fancy coffee and cake from Costa, that's fine, it really is, but you have to take that money from somewhere else. You have to actually decide where you are taking the money from, and you have to decide that the coffee and cake is more important than, say, Christmas. It really does help when you see it in those terms.

And yes, when you get the free YNAB app on your phone, you can enter transactions as you make them, and see whether you have money left in a particular category for a purchase.

So, say you see a pair of trainers that are usually £70 and are reduced to £50, but you only have £10 left in your clothes budget, and you have £40 in your dining out a budget, you might think: 'those trainers are great value, but I don't have any money for clothes. If I want them, I'd have to take money from dining out.... That means I couldn't go out to the restaurant later this month as I'd planned to......hmm I think I'll leave the trainers.' Because in the real world, can't have everything, and if your finances are such that you can't afford trainers and a restaurant in one month, it doesn't matter that the store has knocked £20 off the price of the trainers, does it? It's still more expensive than you can afford.

What would you all say a reasonable cost is or an anniversary meal out?

The problem with me and apps was that I find spending on a card so so easy. When it's cash in my hand and I have to write it down I don't spend as much!

I don't call it pay day, it's more like exchange day. Work pay it to me and I pay it to everyone else! I get paid weekly now which for some reason seems so much easier to deal with than monthly. My rent and water goes out weekly and each week I pay a 'bill' so week 1 I pay council tax, week 2 TV license and phones and so on. I do find it much easier to budget weekly and am never without a few quid before pay day now. Would splitting your wage into 4, arranging bills to be paid and then having what is left per week help?
Also as for savings, at Christmas I opened an online only account, and every few days I transfer the odd pounds and pence from my main account, anything £10 or less, because I can't get it out of the cash machine unless it's a 'whole note' so all that odd change is mounting up nicely. I also have a jar at home where anything under a pound goes, jar holds about £30 when I change it and I transfer it into the online account when it's full and paid in. I don't have a fortune in savings but it was enough to cover an unexpected vet bill and dd's birthday without eating into my weekly budget.

teenstimestwo that's a fantastic system.

I was also never taught how to budget. My dm despite having a well paid job paid fortnightly used to send us to bank machine to print a balance statement to see what she'd left in her overdraft before telling us what cash to withdraw.

I got as far as expecting dd without managing money correctly when the house of cards fell down, I was cut to a three day week at work, and suddenly had to pay mortgage & bills on maternity benefit, dd is now 7 and it's only now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel with cc debt, I wish it was a subject taught in school.

When my dc start to earn, they will be putting 20% of what they earn into savings and we will discuss the priorities for remaining money. I don't want them to go through what I've done.

Blimey, your system sounds like hard work.
Pay day can come and go without anyone really noticing.
I have everything on standing order or direct debit ( including money to go into a savings account, just like any other bill). It goes in a day after pay day.

I challenge my self to get through the week not to do frivolous spending and just take out £10 at the beginning of the week ( just in case money. - work collections, town parking etc)

I like to have a minimum amount of money in my current account. Any excess over that amount around pay day goes into savings.

I look at the bigger picture. I would rather have put money in the bank to be able to afford a designer whatever or a flight to somewhere than buy Hell No magazine or a costa lotta coffee.

carjacker I signed up to Monzo a while ago it turns out but never applied for my card,. Have just done that now, That sounds like a much easier method. What happens with regards to cash withdrawals?

I have two accounts. I know how much I need to transfer for bills/Direct debits. The rest is food and spending money.

I get paid weekly and I look forward to it, even though the amount I earn is nothing to celebrate.

I have as few direct debits as possible as I don't like them. I pay things like gas and electric, water etc quarterly. Council tax I pay over the internet. For childcare I have a standing order. I have a spreadsheet to keep organised and calender/email alerts set up telling me when to pay things so I never forget. I don't have a credit card or any debts. I have no idea what my credit score is, I don't know why I need one. I feel completely in control of my finances.