So I've started YNAB ...

[SheilaTurnip]

And I dont get how you cant put your future earnings in?
If you are mean to bugdte how come it lets you put what you will spend in future months but not earnings?

The system is based on you allocating the money you already have. So that's budgeting what you'll spend say over the coming month, and if you've got money left over, then for the next month too - but you don't allocate future earnings until you've actually got that money.

Exactly as AalyaSecura says. If you get £5000 but only need £2000 this month, and know that you have a bill for £2000 next month and £1000 the month after, you might want to allocate it to those future months now, so that next month's income deals with your normal bills, etc., and those big bills are already dealt with.

But you can't enter money in advance that you don't have, because then it all becomes meaningless. You have to work with money you actually have.

Okay, not the system for how my mind works. And wants to plan. I can put t to one side then before I waste any time getting to know it.

You can put the earnings in the same way you put future bills in, as upcoming transactions. You just can't allocate the money to a bill/category because you don't have it yet.

Well worth sticking with it IMO, although I believe they've put the price up

Gosh! Ive worked it out !
This is genius !!

It took me about 3 weeks to get the hang of it but I love it.

I adore YNAB. Best thing ever!

I can't stand the fact that you can't change the start date of your "month" to link to when you get paid (and therefore when your DDs come out etc). I get paid on the 20th of the month, so to start the system from 1st is unrealistic. Has anybody found a way around this?

I get what you mean because our payday is the 21st but it doesn't make any difference to how I use it I don't think, I allocate all the money in the 21st just the same as I would if it was the 1st

I don't get paid on 1st either so my budget starts on payday. If I was paid on 21 Feb that money would fund my March budget IYSWIM.

I guess the way around it (I'm using older YNAB terminology and I don't think nYNAB supports this concept) is to allocate some money to 'available this month' and the rest to 'available next month'. One of the goals of YNAB use is to break the link between the day on which you get paid (which will change over time) and the period of time you are budgeting for (the calendar mostly doesn't change!). So if you can build up a reserve, the February paycheque should fund March expenses, including those which come out after the March pay cheque has gone in.

I get paid 21st and it's exactly as PP says. When you get paid, work out what that money must pay for before you next get paid. Some of that might be in the current month, so allocate it to this month's categories, but the rest might be due the following month but before your next payday, so skip forward and allocate it to next month. It does take a while to get used to as it's not the way we typically think of doing a budget. I think that's exactly why it works so well though.

I for one have never been in such a good position financially since I started using YNAB. I used to live in my overdraft and since starting to use YNAB six months ago haven't been into (or near) the overdraft once. And even have savings now!

And you'll know you're a convert when you get exited for payday not so you can spend money, but so you can allocate money to categories and watch your balances go up!

Whereiscaroline I love payday for budgeting but also for spending haha.

I also don't skip forward to allocate, I just allocate it all on the 21st and the stuff that's for the next month just rolls over.

Lorna that's a good point, but it's all guilt free spending as you know you've allowed for it! Love, love, love it

Haha yes indeed looks lovingly at potential new boots

Sorry to hijack post but I've used YNAB for a while, think I've got the hang of it (except credit cards but that's another story) except I can't work out whether a deficit budget rolls forward? So I overspent by 5.5 on groceries last month, does that automatically deduct from this month?

I've just worked it out. It takes it off 'to be budgeted' total in the next month but doesn't actually roll the red deficit figure on that particular budget forward. I have claimed some work expenses and I wanted to leave the budget overspent so I could allocate the money to it when it arrived but it's not that simple if it crosses into the next month...

Yes, that's what of the things we objected to when nYNAB was released, Chimichangaz. I also have a work expenses category and I 'turn the arrow to the right', meaning it does not affect the amount I have to budget but contains the debt within that category.

One way of handling it is shown in - essentially you borrow from the Job Expense category to release the money back to the budget.

Thanks trib glad it wasn't just me. What did you mean when you say you turn the arrow to the right? Sorry if that's a daft question...

This was a feature of YNAB 4, Chimi, which many users (including me!) are still using. In that, you could choose whether a category with a negative balance (like Job Expenses before they're reimbursed) would be taken off your 'Available to Budget' amount (which in fairness, you haven't actually got the money so it isn't available to budget) or whether you could select to have the debt just roll forward within its own category.

It relates to another concept that nYNAB doesn't have, which is 'income available this month' and 'income available next month'. Let's say it's 15th Jan and I have -£100 of Job Expenses. I get paid my salary of £1000 and I say that this income should be available to budget next month, so the January budget ignores it and the February budget says 'thanks very much, I'll have a grand'.

If I don't 'turn the arrow to the right', the Feb budget will actually be £900, because it's the £1000 I got minus the 'overspend' in my Job Expenses category.

If I do turn it to the right, my available to budget stays at £1000, but my Job Expenses category shows a -£100 total until those expenses are reimbursed.

You would also have handled credit card debt the same way, so that the debt was 'quarantined' and only affected its own category total. Otherwise let's say I had a card with a pre-existing debt of £2000 on it, my available to budget would always be -£1000 after I'd been paid.

There are various different ways you can try to frig this in nYNAB but I prefer it old skool. God knows what I'm going to do when YNAB 4 finally breaks, probably move off YNAB completely.

tribpot is it inevitable that Ynab 4 will break one day? I get that they won't update it but won't it just carry on as is? Please????

Thatsnot eventually the Dropbox interface it relies on will stop working, at which point we can maybe eke its life out for a while longer using the legacy sync if you remember that from YNAB 3 days. I don't think it relies on as much third party software as YNAB 3 but it certainly does rely on some, and so eventually that will stop working as well if YNAB 4 isn't maintained.

There may be considerable life left in it yet - I think YNAB 3 probably still runs? - so I'm not hugely concerned but I am worried we may not get any warning.

I've been using YNAB, new version, since November and it is amazing. I always budgeted but I did it with imaginary future money and expected expenses which never quite worked. Now I only budget what I have and if I have an unexpected expense I have to move money from another virtual pot to cover it.
I love pay days because I get to send the money off to do different jobs.

I love the first day of the month too so I can have a look at all my pots of money I access Ynab through steam so I guess that's another place either could stop working? I think you can download it but never figured out how. Better figure it out before it disappears, I'd be devastated!