Does anyone use YNAB (You Need A Budget) and fancy a support/chat thread?

[lougle]

I've just got the trial version and I'm hooked, if not slightly overwhelmed. I'm currently in 'why is it asking me to budget so much money' mode.

I'm hoping that I'll really take off with it because it sounds quite life-transforming.

Put a file into Dropbox on your PC. Can you see it in the Dropbox app on your tablet?

Dropbox is a separate service from YNAB, YNAB just uses it to do the sync. So you can check that Dropbox is working without using YNAB to do so. This just reduces the number of things that could be going wrong.

If you can check Dropbox is working okay first, that would be good.

In the Android app, you should see a button in the top right hand corner that looks like a gear. Click that. You should see Settings. Half way down you should see Sync Method. Click that. You should see Cloud Sync. Click that. It should show you a list of budget files that the app is aware of.

I'll do some screenshots from my Android app now but will take a minute as I have to delete my account balances from the screenshots!

Thank you both very much.
trib the problem is I am not seeing that option in settings. That's what other people have suggested too but I don't have that as an option in settings

Wait! No, I do have that option but when I tapped cloud sync it said woops, you don't have any budgets to sync. But I do!

ok, deactivate the cloud sync on your budget. Then reactivate it.

Good, that's progress, dementedma. It means it can't find the budget file you've stored in Dropbox. Either because you're not logged in to the same Dropbox account, or it's struggling to find where the YNAB files are stored in Dropbox. Try deactivating and reactivating as lougle suggests.

Screenshots now redundant but since I've done them I've added a link anyway!

Thank you for the screenshots. I will need to do this when both PC and tablet are free to see if I can follow it.

Can I prepare this now to start using in future (obviously knowing this will eat my free trial)? I want to start properly when I get paid on 22nd but wondered if I could get started putting in regular payments etc now

You can set up scheduled payments, doodlekitty, in the accounts. So yes, you could enter all the regular bills in as scheduled payments with the next payment date.

You can start now Just set the account up with the balance as it is. Your current balance will be your 'Available to Budget' amount, so you can allocate that (remembering that if you like to save money, you can have a category called 'savings' and allocate money to that, even though the money won't leave the account), then every time you spend something, or something is debited from your account, enter it in ynab.

The biggest thing to get your head around, I think, is seeing '£0' as your 'available to budget' but seeing, say, £400 as your account balance. Because we're so used to thinking of 'having no money' as 'having a balance of £0'. In YNAB, it's not about 'having no money' but 'having no money available to budget.'

If you have £0 Available to budget, but you need to spend £10 on something, then you either go £10 over budget, or you deduct £10 from another budget category, so that your ATB goes up to £10, then budget that £10 to the area you want to spend in.

Fab thanks. Our problem is that our money just slips through our fingers in a tenner for this and 20 for that. Just got a shock when I checked bank before going shopping so I need to get things in hand

The method definitely makes you more 'mindful' about money. When you think 'ooh I'll have fish and chips for tea', then you have to decide which thing you'll sacrifice to have the fish and chips, it makes it much harder!

Just downloaded the free trial and got set up, I think - the test will be whether we can really be bothered to input all our transactions every day. Does anybody do this, but with quite significant budget allocated to "cash" for the terminally lazy? Would it still work?

Lougle, way upthread you mentioned adding YNAB4 to the steam wishlist to get a notification for any sales that come up (bit gutted that I've just missed one!) - but I can't see a wishlist button on there. Do I need to install steam first, to get that option? Thanks.

Just jump in, Doodlekitty. You can start from today.

Do you have a lot of transactions every day, Mmmango? You could ease yourself into it by not tracking individual transactions on your credit cards, but instead just recording the payment out of your current account when you pay each one's monthly bill.

We aren't in the UK, and use cash for almost everything. It seems like we have a choice between recording a withdrawal of 100 quid and not knowing the details of where we spent it, or recording every coffee/ bag of veggies, unless I'm missing something.

I think our categories are too complicated the way I've set them up now (e.g. separating toiletries from general household spending) - this has always confused me when I've tried budgeting, knowing how to categorise 'ordinary' spending that isn't regular bills.

I'm going to jump back in as well! Went on holiday for two weeks, spent a scary amount of money and then had to buy a new laptop! Still accounts reconciled now and whilst I'm not going to get as much paid off the credit card 'debt' as I'd hoped and its going to be a tight month I think we'll be ok (famous last words!).

Doodlekitty - once you get into it it's not that big a deal logging every transaction (if you have the app on your phones). DH and I also allocate a small amount of 'pocket money' each month that we just keep in our wallets separately. Then we're not having to worry about the pound here and pound there. You can make this bigger but then you're losing the ability to track what goes where.

I have a question on the buffer though as I'm confused. We get paid monthly. If I get paid on 20 Jan and is the buffer not needing to use that money for any Jan spending (so about 10 days buffer) or is it not needing to use it for any Jan or Feb spending (ie one month 10 days buffer)? Ic

Sorry mmango not doodlekitty! I'm curious - where are you? We're not in the UK either and have to make a lot of the bigger payments by cash too. We're in the GCC not sub-saharan Africa.so maybe not as bad as you.

Oh and we have been going for about two months now. You quite quickly work out what you need the categories for - we have a general groceries category and don't separate it put but have started to separate out the pet expenses (food etc) as that was getting high. I'd say try and keep it pretty general in month one. You'll fiddle with the budget enough as it is!

Downloading the trial as we speak. Does anyone know if you can use the apps with the trial?

Agree with Living - the categories need to be useful and not overhead. So I would dump groceries into Groceries and don't sweat what's household rather than food. If I buy clothes in the supermarket I will normally record that separately but otherwise I don't worry.

With cash you could maybe try recording whatever you've got a receipt for as an individual transaction and the rest as a lump? Or whatever you can remember or can note down straight after the purchase. Maybe as a voice note if not through the mobile app?

You can use the apps with the trial Doodle

Mmmango do you have a Steam account? If you create a steam account, then you can add things to your wish list.

With the spending, you can go hybrid So as long as you know what you've done, and the total coming out of your account with the bank tallies with YNAB, it doesn't matter how you arrive there.

Examples:

You withdraw £250 to pay for swimming lessons.

Your choices are:

1. Record the £250 as a cash withdrawal, categorised as 'swimming lessons' or 'extra curricular', etc.

2. Record the £250 as a cash withdrawal, categorised 'cash' or similar, but put a note in the 'memo' field of 'swimming lessons'

Now, you withdraw £100 and you know you need some groceries, about £30 worth, but you want to get extra money for general spending.

Your choices are:

1. Record the £100 as a cash withdrawal. Don't record any spending.

2. Record a split transaction, with £30 categorised as 'groceries' and £70 categorised as 'general spending' or 'cash'.

3. Record a split transaction, with £30 categorised as 'groceries', £70 categorised as general spending, then update the split categories as you spend it (not worth the effort IMO).

The fact is, that once it's gone, it's gone. As long as it's gone from your account and YNAB, the only difference between the choices is how much 'trackability' you want in your spending.

Living the buffer, in reality, is not to have to spend the money you get on 20th January for February's spending. That's because the idea is to have a month's worth of spending 'in hand', so that if you didn't get paid for some reason, you'd have a month's grace to sort it out. So if your wages normally pay the following month's bills, then your aim is to have January's salary paying March's bills, so that February's salary is 'spare'.

Doodlekitty, yes it's a fully functional trial, and if you decide to purchase it, you simply enter the activation code from your purchase and carry on as normal.

That's what I suspected lougle I don't get how people get there in 3 months as suggested on YNAB! I think we'll work on the smaller buffer and then concentrate on building savings. Same thing in a lot of ways.

Ok, I'm up and running but a bit confused. When I go into my budget screen for feb I can pull through my budgeted expenses but not my budgeted income, so i cant really allocate funds. Am i missing a button somewhere?

Well YNAB doesn't work like that, Doodlekitty. It works on the principle of only allocating money that you actually have.

You can do it - you can enter a future transaction, and it will show as available for the month that you've entered, but it will throw your account balance off.