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.

I'd second starting at the beginning of a month so that you don't get confused. I started mid-month and found it a bit weird - it was only at the start of the month that the benefits of YNAB became apparent to me and I had to unravel a bit of a tizzy I'd got myself in with it!

I'd spend the next week grappling with what you are going to include - all of your regular monthly payments plus irregular payments (car insurance, quarterly utility bills etc.) and any rainy day/one off stuff (saving for household maintenance, holidays and Christmas saving etc). Then you'll be able to start the month with YNAB knowing all the categories you need to allocate budget too.

Definitely start on February 1st. Don't try and do what most people (including me) do which is to try and create a 'history' from a few months ago to get you started - it will confuse you and waste your time. It's gone.

Start on 1st February with the starting balance in your account. Then from that minute on, every transaction gets entered into YNAB.

If you're a really neat person and can't stand the thought of transactions on the 1st February not being entered, you could start your account on the 31st with that starting balance, so that money which came in/went out on the 1st is all recorded in YNAB.

Actually I started mid month and it was fine - but I didn't try to backdate, I just allocated what money I had to what I know had to be paid. Most people buy the software pretty quick but if not the big reason to start at the beginning of the month is you get to do a whole month in the free trial.

I started mid-month too, Living - but we get income weekly, 4 weekly and monthly, so there is no mass influx of money at any one time.

I desperately need something to sort our/my finances out and have come here from the 'where does all our money go' thread. I haven't downloaded anything yet.

I get paid at the end of the month and DH in the middle. We have separate accounts (tried a joint account and got into all sorts of mess with it as - yes - we're not good at budgeting).

AT the moment we both have direct debits from our personal accounts to cover various bills - we pay a proportionate amount related to our salaries. The day to day stuff - food, kids expenses, fun stuff - is paid ad hoc whoever has been paid most recently. I always run out of money at the end of the month.

So my question is - does this only work if you have a single figure which covers the amount you both earn? And how does that work with managing your bank accounts if they are separate.

For example, DH has budgeted to spend £50 on a pair of shoes. He does this on the 14th of the month, the day before he is paid. We have budgeted the money, so it's available, but it's in my account - he has £10 left in his as he's about to get paid. So I would have to move money over to him. Do other people make it work in this way?

Hi Polly, you have options.

YNAB doesn't care where your money is. It can be stuffed under your mattress, in an old baked bean tin, in one bank account or three - the fact is that wherever it is, any money not already spent or committed to an expense is available to budget.

However, practically, if your DH only has £10 in his account, then if you budget £40 for a takeaway and use his account, he'll be £30 overdrawn, even if you do have the money between you.

So, your choices are:

1. Decide you're going to commit to budgeting and have one joint account. This is easy, because all your money is pooled.

1. List your accounts as separate Master categories, making sure that when you budget from them the Master category total is the same as your account balance for that account. This works (I do it) but you have to be very confident with maths processes to make sure that you're keeping up with what you're doing.

1. Use YNAB as you've described - you'd just record a transfer from one account to the other, just as you've actually done in real life.

The bottom line is that as long as you don't start allocating money that isn't in your accounts, then you'll be able to budget clearly with ynab.

You can have separate accounts on YNAB. I do.

You could keep your own personal accounts as "zero balance" (or close enough to avoid charges) and then transfer the money in as you need it.

I actually do have a teapot (with a lot of cash in it) as one of my accounts. Leftover from when I decided the way to save was to take out a lump sum in cash each month. :)

Thank you so much for answering - think I need to have a chat with DH about how this might work in practice. I hate the idea of pooling all our money but how we're doing it now is simply not working and causes me a huge amount of stress, not to mention the frustration of us seemingly having a decent amount coming in but quite often having nothing left in the last week of the month.

Polly good luck. I have just started a budget last week - we make a good sum of money but I have no idea where it all goes. One thing that I found I was never doing, because we are relatively well-off, is restrain myself from buying "small" things like a candle. I have never looked at the price of milk. I've always bought fair-trade artisan everything.

Now, having a small pool of money earmarked for groceries, for example, forces me to look at the price of milk & eggs etc - and now I have determined that we have been spending a small fortune on smoked salmon!

Just today the penny dropped for my husband because we have an uncharacteristically large sum of money in the bank and he called me and said: What's going on in our bank account? And then he get pretty excited about YNAB too.

You don't have to pool your money. You could, if you wanted, each have a budget, then have a shared budget. It would be a but of a faff switching budgets, but perfectly do-able.

I'm totally excited about it. We have done spreadsheets galore over the last few years always analysing what we have spent rather than looking at what we will spend. I am ashamed to say I have no proper grasp of how much disposable income we have.

Polly - the way DH and I do it is that we have personal accounts that our salaries go into. We then each keep the same amount each month (to cover all personal spending - social, clothes, personal DDs etc) and the rest gets transferred to a joint account. Spending for DCs all comes from joint account.

That way, we have our own money and have control over it, but we don't have to worry about subbing each other for bills as that all comes from the joint.

Obviously I'm not saying this is best for you but thought it was a way of each having your own money but also making managing the bills a bit easier together. DH is a massive saver, I am more of a spender. This way if I go into my overdraft it's for me to manage my way out whereas joint money is never affected by that, or if we go into overdraft then it is a joint decision and we have joint control over managing it.

FWIW, I only keep the joint account on YNAB - I have no interest in what he spends his personal money on so long as all joint stuff is covered and vice versa. I do actually use YNAB to run my own separate budget for my own account but as that money is ring-fenced from the joint stuff it's completely separate and I just do it to keep track of my own personal spending and things like saving for any particula things I want to do.

That's the key, Polly. Ynab is all about what you will spend. What is spent, is spent, and the only reason it's recorded is so that you can inform your future decisions. The focus of YNAB is 'give every £1 a job', even if that job is to be saved for future spending. Once you have the mentality that the £10 has been 'spent' on saving, then it's less easy to dip into it without thinking.

That's interesting Everton. Would you mind telling me what you class as personal spending?

My outgoings are far higher than DH - for eg I need smart clothes for work (he ca be pretty casual), have hair (he does not!).

For us personal spending is anything we spend on ourselves - clothes, hair, beauty, social, gym or exercise classes, contact lenses/glasses (we both wear them), books, magazines, music, gifts for each other. If we eat out together we will generally pay for it from our personal accounts unless we have enough in the joint to 'treat' ourselves.

We do occasionally put personal stuff through the joint account. DH wears suits for work whereas I work from home so wear casual. So when he needs a new suit we usually put that on the joint account as it's a much bigger expense than I would ever incur (but equally if I ever go back to being an employee rather than self-employed and need a suit for interviews then the joint would probably pay it)

I spend more on hair as he barely has any, but he spends more on clothes as he prefers pricier jeans to me! I think if only one of us wore glasses we'd probably put those on the joint account as that would be a big lopsided expense. We try to keep it roughly fair but allow each other the freedom to spend without having to discuss everything or sign it off. Recently we realised that DH was actually buying lunch every day with his money but I get to dip into the fridge which is paid for out of the joint account, so we allocated slightly more to his personal expenditure to account for that.

It has worked well for us for 11 years now - when we first moved in we kept more for ourselves (but always an equal amount each despite me earning a lot more at the time - now he earns a lot more but we still keep the same amount) but would often have to pool money for certain things and the joint account was mainly for rent and utilities, but as we got married, had kids and I had mat leave, went self-employed etc, it made more sense for the joint to be the main account for all sorts of bills and the personal to be really personal stuff only. So you could start small with just having a joint account for the key household bills and then settle at a situation you are both comfortable with.

Also DH has just had a week skiing - he saved up for it and has paid for it himself. So it's entirely his thing, I haven't had to pay half or find the money from other things in the joint account. I have done similar in the past - not skiing though as I am crap at it :o

Thanks Everton.

I'm planning to start this on 31 Jan when I get paid. So will spend the next few days looking at outgoings.

Sorry I haven't read whole thread as jet lagged and post nights! I posted a new thread but was directed here

Can you make it automatically do the bills etc or do you have to manually put them in every month?

How do you transfer from one account to another as I have various savings accounts (empty at moment!) and what to automatically transfer money into them.

Trying to reduce the debt I am in and get a grip on spending as need to save money.

Any help would be gratefully received x

I found the one on money savings expert easier but bought this one as everyone states how great it is but I am just confused!!

You can set up scheduled transactions. Not sure if you can do that for savings. YNAB doesn't care where your money is. I have to save for a big expenditure in March. Some of the savings are in my current account and some are in a teapot. So unless you are getting a good return (or worried about having it all in one account from a security perspective) it can sit in your current account.

Hi justtoomessy! Glad you found this thread

You can set up scheduled transactions to pay bills from your current account but you will need to confirm them (it pops up a reminder) before they are put against your budget for the month.

On savings I think you can set up automatic transfers under Scheduled Transactions as well to replicate any transfers you have between your bank account.

One thing to remember is that YNAB wants you to actively budget each month so those scheduled transactions don't automatically appear in that category each month, they just get set against it when they're paid. You need to use your Available to Budget figure to allocate money to each item. In practice for regular set amounts at the start of the month you can quickly copy the previous month's values to your new month's budget rather than laboriously type in each one. Somebody, lougle I think, explains this a few posts earlier in this thread.

It definitely is an active budgeting tool. If you want to be able to set up your budget, ignore it, spend as you like and then work out why you have no money, ynab isn't the answer.

YNAB is intended to help you make active decisions on spending. So if you get to week 3 of the month and need some groceries, but you've already spent all of your grocery money, Rule 3 in the YNAB method is "Roll with the punches" - get the groceries, but YNAB will make it clear to you that unless you forgo something else, you'll have overspent. Fine, if you've built a buffer of funds. Not so fine if you're down to your last £5 with no overdraft facility.

Having another go at getting g my head round this.
Never did get the drop box sync thing sorted outout but just using it on the PC.
I really hope I can master it as I So want to manage my money better

Right, may I join?

Just marking my place. But will come back and read.