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.

Folks, most of my t'interweb access is via iPad/iPhone but do have a cranky old notebook that might last long enough to download the software...however do I need regulars access via the notebook or can I do what I need to do from the iPad?!

You need to set up/maintain your budget categories from your notebook, but you can enter whatever transactions you want through your phone or iPad app.

I'd say we fire up the PC version once a week or so, for moving bits and bats around, but almost all of our spending tracking goes through the apps.

Just spoke to DH about him not properly updating spending to find that an amount from 1 April was in his phone and the laptop but down as a transfer on my phone!? Anyone had this before? obviously synced a lot since 1 April and everything else looks ok.

Hi does anyone know if ynab is likely to come up on sale anytime soon?

Heeeelp

I'm an IT illiterate and I need some help!

A couple of questions ...
I started using YNAB about a week ago, and I entered my bank balance at the time. Now I've just been paid. Does it go on the budget as money for April or money for May? If it goes in as the latter, the payments I still have to make this month will show up as red ... so then what do I do to make sure the books balance?

Also, I had some cash in my purse when I started it, and paid for a takeaway from the cash. Do I log that as a spend, because it won't show up on my statement and so I can't clear it, or do I wait until the cash runs out before I start logging my spending?

Finally, I can't work out reconciliation. Any suggestions?

Heeeeelp ....

One of the main principles of YNAB is you only budget with money you have - and then you try not to spend more than what is in that 'pot'. That's great in America, where they are paid weekly - but here it's a little harder to manage.

Here's what I suggest you do - put all of the income into this month. Allocate the money that you absolutely need to spend for the rest of April to those categories. Hopefully there should be some money left over. If there is, note down the number, and go back to your transaction where you have the income as an inflow. Split the transaction between two categories so that the amount you need to last you until the end of April is income for this month, and the amount you had left over is income for next month. Then when 1st May comes round, you'll have a fresh amount of money to budget, and your books will balance for April.

Cash - there are different ways of doing this. I would handle your cash/takeaway by ignoring it. I track cash by having a payee of "cash", logging a transaction when I take some money out and then splitting the transaction between spending money/dry cleaner/handyman etc. I don't bother noting down what I actually spent the cash on, because that tends to be such small amounts that it makes very little difference to the overall picture, but then I tend to use cards most of the time. Other people have their wallets as accounts, and do a transfer from their bank account to their wallet rather than a transaction to a payee. From what you said, the cash in your purse wasn't logged as part of your starting balance - so you can forget about it, unless you want to adjust that?

I've just realised I wasn't clear on the cash thing - I said I didn't track it, and then said I split the transaction. What I meant was, if I take out £10 it might look like this:

£5 - spending money
£5 - house purchases

Those two are categories - so I allocate the cash to a category, not a payee if that makes sense. So I won't note down exactly where I spent my £5 spending money, or £5 on something for the house. I just know some cash went on those categories, and for me, that's enough detail.

Ohhhhhhh.

Thanks so much Callme. That's really helpful and has wiped out two of the things that were confusing me. Fab: back on it!

Oh yes! I'd just spotted your reconciliation question.

I think it's important to think what reconciliation is for - it goes back to checking your statement against your cheque book, and seeing whether all the transactions matched. That's what reconciliation is for - it's for checking you haven't made a mistake. I reconcile once a month for accounts with little activity - twice a month for current accounts.

I get my statement, either online, or on paper. I make sure the date of the balance I'm reconciling to is a few days before todays date, otherwise some transactions might not show (Lidl's bad for this - money goes out days after you've been there). I go to the account, and work through the statement, after putting in the statement date and balance into the reconciliation wizard. When I've checked each transaction is OK, I press "C" next to the transaction on the far right. If there's a problem I fix it. Hopefully, when I've done all that, there's no difference between the statement and YNAB, and at the bottom of the screen it'll say the account is reconciled.

However, sometimes it won't. YNAB will tell you how far away you are from the statement total. What I do next depends on how far I'm out. If it is a significant amount of money to me, I hunt it down and put it in. If it is pennies, I'll fiddle with a transaction to make it balance - life's too short to worry too much. There's also now a way of putting in a dummy transaction to make it balance too I think.

Anyway, when the account is reconciled you press the button that says "Finish Reconciliation" and the C's turn to lock symbols - that means the data is locked, and although you can change it, you can rely on it for reporting etc with confidence.

Hope that helps.

Thanks Callme: you've been so helpful. I was getting a bit scared to use it, but I didn't want to give up on it after all the good press I've read on here. I really want it to make a difference to us, so thanks for the support.

Hello
I've just downloaded the trial of YNAB and wonder if I can ask a couple of questions here?
First what do you physically do with the money allocated to all the different categories - does it just sit in your current account or are you supposed to move it to a savings account or something?
And what if you get paid say on the last Thursday of the month (today)and then tax credits/CB come in 2 and 3 weeks later - do you add them at the start or wait till they actually come into the account? And does today's pay go in May's budget as all the DDs come out on 1st of the month?

I'm intending to go through some of the tutorials at some point but want to get stuck in and started right away.

It's really worth doing the tutorials because it's a whole new way of thinking. YNAB doesn't care where you keep your money. It just cares where you spend it. So when you put an amount into a category that money just sits there in your bank account. you could move it to a savings account if you wanted to but you don't have to.

You then decide whether you have money to spend by looking at your budget not your bank balance. I currently have a ridiculous amount of money sitting in my bank account. Before I started ynabing I would have gone 'woohoo let's book that holiday'. Now I don't because YNAB tells me actually I need that money for something else. I can use it if I want but then I have to actually reduce the amount I have for the other thing.

does that make sense?

On the tax credits you need to wait until you have them. you can only budget with money you actually have.

Yes, do the classes and read the forums. I found out almost everything I thought about our finances was wrong. Especially regarding credit cards and paying them off each month.

We've been using it since November and it has transformed our finances.

However it does require a major mindset shift. I am so happy with it, but don't have many ways to tell others about it - so I'm happy to help on Mumsnet instead!

I have a section for Rainy Day/Irregular bills (like the 6 monthly water bills and saving for household maintenance) - I sweep that money into a savings account each month as I don't want a huge current account balance and like seeing a separate total for 'savings' versus money still to be spent in the month. But you could equally just keep it all in one account.

YNAB is ace - we've not dipped into our overdraft since we started using it in December whereas we would always hit the end of the month not quite even. We would look at our bank balance, do a rough totting up of remaining bills, assume the rest was for spending and then find we'd forgotten some irregular bills or underestimated how much was already waiting to come out in pending transactions. We're now completely on top of it and know to trust the budget rather than the bank balance.

Thanks Looks like I should book in for the web training sessions then. I've been trying it out a bit tonight and sort of see what's going on and getting a wee bit excited at the thought of having everything under control in a lovely spreadsheet! Looks like it will need a bit of discipline to keep purchases updated though, I usually just take say £50 out and spend it on whatever but I'll need to go through receipts and separate food, cleaning stuff, clothes etc if I do a big shop at asda for example.

I actually find it easier to put everything on debit rather than use cash much so that the exact amount for each transaction is easy to account for. With cash I do as callme does and allocate it roughly to categories but not worry too much about getting it right, because the bulk of my spend is via easily tracked debit card transactions.

It's completely transformed our finances too. The difference between the situation we were in just before Christmas and now is genuinely incredible.

Hi!

i just got the trial today, I'm struggling to get my head around it. Dh and I will be going through our bank statements for the last month to make sure we get everything down which doesn't get paided by dd.

really do the online presentations. they really help get the theory. Personally, I wouldn't stress too much about making sure you have worked out everything. the idea us that you 'roll with the punches' so adjust your budget if the unexpected happens. you'll be playing with the budget a lot in the first few months anyway.

I've signed up for the first class tonight

It takes a month or two to really get to grips with how great it is so stick with it, and do the tutorials. It's made a huge difference for us, just a few months in.

The hardest things for me at the start were deciding on the budget line items - some I have rolled up as they were too detailed and some others I've split out further - and setting a monthly budget. Know find that some budget items (e.g. Groceries) get carried straight over as the same amount each month and others (e.g. Childrens activities) are revisited each month depending in what events are happening in that upcoming month. 5 months in and I am able to predict my budget much more closely than I did at the start. Rolling with the punches is a great philosophy as it makes you feel much less guilty about going off track or having predicted incorrectly, and keeps you going rather than just stopping out of frustration.

Hi all - I haven't managed to RTFT so apologies if this has already been discussed...

Is it possible to password protect YNAB on the desktop?

Is YNAB useful if you have a very erratic income stream (self-employed) and a DH who is not likely to be very co-operative? I can access all the bank accounts online so can see what he's spent on - apart from cash, obviously. Is that likely to mess up the system or does anyone think it would be workable?

lucid - I seem to remember there were some security options. I haven't used them though so don't know the detail.

It's great for an erratic income stream. unhelpful DH more difficult. if most of his spends are on a card this is fine. if he's spending a lot in cash this might be difficult as you'd have no way of monitoring it.

Also YNAB is great but at the end of the day its a fancy spreadsheet. if your DH is going to ignore it and just spend money you don't really have it's not going to work really.