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.

Sorry about all the typos

My money coming in.
I just cant get my head around it.

Yes, thanks, oakmaiden I meant software updates.

YNAB article on variable income - it's definitely worth attending one of the free classes, there's an opportunity to ask questions.

Oakmaiden, YNAB is really designed to help people whose pay frequency is different from their bill frequency. A lot of US posters on the YNAB forum are paid weekly and thus don't have the money on hand to allocate to their monthly outgoings. The aim is to build up a buffer so you have a month's money on hand but this is a long term goal for many posters, especially since they may have debts to pay off as well.

And yes, I track cash. When I draw money out I record that as a transfer of funds from my current account to my cash account, and then as I spend the cash I record the transactions against the appropriate budget category.

Hi all

Not had chance to go through the whole thread properly yet, but just wondering if there's a Windows phone app?

I'd really like to give this a go, but DH doesn't think there's an app for his crappy windows phone.

There's a beta app that's been developed by an end user, it looks as if it was waiting to go into the app store (I don't know how long a process that is?)

Thanks, that looks promising then.

Is it worth doing it anyway, without DH having the app I mean? We have joint finances, I suppose it would mean him sharing the info from his purchases for me to input.

Well you can have YNAB installed on multiple machines in the same household, so you could both have the full app on your laptops (assuming you have two). Are most of your DH's transactions electronic? Do you have access to the online accounts for them anyway? If your finances are more separate, and he doesn't want the hassle of inputting a load of transactions at the end of the day, you could make his accounts off-budget for now, which means the money in them doesn't affect the budget. Not ideal if there's significant quantities of dosh going out that way.

YNAB finally seem to have got the hint from multi-platform apps like Evernote and I think are developing a web app, which makes sense given the budget lives in Dropbox, i.e. in the Cloud, anyway. This should make life a lot simpler for those choosing to indulge in niche software like Windows

Yep mostly electronic, and everything comes out of our joint account which I access every day anyway.

We have two laptops, (his is another Windows effort) but I have the iPad and an iPhone....and tbh, I do 99% of our finances so I think it's worth me getting the YNAB anyway and waiting for a windows app to eventually be released.

Thanks for your help! No doubt I'll be back with more questions

So it sounds like most of his spend that you couldn't easily account for would be cash? What you could do for simplicity for now is have a category called 'DH's Cash' and when he withdraws money from the current account you record that as a transaction with the category of DH's Cash. That way he doesn't need to record every cash transaction manually before the Windows app arrives.

Excellent, thanks trib

Thanks for the link to the article, tribpot. Very helpful.

Gah seems to be a problem with the YNAB site- all I'm getting is error pages

Yeah, I get an error saying "We're experiencing heavy load right now" - I've never seen it before so it should be okay again shortly, I suspect they may have underestimated the page hits their marathon set of classes would generate.

I'll try again tomorrow

It's down to £7.49 on steam now!

Wow! That is a serious bargain.

Only 9 hours left on that deal, what a fantastic price! BUY BUY BUY!

;)

(she said, in a flurry of consumerism that YNABers would not be proud of…)

I've just bought YNAb from Steam and have got started with adding my bank accounts. I have a query though:

I've been using the principle for a while now anyway and because my income is mainly cash, my savings are in cash in a safe in my home (grander than it sounds, £24.99 in Argos :D ). So I have a segmented money tin with catgaories such as 'car tax' 'mot' 'Christmas' 'Holiday' etc. Each has some money in them already - how to I add these to my YNab? Should I add them as 'off budget accounts'?

Oh bloody bugger I tried to DL Steam last night as well, but it froze three quarters through grrr

I'll be so cross if I miss it!

can somone help. trying to download onto pc but it refuses. said there was a faulty plugin in download manager which i removed and then installed a new download manager. now it says "experiencing heavy traffic, come back later"
got it to download on the laptop and played around with it a bit. Changed the categories etc. However, cant understand how to log transactions and get it to tally. I put in the transaction etc and then click the save button? It then says the transactions need to be cleared so clicked the clear button and then is asked if I wanted to reconcile but the reconcilitation didnt agree with the YNAB etc etc. I know I'n hopeless at this kind of stuff and I really want soemthing like this but I dont understand it

Phew! Managed to purchase it earlier through Steam, got to it 6 minutes before the offer closed

Sorry DementedMa, can't help with your questions yet- no doubt I'll be along with some of my own shortly

Dementedma, am away from home and on my phone, so can't really post links.

Sounds like you can't download the application, you need to contact YNAB for that.

You really need to work through some of the support videos, is the support site running again yet?

Clear is what you do when you've entered a transaction on the spot and now you're comparing it to your online banking and the transaction has been posted (ie the money has left your account).

Reconcile is what you do when you get your bank statement. You put in the final balance of the statement and it will compare this to the list of transactions you've recorded. If they're different amounts you know you've missed a transaction or recorded an incorrect amount.

Anyone who has downloaded the programme through steam, you only need to run steam once.

Steps to take if you don't want to have to use Steam each time:

1 Download the trial version from YNAB site itself.

1. Open your steam version and click the 'Help' tab.
2. Click 'About YNAB 4', it will bring up a box with the version number etc.
3. Click 'Copy Activation Code to Clipboard'.
4. Open the trial version you downloaded from YNAB.
5. Copy the activation code into the YNAB start screen.

Then, you'll be able to open YNAB without having to load the Steam client.

Flouncy with your situation, I'll give you an example.

You have a brand new copy of YNAB. Set up the categories as you want them.

Now, you need to enter your starting balance of each account you will have on balance.

Say you have 2 bank accounts:

Acct 1: Balance £200

Acct 2: Balance £100

You create those accounts in YNAB and put your balances in.

So far, so good.

But you have that cash sitting in your house, right?

Well, you can keep track of them in your budget, by creating another on budget account. Simply add up all the money in your safe:

car tax £30
mot £25
Christmas £100
Holiday £550

Total: £655

So, you enter the starting balance of your new 'account', which you can name 'Safe' if you want to, as £655.

Then, you create categories of car tax, mot, Christmas and Holiday

You'll have £655 Available to Budget, so give every £ a job.

£30 is given the job of 'car tax', £25 is given the job of mot, £100 is given the job of Christmas, £550 is given the job of Holiday.

It's as simple as that!

YNAB doesn't care where the money is, as long as it's all accounted for and none of it is budgeted twice.