Simple Question About YNAB

[krisskross]

Hello
I read about YNAB here and have downloaded the trial, and am getting v excited about taking control of our finances at last!!

But- One fundamental thing I dont get, despite watching the webinars.

MY DH gets paid on the 15th of the month. So (as we have not built up a buffer yet and not really sure we can), we need to pay for all our groceries from now until 14 April from March salary. However, looking at YNAB, if I input grocery shopping on 14 April, it seems it will automatically come out of Aprils income, which I dont want it to.

I think this is obvious, so I'm sure someone here can help.

Also- can anyone tell me where I can buy YNAB cheaper than 23.99?

Thanks everyone!!

ooh, one other v similar question.

We have loads of bills that go out between now and next pay day on 15 April. However, they also look on YNAB as if they will go out of April salary, but they need to go out of March salary, as they arrive before next pay day. So- even though they are dated April, how do i make them come out of YNAB on March income as that is how we'll have to pay them.

Does this make sense? Thanks

Sorry- one more question - my head is aching with this!

My march budget currently reads as having 2270.72 available to budget. However, my April budget says I am 63.99 overspent in march.

This doesn't make sense, as I entered this payment as a monthly recurring payment. In order to stop it looking overspent, do i need to manually input each monthly recurring expense as they go out of the account (even though I have entered them as monthly recurring expenses)?

Thanks again

Bumping...thanks

I'm afraid you've missed the fundamental point of YNAB. You budget per monthly cycles regardless of when in the month you get paid. It does seem weird at first but it works - and protects you from strange changes in pay day like before Xmas or in February.

There's a video about it on the support website, I'll see if I can find it.

This means you won't be able to budget for the whole of April until you get paid again in mid-April. That's okay - you can put the categories in but not assign any money to them until the income arrives. Or you can put the budget amounts in and have them turn red since there isn't enough cash on hand to pay for them, it depends whether you would find that psychologically hard.

Monthly recurring expenses will get added to the account on the due date, not sure I understand the rest of the question.

You can have money on hand and be over-budget at the same time. If you have cash you haven't allocated to a budget category, that's money available to budget. If you record more expenditure than you have budgeted for, that's how you're over budget.

Have you looked at any of the support videos on the YNAB site? You need to get into the swing of the four rules. Will get a link to those too.

Getting started

Step by step set-up

Top Ten questions from new starters

Mid or late monthly pay budgeting

Oh and in terms of April bills, you need to split the March salary in two - available this month and available next month. That will shunt a bunch of cash over into April's Available To Budget.

Thanks tribpot. I have watched the first video and Def Need to watch more to think thanks for explaining the monthly cycle....I'm still a bit stumped by being paid mid month but hopefully with time I'll get it! I'll try to find the webinar.

Thank you!

Ooohhh posted before I saw your other two posts, thanks this is really helpful.

Can I ask, how do I split the march salary in two...?

I've been considering this for AGES. £23.99 sounds good - where is this?

Split transaction

If you can attend a live class, that would be ideal - but they are timed for the States. There are some this weekend at civilised times if you use the drop down lists to look.

Thank you trib...your posts are really useful for me. When I'm more awake tmw I'll go through the details.

Sea of love.... I thought I'd seen it gor that price last week but I think I'm muddled as their support centre told me today that even in UK you pay in dollars. Mmm sixty dollars is alot but if I get to end of my trial and it works for us I'll buy it.

Yeah, $60 is around £40. DH thinks that paying any sum of money for budgeting software is a rip off, however useful the software is but I must sign up to the trial and do it anyway!

Steam is usually a cheaper way of buying it. However, I would agree with YNAB when they say most people have found they have saved themselves more than $60 within even a few months of using it, if not just in the trial itself.

The trial will tell you whether it will be useful - kudos to YNAB, it's a full-featured trial (rather than something limited so it's just trying to tease you into buying) and all of the support resources are free for anyone to look at, so you can review all the videos, attend classes etc without buying the software.

They are also pretty reasonable about upgrades - I will have to pay full price when YNAB 5 comes out, but I bought YNAB 3 only about two months before 4 was released, so I got a free upgrade, and I retained my YNAB 3 licence so I was also able to give that to another MNer to use.

krisskross, don't worry that you're struggling to get your head around the method, that's normal. Give it a little while to sink in and stick with it. You can always have a test budget you can use to try stuff out in, to see how this whole mid-month salary thing works over successive months. It's actually great to get to a point where payday doesn't matter (well, it matters that it arrives but not precisely when!) because you're thinking in terms of calendar months.

T hanks trib. The split transaction is great... Has answered my question and cleared up my confusion.

Sea of love.... On steam which trib linked to. It's £29.99 but I think I read that you only get the free upgrade if you buy direct from ynab and with steam you open the software through steam each time so might be a pain.

Ynab told me that on their forums you can be referred and get six dollars off.

Just wanted to echo what Tribpot says about YNAB - it has paid for itself for us many, many times over.