Anyone interested in a YNAB chat/support thread?

[OrangeBlossomsinthesun]

Hi,

I wondered if anyone was interested in a YNAb thread to chat about progress and help each other. I've just started the trial period a couple of weeks ago and, although it's quite a steep learning curve I'm really impressed with it.
I'm freelance so it's important for me to track money and be prepared for fallow periods. I had a thread here with some great advice. I'll add it as there are some good links www.mumsnet.com/Talk/legal_money_matters/4327812-YNAB-help-for-a-freelancer?watched=1&msgid=110514876#110514876

Anyone up for some YNAB chat/support?

Just a question about the Age of Money report. Does anyone use this as a useful tool? I was hoping to get this up to the magical 30 days to show me that I am funding everything a month ahead.

BUT my AOM number has not moved for a long time! I seem to be stuck on 15 days even though I have been careful on spending and checking it regularly. I am not the most mathematical thinker but I think I get the idea of it averaging out recent spends.

Any ideas on this? Anything I can do to get the number higher? Or should I just ignore it and focus on net worth or another report?

Mine does that, climbs towards maybe as much as 20 days (12 atm) and then nose dives when I have to pay out loads at the beginning of every month. But I am also still not funding anything much past immediate obligations so that makes sense.
I'm just concentrating on covering what I need to without using credit and slowly slowly beginning to cover some long term expenses even if it's only a tiny bit.

I've just downloaded the toolkit for ynab for chrome but not used it yet.

Thanks. Please can you let us know what you think of the toolkit and if you find any more useful bits than AOM? I do like a nice graph or number to aim for!

Age of money is a bit of a gimmick. Also I think it works better if you don't have a monthly pay cycle. If you get paid once a month and have most direct debits set up to go out in the week or so after payday, it will just bounce up and down. As I understand from Reddit, most Americans get paid fortnightly and they are all deathly afraid of direct debit, so money goes in and out throughout the month.

Are you actually funding into next month? That is what I was aiming to do, before we had this current cashflow situation. That gives you something concrete to aim for.

Thanks for that. I get paid fortnightly, and so I suppose with a 15 day AOM I am officially not living paycheck to paycheck any more.

I am not yet funding anything into next month. I think my general outgoings are too high for that, as I rarely get to fully fund my true expenses for the current month tbh.

Maybe I will have to look into reducing my quality of life and goals categories, so I can start funding the following month at some point. It’s positive in that I am more aware of my finances, but it is all a bit of a depressing wake up call still!

Yes, so I wouldn't rely on AOM to tell you when you're funded into the future, you either want to work out how much money you need for an emergency fund and build that up, or you want to physically budget the money into the next month. BTW, I'm coming up to my second full year of YNAB and we are not there yet. I've just about got a handle on true expenses, we paid off one of the overdrafts, and I had an emergency fund first of around €100 (which I would spend and rebuild almost every month/every other month!) and then of €1000 (!!!) then we currently have a blip due to non payment of maternity/paternity pay but that will be rectified soon.

I don't think getting a month ahead is necessarily the first goal you should aim for. It will be different for everyone.

I think it just takes ages to get things under control and cover your immediate stuff and then start with true expenses. But at the same time I think these few months are months I have made (slow) progress that I wouldn't otherwise have made.
I didn't really understand my financial situation before and now I do and it's a bit depressing and slow to improve but it is improving incrementally by doing this.

It's definitely better. We spent the first year treading water but every year before that in our married life we sank further and further into debt. Second year I think we will actually see a net gain.

I'm watching this now. I've added days of buffering but it's a bit depressing hahaha, I might remove it. Have changed the colour of the current month and made it easier to switch between my family and business month. Nick True has just said in the vid that he doesn't bother with AOM, he just concentrates on how far ahead he can budget.

Still lurking. I've fallen off the ynab wagon but updated the worst yesterday. I'll finish the rest today. You'd think I would have learnt from last month. I'm just spending without ynab in mind...but then I still have zero fun money allocated so keep moving money into those categories. Eg I just bought for the boys some baker Ross Christmas crafting bits but nothing in their category

I think it's really hard at this time of year. I bought DD some wireless headphones in a black Friday sale for her birthday in January. I'm sure she'll like them, and they were an amazing deal but they were still £54 and my birthdays and celebrations category is now in the red. I might send them back.

Oh that would be a shame. Can you cover it at the end of the month? I think that's technically stealing from the future, but....

I'm having a really slow month (freelancer) so I think I won't get as far as I wanted to in covering true expenses, but I am doing better than I would normally be doing at this time of year, and I am so much less stressed.

I think I can get the thing DS wants on amazon black friday for 100 euro instead of 160. Can spread the payments interest free so might od that too.

‘Better than I would normally be doing’ is where I am at too, and I am trying to see it positively! Money is often transferred out of true expense categories but I am staying away from amazon and black Friday deals as there is no money for them.

@Justanotherquestioner keep going with inputting your transactions! 😊

I got a bit behind with mine too. I'm trying to work out if I can flog some furniture back to Ikea for Green Friday but I need my Ikea Family card number and it's rubbed off and I can't read it. Considering going to Ikea to sort it out (it's nearby).

Not going to lie, I have some money coming in tomorrow and have already input it today to cover some reds!!

I've just done a balance transfer on my credit card to hopefully save on some interest

How's everyone getting on?

I haven't made much money this month and probably won't make much next month as things will slow down with Xmas and so on.

So, things will be tight, what with Xmas. But I will also be past come of the long term expenses that I wasn't prepared for when I started iyswim? There were a few that came up as soon as I started YNAB and so I had nothing put aside for them

Doing ok just now - my income is very steady but outgoings have been big the last week or two. So a good bit of wamming going on and I’m hoping to have a quiet week coming up with no extra outgoings. That’s the plan anyway - but as ever real life has a habit of getting in the way of my budget

I'm very pleased as we got our bank payment of the parental money and I filled up all categories to January which is when DH will start getting paid his normal wage again.

Then I bought a tumble drier and DH bought a fancy computer monitor in the black Friday sales :o oops!

It's fine but we're now only filled to the beginning of January and not the 20th! I'll have to be careful.

That’s amazing @BertieBotts, I’m so impressed at you filling up to January! I am no where near that at all and yet still feel more on top of my finances than before.

Well we got 2.5 months' pay at once and have no income except child benefit until the end of Jan, so it was necessary. Thank goodness for YNAB though - previously I'd have had absolutely no sense how much that lump sum would cover, it felt like a fortune.

@BertieBotts

Well we got 2.5 months' pay at once and have no income except child benefit until the end of Jan, so it was necessary. Thank goodness for YNAB though - previously I'd have had absolutely no sense how much that lump sum would cover, it felt like a fortune.

Totally agree! What I really like about YNAB is that I can see at a glance what I need money for and when. I just found it so complex before to try to work out if I had enough money, especially with having an irregular income. Well, it looks like I am going to be able to roll over 25€ this month!!!! And pay 100 more off my credit card debt. And I've got Christmas under control. There's no way I'd have managed that without YNAB.

I've just done the income v expense report for this calendar year, and we've spent £1200 more than we've earned. This isn't surprising, there's been a lot of expenses related to DH car and he was on furlough for three months. Still feels a bit depressing, but to echo a few recent posts - without ynab that would be so much worse.

To cheer myself up, I looked at the net worth report. We started using YNAB in November 2013, and since we started our Net worth has increased by 48%. I only include cash and personal debt in that, not our mortgage or house. That puts it in perspective - it's not like we've done nothing majorly spendy in that time, we've put in a new boiler, repaired a roof, had the garden done and bought two cars outright.

I'm not trying to show off, and I hope this post isn't out of place on this thread - I do feel for posters who are where I was in 2013 - but the system does work, stick with it.