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?

Trips are very hard to budget for! I always under budget for food and drinks etc and over budget for entertainment.

Food has got really expensive in the UK since we were last there so definitely on that front.

Hi all, I am new to YNAB and, though I have watched a bunch of videos I am still a bit confused! I only have a couple of hundred left in my bank account this month, payday on 28th, but even though I have told it the dates payments are due, it is saying I am 3k short! I actually don’t have anything more I need to spend till payday, when I planned to start using it properly, to allocate my salary into the pots.

it doesn’t actually link to the bank account in terms of spending the money and paying the bills, right? It is just a way to keep track of it?

So say I allocated £100 per month to Christmas gifts from January to the following December, what would happen is that money would accumulate in my current account?

@BlastedSkreet you need to look at the videos again. You should only be budgeting for expenses that will come before you next get paid. So using rule one 'give every dollar (pound) a job' - what does that £200 have to do for you in the next 11 days? Everything after the 28th will be budgeted out of your new money. You only need to think about this money.

Having said that, you do need to be mindful of yearly expenses, ad hoc expenses, etc., and budget for them.

For example, we get DH's wages at the end of the month and universal credit mid-month. I have to be conscious of the fact that DH's wages don't cover all of our direct debits for the month (because they're all scheduled at the beginning of the month), so I have to make sure that I budget forward some of the UC for the next month.

Once you're in a cycle, it is second nature, but you have to really think at first.

"it doesn’t actually link to the bank account in terms of spending the money and paying the bills, right? It is just a way to keep track of it?

So say I allocated £100 per month to Christmas gifts from January to the following December, what would happen is that money would accumulate in my current account?it doesn’t actually link to the bank account in terms of spending the money and paying the bills, right? It is just a way to keep track of it?"

You can link it to your bank account so that all your transactions are automatically imported. But no, if you put £100 in Christmas gifts, nothing disappears from your bank account. It will all just sit in your account, waiting to be spent.

A big example would be paying for a cruise. You may have a bank balance of £10,000, but £8500 of it is allocated to 'summer 2024 cruise', so you only have £1500 to distribute between all your other categories.

Thanks @Lougle and thanks for coming over here to help me too!

Yes I am living paycheck to paycheck at the moment. I have deleted July’s payments and reset them up for August.

As my current account is linked to my YNAB account, will my pay automatically be added to the ‘inflow’ box, and become money I am able to allocate? And, say I spend £5 in a coffee shop, as YNAB will see that, is it clever enough to tag that as ‘eating out’ or whatever and take it from the right category, or do I need to do that like reconciling a chequebook?

The money will automatically come in as an inflow. You'll need to assign it as 'Inflow: Ready to assign'. Outgoing transactions will automatically import too, but you'll have to assign them to a category. You can set it up to automatically assign certain payees to certain categories. It will also gradually learn what category applies. But you do have to keep an eye. For example, I have 5 petplan policies, and it sometimes assigns them all to one pet, so I have to separate them out.

Brilliant, thank you.

I can see this is a totally new way for me to think about money, and I think it will really help me to stop the ‘woohoo! It’s payday’ spending. I can see myself getting a bit obsessive over it!

Thanks so much for your help. I have just successfully allocated a credit card payment as a transfer #winning!

Woohoo!

When you said it was saying you're 3k short, is this because you'd assigned 3k to categories even though you don't have the 3k yet?

And when you say you've moved all July's payments to august, what do you mean - have you entered the transactions (with the right dates?) or allocated money to categories, or created category goals starting in August?

It is quite addictive to tinker with your budget all the time! I find this wears off over time but it's still useful anyway.

Thanks for being excited with me @BertieBotts 😁

I have created the categories (for eg life insurance payable on 10th of month) and added the goals (like save for holiday) in August. Haven’t allocated any money yet to those though as I don’t really have much till payday.

in the current month I have deleted all the allocated goals for each category that I had already paid, but I have allocated money to fuel, eating out and groceries between now and the end of the month. So YNAB says I have £100 left to allocate, but I have over 200 in my bank account.

I can see it will really help me as it sort of gamifies budgeting. It makes it clear where you can spend, but alerts you to where you are overspending. I also really like the idea of growing my age of money!

I wonder how long it might take to get to the magic 30 days 😁

I'm only at 22 days and I have been using it for about 4 years - sorry! - I think it gets a bit broken with a monthly pay cycle, as it's designed for Americans who generally get paid once every 14 days.

Or we are just rubbish at this maybe. What I do find really motivating is the net worth graph, and other graphs. If you've got a computer or tablet, look at it on the desktop site as that is really good and if you use Chrome, install the extension YNAB toolkit once you've got used to the basics. It gives you more reports and some other options.

I would urge you to assign that last £100. If you don't know what to put it into, put it straight into next month, or Christmas/holiday, or start an emergency/unexpected expenses fund and stick it in there. I tended to find that about £100 a month was the right amount to put in that. We used it most months. After about a year, I'd collated all of those expenses into their own categories - so we have stuff like car tax, which is yearly, bank account fees, DS1's school supplies etc etc, but also things like "phone replacement" "appliance upgrade" and I put a goal on them with a date and rough amount. But don't do that yet, a catch-all emergency fund is more useful as you'll be part way through the year for some of your yearly goals and that makes it harder to catch up.

Age of money is about the age of the money that was used to fund the last 10 transactions. That means it can change rapidly. If your last 10 transactions were all 99p, you could be using money from last month. If you have your big transactions such as rent, utilities, etc., in your last 10 transactions, you're much more likely to be using this month's money, until you are working a couple of months ahead.

@BertieBotts
Why is it a good idea to allocate that last £100? Is it so I don’t spend it?

I know how it works, I just think it's a bit gimmicky TBH, and you should be able to change the number of transactions that feeds into it. I tracked it for a while in a separate excel sheet and found that it would cycle throughout the month and go up higher before payday and then lower about a week or two afterwards - I think as you say because we were using the money we'd just received to pay loads of expensive bills that were all scheduled at the start of the month.

Days of Buffering which is a toolkit one is better, but it doesn't seem to work for me at the moment.

It's rule 1. Give every £1 a job. That £100 might have the job (category) of 'not sure what to spend this on yet' but by putting it in that category you've made a decision. Then, if you spend more on groceries than you intended, you can move the extra £5 out of that category into groceries (Rule 3 - roll with the punches) and next month you might allocate an extra £5 to groceries at the beginning of the month (Rule 2 - embrace your true expenses). By consciously deciding how to spend your money, you'll establish your priorities and rule 4 (age your money) will take care of itself.

@BertieBotts I agree. I love the YNAB toolkit. Little tweaks like running total are so useful.

You can still spend it if it's allocated. But you are less likely to spend it without thinking. You're not thinking of it just as free/spare money.

To Be Assigned is not a proper category and should never have money left in it, you should always try and keep it at 0. If you have money sitting in TBA then it can do odd things like when you overspend it masks this so you don't immediately notice, and then you get into trouble later on.

I think running total is native now. But yes, things like that!

So the aim is to have zero left to allocate?

i feel like I want some buffer in there just in case of unexpected expenses between now and then.

But now I am guessing it’s just that sort of thinking that will keep me living hand to mouth! My instinct is to have some still free to allocate as I still have 9 days till payday! Although I don’t have any expenses expected!

Thanks @BertieBotts and @Lougle for your advice and patience with a newbie!

Create a buffer category, or unexpected expenses, or "things I forgot to budget for" and put it in there.

Yes, this is a really good idea to keep some aside in case you need it. Just don't keep it in to be assigned :)

Yes, absolutely agree with @BertieBotts . You can have as many categories as you like, so you can have one for 'just in case I fancy a coffee', 'emergency fund', etc. You have the flexibility to move money in and out. So if you underspend groceries, you could move the surplus into a different category.

Think of the extra categories like metaphorically shoving the money under your mattress for a rainy day. It will sit there quite happily, but it won't be burning a hole in your pocket like it would in the 'to be assigned' category.

Ok, that makes so much sense. Thank you both.
Is it usual to be really excited to get to payday and start tucking money away into all these categories? I am so excited for next Friday 😂

Since you are both here and being so helpful, can I ask another? I have a separate account (but with the same bank, so very easy to transfer from one to another) for ‘Emergencies’ which I have been trying for about a year to build into a few months salary. I have also set up a category for that in YNAB.

I planned to build it up (in my current account) by allocating it in YNAB and then move it across into the emergency account when I have accumulated, say 5k. Is that what you do? Would that upset YNAB or be ok as I could label it a transfer, like I did with paying off the credit card? Or in order to do that should I import that account into YNAB too?

YNAB is designed so you don't need emergency accounts. You'd just have a category called 'emergency fund' that you don't dip into.

However, if you really want to have another account for that, there are two ways of doing it.

1. Keep the account off YNAB but when you transfer the money it will have to be recorded as a payment, as if the account isn't yours. This option means that you have to remember the money is in the other account, and if you wanted to use any to boost your budget, the account would have to pay you the money again because YNAB doesn't know it's your money.

1. Add the account to YNAB, then in your budget line have a main category called 'Account 2' that reflects the amount of the money in that account. It's doable, but a bit of a pain because you have to absolutely make sure that the total in that budget line matches the total in the account, or it throws the entire budget out.

I do 2 because I get disability income on behalf of my children and want to be absolutely sure I know where it goes, etc., but I do have to keep on top of the balances. For example, I've bought DD1 some noise-canceling headphones today. That would normally be a 'household' expense, but because I have a separate category for the account I paid for it with, I have to ensure that if I allocate the expenditure to household, then I have to move the same amount of money from the second account's category to the household category, otherwise my ready to assign will be £190 down on reality and my second account will be £190 up on reality.

You'd be better to trust the system and keep the money all in one account.

YNAB win for me today - I'm about 3 years a YNABer now and Age of Money currently 80 days. I went over 100 days once, and then went on holiday and it dropped.

Its car service & MOT day today. I need 2 new tyres, replacement brake pads and discs, service, MOT etc. Woman from garage calls with the apologetic voice and I'm yes yes yes, do the work no problem. My auto repair and replacement tyre budgets are fully funded and I am ready to go.

Its such a good feeling. Such a different place to be in than in the past pre YNAB. I read about the additional cary tyre budget a couple of years ago and thought that was a good idea to have on top of general auto repairs.