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?

@JackieWeaversZoomAc aaah that must be such a nice feeling! I am two days in, eagerly awaiting my next payday so I can allocate away!

@JackieWeaversZoomAc that's so exciting! Well done you.

I do think YNAB stretches money. We aren't a high income family, at all, but because everything is broken down into discrete categories, it's so easy to see what's eating up the money.

I noticed our electricity costs were rising and started squirrelling away money to cover that. When I got my bill I was able to add another £600 to pay the increased costs.

Nice to see some new faces! I am still struggling with money but hopefully will be getting a salaried job soon and have a more stable income. Still using ynab.

Is there a point of having multiple accounts for budgeting plus ynab? I feel like I am doing too much work sending money to different accounts every month and then recording in ynab. I like ynab and think it might be easier to manage everything from one account but paying my bills and spending on shopping from the same account makes me nervous. Any help would be appreciated. I'm literally going round in circles.

I love ynab! Going to allocate my money today. I feel like net worth just going down though as had a holiday and car insurance to pay for. Keep reminding myself I’d be so much worse off without it!

Hi again everyone, I am two weeks in and keep hitting tricky bits I am not sure how to resolve.

plus side: I can see how this approach is already changing my spending. I feel poor on the first day of the month instead of rich and when my money is allocated it feels like I have spent it. So that is brilliant and really helpful.

downside: I am still struggling to understand exactly how to manage reconciling the bank and YNAB. Good example this morning. I had forgotten that I had set up a direct transfer from my current account into savings (before YNAB), so £300 went out of my current account into an unlinked one. I spotted it on my banking app and moved it back, but YNAB had already picked it up. I told YNAB to remove transaction (or ignore it, or something), but then it gave me £100 back to allocate - and I had already allocated it.
Also, I had trouble as the month rolled over. I have payments that come out as soon as I get paid (on 28th) which I have always counted as the following month. YNAB doesn’t like this so it looks like I overspent last month, but actually the payments came out of this month’s pay.

Any tips, videos or suggestions gratefully received. At the moment I feel like I am fudging things a bit!

Sorry, I meant it gave £300 back, not £100.

OK so what I would do in that case is not remove the transaction, but add an additional one for the money coming back in. Then categorise the transaction as "Savings account" or something. If you categorise both the outflow and inflow as the same thing, the effect will balance at 0.

I don't know why it's given you an extra £100. If you look on the web rather than mobile, you can see things like recent moves which will help you figure it out. It might also be that some category is now £100 (or £200? £300-200=100?) overspent which will reflect in To Be Assigned.

Another option is to add the savings account to YNAB, maybe as a tracked account rather than a cash account. Then you can just tell YNAB that was a transfer to/from X account.

For the payments which come out early, move the money from August back to July and then they won't look like they are overspent. Fund September 1st's transaction in August going forward. Consider changing the date of the transaction to the 28th to reflect when it actually comes out.

If you paid it on 28th July then it didn't come out of August's pay, because today is only the 1st, and you had to physically have the money in your account on 28th July. YNAB does not want you to allocate spending to paychecks anyway, YNAB wants you to think about having all the money you have right now today in a giant pile and allocate it into smaller piles. Having certain payments allocated to certain paychecks is more of a Mint or similar kind of budgeting mindset, which is a different method.

Because DH gets paid on the 25th and we have a few payments which come out on 28th/30th/31st, I do tend to "save" those, so for example the July 30th payment I only fund after the July 25th payday. I try to fund 26th Jul - 25th Aug with that 25th July paycheck.

Ideally according to YNAB you should fund the August 30th payment with the July 25th payday, but because we have some fairly beefy payments coming out on that day it's just not something I've prioritised.

There is no point at all and it will make your life harder. I do it because some of my income is actually belonging to my children. What I do is to have the account in my YNAB accounts, then a main category called 'Savings account'. I then make sure that the figure allocated to that budget category always matches the amount in the bank account. So, for example, if I spend £100 on something like groceries from the savings account, I would reduce the 'Savings' budget line by £100 and allocate it to groceries, so it reflects the actual situation.

downside: I am still struggling to understand exactly how to manage reconciling the bank and YNAB. Good example this morning. I had forgotten that I had set up a direct transfer from my current account into savings (before YNAB), so £300 went out of my current account into an unlinked one.

My first question would be why do you have an unlinked account?

Whatever happens in YNAB has to reflect reality. So if you transfer money to an unlinked account, in YNAB's mind you have paid someone £300 because it doesn't know about that your other account belongs to you. Therefore, that money is gone and you need to tell YNAB what you spent it on (which budget line to allocate the expense to).

I spotted it on my banking app and moved it back, but YNAB had already picked it up. I told YNAB to remove transaction (or ignore it, or something), but then it gave me £100 back to allocate - and I had already allocated it.

In your mind, you accidentally moved £300 into a savings account and then undid the move. In YNAB's mind, you spent £300 (so it wasn't available anymore) then you told it that it wasn't spent after all, so it gave it back.

You need to check through all your budget lines to find where that money has been over or under allocated.

OK so what I would do in that case is not remove the transaction, but add an additional one for the money coming back in.

That is, assuming that this is what happened IRL. (I think so because you said "moved it back")

If you just were able to cancel the transaction and it never happened, then deleting it from YNAB makes sense. But Lougle's explanation was right.

Also, I had trouble as the month rolled over. I have payments that come out as soon as I get paid (on 28th) which I have always counted as the following month. YNAB doesn’t like this so it looks like I overspent last month, but actually the payments came out of this month’s pay.

Again, YNAB deals with reality. You were paid in July, so on 28th July you were using July's money to pay July's bills. When you allocate your money in July, you're only saying 'This is what I intend to spend my money on'. It isn't fixed. Any money that hasn't been spent by the 1st August will move into the August budget and you can carry on from there.

I had this situation today. For some reason, some of my transactions that went out overnight imported as 31/07/23. Because DH got paid on 29/07/03 and I knew that the transactions weren't due until 01/07/23, I had allocated them in August's budget, so when they got imported with the 31/07/23 date, it told me that I was way over budget and needed to fix it. I simply switched the dates and it all resolved. However, had I allocated the money in July's budget, it wouldn't have been an issue in the first place.

Thanks both, and thank you for your patience 😁
@Lougle i had set up separate accounts to save up an emergency fund, money for my kids Uni and one other, that I have been trying to save into. This approach absolutely hasn’t worked for me - because I hadn’t been budgeting properly, I’d spend money early in the month (and allocate it into savings) and then realise later I needed it for something urgent (like car tax) and take it out again.

I know I should put it all into my current account and trust the system, but I wanted to give myself a couple of months of YNAB before I put all the cash into my current account. Meanwhile I have these other accounts, which mostly I am not using but which are causing problems. Maybe I should just import them all for simplicity.

What I am finding really odd about YNAB is that I have the same ‘I’m out of money’ feeling now, just after payday, with my full pay in the bank, as I normally do at the end of the month. Because I have allocated it all - and I know where it’s all going. It’s not burning a hole in my pocket like it used to.

And I have reached the heady age of money of (drumroll) 4 days 😂

@BlastedSkreet you have that feeling because you're not used to getting to the end of the month in one piece. Once you been doing it for a while, that feeling will turn in to 'Ahh, I know that all my bills are taken care of this month'. Because you're more aware of your spending, you will gradually prioritise more effectively and won't spend money on impulse or have so many unexpected expenses. Then, you'll get to the point that you start to pad out different categories, which means that when an unexpected expense does come (because it will), you'll be able to say 'Ok, I'll spend less on clothing this month' or 'Ok, I'll book my hair appointment next month instead', instead of having nothing to meet the expense with.

Can I join please?! This is my second month!

Welcome @Hugasauras

@BlastedSkreet - this has an official name "YNAB poor"!
I constantly feel YNAB poor because all my money has jobs, even when it's job is 'savings'. So I feel like I can't spend any of it!

Thanks for the suggestion @Lougle. Now onto tackling how to handle a credit card. Ynab is driving me insane here, I've had to remove it & pretend it's a checking account. I know the whole point is to get rid of the debt entirely but I still spend on my card & pay the min balance. I transfer what I need to pay for some things on top. E.g. when I pay Netflix, I add the extra cost to my min payment. So I get confused when ynab then allocates the £10.99 to available credit card payments. How is it still available I've just paid the bill?

It sounds like you're doing manually what YNAB is doing automatically.

You don't budget with the credit card, only your actual money. The credit card is just a vehicle of payment.

So, you can buy an apple on Monday and budget £1 to groceries, a coat on Tuesday and budget £40 to clothing, and a bottle of detergent on Wednesday, budgeting £3 to household.

Scenario A: you're paying out of a bank account. On Monday your £1 was paid, your bank balance went down by £1, and your available budget for groceries is £0 because you allocated £1 for the apple and you spent £1.

Scenario B: you've used your credit card. On Monday, your £1 was paid on your credit card. Your bank balance did not go down. Your grocery budget is £0 because you allocated £1 for the apple and that £1 has been transferred to your 'ready to pay the credit card' category.

At the end of the month, when you need to pay your credit card, you'll have a budget line 'ready to pay credit card' that totals all the transactions you've put on there that month, plus the budget line for the minimum payment.

But it will only do all this if it knows it is a credit card.

@Lougle oooh now that makes so much sense. Thank you. Even after watching the videos I just couldn't get my head round it.

It took me a while to get credit cards on YANB too. I do still use a CC but I pay the whole balance every month - if for no other reason is I don;t know what to do in YNAB if I don't 😊

Ag of Money - 92 days!

I am the definition of YNAB poor at this point in the month! DH was bemused when I said we had no money left in entertainment budget as we have way more in our current account than usual, thanks to YNAB. I had to explain it was all accounted for and if he wanted to take money out of the kids' Xmas fund or car maintenance to get a Subway then he could. He did not

Payday tomorrow so will get the dopamine hit of assigning all those pounds to jobs!

Aaah @Clefable i am exactly the same! Used to be I got paid on 25th ish, looked at my current account balance, felt rich and and went on a spending spree, then was clinging on from about the 8th of the month onwards waiting for the next payday.
This month I reached payday feeling broke (with 1.5k in my account 🤪), was paid on 25th, I allocated the money into September, I’m scrabbling around for a tenner here and there still in August so I don’t overspend this month! And all the while my bank account is at an all time high 😂

Such a turnaround for me. I can tell this is a massive breakthrough . I am being careful and thoughtful about financial decisions in a way I have never had the information / visual representation to understand before.

I feel broke but I am saving for a family holiday, a new sofa, music lessons for the kids, my car tax and insurance for next year - all things that normally blindside me.

I have four months of credit card payments left and then I will be able to use that money to pad out other categories.

But I still feel broke 🤣

YNAB broke is good broke!

I get paid last Friday of the month - and usually I've maxed out on most spending catagories and also have to resisit the urge to dip into the next month budget. I like the scrabble around when I have a full bank account.

Its a 5 week pay month ahead for me so I need to be extra careful on the grocery, personal spends & transport budgets.

New perfume for me or DD's new school shoes - keeps things in perspective. Having said that I do have a separate perfume catagory and I will have a new scent before Xmas.