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?

Yes, you can link multiple accounts - I have my current account plus a savings account which I keep off-budget by having it as a tracking account (thanks to @BertieBotts for explaining how to do this!), so I can transfer in and out of it like it's a payee. You can have your multiple accounts all on-budget.

You can also have multiple budgets in your YNAB account - if you look in the top left of the screen where it says My Budget, there's a drop-down arrow where you can add New Budget, so if you prefer you could have a separate one for your husband's new business.

Oh that's fab news, thank you @WouldBeMrMicawber. It would be useful to use for the business I think, so that's very good to know.

I've set it up! It's very clever. Just transferred our outgoings from an existing spreadsheet then need to get DH to link his accounts tonight and we are good to go. Still need to properly get my head around some of it...

@FranktheElf multiple accounts are fine. If you want them all to feed into your budget, you'll have to add categories for them so that the amounts tally.

Yes it works really well for set ups like this.

On the reddit sub they generally say if you are going to do business expenses, have a business specific budget. You can have I think unlimited budgets and swap between them as much as you want. You can even have two budgets open in different tabs.

So I think I'd have your main budget which is joint, current, loan, DH's 2x accounts.

And then a separate business budget with just the business account.

If you make payments from the business account to one of your accounts, it's just an outflow to <name> on the business budget, or an inflow on your main budget from <business> and vice versa.

I don't have specific categories for different accounts. I think you'd get tied up in knots trying to do that. Keep them separate.

Fabulous, thank you everyone. You are all so knowledgeable!

@BertieBotts if you don't have specific categories for different accounts, how do you know you have enough money to make a purchase? Without specific categories, if I have £300 in one account and £150 in another, but I want to make a £400 purchase, my available balance would say I can make the purchase, but either card would be declined. Do you check your available balance and your account balance before you make purchases?

Not for every purchase, though if I was planning to spend 400 yes I definitely would! But we are not right at the bottom of our overdrafts any more so it's rare that it would be a problem. If I notice the balance of one account getting a bit perilously low then we just transfer money from another account to make sure it doesn't cause a problem.

One of the things I find really good about YNAB is that it effectively lets us pool all our money while ringfencing individual funds.

Ah ok, I understand now. I think I do similarly, I just like to keep my balances clear in my budget, too.

@Lougle I've set up two categories for direct debits, as some go out of our joint account and some from DH account which can't be changed (we have to pay a fee to change our home and car insurance payment account, so not worth doing!). So hopefully that will help with knowing what we can spend from what account. In theory only the money to cover the direct debits should be in DH account and general spends from our joint one but we're in a bit of a mess at the minute. Once we're further down the line hopefully I can revert back to just one category for it all like @BertieBotts does

On the web you can view the running balance, and look at the future transactions to see if the account is going to dip into the red any time. I check a couple of times a week, but I'm generally ok with having enough money in the account.

I have a category for each direct debit type payment, so that if the amount changes it's not confusing. Do you mean you have a master category covering each account? (It doesn't matter, I'm just curious!)

Yes sorry I mean master category, then added individual categories within this for phone bill, council tax, water bill, for example.

Ah yes that makes sense. Honestly not a bad idea for how to arrange them. You can always move them around later anyway, as you said. I started off with them arranged as monthly / weekly / irregular / yearly etc. Then I decided that wasn't very useful for reporting so I changed it to a wants/needs based system for the master categories.

Hi, I’m restarting for 2024 and I have a question which I can’t seem to explain properly to support desk…

I have n overdraft facility on my account but YNAB seems to think that that’s ok to count as Inflow. I can reconcile the account easily but YNAB doesn’t seem to see that using the overdraft facility will take me into the red. So it looks like I’m Real Life broke (true) but YNAB ok!

I don’t want to get rid of the facility by the way, I just don’t want YNAB to use it up and tell me that it’s ok.

Also I don’t really get the working balance - what does that mean?

Yes, we get money twice per month, so I have a 'Direct Debits 1st half of month' master category, then a 'Direct Debits 2nd half of month' Master category. That means that I can auto assign the amounts easily when one set of money comes in.

Then I have a Master category for savings account 1, and a Master Category for savings account 2, and I just make sure that the total amount assigned to those master categories matches the amount in the relevant account. That means that my 'available budget' is entirely made up of our main account, which is where all the day to day living expenses come from.

Did you set it up with the negative balance? If it has a £500 OD facility, then if you are £350 into the OD you are -£350. Your available to balance should be red when you start with -£350, and any spending you do should take you further into the red.

This is a good video to explain how to work with overdrafts https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7O-vG-bkhGc

I have a workaround I did for overdrafts, I'll explain it tomorrow, I am going to bed now. I don't like how YNAB handles them natively. I think in America your normal bank account can't go overdrawn, so they seem to see it as a kind of anomaly, which doesn't work if you're routinely using it - which we absolutely were and now aren't.

Before ynab closed their support forums, there was a really good UK overdraft method posted. I've found the same poster on reddit with the same explanation.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ynab/comments/92d8jp/uk_users_how_are_you_dealing_with_your_overdrafts/

It's always got rave reviews.

I've found my people! flipping love YNAB - its the only app I've ever paid for!

I haven't been using it for long, but my goals for 2024 are:

• Try to fund as many categories as possible a month ahead - almost all subscriptions are now funded one month ahead, and next I will work on groceries
• Get rid of or at least drastically reduce overdraft

I've been using YNAB since September 2023 and I think I've finally nailed it!! Master categories set up to mirror accounts and 2024 sinking funds already partially funded. Feel like I'm winning!

I'm on year 3 of YNAB I think. I've cleared all debt and am constantly in the black now.

Financial goals for 2024 -

Actually renovate the bathroom (I've been fully funded for a year but its the technical/work/choice aspects of the renovation holding me back).

Focus on funding a big/expensive trip the DC & I need to take in 2025 to visit family in NZ.

Wish Farm - I will need a new (to me) car in a couple of years so I would like to put some actual ££ in a wish farm for this.

Hello! Do you treat it as another loan sort of, and set up a separate account?

I have mine on there as a loan, and that seems to work.