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?

This is a very late response, but in case it still helps. It sounds like what you did is started on (eg) 5 March, with your starting balance from 5 March but then included your mortgage etc expense from 1 March. If you backdate (which I wouldn't as it gets messy and there's no need) then you also need to backdate your starting balance and then allocate budget to the mortgage payments you've already made.

How's it going? Spent a bit of time this morning checking my categories and ended up having to manually reconcile as I think I input some figures incorrectly somewhere along the lines. However my categories now have the same in as the equivalent bank accounts etc so I think I should be ok going forward 😊

Somehow my age of money is at 26 days and I should be able to fill all of next month's expenses when I get paid next Friday.

I think not connecting my accounts is better for me at the moment... means I have to take a few minutes going through my expenses every day.

I got paid yesterday and it's going very well. Helped along by doubling my hours after Christmas though. 😊I honestly believe that having YNAB manifested my new job. 😂

Last pay cycle I WAMed a lot less, and when I had to pay a group holiday deposit sooner than expected I already had £50 in my holiday fund and "borrowed" the rest from my Christmas category. (Now repaid) Before YNAB this would have gone on a credit card, and before Christmas this would have been WAMed from the grocery/petrol funds.

I woke up at 3am shortly after the salary appeared in my bank and couldn't get back to sleep so I sat in bed and allocated all the categories.😳 I started with the ones I normally pay from my salary, then paid a few smaller ones that come out of my partner's salary, then I ran out of categories so I started funding a few categories I play by ear and WAM to such as school holiday spending and eating out. I still have £20 in the buffer category. Now I'm really looking forward to my partner moving his money into the bills account so I can do it again. 😂

As I mentioned previously, my employer is moving my payday from the 15th to the end of the month in April, and I am very confident we are going to be ok even though I've not worked out the maths. I've moved all the standing orders and direct debits. So in theory it should just be childcare, food, and petrol/bus that I have to find extra for. Childcare I'm ahead of anyway as I now allocate that all on payday instead of scrambling through the month as and when. Partner still gets paid on the 15th so we can use his salary more heavily that part of the month. Also, I can WAM/borrow from the sinking funds. Pre YNAB I think I would have just stuck the groceries/petrol on the credit card and crossed my fingers.

Also, just wanted to add, that I've been using YNAB for 6 months now. This month is the first month I've really used the auto-assign function to assign last months or the average 3-month spend to a category. Especially to ones that vary wildly month to month such as transport or school holidays spending. It's a good starting point and stops decision fatigue.

I can't wait to get paid so I can assign!
I started this month and it's either the worst time of the best time however you look at it. I've got a really expensive month coming up in April with 'true' expenses I've known about for months and months but not out a penny aside for them.
This month I've cut back hard and will end the month out of my overdraft (yay!) but no matter how I cut it next month I'll be back in.. albeit right at the end and probably a couple of days before I get paid rather than most of the month which I have been before.
So.. it's been a win so far as such and it's nice going into April with completely open eyes rather than living in the red which I had been doing for months (I've managed to pay off about £1000 this month through various means) .
Still, I'm just so annoyed with myself that I've let it get this bad as it's all down to over spending rather than under earning,
I just really don't know what I can do now to prevent it in April other than just watch it happen and re- right in May (which will be more than possible) but I know that's not quite the point of YNAB as I'm forecasting. Ahhh

That's amazing going. Do you mind me asking how it was to begin with?

Lots and lots of shuffling money about, and doing extra work so I would have enough money to covers the bills and Christmas without putting more on the credit card. Most importantly I knew exactly how much I needed rather than burying my head in the sand. Things have calmed down now, and I've got 3 months worth of true expenses savings for next Christmas currently.

Okay this is encouraging to hear thank you. It is a breath of fresh air having my eyes open to it. Might need to sell a few more bits just to avoid the credit as much as possible.

I don't think anyone answered this, but it should automatically match transactions, if it doesn't, then you can just use the tick box to select both of them and then a menu shows at the bottom of the page, click "match" and it will link them up. So you don't need to mess around deleting transactions or getting muddled up with duplicates.

Sometimes it won't match automatically if the amount entered was different or if the payee info gets imported as the wrong thing. Something I find annoying is that we have Google Pay on our phones which is linked to PayPal, and if you pay for something with this, it gets imported as PayPal so it just autocorrects to the previous PayPal payee, and you can't exclude payees from this behaviour. It's not a huge issue as if you click on the payee then the little i in a circle, it shows the proper payee there. It would be handy if you could make it read this instead but never mind!

I spoke too soon!

The Christmas fund has now been decimated as I forgot to budget spending money for a European school trip that was booked and paid for pre-YNAB. They need 20 euros for lunch each day plus airport food etc plus hotel deposit plus actual spending money.

At least I'll be spending less on groceries/mcdonalds/school holiday activities whilst the child is away. 😫It's nice to have a very non-urgent pot to borrow from though so that's a YNAB win. 👏

I had an Amazon voucher for Christmas so I invested in the YNAB book on my kindle. I've found it really interesting. A lot isn't relevant because it's about the cost of healthcare and college but it's definitely made me rethink stuff.

I've been loosely following the Dave Ramsey principles alongside YNAB so I had a general emergency fund. I've split that now into appliance repair/replacement and car repairs. I'm still saving to have 6 months of expenses but that's split into various pots under the heading of FFEF.

Because I must have learned from my previous time with the system i am currently on 34 days for age of money. I have April fully funded and have made a start on May.

I feel a lot less stressed about money and celebrated by buying some gig tickets yesterday 🤣🤣

Off to do a big food shop today probably the last one of the month 😊

@HouseofHolbein just looking on Kindle, there are several with 'You need a budget', in the title, is it the one by Jesse Mecham?

Yes it is. It is quite geared towards American life but I have found it interesting and it's changed my perspective on a few things.

Last day of the month - anyone else looking forward to a new start tomorrow?

I ended the month with a bit left over in my grocery socialising and general shopping budgets so that is going towards my may bills 😊 April is fully funded.

Well done @HouseofHolbein. We spent a lot of money yesterday but it was money saved in the categories for it, so we're all set for tomorrow.

Hello April

February I ended my age of money on 13 days after a previous streak of 15 since October. I think this was due to the shorter month? March however I've ended up with 20 days age of money. Possibly because of my growing pot of Christmas/Birthday money? I know it doesn't really mean anything but I'm taking that as a win. This is the month when my payday moves from the 15th to the 27th so I'm expecting it to change again.

I've also got money allocated to spend over the Easter holidays. Some of it I'm going to move to the eating out category for ice creams etc or to travel for train fare for days out. This is for extra that I am only spending because it's the school holiday, whereas I don't want to stick a day out ice cream on school holiday spending when it's eating out. I'm not sure how to do this? I'm thinking that eventually the categories will average out over the months and it won't matter?

It makes more sense to me to categorize all ice creams into eating out, rather than differentiate between one in the Easter holidays, and one on a Friday after school.

Categories definitely move and shift around over time, I tend to create a separate category for something either if I want to protect money allocated to it from being swallowed up by something else, or when I want to monitor how much I'm spending on something in order to either cut down, or just plan future spending.

So for example, I started out with kids' clothing all merged and then separated out DS1 (teen) from DS2 & 3 (under 6) because I was spending the whole budget on cute tiny things and then DS1 would have a growth spurt and needs a whole new wardrobe of adult clothing and I would have a heart attack at the cost So now he has his own fund, and I just let it build up until he wants to go shopping. He currently has €80 in it. I still spend the little kids' clothing fund in dribs and drabs as I see bits I like or as they need things, so that is currently empty (because I went over last month so borrowed from another category and did an IOU). I really need to do a separate shoe and coat category too come to think of it.

The other way around I had separated out toys, days out spending and kids' activities (which I used for stuff like art supplies/science kits) for ages, but recently I have just merged all of this into "family fun fund" because half the time I couldn't decide what category to put something in.

For school holidays I would probably do one of two approaches (have done both at various times depending on finances)

1. School Holiday Entertainment fund, with target for next school holiday, calculated at however much per week. Then when the holiday actually comes, dole this out into the individual categories like weekend days out, food on the go, eating out etc. At end of holiday, delete target and set a new one for the next school holiday.
2. When there is a school holiday in the month, when I'm allocating funds I just throw extra into the fun stuff/eating out type categories. Because DS1 has cash for his school lunch I tend to save on this so I can rake some of that back for holiday entertainment for example.

Actually there is a third one I would never be organised enough to do - make some kind of holiday spreadsheet with carefully costed activities for each week of the holidays and then save up for that!

First quarter of 2024 down! I have managed to bring my overdraft usage down by a good chunk, have reduced the limit, and am in it for far less of the month. One issue I have noticed - and this is a me problem, not a YNAB problem - is that I have got very good at squeezing the absolute most out of the money I have, rather than saving it. So rather than the situation when I started YNAB, where I had no money at the end of the month and nothing to show for it, I now have money saved for specific real expenses and lots of nice things. Need to learn how to value saving money for its own sake.

I have finally started to get things under control. I took a job in November (was self employed before and basically not earning enough). Also, a relative sent me some money before Christmas which helped a lot.
I have set up a direct debit to ING for €15 a month, which isn´t much, but will add up slowly. I plan to increase the amount when I can.
It´s such a relief to know what´s coming in each month and be able to start paying things off.
YNAB was good before but basically I wasn´t earning enough. I got a handle on my money with YNAB but you can´t budget nothing. Now that I am earning enough to cover my liviing expenses I feel like I can actually budget.
Will get a pay rise at the end of the year too, so that will help. Hoping to have most debts under control by then more or less.

@OrangeBlossomsinthesun Glad things are looking up! I read the whole thread before I started YNAB and I was hoping things would improve for you.

Thanks! It´s been a hard few years. YNAB is great and I am glad I started it when I did. If nothing else it showed me that I was only ever going to spiral into more debt unless I started earning more. I was in an industry that has been badly affected by AI in the last couple of years.
YNAB can work well for self employed people with unpredictable incomes, it wasn´t that, it was that, overall, I wasn´t earning enough to meet my basic needs.

A question about emergency funds...

I have a target of £10k for my long term emergency fund. That's roughly three month's take home pay. Pot is currently at £0 but that's beside the point..

However I also have sinking funds for YNAB, green bin, NHS cert, season ticket, car tax and insurance, home and contents insurance and holidays (balance and spends) etc. 2024 is fully funded including both holidays plus I've started funding into 2025.

So I'm sort of thinking I don't NEED such a large emergency fund because my sinking funds are part of that. My emergency fund could/should be 3x my monthly bills/spends. What do you think?

I haven't got that far yet. I thought about the biggest thing which was likely to cause an unexpected and sudden bill and tried to get an emergency fund to cover that (€500 ish).

I did have it up to there and then worked on my second goal which was to get it up to €1000 but it got spent on something or other and now I'm back to working on the €500 goal again.

I agree with you @AddictedtoCrunchies . I think if you get one month ahead as well you'll need less because you've already got one month covered as it is.
Emergency fund is for the unknown but YNAB encourages you to be specific so it might be better to just focus on funding further ahead whilst also having something like 'new boiler' fund.

I'm nowhere near that but I have managed to fund this entire month including some big payments that I've known about for months and done sod all about. So I'm pretty pleased! Hopefully things will seem easier soon,

@AddictedtoCrunchies YNAB recommends that you start with one month in hand. When you are funding this month's expenses with last month's money, then you are in a secure position.

I'd agree with you that if you are able to save the funds for your one off expenses in full, then your 'emergency' funds don't need to be as high.

For anyone lurking, do bear in mind that if you are on Universal Credit, then building up large savings can affect your benefits.

We have been saving for a second hand car, and mattresses for the girls. So we spent a fair chunk of money all in a couple of days this week. But it had been sitting there, waiting to be spent, so it's all good. April 1st came and our bills are all sorted.