YNAB support thread (2)

[HouseofHolbein]

Just a continuation of the previous one before it fills up!

Done it. Had 99p more in my savings than I had in YNAB so adjusted and reconciled!

Current age of money is 124 days 😊

My age of money has just tanked. From over 100 to 2. No idea why. We paid off our credit card which had an extra large balance this month but we have a generous balance every month that we pay off and it's not had an impact before.

We did move some money from a tracking account into the budget to pay for a specific thing but it wasn't ALL the tracking money (less than 10% of it) so I don't think it was that.

Any ideas?

That sounds odd. Is everything tracked properly? For context mine has dropped this month from 150 to 124 but I've paid a vets bill bought an iPhone and repaid some tax credits. So I was expecting it to drop.

I can explain properly when back on pc but the short version is age of money is a gimmick, don't worry about it. It doesn't generally tell you anything useful.

If you have the YNAB toolkit add-on for your browser, it gives 'days of buffering', which is much more useful (essentially, if you got no more money, how long you could go with what you've currently got given your average spending rate). Age of money isn't really a useful metric, especially if you're moving money in and out of off-budget (tracking) accounts.

The way AoM works is that it can suddenly drop if you used, say, the last money from a paycheque or inflow that came in a few months ago. Relatively minor outflows can cause it to drop quite dramatically just due to the way it works.

I agree that it will have been the tracking money. Basically all tracked money is considered off-budget. So it doesn't matter how much there is. As soon as you move it into your account it is considered income for the purposes of YNAB.

Age of money works as though all your money is arranged as £5 notes in a napkin dispenser. When you get new money it goes in at the top, and when you spend it comes out from the bottom. YNAB tracks (not actually but using the magic of maths) what date each £5 note was added to the dispenser and what date it comes out and the difference between those dates is the age of money - it shows you the average of the last 10 transactions.

Spending on a credit card and then paying it off later messes with AOM, large transactions in/out mess it up, moving money to and from tracking esp if it is a large sum and you move it immediately before spending, will mess it up.

Hi, me again 😁
I'm sure I read somewhere that if you sign up directly with YNAB it works out cheaper than through Apple (which I have stupidly done!) and that if someone refers me, they and I get a month free- does anyone know anything about this and, if I'm not making it up, would anyone like to pm me a code please?!

Here is a referral link you can use :

www.ynab.com/our-free-34-day-trial/?utm_source=customer_referral&utm_campaign=mobile_share

If you sign up after the trial we both get a free month

That's brilliant, thank you!

Reconciled this morning and for the first time in ages it was spot on first time! Doing it weekly until it's regularly right every time then will drop it to less often.

Spent some time flagging some expenses so I can see what I'm spending also putting tags on transactions so I can see how much I spend on weekends away etc.

6 days to payday. Still have money for shopping. Car has a full tank. All bills are paid. November is fully funded. Woohoo.

I got very excited this morning when I logged onto the app and saw I had over £15,000 in ready to assign. Then the app crashed me out and when I logged back in the mystery money had disappeared. Gutted. 🤣🤣

The app is now not working for me - all my categories have vanished. I've shut it down and will leave it for today. I need to reconcile but normally do that on my laptop so hopefully that will work.

We've been away for a few days so all our spending's been on our "holiday" credit card meaning there shouldn't be much to do.

Well done on having November fully funded @HouseofHolbein. I've tried several times to fund into the month ahead but i can't get my head around it. I have about 4 months' worth in an emergency category instead.

I've been enjoying spending recently because it's all funded.
New kitchen from ikea 👍
Concert tickets 👍
Meal out with dc 👍
Halloween decorations 👍
Paying builder 👍

Admittedly the extension payments have come from topping up my mortgage but it's safe money

I'm almost at the end of my first full month being paid monthly, a five week month at that. I do get maintenance weekly which has meant no need for WAM but I need to firm up what those maintenance payments cover going forward as I feel I've no structure with them yet. I've overspent to value of €140 but I've €60 to assign from today & will be paid again next Thurs

Son has been a bit upset over the weekend because his girlfriend of 2 years dropped out in conversation that she's buying a house with her sister. He said he thought that they were aiming for that together but she's said he's too shit with money. He may have pointed out that he didn't get his driving lessons paid for or his car insurance paid for or his car repairs paid for.... also that he regularly does a 60 mile round trip to work over country roads so his fuel bill is massive and the potholes have lead to punctures etc. Tbh I think he's having a bit of a rethink about everything since she told him 😢

Anyway I had a chat with him about the relationship side on Saturday then yesterday he went out with a friend who talked him through savings options etc so off the back of that I will be sharing YNAB with him so he can get himself sorted. I didn't want to overload him on Saturday bless him.

I might as well get full value out of my subscription 🤣🤣 could possibly get my daughters involved too but will wait and see.

Sorry to hear that, sounds like they were on different pages about where things were going. Always a painful realisation. Hope he is OK.

He'll be fine. He's supported her through a lot this year - her dad died very suddenly - and I think that he's just hurt. Plus she's happy for him to bang the miles on his car to travel where she doesn't like to drive to... I did say to him that actually it's quite unusual for a 22 year old with a part time retail job to have pulled together a deposit and a mortgage with their 19 year old sister.... I reckon they've had a cash injection from family but told not to include boyfriends which is absolutely fair enough but please be honest about it.

I really liked her as well but I've gone right off her. I've come over all Mama Bear 🤣🤣 so pleased he could speak to me about it though. He's a lovely boy even though I'm biased.

Just checking in but nothing exciting to report. I've been using ynab for just over two years now and, while I still don't have loads of ££, I do feel that what I do have is under control and in the right place.

I run ynab alongside my projection spreadsheet and I anticipate that all next years pots (birtjdays, christmas, insurances etc), will very funded by the end of March then I'll start on 2026 which'll be complete by Oct.. I'd rather do that than fund into next month as I always seem to mess it up.

Then my focus turns to new windows, guttering and a new kitchen.

I kmow ynab suggests having all the money in one account but I prefer to have it separate. So I have one current account for bills and a matching category called 'bills'. On payday, I transfer enough for all the direct debits. Main current account is for groceries, personal spends, dog food and fuel. Plus my child benefit goes in there. All have separate pots within my 'spends' category.

Then the rest goes into my Chase account for haircuts, car expenses, dentist plus annual pots for insurances, birthdays, travel etc. I finally seem to have found a system that works and I live tinkering about with my budget and my spreadsheet. 🙂

It was payday on Friday, and I completely forgot, as there is currently lots of money in my accounts for sinking funds for Christmas and Birthdays etc. So I had lots of fun allocating it all, and as always I'm now YNAB broke.

I had my 1-year YNAB-iversary a couple of weeks ago. I would be happier if I was allocating more money to my fully-funded emergency fund, and very long-term sinking funds, and I'm struggling to allocate money to vague things like school holiday spending or white good replacement, but I am currently feeling very blessed to have YNAB in my life. 😍

Payday today 😊 allocated my wages so now December is fully funded! Any money that comes in now until payday in November will go towards topping up my savings pots. Have spent a lot this month on gig tickets 🤣🤣 nothing new there 🤣🤣

Todays payday here and with the time change I wake early so I spent a glorious half an hour budgeting. I'm only budgeting November though.
I will get maintenance weekly too & since I change to monthly pay I've just been budgeting that in fighting fires style so this month I made a plan for any extra incomes that will come in & I've saved it in my notes on iPhone to refer to. I've some funds not budgeted yet so I'm going to put them into miscellaneous and that'll be there to show me where my overspends are.

My first monthly pay survived with just 3 categories over budget, I'm happy with that & they weren't huge overspends either.

I just purchased my winter delivery of home heating oil, half the funds won't be in my account until Tues, if the month wasn't rolling over I'd have left it as an overspend but I whacked a mole from emergency fund & will replace on Tues. easiest category.

Our October pay has been sat in ready to assign for a week but dh and I will budget tonight for the upcoming month.

We're apparently £1k in credit on our gas and electric so that's going down by £50 a month which is nice.

We're off to visit ds at uni this weekend. One overnight stay and a couple of meals out. I'm unsure whether to budget for it all out of November's money or use "holiday" to pay for it (we have enough in there and it's not really allocated for a specific trip). Decisions decisions!

Nice to see everyone's updates. I'm currently very grateful for YNAB. I've been doing it for a year, and it means that the fact that we're having a big life change (temporary lack of income) isn't scary. Although our current account looks bad, it really isn't, because I've been allocating funds a couple of months into the future, and it's just sitting in our savings account waiting to be needed. It's a very important psychological shift knowing that it's ok to be using our savings for everyday spending.

My teens are on YNAB Together too…I’m trying to set them up for success, unlike me, who got enticed by a credit card stall at uni and wasn’t able to dig myself out of CC debt for 8 years. 🙈

I had a very exciting allocation this month…I had a 9% raise at work, and just started receiving it this month. It was backdated to April (beginning of the tax year), so it was nice to get a lump sum! 75% in mortgage overpayment and 25% for fun things…very boring, I know! 😂

I'm kind of obsessed two months in. It's really helped me track where my money is going and understand when and why I will use my savings.

Gig tickets - this is also becoming a regular expense for me. So currently I have 3 different categories for 3 different gigs. I think there's a better way to categorise this? Should I switch to a generic "Gig" category and put maybe £50 a month in? What should I do with the categories I have which I've spent from? Can I delete them or will they stay there forever?