YNAB support thread (2)

[HouseofHolbein]

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

There must be money that’s been sitting in one of your categories for at least 24 days.

It's because payday is on Wednesday, I guess you get paid monthly, so you're currently spending money that you received last payday, which was presumably around the end of last month. Don't need YNAB to tell you that It may have been at a week for ages if you have most of your bills set to go out shortly after payday.

It's calculated with the last 10 transactions and it counts the date you spent the money, minus the date you received that money. It doesn't matter how long it's been in a category, it doesn't count that. It just keeps a running count of inflows set to Ready to Assign and sort of knows "This money was received on 29/07, OK, this money was received on 28/08" - that's how it calculates how "old" the money is when it gets spent.

Age of money is totally useless with monthly pay, direct debits, and being skint, because it will just cycle between 1 and 30 for the whole month, every month. It seems to be set up more to deal with twice-monthly pay, which is apparently standard in the US, while direct debit (which they call autopay) is not standard, so bills may be spread throughout the month, and/or people who make a lot more transactions in a month, which I think is more YNAB's target market. I did try to outwit this for a while by noting down the AOM daily in a spreadsheet and then getting it to show me the average per month and a little graph. I just ignore it now, it is mostly useless information. If you get the Toolkit for Chrome, you can see Days of Buffering instead, which can be more useful, though again honestly rarely look at these.

Yes, I am paid monthly and most things go out at the beginning of the month or mid month at the latest.
I just wondered why it had changed. Thanks for the explanation, I will continue to mostly ignore it. 😁

I'll get paid tomorrow for 15 days, my first monthly salary payment. I've been paying myself a weekly wage out of gifted money each week so I'm going to try fund Sept with this. Finally using YNAB the way it's intended!

That sounds like a plan @Happierwithouthim. DH and I have both been paid and it's currently sat in RTA ready to assign for September.

What YNAB's taught me this month is how expensive July and August are with both children at home. We've massively overspent this month and I've been wamming all over the place. I might try and put a little bit aside over the next year to give me a fund to dip into during the summer holidays next year.

Nearly September though!

@QueenMabby it’s all a learning curve, isn’t it? At least you now know that your “real expenses” are higher in July-August and now have time to plan for it next year. Will you create a new category for summer school holidays?

@Chatonette - I'm not sure. DS is heading to uni next month and we'll just have dd at home. I may just keep the grocery and leisure budgets the same but build up a bit of a slush fund and see if that helps. DS intends to get a job next summer so will be buying a lot of his own stuff.

Following this thread with interest as I have been using 'old' YNAB on my PC for years and hadn't thought I needed to switch to the new version.

Anyone used both and can say new one is better?

I've also just retired so no income to speak of apart from a small occupational pension (no state pension for a while yet) and will be living off savings/investments until then so not sure how new YNAB will handle that.

Is anyone else in a similar situation? I'm not sure how to set up old or new YNAB to cope with my particular circumstances. Do any of the YNAB videos etc. cover this? (I will go and look just wondered if anyone here had experience).

I used YNAB4 years ago. I love the flexibility of being able to use on my phone & PC but maybe it's not worth the expense for you

Got paid today. Assigned my money for October 😁 put the rest into savings pots then promptly booked a festival and 2 gigs 🤣🤣 which has almost emptied that category but was always the plan for this payday.

Love knowing that my expenses are covered and I can afford to do stuff I want 😊

Living the YNAB dream!

@HouseofHolbein How long did it take you using YNAB to be so far ahead?
I'm really happy with my progress, but I don't seem to be able to allocate anything very far ahead.
I'm much happier that I'm saving for the annual spends (rather than just 'finding' the money when a bill came) but I'm still only covering my requirements for the month from my pay.

@flipent I did YNAB a few years ago and then after the first year decided I could go it alone. So I'd sort of followed the principles since and had built up a bit of a buffer.

It actually was more work than I thought to keep on top of it so I reinvested in the app in February. I'm still playing around with my savings pots changing how I fund them.

I could have part funded November this morning but decided to add to my gigs pot because I have quite a bit coming up 😊

I realise I am in a very fortunate position here

If it makes you feel any better @flipent , I was the OP of the original thread and have been using YNAB for YEARS and am in the same position as you. I am still very hand to mouth with finances because I was previously self employed and probably not earning enough really. Then my industry was devasted by AI about 2 years ago and things got really bad and I built up some debt.
I have had a salary coming in for almost a year and am finally managing to cover my expenditure instead of running up debt and have been paying existing debt down, but it is taking me YEARS, even with YNAB.

Thanks @OrangeBlossomsinthesun! Don't get me wrong, I'm in a far better position having found YNAB - and I've got plenty of work to do to unpick the years of half arsed budgeting!
It's reassuring to know I'm not the only one fighting through history and pretty inspiring to know it's possible to get that far ahead that you can have a month in hand.
Going to keep plugging away and celebrate the little changes which will build up to a big difference.

The big thing that YNAB showed me was that I wasn´t earning enough. You can budget all you want, but if your income doesn´t cover what you need to live on, then you´re going to get into debt. It wasn´t always easy to see that without YNAB as my income was up and down as a freelancer. So, it felt like maybe I just needed to budget better in lean times. But, really, especially about 2 years ago when the work started drying up, I just wasn´t making enough.
Obviously, that reality dawns and there isn´t necessarily a job right there, particularly for me as I live abroad in a non-English speaking country. I have a high level of the local language, but it´s still hard to get a job, and my experience in the industry that was hit by AI was very specific and my experience before that badly paid.
I was lucky to get a job reasonably quickly (within six months more or less), but there was a lot of time where I was just sinking further into debt.
It´s been 9 months that I have been earning enough to cover my outgoings if I am careful, but I am also trying to use the extra to pay down some debt. I should have finished paying off a credit card by Christmas. It had got to over €3000 at one point and I have been trying to pay it off forever. I had to take a loan because just before I started the job, my husband´s company aid him a day late and we would have defaulted on the mortgage. I took a long to cover it and pay off some of the CC as the interest on the loan was 7.5% compared to 18% on the CC, so I still have some of that debt, but I have reduced it and more than cut the interest I pay on it in half.
Baby steps.

Glad I'm not the only one who YNAB keeps out of the red but isn't a month or two ahead with their finances.

Nearly month end! Sadly for me that's a very exciting time - YNAB budget time!
We don't push money into future months either. (A) can't afford it and (B) from the Facebook group it seems to cause more trouble that it's worth when there's overspending, credit cards and other things in the mix!

Pushing money ahead has always caused me problems for some reason. Glitches where everything is funded and green, then the next time I login, I’ve somehow overspent by hundreds of pounds, despite not having any activity since my last logout. Even though I get paid a week before the end of the month, I still allocate everything into the current month and let it roll over on the 1st.

I never have any money to push ahead!
I have been allocating today and have covered all my immeadiate stuff for the coming month.
Still got some long term expenses I am not fully covering, but I wll get a double salary in December and a slight pay rise in November so hoping to finally be able to start fully funding from then.
I also reckon I will have the credit card fully paid off by the end of the year (on the high interest, still have the loan I took to partly pay it off, but that´s much lower interest and over 5 years). But by the end of the year I will have got rid of the 18% debt.
That frees up about €100 a month, which I am going to plough into paying off the kids´braces. Hope to get that done by about May next year.
Then i can start reducing the loan too. I should get some money back from the solar panels at some point in the next year too so I can use that to reduce any further debt (probably this loan, or to pay off some of the solar panels).
The reason we have solar panels is that it was part of the deal when we renegotiated the mortgage a couple of years ago, we changed to fixed for the rest of the term (ie forever) at 2%. The panels are well worth it here in southern spain anyway, we haven´t paid for electrcity for months now.

I've signed up for the free trial today and started a budget. I found it quite complicated but hoping as I move through the month it'll become easier.

I decided to sign up as I have a budget forecast which states I should have £200 left each month and invariably I never do. So I'm hoping to figure out where I'm overspending and be more proactive.

Welcome @IKnowAristotle. I signed up for my free trial back in May and although dh and I would say we budgeted really well before (in an excel spreadsheet) it's been really illuminating.

Thanks @QueenMabby. I love a spreadsheet but have recently realised that we're not holding ourselves accountable day to day and spending lots of money on silly things (eating out, so much stuff for the kids!) which prevents us spending on the bigger things (home improvements, nicer holidays).

Is too @IKnowAristotle. DS is going to uni at the end of the month and changes are afoot in the next few years and dh and I need to be able to pivot with them so we're working on really getting our finances in shape.

Hi all.
I’ve been considering YNAB for a while (but have been on the fence due to the cost, considering there are free apps out there). I’m about to go on maternity leave for a year, and wondered if that makes now a really stupid time to start YNAB or a great time? My salary will change throughout the year as I move from additional maternity pay, to statutory, to diddly-squat. And my expenses will be different too compared to future years - higher in some areas but lower in childcare costs compared to when I go back to work.
Any thoughts on whether to start now or wait a year for my new normal?