GG's Financial Management Thread

[RunningMn9]

Many people find that not having a bucket of their own is frustrating.

What do you mean?

[GreenGoo]

That's sort of what I mean by unintuitive. I can't help but feel that there should be a debt service bucket, but if I added one, I would be double budgeting for the same item. Once as a line item groceries category, and a second time for a line item debt payment category.

I assume that they agree with you on this, which is why it works the way you think it should work in v5.

When I go into the CC ledger and enter a transaction for groceries, the money is automatically moved from "Groceries" to "Credit Card Payment" (for the CC I used). You can see it right there. And most importantly, you can move it OUT of CC payment if you want. I do not ever do that. The amount in the CC Payment categories always exactly matches the CC balance. Mostly because historically that has been my Achilles's heel.

Heh, good! I watched a video after I went to bed and "magically" the grocery bucket that was purchased with the cc was moved to a cc bucket. So instead of disappearing out of the bucket into the Abyss, "buying" something with a cc just moves it from the budgeted item (say, groceries) to a cc budget item. Transferring money from a bank account to the CC (actually buying all the items the cc "bought") empties the cc budget line item.

So YNAB 5 does it automatically. As far as I could tell, the CC bucket was automatically created (the video didn't show the person creating it, although it did show other items being created, which is why I think it was automatic and not done off camera).

Now I need to figure out how to handle it in YNAB 4. There must be a way. cc's aren't a recent invention. Hell, it could be "automatic" too, I'm just not doing it right, so far.

I used to have a budget with like 75 categories of nested things. And maybe to initially get a handle on things, that makes sense. But I fear that it will be too much tracking for you, and a level of scrutiny that will result in your wife killing you in your sleep.

It totally makes sense when you have a mess that you're trying to clean up to look more closely at where the money is going. And it totally makes sense that once the mess is cleaned up to simplify tracking by reducing the number of categories. YNAB 4 only has Master categories and categories by the way. The naming convention (categories/subcategories) seems to have changed for YNAB 5. Just a heads up in case we get confused when we think we're talking about the same thing.

I'm going to have a line item for pizza completely separate from a line item for "take out" because we buy so much pizza it's probably the same magnitude as all other takeout combined. I'm not going to have a line item for diet coke, although I probably should at this point. Our "incidentals" are going to be HUGE because we *think* we're rich and how much could forty thousand diet cokes being costing us anyway? So I want to divvy up the incidentals category for now.

[Smoove_B]

I'm going to have a line item for pizza completely separate from a line item for "take out" because we buy so much pizza it's probably the same magnitude as all other takeout combined. I'm not going to have a line item for diet coke, although I probably should at this point. Our "incidentals" are going to be HUGE because we *think* we're rich and how much could forty thousand diet cokes being costing us anyway? So I want to divvy up the incidentals category for now.

Start big and then slowly dissect the details. As RM9 noted, having 70+ categories was fine for him, but I'd agree if you try to foist that on someone you will likely get shanked. Once you have the broad categories (mortgage, utilities, credit card bills, etc...) then start to tease out the useful information. Because this is where you'll notice that your "miscellaneous/incidentals" line item is the same as your mortgage (lord, I hope not). Why is that? What is going into the incidentals bucket that is causing it to be so insanely large? Is it really pizza or is it all restaurant/takeout food? Add the time element and you can see (hopefully) patterns emerge. This will help you (collectively) be more aware of spending habits.

[GreenGoo]

YNAB 4 is 3 years out of date at this point. Finding info on how to handle CC payments as part of the budget is a little difficult, as everything just points to ynab 5 now, and as Rmn9 pointed out, it works differently (and better, from my perspective).

I wonder if I should just create my own CC payment line item, and when I "buy" something with my cc (which automatically removes the money from the bucket) I should manually ADD the same amount to the CC payment line item. Then I could use the CC Payment category for the transfer, which should result in the expected behaviour. I'll probably test it.

Anyone have any other suggestions on how to handle this? Doing it manually is a pain and likely to result in errors for awhile.

[GreenGoo]

I'll meet you guys in the middle. Instead of 150+ categories I'll start big (mortgage, take out, incidentals) and start splitting them up as we actually use specific line items, so very few categories until I actually use a subcategory (like ordering pizza, but higher level).

Also noteworthy is because I don't actually know what we've spent on a lot of these categories, and YNAB is a "moving forward" app, I won't be able to populate (i.e. assign budget values) to a lot of these line items until I actually use the line item (like no snow tire item until I actually buy snow tires, then I'll create the line item AND give it a value). I realize this is not ideal but if I start high level (mortgage, utilities) and drill down as the need arises (and I can evaluate the need on a case by case basis) as well as create the budget amount.

Also, you guys keep talking like getting shanked is a bad thing. The sweet release of death would end all this bookkeeping and future battles over bookkeeping. Almost worth it.

[GreenGoo]

I'm planning on using this thread as a kind of journal. I do the same thing when playing a new video game. As such, there will be a lot of "notes to myself" that I'll write down simply to have a written record. I doubt that aspect will be very interesting to anyone.

I'll try to keep details from being lost of my rambly posts, so major events or concrete, factual items will probably have their own, separate post. Ramblings about the nature of man will be self contained in a separate post.

Hopefully that will help keep individual posts from becoming too unwieldy for anyone reading along casually.

[wonderpug]

This article on using credit cards in YNAB4 should help you.

FYI in case you need to know what to Google, the newer web-based YNAB isn't called YNAB 5. Generally the community calls it "nYNAB" for "new YNAB".

[GreenGoo]

Omg thank you very much wonderpug. I was searching for YNAB 4 and not having a lot of luck, although I hadn't given up yet. I'll read your link.

Hilariously, I *am* finding lots of people complaining about how YNAB5 does cc's, with lots of people claiming the old way was "better". Obviously I disagree and would prefer the new way much more. Especially since I haven't locked down how the "old way" worked yet.

[wonderpug]

Hilariously, I *am* finding lots of people complaining about how YNAB5 does cc's, with lots of people claiming the old way was "better". Obviously I disagree and would prefer the new way much more. Especially since I haven't locked down how the "old way" worked yet.

I prefer the new way, but I guess it can be really confusing to people used to the old way. They've beefed up the tutorials and on-screen help over the last year, so I think it's not as hard for new users to grasp as it was at the beginning.

[GreenGoo]

Ok, I read wonderpug's link and I'm proud to say that I had already done exactly as the article suggests, in its entirety. So it's good to know I'm on the right track. The article ends right before my most pressing question is answered however.

Basically, I want a budgetary line item that shows my credit card payment separately from the budgetary items like groceries, gasoline, etc.

In YNAB 5, when you "buy" gas with your CC, the application changes the gas line item to show "outflow" just as it would if you bought gas with a chequing account. But YNAB 5 ALSO moves the outflow from the gas line item into a new line item. I think Rmn9 said it was "CC payment".

Why this is important is because even though you've budgeted for gasoline, and even though you bought gasoline which changes the gas line item to "outflow", you haven't actually spent the money for gasoline yet.

I.e. the money is allocated and then removed from the line item, but the money still exists in your chequing account and doesn't get removed until you transfer payment to your CC.

Looking at your budget gives an incomplete picture or worse, a misleading picture of your financial situation AFTER the CC has been used but BEFORE you've made a payment to the CC. Which is like 99% of the time.

Could I adjust and simply live with it? Sure. Do I want to? Not really. I want YNAB5 functionality, damn it.

I've suggested one possible way of handling it, which would be doing what manually what YNAB5 does automatically. i.e. move gas outflow into a CC payment budget line item. This essentially changes buckets instead of emptying a bucket. In YNAB5 I see you can pull budget money from 1 category to pay for an overage in another category. I assume you can do this in YNAB4 as well. It wouldn't work for what I want to do but at least the idea is the same.

[GreenGoo]

Hilariously, I *am* finding lots of people complaining about how YNAB5 does cc's, with lots of people claiming the old way was "better". Obviously I disagree and would prefer the new way much more. Especially since I haven't locked down how the "old way" worked yet.

I prefer the new way, but I guess it can be really confusing to people used to the old way. They've beefed up the tutorials and on-screen help over the last year, so I think it's not as hard for new users to grasp as it was at the beginning.

Oh yeah I get it. Change sucks and don't fix what ain't broke. As I posted above, I'm missing 1 crucial (imo) step for YNAB4. If I find out how people did it in the past (besides just ignoring it) I'll post just for posterity's sake.

[GreenGoo]

Here's a webpage showing a video about CC management for YNAB 4. I'm half way through it and they are already talking about the "problem" I'm describing including the double budgeting issue (1 job, 2x dollars), although they are clearly avoiding calling it a "problem" because then it appears the app is creating a problem instead of fixing them. Given how much they've addressed the circumstances I've taken issue with, I'm confident they'll propose "something" for handling it.

Here's the page with the video:

YNAB 4 CC tutorial

edit: Again hilariously, the video is spending minutes explaining to me how even though I budgeted for the line item, and even though I "bought" the line item with my CC, thus changing the line item to "outflow" the money hasn't actually been spent yet, and must be moved to the CC account from the chequing account before the money is truly "outflowed" out of the system of accounts.

All of which I know already and am dissatisfied with how that information is presented on the budget page itself. Still no solution yet. I'm getting a sinking feeling that they think because they've explained the problem, that's good enough.

edit: Ok, no solution offered. Screw you hippy.

[Blackhawk]

Have you considered just upgrading? You could make a YNAB bucket just for that!

Anyway, thanks again for this thread and for doing this publicly. I'm learning a bunch just following along. For instance, I'm realizing that my spreadsheet organization system seems to be very, very similar to what YNAB does!

[GreenGoo]

Have you considered just upgrading? You could make a YNAB bucket just for that!

Anyway, thanks again for this thread and for doing this publicly. I'm learning a bunch just following along. For instance, I'm realizing that my spreadsheet organization system seems to be very, very similar to what YNAB does!

Lol, it's almost 90 BUCKS for just 1 year! And I've got YNAB 4 already. AND Pyperkub gave it to me for free. Not using it would sully Pyperkub's memory (of his generous nature).

I'll consider it once I've got YNAB 4 up and running and working for me. No need to spend more money, yet.

And I'm not surprised that YNAB and you have similar organization. It's a pretty common approach. Smoove's cash only system is also nearly identical. We have (had?) a tv show up here in the great white north called "Til Debt Do Us Part" which ALSO uses a nearly identical system of money jars (instead of virtual buckets) which is very close to Smoove's approach.

On the one hand, you've re-invented the wheel. Boo. On the other hand, you've reinvented the wheel exactly RIGHT (smart), and with customizations for your specific situation. Yay!

[GreenGoo]

Ok, apparently the YNAB people just expected users to live with the shortcoming (imo) of the YNAB 4 app. I fully admit that with time and usage, I'll have tuned my thinking to match the app. When/if I upgrade, I can switch back to my old (and imo, correct) thinking. Annoying and a sticks in my craw, but oh well.

Separately, I have another YNAB question.

How do people handle budgeting for things that never materialize? If I budget today for snow tires, and then, I don't know, maybe receive snowtires as a gift. I've now locked up snowtire money in YNAB 4 with nearly zero chance of spending (outflow) that money in the near future. So a small portion of my chequing account is not available for budgeting because it's already a line item (that will never be used).

Do people just free up that money by removing it from the line item? Maybe it's obvious with use, I'm just thinking (although not very hard) about what happens to money that doesn't get spent.

My old "system" was a giant (ok, not giant, but sufficient) pool of money that I paid bills from. Anything that wasn't spent on bills was available for use on anything I wanted. Board games for kid's birthday, new video game, dinner or lunch out, christmas gifts etc. Barely a system at all, but with restraint, it worked fine. I still had no idea where money was going, mostly, but because it wasn't going anywhere that wasn't a bill, it really wasn't a problem. If I made sure I paid off my credit card, and made sure I never approached a 0 balance, it was never a problem.

Giving that "sufficient" pool of money lying around a job (even if it's just a "giant pool of money" budget line item) is counter-intuitive to me.

It makes sense, and I'll do it, and it will change how I view my money (for the better) but I'm feeling my own resistance to change when I think about it.

[Carpet_pissr]

Lol, it's almost 90 BUCKS for just 1 year! And I've got YNAB 4 already. AND Pyperkub gave it to me for free. Not using it would sully Pyperkub's memory (of his generous nature).

I think that's insane for a glorified spreadsheet, but I guess you are paying for the idea behind it, not the platform or tech. Still, when they switched models AND raised the price so much, I went from "excited" about using a newfangled tool to wrangle my mangled financial tangle, to "hellllllllll......no."

I should ask for a refund for the $15 that I paid since I was never able to use it before they switched to a subscription fee.

[GreenGoo]

Lol, it's almost 90 BUCKS for just 1 year! And I've got YNAB 4 already. AND Pyperkub gave it to me for free. Not using it would sully Pyperkub's memory (of his generous nature).

I think that's insane for a glorified spreadsheet, but I guess you are paying for the idea behind it, not the platform or tech. Still, when they switched models AND raised the price so much, I went from "excited" about using a newfangled tool to wrangle my mangled financial tangle, to "hellllllllll......no."

Rmn9 has an opinion on that and can defend his decision to use it if he wants, although I know crossplatform functionality and tracking plays a big part. YNAB 4 solves this problem by exporting everything to dropbox and importing everything from dropbox. It's kind of an elegant solution given the technology at the time, although it's clearly a kludge.

I'm not a fan of "software as a service" business model, and this is absolutely a money grab business model change, but lots of people are doing it and it seems to be accepted by lots of people, so here we are.

[GreenGoo]

Should I feel guilty for moving the charity line items to the bottom of my budget? Nah.

[RunningMn9]

Also noteworthy is because I don't actually know what we've spent on a lot of these categories, and YNAB is a "moving forward" app, I won't be able to populate (i.e. assign budget values) to a lot of these line items until I actually use the line item (like no snow tire item until I actually buy snow tires, then I'll create the line item AND give it a value).

I'm going to harp on this, just to reinforce the way that YNAB requires you to think. I don't mean it personally, it's an adjustment for people and I get that. But when there are discrete examples to use to illustrate the philosophy, sometimes that helps.

You can certainly add a "Snow Tires" line item, and set it's balance to zero. I just want to compare traditional budgeting to how YNAB works for a second. Let's say November rolls around, and it's time to buy snow tires. In a traditional budgeting scenario, you would then set an estimate for how much snow tires will cost you that month. When you buy the snow tires and you have the actual amount that they cost, then you will either come in over or under budget.

With YNAB, it's important to understand that you aren't assigning a budget value. You are taking a physical pile of dollar bills that you currently possess, and you are saying "I am spending these dollars on snow tires". Because you are assigning physical dollars and not assigning a budget value, those physical dollars must come from somewhere. The reason that I find this superior to any other budget method is that it forces you to make constant evaluations from a "global" perspective. To put $500 in the line item for Snow Tires, you must also reduce one or more other line items by an amount that totals $500.

This is important (IMO) because if you make a budget in Mint, you are basically just estimating all of your bills, and then tracking performance against those estimates. If all of your estimates were wrong at the end of the month, and all of your categories ran over budget, where does the money come from to address all those over commitments? With YNAB you are forced to make those choices each time you spend dollars that you didn't expect to spend. They must come from somewhere. That's where the repeated visual impact of poor financial decision making is driven home with a sledge-hammer.

If every time you get pizza, that money has to get moved over from your vacation fund, well, there are no surprises for why you can't go on vacation (just a hypothetical). You ate your vacation and there's a paper trail.

One piece of advice that I have for you is that if you think there is any value in YNAB and that it will help you, then I would recommend just moving to v5. It is *vastly* superior, it works the way you think it should out of the box, and the joint integration through the web and via apps is so much better. I pay for it annually and don't regret it for even a second. It's the most important software tool that I use.

How do people handle budgeting for things that never materialize? If I budget today for snow tires, and then, I don't know, maybe receive snowtires as a gift. I've now locked up snowtire money in YNAB 4 with nearly zero chance of spending (outflow) that money in the near future. So a small portion of my chequing account is not available for budgeting because it's already a line item (that will never be used).

Your choices aren't permanent. If you want to set aside $500 for snow tires, and then someone gives you free snow tires, you simple move the money out of the snow tire line item and into one or more other buckets for a new job. Money that goes into buckets isn't spent. It's money that's waiting to be spent. If you want to spend it on something else instead, you just move it out of that bucket and into the new bucket.

It is literally just a digital envelope system, with some handy shortcuts. If you put $500 in an envelope marked "Snow Tires" and then decide that you don't want them, or that you need something else more, you just take cash out of that envelope and put it in a different envelope to spend there. It's Smoove's system for the modern age.

My old "system" was a giant (ok, not giant, but sufficient) pool of money that I paid bills from. Anything that wasn't spent on bills was available for use on anything I wanted. Board games for kid's birthday, new video game, dinner or lunch out, christmas gifts etc. Barely a system at all, but with restraint, it worked fine. I still had no idea where money was going, mostly, but because it wasn't going anywhere that wasn't a bill, it really wasn't a problem. If I made sure I paid off my credit card, and made sure I never approached a 0 balance, it was never a problem.

That's the most common system used by people that don't need to budget (or don't think they need to budget). Even if you are still in the state that you don't financially need to learn to budget, it's much more advantageous to learn now while it isn't critical. Unfortunately for you, for your wife it's already pretty critical.

How did you make sure that the money for the bills was always there, and that you didn't accidentally spend it on hookers and blow?

[RunningMn9]

If I find out how people did it in the past (besides just ignoring it) I'll post just for posterity's sake.

If I am not mistaken, I think my policy for v4 was to trust but verify. I knew that the checking account balance was always accurate. So at any given time, that balance should equal all of my buckets + the current balance on the CC. As long as Buckets + CCBalance = BankAccountBalance, everything is working as advertised. If not, all hell breaks loose while I hunt for the problem. In v5, the bucket would be there, in an angry red, telling me that I don't have enough money to pay the credit card.

[RunningMn9]

Rmn9 has an opinion on that and can defend his decision to use it if he wants, although I know crossplatform functionality and tracking plays a big part. YNAB 4 solves this problem by exporting everything to dropbox and importing everything from dropbox. It's kind of an elegant solution given the technology at the time, although it's clearly a kludge.

I'm not a fan of "software as a service" business model, and this is absolutely a money grab business model change, but lots of people are doing it and it seems to be accepted by lots of people, so here we are.

My subscription is $45USD per year. That's less than $4 for a software tool that I use several times per day. That's easy. Spreadsheets cannot be easily updated while I'm standing on line at McDonald's. Spreadsheets don't automatically retrieve and match transactions from my accounts to provide the required reconciling that one should be doing. Plus the app is continuously updated to add new features, which are always available on the web and phone apps.

And while the YNAB 4 method of distributed functionality sort of worked, it was a bit more than a kludge. I used Dropbox as the intermediary, and it would occasionally have update issues which caused double spending of the same dollars, which is precisely what the tool is helping to prevent.

I see that it's now $7 a month, no idea why I don't have to pay that.

[wonderpug]

Ok, I read wonderpug's link and I'm proud to say that I had already done exactly as the article suggests, in its entirety. So it's good to know I'm on the right track. The article ends right before my most pressing question is answered however.

Basically, I want a budgetary line item that shows my credit card payment separately from the budgetary items like groceries, gasoline, etc.

In YNAB 5, when you "buy" gas with your CC, the application changes the gas line item to show "outflow" just as it would if you bought gas with a chequing account. But YNAB 5 ALSO moves the outflow from the gas line item into a new line item. I think Rmn9 said it was "CC payment".

Why this is important is because even though you've budgeted for gasoline, and even though you bought gasoline which changes the gas line item to "outflow", you haven't actually spent the money for gasoline yet.

I.e. the money is allocated and then removed from the line item, but the money still exists in your chequing account and doesn't get removed until you transfer payment to your CC.

Looking at your budget gives an incomplete picture or worse, a misleading picture of your financial situation AFTER the CC has been used but BEFORE you've made a payment to the CC. Which is like 99% of the time.

Could I adjust and simply live with it? Sure. Do I want to? Not really. I want YNAB5 functionality, damn it.

I've suggested one possible way of handling it, which would be doing what manually what YNAB5 does automatically. i.e. move gas outflow into a CC payment budget line item. This essentially changes buckets instead of emptying a bucket. In YNAB5 I see you can pull budget money from 1 category to pay for an overage in another category. I assume you can do this in YNAB4 as well. It wouldn't work for what I want to do but at least the idea is the same.

If you're looking for "how much do I have to pay my credit card balance right now", in YNAB4 the answer is the credit card balance shown for that account minus anything you have listed as 'pre-YNAB debt'.

[Blackhawk]

On the one hand, you've re-invented the wheel. Boo. On the other hand, you've reinvented the wheel exactly RIGHT (smart), and with customizations for your specific situation. Yay!

Did I just get a cookie? I feel like I got a cookie.

[Zaxxon]

First, best of luck, GG. It sounds like you're at least close to resolving the immediate hurdle, while taking concrete steps to attempt to address the chronic issues. Bravo.

Second, I'm taking [ugh, yet another] try at YNAB. I've tried in the past and petered out, and it frustrates me each time as I don't understand why. YNAB sounds like it's RIGHT up my alley--I already track the larger money movement across our accounts each month, I friggin love tracking things that most people would roll eyes at (monthly energy usage, etc), and the app is well-designed (I'm told, by people whose input I trust). But I fail at getting into the YNAB habit each time.

I'm going to try again, but first, a high-level question: which accounts do you folks link, and which do you skip? It seems to me like longer-term stuff (eg retirement accounts, savings accounts not frequently touched) wouldn't need to be included as it muddies the month-to-month picture. Is that right? Especially ones that rarely interact with the checking account. Otherwise I am starting with a balance for 'this month' that bears no relation to what I'm actually looking to plan for using/spending/saving 'this month.'

I'm ambivalent as to whether I care about those being in there, but I definitely do not want them to be reflected in my 'you have this much' balance. I'm looking to basically pull in our 'actual' (eg take-home) pay, then deal with how that gets spent, transferred to credit card, saved, etc. Pretend I'm a toddler and start at the bottom, using small words.

Help me, Obi-9; you're my only hope.

[wonderpug]

I'm going to try again, but first, a high-level question: which accounts do you folks link, and which do you skip? It seems to me like longer-term stuff (eg retirement accounts, savings accounts not frequently touched) wouldn't need to be included as it muddies the month-to-month picture. Is that right? Especially ones that rarely interact with the checking account. Otherwise I am starting with a balance for 'this month' that bears no relation to what I'm actually looking to plan for using/spending/saving 'this month.'

I'm ambivalent as to whether I care about those being in there, but I definitely do not want them to be reflected in my 'you have this much' balance. I'm looking to basically pull in our 'actual' (eg take-home) pay, then deal with how that gets spent, transferred to credit card, saved, etc. Pretend I'm a toddler and start at the bottom, using small words.

Leave out things like retirement accounts or a home mortgage. If you really want, track them as off-budget accounts, but YNAB isn't the best software for that sort of account.

Keep it to just transactional day-to-day stuff: just your main checking account(s) and all your credit cards.

[GreenGoo]

And...I'm seeing that I'm getting screwed by my premium cashback credit card. At some point they either made changes to it that I failed to read or some other reason that it is not exactly as I remember it being. It doesn't matter. The current situation (what I get for what I pay) is unacceptable, so I'll be looking into it when I get the chance.

Changing all the pre-authorized charge agreements is gonna be a HUGE pita though. Sigh. Marked for later.

[RunningMn9]

wonderpug’s advice is sound, although I don’t follow it.

I have four retirement accounts, all of which are in YNAB as budget accounts. The balances of which all go into a “Retirement Savings” line item. As mentioned above, I generally update the balance every month or two, with a “Market Value Change” transaction that adds or removes dollars from that Retirement Savings bucket.

I do it so that I have a more complete picture of finances. It doesn’t interfere with my day to day stuff at all so it’s pretty painless. I don’t track the mortgage through YNAB, but I do track equity in the house. When I pay the mortgage, I also add a transaction to an account for that purpose, which accumulates in a “Home Equity” bucket.

Again, the reason is to just to have a more complete picture for the RM9 financial empire. I started doing that because I was tracking to determine when I had sufficient equity to refi and dump the escrow account that the mortgage company kept screwing up.

If you don’t want to deal with that sort of data, don’t bother.

[RunningMn9]

Changing all the pre-authorized charge agreements is gonna be a HUGE pita though. Sigh. Marked for later.

This annoys me more than anything else when a card gets compromised.

[Grifman]

Boo! Less mechanics, more drama!

Seriously, still wishing the best for you and your wife!

[GreenGoo]

YNAB 4 doesn't handle 1 time annual payments very well as far as I can tell. I guess I create a budget line item and only "budget" for it in the month that I plan on paying it from that month's income (and as yet unbudgeted funds)? I leave it unfunded the rest of the year. This works if you can cover the line item from a single month's income. Let's say that I have to split the budgeting (ie. fund the line item) for larger items across multiple months. This works if, say, you pay your car insurance monthly instead of annually. It's not great if you need to save across 2-3 months in order to make it work.

YNAB 5 has some nice features like achieving goals (fully funding a line item by a certain date) which are clearly an improvement over YNAB 4. They allow you split the funding across however many months you want, automatically based on the goal date.

Oh well, not a huge deal and totally workable.

[Zaxxon]

I have four retirement accounts, all of which are in YNAB as budget accounts. The balances of which all go into a “Retirement Savings” line item.

...

If you don’t want to deal with that sort of data, don’t bother.

I do, but perhaps I'll stick to my spreadsheet for all but the day-to-day transactional stuff until I get my head around YNAB more completely.

[wonderpug]

YNAB 4 doesn't handle 1 time annual payments very well as far as I can tell. I guess I create a budget line item and only "budget" for it in the month that I plan on paying it from that month's income (and as yet unbudgeted funds)? I leave it unfunded the rest of the year. This works if you can cover the line item from a single month's income. Let's say that I have to split the budgeting (ie. fund the line item) for larger items across multiple months. This works if, say, you pay your car insurance monthly instead of annually. It's not great if you need to save across 2-3 months in order to make it work.

YNAB 5 has some nice features like achieving goals (fully funding a line item by a certain date) which are clearly an improvement over YNAB 4. They allow you split the funding across however many months you want, automatically based on the goal date.

Oh well, not a huge deal and totally workable.

Don't lump the payment all at once on the month its due. Fund it as much as you can right now, in September. Whatever the rest is, divide that by the months you have left and make that your monthly goal. I know YNAB4 doesn't have goals like nYNAB does, but just change the name of the category to "Car Payment ($85/mo)" to remind yourself.

Another example. Let's say it's January you want to spend $1000 at Christmas. Don't try to put $1000 in the budget amount for December. Try to add $83 to the budget every month so that the 'available balance' reaches $1000 by the time December comes around.

[GreenGoo]

Boo! Less mechanics, more drama!

Seriously, still wishing the best for you and your wife!

It's coming. No hard questions for her yet, no life style changes yet. I haven't even looked at her (our shared) account yet, or entered her income into YNAB, or "her" expenses. So far I'm just doing my stuff since I already know all the answers and wrestling with the application is the main time consumer right now. Once I've got that covered, which will be soon, I will start in on her account, expenses and income and that's when the drama will come. Don't laugh, it might end our marriage, no joke. Ok, laugh if you want to, but this is serious biz for me. I'll probably treat it humorously to help deal with the stress. She's a saint when I'm doing everything and not asking her to do anything or change anything. Let's find out what happens when that changes.

Honestly I think I will create a separate budget for her just to get everything organized. I FULLY INTEND to consolidate the two budgets into a single household budget by the end, but while I'm collecting data on our spending habits and expenses, it might be helpful to keep the stuff I was already tracking (albeit not closely) separate from the stuff I'm finding out about ("her" stuff).

I know people want me to treat the household as a single unit, and I absolutely will! In the meantime though, for organizational purposes, I'm doing 2 budgets until I've locked their details down.

I'm mostly finished with my budget for this month. Which leaves hers. *gulp*.

[GreenGoo]

Don't lump the payment all at once on the month its due. Fund it as much as you can right now, in September. Whatever the rest is, divide that by the months you have left and make that your monthly goal. I know YNAB4 doesn't have goals like nYNAB does, but just change the name of the category to "Car Payment ($85/mo)" to remind yourself.

Another example. Let's say it's January you want to spend $1000 at Christmas. Don't try to put $1000 in the budget amount for December. Try to add $83 to the budget every month so that the 'available balance' reaches $1000 by the time December comes around.

Yeah, I don't like that. I don't want to do that for certain things (none of which I can think of right now). Let's say that I have an annual expense of "balls washing" that costs $240 bucks. I don't want to budget 20 bucks a month. I want to just pay it out of my unbudgeted (as of yet) income for that month. That should work, I think.

Maybe this is just resistance to change. I just don't like the idea of saving 20 bucks in July for my Annual Balls Washing that occurs in December every year. 20 bucks a month for something that isn't actually paid every month (like Crunch Roll, for example) annoys me. It's too small an amount and it sits unused (but accounted for in the fully funded budget) in my chequing account for too long. No sir, I don't like it. Change sucks.

We'll see how things pan out going forward. I'm still going through growing pains with the app and the changes in view that it requires. And that goes for Rmn9's points about how to view things as well. I expect some mistakes that I'm making now (like the single $240 December expense above, or too many categories, or other aspects as outlined by Rmn9) will come out in the wash after a little time using the app.

[wonderpug]

I'd recommend keeping her on the same budget but with her own category. I had a category named "Wife's Mystery Spend" for a while when I hadn't fully gotten her on board with the YNAB program. Even though it would have been better to actually know what real categories she was spending out of, having the big 'Mystery Spend' bucket let me track what was going on and make sure we could stay on top of credit card payments.

[wonderpug]

Don't lump the payment all at once on the month its due. Fund it as much as you can right now, in September. Whatever the rest is, divide that by the months you have left and make that your monthly goal. I know YNAB4 doesn't have goals like nYNAB does, but just change the name of the category to "Car Payment ($85/mo)" to remind yourself.

Another example. Let's say it's January you want to spend $1000 at Christmas. Don't try to put $1000 in the budget amount for December. Try to add $83 to the budget every month so that the 'available balance' reaches $1000 by the time December comes around.

Yeah, I don't like that. I don't want to do that for certain things (none of which I can think of right now). Let's say that I have an annual expense of "balls washing" that costs $240 bucks. I don't want to budget 20 bucks a month. I want to just pay it out of my unbudgeted (as of yet) income for that month. That should work, I think.

Maybe this is just resistance to change. I just don't like the idea of saving 20 bucks in July for my Annual Balls Washing that occurs in December every year. 20 bucks a month for something that isn't actually paid every month (like Crunch Roll, for example) annoys me.

We'll see how things pan out going forward. I'm still going through growing pains with the app and the changes in view that it requires. And that goes for Rmn9's points about how to view things as well. I expect some mistakes that I'm making now (like the single $240 December expense above, or too many categories, or other aspects as outlined by Rmn9) will come out in the wash after a little time using the app.

You can do things however you want, but budgeting gradually for big things in the future is pretty central to the YNAB methodology.

Here's the Rule Two explanation in case you want to see if YNAB can sell you on changing your mind.

[GreenGoo]

I'd recommend keeping her on the same budget but with her own category. I had a category named "Wife's Mystery Spend" for a while when I hadn't fully gotten her on board with the YNAB program. Even though it would have been better to actually know what real categories she was spending out of, having the big 'Mystery Spend' bucket let me track what was going on and make sure we could stay on top of credit card payments.

Not yet. Her budget should look very similar to my budget, as our incomes are nearly identical and our expenses (values anyway) should be close. Except there should be no cc's, loc or other revolving debt vehicles.

She's not getting her own "wifey" category because it would literally be 50% of the entire household budget in a single mystery category right now.

When we've consolidated our incomes and expenses into a single household income and expenses budget, then she can have (and me too!) her own mystery spending line item.

I appreciate the advice though Wonderpug, and chances are very good that I will take your advice to heart and use it in the future. Just not yet.

[GreenGoo]

You can do things however you want, but budgeting gradually for big things in the future is pretty central to the YNAB methodology.

Here's the Rule Two explanation in case you want to see if YNAB can sell you on changing your mind.

It's just growing pains. Also, it feels like budgeting for a single diet coke purchase, on a slightly larger scale. As Rmn9 points out, managing categories so that the number doesn't get out of control creating an excessive amount of work is something that I'll need to keep in mind. At the same time, I just can't get behind saving 20 bucks a month for something, unless it's a vacation or new toy or something like that. I realize there is no mathematical difference between saving 20 bucks for a toy or saving 20 bucks for an expense, so it's obviously an internal (like, inside my head) resistance to treating them the same. Except maybe one I can do without, but the other *must* be done. It's still an emotional difference with no real practical difference.

As I said, growing pains. I'll come around, eventually.

[GreenGoo]

wonderpug’s advice is sound, although I don’t follow it.

I have four retirement accounts, all of which are in YNAB as budget accounts. The balances of which all go into a “Retirement Savings” line item. As mentioned above, I generally update the balance every month or two, with a “Market Value Change” transaction that adds or removes dollars from that Retirement Savings bucket.

From what I've read, my conclusion is that only accounts where money can be removed should be included as budget accounts, for simplicity's sake. Any account that you will *ONLY* be making deposits to in the foreseeable future doesn't need to be added. You don't add the water company as it's own account either, for example. The money leaves the budget accounts, never to be seen again (by YNAB). I can see value in adding retirement accounts because it gives you a more complete financial picture from a single screen, but from a YNAB standpoint, it's a black hole where money is only inflow.

If I'm repeating what has already been said, my apologies. I'm working and working on the budget and skimming along trying to read everyone's posts, I can easily read something.

I absolutely will return to the thread when I have more time and read what everyone wrote more closely. I appreciate all the comments, from well wishes to advice to anecdotes of other peoples' experiences.

[Blackhawk]

You can do things however you want, but budgeting gradually for big things in the future is pretty central to the YNAB methodology.

FWIW, it is invaluable when you're scraping by and can't afford to pay sudden big charges. I divide every single annual expense by 12 and pay in that amount every month, including holiday gifts and summer kid spending. Not only does it mean that annual expenses no longer crash my finances for a month, it also means I can see what everything is costing me on the same scale. I can look and ask myself if PS+ is worth 1/2 of a Netflix fee, or how the cost of Prime really compares to my other expenses.