GG's Financial Management Thread

[GreenGoo]

Ok, gonna stop here for now. From fixed, monthly expenses (no video games, no diet cokes, no balls washing) viewpoint, it looks like they are just about 66% of my net monthly income. That includes monthly contributions to the kids education fund as well as the mortgage. That's pretty good and leaves a fair amount left over for savings and/or fun, although I'm sure I'm missing some things.

A quick mental (educated guess) calculation puts our mortgage at about 1/6 of our net household income.

Let that sink in.

Now imagine that somehow we accrued enough cc debt that we're being sued!

Let that sink in.

Yeah.

[GreenGoo]

tl;dr
-------------------------------
No legal action as of today!
1 more (significant) payment and the offending debt is gone.

==================================


Oh, quick note before I ignore this thread for awhile.

As of today legal action against us has stopped! My initial lump sum payment has cleared with the creditor and as per our agreement (I will contact the lawyer to confirm!) that should put a halt to the legal action against us.

One more lump sum by the end of next week and that particular debt will have gone away. It's created some other new debt due to consolidation and such, but we won't be accruing 25% (or more!) against a huge balance that was crippling us.

[GreenGoo]

Ok, I make more than I thought I did. So that moves all the expense percentages lower and the freed up funds higher. Yes I'm a moron but I TOLD YOU GUYS that I don't like having to pay attention.

Obviously this is good news.

The bad news is something has happened to my monthly education fund contributions and I can't find out what. It looks like they just stopped and I can't find any record of the hows or whys. So...that's not good. It gets worse, because the government was supposed to be matching contributions (up to a very small fixed amount) and I've probably lost those contributions as well. Free money is free money and I lost out on it.

Chances are the government stopped matching (I don't know, I need to find out!) when I wasn't looking and somehow the bank took this to mean that I should stop contributing as well. Who knows.

Marked for later (sooner rather than later).

[GreenGoo]

Wait, there is no way to make a copy of your budget, not even in YNAB 5?

Not cool, man. Not cool at all.

I don't see a way to import a budget from files either? Wtf are all the saved versions of your budget then? How would one go about regressing to a previously saved version? What happens if your current version gets corrupted?

*panic*.

My dreams of merging budgets without huge manual effort also seem to be pipe dreams. Sigh. You know, for a 83 bucks a year, some basic technical functionality seems to be missing.

[Blackhawk]

Honestly, all your bad news seems like it's turning out for the best. You're finding money, you're discovering things (like your card and education fund) that were not doing their job. In the end, you'll be out the lump sums, but it sounds like your overall situation will be better for it, with some hidden pitfalls avoided.

[GreenGoo]

Purely for interest.

It appears that while YNAB is using Canadian currency and Canadian currency format (whatever that is), it is using South African date format (because that's what it thinks it has detected on my system). It has detected the correct format and is using the correct format, but I don't know why it's decided that it's a South African format (presumably this is the format they use. That doesn't make it specific to them).

Why this matters? Because I'm assuming the language issue I'm having with the months' names at the top of the budget are related to South Africa in some way. Without looking them up specifically, they have a very german-y feel to them. So presumably YNAB has decided my months are South African months based on the date format I use.

Weird, right?

Bottom line, I can keep the date format or I can keep the months in English, but I can't keep both.

[GreenGoo]

Honestly, all your bad news seems like it's turning out for the best. You're finding money, you're discovering things (like your card and education fund) that were not doing their job. In the end, you'll be out the lump sums, but it sounds like your overall situation will be better for it, with some hidden pitfalls avoided.

Absolutely, and to be honest I knew I'd find some things like this. If you recall, I started out by describing how I'm "not always available" to manage things actively so I set up a lot of automation to handle things when I'm elsewhere. It's frustrating to find out that some of the automation broke and that even automation seems to need regular maintenance.

On the one hand, it's irresponsible to not actively manage (in some form) your finances. On the other hand, how hard is it to have an automatic withdrawal automatically withdraw?

[RunningMn9]

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.

Let me state up front that your brain needs things to be a certain way to make sense. And that's ok. What makes sense to me may not make sense to you, and vice versa. I can just explain how I handle some of these things, and you can do with it as you will.

YNAB works perfectly well for annual or semi-periodic bills (annual ball cleansing, or more normal annual things like car insurance). When considering how to handle this in YNAB, I go back to what is the goal that YNAB is trying to achieve? Ideally it wants you to be one month ahead of your bills. So the income you generate in Sept is used to pay bills in Oct (or Nov, but not Sept). This obviously is most intuitive with monthly bills. But the same is true with annual bills.

Let's say I have to pay $500 per year in homeowner's insurance, and that it's due at the end of October. The goal for YNAB is for you to have $500 sitting in a homeowner's insurance bucket on Oct 1. How you achieve that is up to you I guess. You can pay the bill on Oct 31, and take the money out of your "unbudgeted" line item. Or you could take $21 from every paycheck and stick it in the Homeowner's Insurance line item. There are reasons to do that. The money in "unbudgeted" is subject to other financial whims. Maybe you spend it on a new computer? Your system requires that you know in July that you have to make sure that you have $500 in October. My system knows that the money will be there, with 100% certainty. And all of my decisions can be made without regard to paying that bill in October, since it's effectively always paid.

[GreenGoo]

I don't see a way to import a budget from files either? Wtf are all the saved versions of your budget then? How would one go about regressing to a previously saved version? What happens if your current version gets corrupted?

The answers are to physically copy the files and then "open another budget" from inside the application. You'll have to change the name from within the file as none of hte budget meta data will be different (it's a complete copy of the files).

Copying the budget directory and changing the name of it within the file system doesn't have any ill effects that I'm seeing.

The answer to the second question is "open another version" which allows you to pick a different version (a previous save) of the same budget to open.

[GreenGoo]

Let me state up front that your brain needs things to be a certain way to make sense. And that's ok. What makes sense to me may not make sense to you, and vice versa. I can just explain how I handle some of these things, and you can do with it as you will.

YNAB works perfectly well for annual or semi-periodic bills (annual ball cleansing, or more normal annual things like car insurance). When considering how to handle this in YNAB, I go back to what is the goal that YNAB is trying to achieve? Ideally it wants you to be one month ahead of your bills. So the income you generate in Sept is used to pay bills in Oct (or Nov, but not Sept). This obviously is most intuitive with monthly bills. But the same is true with annual bills.

Let's say I have to pay $500 per year in homeowner's insurance, and that it's due at the end of October. The goal for YNAB is for you to have $500 sitting in a homeowner's insurance bucket on Oct 1. How you achieve that is up to you I guess. You can pay the bill on Oct 31, and take the money out of your "unbudgeted" line item. Or you could take $21 from every paycheck and stick it in the Homeowner's Insurance line item. There are reasons to do that. The money in "unbudgeted" is subject to other financial whims. Maybe you spend it on a new computer? Your system requires that you know in July that you have to make sure that you have $500 in October. My system knows that the money will be there, with 100% certainty. And all of my decisions can be made without regard to paying that bill in October, since it's effectively always paid.

I follow what you are saying and I understand it. Something that may not have been clear in my examples is how I envision future months to work.

First, you have your monthly budget. Assuming you give every dollar a job, you start your month in the hole. i.e. no money in your chequing account that has not been budgeted for. You might (even probably) have money in your chequing account, but YNAB has already accounted for it by putting it in a bucket.

Then, you put in your first paycheque. It arrives via direct deposit in your bank, and on that day you add it as an income transaction (transfer?) for that month. You start filling in the money holes. The negative balance at the top of your budget shrinks. You don't have enough to cover the month yet, but you're making progress.

1/2 way through the month you get another direct deposit, so you add it to YNAB. All the money holes fill up completely and your balance turns positive. Whatever is positive is unbudgeted. You *can* put the leftovers in a savings bucket, but chances are the value changes every month which means you'll be constantly modifying the budgeted amount for the savings bucket. If you do this you will *never* have anything left over and thus never have any unbudgeted funds. Which is fine. Good for a lot of people, in fact.

I'm not sure how I want to handle that, yet. I can leave it unbudgeted or I can budget it to something. Those are the only two options. Does it really matter if I budget it to a savings line item or a leftovers line item? The effect is the same. Leaving it unbudgeted does mean that the budget is not a complete picture without that "unbudgeted" line at the top of each month, but that doesn't seem overly confusing.

If you think the temptation to view the unbudgeted amount as a windfall is too great, ok, I get it. I guarantee it won't be, but at least I understand what you're saying.

I still haven't decided on what to do with income that is not "budgeted" yet. I've got some time to think, as debt repayment will occupy anything left over for quite a while.

[GreenGoo]

Mild drama. Ok, not really, but not super positive either.

I spoke with my wife and told her I was about done with the things that have traditionally been my area of responsibility. I told her I needed online access to our shared account. I haven't looked at it in years, I'm sure my credentials are out of date. I told her I can get it myself if she is unable to provide me access for whatever reason (including forgotten passwords or whatever).

I asked her if she received her paycheque as direct deposit in that account. She answered yes. So I don't have to bug her about how much money she makes. I can see it as it comes in.

I asked her if she had any other accounts or credit cards that I don't know about, because it is very important that we have a complete picture in order for this to work. She answered nope. Great.

I will have access to her account and see her income. I can do all the heavy lifting in YNAB myself to start, she doesn't need to do anything. What I do need from her is to let me know when she spends *ANYTHING*. If the bank account does not match the YNAB version of that account, we're in trouble. So I need to know everything for now.

Stony silence. She's trying, really hard for her, but she is NOT excited about doing this. She agrees, but her tone has changed from "good idea, what can I do to help?" to "this is a problem, this won't work, why are you being like this?". It's just tone, but I am super sensitive to tone, especially from my wife.

Also, I've mentioned this before. When you *want* something to happen, you find reasons to make it happen. When you *don't want* something to happen, you find reasons that it will fail so you don't even have to try. Several times I got the "that won't work because of x" speech. She may believe (If I give her a heaping helping of benefit of the doubt) that she is just identifying potential issues that will need to be dealt with, but it comes across less as problem solving and more as "that will fail because of x. That won't work because of y." When I explain how x and y are not a problem or simply don't matter for the thing she's tearing down, she really starts digging in her heels and huge amounts of negativity flow out of her.

I was not encouraged by her attitude, which was neutral at best, pessimistic at worst. She's trying, I can see it in her eyes and her phrasing and the way she says things, but it's clear to me that even if she understands that what we're doing is a good idea, she doesn't like it and that it's a "problem". I tried to explain how the new system (YNAB) will help prevent being sued again (I phrased it differently. ) and how there are many benefits, including me making assumptions about things that simply aren't true (like me thinking she spent all the money she owed, when in fact she spent significantly less and then got buried by accrued interest. This is a real life actual example and I need to keep that in mind when/if I get angry).

So we'll see. It has to be done and once I have her line items and income added to the budget, I will be able to see if/when we start going off the rails long before it gets bad.

[RunningMn9]

Apologies in advance for the Treatment(tm), this is just so I don't miss anything.

First, you have your monthly budget. Assuming you give every dollar a job, you start your month in the hole. i.e. no money in your chequing account that has not been budgeted for. You might (even probably) have money in your chequing account, but YNAB has already accounted for it by putting it in a bucket.

You already lost me.

If your account balance has an amount, and each of those dollars has been given a job, then what do you mean by in the hole? You have all of your money allocated. That's the normal expectation, and does not mean you are in the hole.

Then, you put in your first paycheque. It arrives via direct deposit in your bank, and on that day you add it as an income transaction (transfer?) for that month. You start filling in the money holes. The negative balance at the top of your budget shrinks. You don't have enough to cover the month yet, but you're making progress.

Why are there money holes? Why is there a negative balance at the top of your budget? Not enough to cover the month yet? Progress? What?

You are still approaching this in a way that is contrary to the design and philosophy of YNAB.

There are no money holes that you are trying to fill in. You don't start the month saying "The mortgage costs $1000, so I have this mortgage bucket with -$1000 in it, and each paycheck I get I will put $500 in the mortgage bucket until it is $0, and then figure out what to do with what's left over."

The intent of the system is that the mortgage is due on the first of the month. On the first of the month, the bucket must have the $1000 already in it. That's $1000 real dollars that you have, whose one job is to pay the mortgage. You pay the mortgage, and it goes down to $0. Each paycheck during the month results in you putting $500 into the mortgage bucket. That way, when the first of the next month rolls around, the balance is $1000, and you know that you already have all of the money available to pay the mortgage.

As an example:
9/30 - Mortgage Bucket = $1000
10/01 - Mortgage Bucket = $0 (-$1000 to mortgage company)
10/15 - Mortgage Bucket = $500 (+$500 from income)
10/31 - Mortgage Bucket = $1000 (+$500 from income)
11/01 - Mortgage Bucket = $0 (-$1000 to mortgage company)
Ad infinitum

The value of that bucket *never* goes below $0. Does that make more or less sense?

[GreenGoo]

Not at a computer, so response will have to wait. Just so you know I'm not around for awhile.

[Smoove_B]

Just so you know I'm not around for awhile.

Don't forget to keep your receipts!

[dbt1949]

This is the most complicated thread I've ever read.

[Grifman]

Goo, put her accounts on Mint. Then you will receive in real time where she is spending money without her or you having to do anything. Once the accounts are linked, it’s all automatic - you don’t have to rely on her at all. Just a thought.

[Zaxxon]

Same is true of YNAB, I believe.

[GreenGoo]

Ok, I went back and re-read the last 3 pages.

I'll try to keep it shorter in the future.

[GreenGoo]

Goo, put her accounts on Mint. Then you will receive in real time where she is spending money without her or you having to do anything. Once the accounts are linked, it’s all automatic - you don’t have to rely on her at all. Just a thought.

I have some personal issues with giving 3rd party software access to my financial accounts. I like the idea of Mint but so far I haven't been able to get past that. I believe YNAB 5 does something similar.

I'll reconsider at some future date.

[GreenGoo]

Apologies in advance for the Treatment(tm), this is just so I don't miss anything.

First, you have your monthly budget. Assuming you give every dollar a job, you start your month in the hole. i.e. no money in your chequing account that has not been budgeted for. You might (even probably) have money in your chequing account, but YNAB has already accounted for it by putting it in a bucket.

You already lost me.

If your account balance has an amount, and each of those dollars has been given a job, then what do you mean by in the hole? You have all of your money allocated. That's the normal expectation, and does not mean you are in the hole.

Then, you put in your first paycheque. It arrives via direct deposit in your bank, and on that day you add it as an income transaction (transfer?) for that month. You start filling in the money holes. The negative balance at the top of your budget shrinks. You don't have enough to cover the month yet, but you're making progress.

Why are there money holes? Why is there a negative balance at the top of your budget? Not enough to cover the month yet? Progress? What?

You are still approaching this in a way that is contrary to the design and philosophy of YNAB.

There are no money holes that you are trying to fill in. You don't start the month saying "The mortgage costs $1000, so I have this mortgage bucket with -$1000 in it, and each paycheck I get I will put $500 in the mortgage bucket until it is $0, and then figure out what to do with what's left over."

The intent of the system is that the mortgage is due on the first of the month. On the first of the month, the bucket must have the $1000 already in it. That's $1000 real dollars that you have, whose one job is to pay the mortgage. You pay the mortgage, and it goes down to $0. Each paycheck during the month results in you putting $500 into the mortgage bucket. That way, when the first of the next month rolls around, the balance is $1000, and you know that you already have all of the money available to pay the mortgage.

As an example:
9/30 - Mortgage Bucket = $1000
10/01 - Mortgage Bucket = $0 (-$1000 to mortgage company)
10/15 - Mortgage Bucket = $500 (+$500 from income)
10/31 - Mortgage Bucket = $1000 (+$500 from income)
11/01 - Mortgage Bucket = $0 (-$1000 to mortgage company)
Ad infinitum

The value of that bucket *never* goes below $0. Does that make more or less sense?

I've kind of run out of steam on this topic for today, but I can see going over the last couple of pages that there is some miscommunication.

First, I'm just setting everything up after draining my account, so there are some things that won't exist after a couple of months. I have no carry-over balance and I need September's income to cover September's expenses. I.e. some buckets are empty not because they've been paid, but because I can't cover them, yet.

Second, and you picked up on this Rmn9, is that until you assign real dollars, a bucket is just a bucket with an unpaid balance. You need to assign dollars to it before you can do a transaction and clear the balance for that month. If you don't have the money, you can't assign budgeted dollars to it. I misunderstood and thought that a new month would have the expense balance AND the budgeted number from the previous month, even though you haven't received your income for the month yet. So that's what I meant by money holes. I was thinking that money would auto-populate the "budgeted" field just like it does the "balance" field. This would have resulted in money budgeted to line items before the money existed (you haven't been paid yet), which would result in a negative account balance, or "money hole".

I'm not sure why I thought that, as it clearly doesn't and can't work that way (you can't assign a dollar you don't have yet). What it does mean is that you can have unpaid expenses for a month if you simply don't assign a dollar to it. I'm not sure what happens then. The expense is not paid, but there don't appear to be any red flags or warnings or anything. If I just leave a month blank by not assigning any money to budgeted line items, it's just a big white screen. The only difference from the month before is a few more numbers. In YNAB 4 you see 12 months at a time, and once you have a few months under your belt, it all sort of blurs together.

What am I missing?

Anyway, that's basically it. I mistakenly thought that balances (these are monthly expenses, so this makes sense) AND budgeted funds (these are real dollars and don't even exist yet, potentially, so this doesn't make sense) were carried forward into a new month before you have any income to assign to line items. Hence I thought your account would show in the red until you got paid. Money hole.

My bad.

[RunningMn9]

What am I missing?

Anyway, that's basically it. I mistakenly thought that balances (these are monthly expenses, so this makes sense) AND budgeted funds (these are real dollars and don't even exist yet, potentially, so this doesn't make sense) were carried forward into a new month before you have any income to assign to line items. Hence I thought your account would show in the red until you got paid. Money hole.

My bad.

There is no outflow from the allocated dollars (I'm going to stop using the phrase "budgeted number" from here on out) until the bill is actually paid. And at the moment that the bill is actually paid, there is no two ways about it - you've actually committed physical dollars. They had to come from somewhere.

The only thing that I think you might be doing here is that if you pay the bill with a credit card, you are operating as if you haven't actually committed physical dollars yet. In that case, the bucket will most certainly go negative until you add more dollars. The tool allows you to do it, but this is not the goal of YNAB. In the world of YNAB, spending $1 on a credit card is exactly the same as spending $1 from your bank account. That $1 is gone, immediately (so it can't be spent again).

The advantage for me is that YNAB works exactly like the spreadsheet system that I developed over years on my own - it's just so much better at it. I didn't appreciate the difficulty encountered by those who didn't independently come to that system. The reason that I have it setup the way that I do is that every two weeks I get paid, and if I divide my paycheck up into these buckets with these amounts, I know with certainly that every single bill will be paid on time without having to stress about it. And I always know that regardless of how much money is in the bank, I know *exactly* how much of that money is actually mine. Which allows me to make better decisions about that money. It works for me because it's how I already thought about things. It may not be for everyone.

My final thought for the night is that I think if you try to bend YNAB to your will, it will be a very poor tool for you. If you instead learn how it wants to help you manage your money better, it might really help you.

Also: The number of months displayed in YNAB4 is a function of the window width. If you want to see fewer months, don't go full screen and shrink the width until it shows you the number of months that you want (incidentally, nYNAB *only* shows 1 month regardless of window width, which I'm sure will enrage you if you ever check it out).

Sorry, last piece of advice. I know that you want your wife to report every single transaction to you, so that you can meticulously build an accurate picture of your household finances. And that's an admirable goal, but only so long as your wife is cool with that. Might I suggest an alternative approach that let's you accomplish the same goals, without forcing her to report to you. Use Mint as a transaction processor. It is fully capable of downloading all of your wife's transactions. Whether she wants you to do this or not, I don't know. But at least then you are just recording what the bank tells you, and not constantly pestering her asking her what she spent that day, or demanding receipts. You want the data, not the headache.

[GreenGoo]

My final thought for the night is that I think if you try to bend YNAB to your will, it will be a very poor tool for you. If you instead learn how it wants to help you manage your money better, it might really help you.

This makes me think that you are under the impression that I am doing something out of the ordinary, unusual, or even wrong with YNAB. I don't feel that I am. There are growing pains and I am adjusting. My misunderstanding above was because I was writing without the application in front of me and, as you surmised correctly, I was still thinking in terms of predicting future expenses and trying to save to meet them like a more traditional budgeting app.

If I had the application in front of me I could have seen how future months have the expenses but not real dollars (the app calls these budgeted dollars) so there is no "money hole" as I was thinking. And in retrospect, of course not. Without real dollars, nothing has been "budgeted" (this is the term YNAB uses) for that line item.

I'm not "bending" anything to my will. I'm describing my climbing the learning curve. I have found myself reading a concept, understanding it and then the next day falling back into old habits and viewpoints, which again must be replaced by re-affirming the new concepts. The concepts are complicated or difficult to grasp, they are just foreign to typical default approach to home finance budgeting. That's just the process of undoing a certain outlook and creating a new one. It's not bending anything to my will.

I get that because you've used YNAB for years and your own similar system before that that the entire approach is second nature to you, and that's cool. I've spent 2 partial days with it, in total.

Mistakes will be made. Concepts will be learned in theory but not internalized and have to be refreshed. Using the application will result in bad transactions or budgeting or transfers that need to be deleted and redone. Experience will be gained and proficiency will follow.

I'll get there.

God I talk a lot.

[GreenGoo]

Also: The number of months displayed in YNAB4 is a function of the window width. If you want to see fewer months, don't go full screen and shrink the width until it shows you the number of months that you want (incidentally, nYNAB *only* shows 1 month regardless of window width, which I'm sure will enrage you if you ever check it out).

Sorry, last piece of advice. I know that you want your wife to report every single transaction to you, so that you can meticulously build an accurate picture of your household finances. And that's an admirable goal, but only so long as your wife is cool with that. Might I suggest an alternative approach that let's you accomplish the same goals, without forcing her to report to you. Use Mint as a transaction processor. It is fully capable of downloading all of your wife's transactions. Whether she wants you to do this or not, I don't know. But at least then you are just recording what the bank tells you, and not constantly pestering her asking her what she spent that day, or demanding receipts. You want the data, not the headache.

While I do find all 12 months at once to be a distraction, it's not the end of the world. The font is tiny when all 12 are displayed though, and that won't change by shrinking the window to limit what's visible. Correct me if I'm misunderstanding.

I have full access to the only bank account she has, the same one that her paycheque is deposited into, so I can already view all bank records without going through her. What I need from her is an understanding of what she's spending the money on. Obviously if she buys something with a debit card I can look at the bank record and we're good (except for the wisdom of the purchase itself, which is a different battle). If she takes out 300 dollars and then spends cash on everything, then I need her help in understanding where the money is going. Many of the expenses formerly thought of as "hers" are being added to YNAB as expected, and that will cover a lot of where her money was/is going as well. I won't need to ask her what she spent money on today, only to find out it's the electric bill. I'll already know that from the bank records and can manage YNAB for that expense without her input.

I appreciate the advice on the application and on reducing conflict.

Making progress.

[RunningMn9]

I get that because you've used YNAB for years and your own similar system before that that the entire approach is second nature to you, and that's cool. I've spent 2 partial days with it, in total.

Mistakes will be made. Concepts will be learned in theory but not internalized and have to be refreshed. Using the application will result in bad transactions or budgeting or transfers that need to be deleted and redone. Experience will be gained and proficiency will follow.

I'll get there.

I get it, and it may be that we just think about things in a different way, and so it jives differently for each of us. That's fine. I am in no way being critical.

If I had the application in front of me I could have seen how future months have the expenses but not real dollars

There is a language issue here in some sense, because I don't know what you mean. The future months shouldn't have anything, except real dollars that you assigned to the line item that you haven't spent yet (they will continue to carry forward to future months until they are spent).

I don't have a concept called "future expenses". So I don't know what you mean. I didn't think that the tool did either, so either it's just a question of terminology that will resolve as soon as we get on the same page, or maybe I'm wrong (since I haven't used YNAB4 in a couple of years). I assume this is becoming frustrating for you, so I think I should just ease up a bit on the explanations so that you become comfortable with the tool in whatever way makes the most sense to you, without me cocking up the situation by explaining things in a different and confusing way.

Correct me if I'm misunderstanding.

According to reddit, if you shrink the window width, it will reduce to two months at some point, and there is some play in the width before it goes back to three months. So I assume it adjusts the scaling/spacing a little before bumping back up to three months. Reddit was no more specific than that.

If she takes out 300 dollars and then spends cash on everything, then I need her help in understanding where the money is going.

That seems like a useful compromise (to me). If your wife doesn't agree, then at least you have the option of trying the Smoove approach which is to track the money leaving the system (the cash withdrawal), so that when things aren't going as well as they could be, there is at least some evidence to say "Look, all this other stuff seems to be working well enough, but there are still issues, maybe it's time to look into this black hole which is the $1800 in cash withdrawals per month?". And at that point, you may even have the data to also say "As an example, last Tuesday when you took out $500 in cash, you didn't actually have $500 available to take out in cash, so we had to take $238 out of the vacation fund to cover the withdrawal. Which is fine, as long as you don't want to go on vacation. If that's not fine, we need to find out if what you bought with that $500 is more important than our family vacation." I'm sure that will be a fun convo too.

I don't know what will work best for you on that front. You will likely have to discover the details of that on your own. We're just spit-balling possibilities for you. In the end, my wife has a bucket all to herself to manage her day-to-day. As long as it never goes below $0, I don't care what it's being spent on. And most of the time, she enters the transaction as it happens, so I'm just clearing things and not asking questions.

But we are also 10 years into this plan, so our hiccups are all worked out already. So it's not exactly fair to expect you to jump right there.

[GreenGoo]

tl;dr

Final payment made, waiting on official confirmation lawsuit dropped
================================================


After waiting for another bank draft to clear, I've made the final payment on the debt covered by the lawsuit, including lawyers' fees. Now I'm waiting for it to clear, for the Bank to notify the lawyers, and the lawyers to write me a letter saying my wife is off the hook.

I've been using YNAB daily, but the truth is I don't spend money daily, but I'm still taking a look at my accounts online and in YNAB. I've had a few transactions that I dutifully put into YNAB. Things are plugging along.

I still haven't added my wife's account or the monthly expenses that she pays, yet, but I'm planning on doing that this weekend. My wife reminded me that I had other priorities that took precedent so I backed off for a few days. She was right, and I absolutely was procrastinating by learning and using YNAB instead. Like knowing you have to clean the bathroom so you vacuum the living room instead.

In any case, things are moving along.

I feel vaguely nauseous watching all that money leave us, but it needed to be done and I'm tightening up our finances so hopefully we never see something like this again. My wife is going to need a credit card again at some point, but for now she's not allowed to use credit for anything (nor can she. There isn't a valid credit card she's authorized to use), even with me on top of spending.

[GreenGoo]

Burning that much money (on the cc debt/lawsuit) all at once has driven my miserly instincts into overdrive, and I feel completely paralyzed by the idea of spending money on anything. Even relatively small amounts, like $100. Which means YNAB has not been as active as it might be otherwise.

Now that I've been using YNAB for about a week, I at least have some transactions in it. I'm watching what's happening closely as I try to solidify my understanding and correct usage. I can't help but feel like I'm spending a lot of time and (mild) stress levels balancing YNAB accounts, actual accounts, and unbudgeted monies left over. I should probably move the bulk of my unbudgeted funds into a category, even if it's just called "unbudgeted funds" but I haven't been able to do that yet. Mostly because it feels wrong to "commit" the money when it's uncommitted. Actually, I have no idea why I'm resistant.

I know Rmn9 is gonna tell me I'm not doing it right, and I'm not, but until I get more familiar and more comfortable through continued usage, it's gonna be like this.

Zax, as a fellow learner, if you have any questions please ask. If I can't answer them then I probably need to know the answer, so asking here will help both of us.

My wife's stuff is still not in YNAB yet. There are reasons, but I don't think they are good ones, so I'm not gonna go into detail right now. I'm gonna try to get the big stuff (utilities, mostly) into YNAB before the weekend is out.

Financially I've been putting off a lot of paperwork that could be providing us with more money, so I need to get to that in the near future. First thing that comes to mind is filing our taxes. We're far enough behind and I'm clueless enough that I'll probably just throw everything at an accountant. Once we are caught up it should be relatively easy to stay on top of things without 3rd party help. Honestly removing the headache of trying to figure out everything is worth the cost.

[RunningMn9]

RM9 is not going to tell you that. You just keep using it until you figure out how to do what you want to do, the way that makes sense to you to do it.

[GreenGoo]

Here I am resistant to the idea of spending 50 bucks on some exterior lighting, 2 weeks before the lawsuit bombshell.

Did I mention I don't like spending money? Yeah, well, here's some evidence to that effect.

Neat. I am seeing some light/camera combos and while I like the idea of seeing what's moving around out there, it just feels too indulgent for me.

I really don't like spending money on...well, anything these days.

[GreenGoo]

Lawyer acknowledged that the final payment has cleared. She will be sending us the final documents this week.

I'm not sure which I find more stressful. Being sued for the money, or actually letting go of the money.

So far nothing out of the ordinary on the home front. She does not have access to credit so she can't spend more than is in her account. In the meantime I'm still looking at expenses to see where we are out of control.

Food, both groceries and take out, are an obviously source of hemorrhaging money. It's practically criminal. With that said, I enjoy(ed?) all benefits of that spending, so reap what you sow I guess.

Lots of incidentals. SOOoooo many incidentals. Hundreds of $$ in bags of chips and soda for everyone, none of which is part of the groceries and all of it bought in the most expensive fashion possible (i.e. corner store, 1 bottle at a time, from the impulse buy refrigerator).

[Zaxxon]

Lots of incidentals. SOOoooo many incidentals. Hundreds of $$ in bags of chips and soda for everyone, none of which is part of the groceries and all of it bought in the most expensive fashion possible (i.e. corner store, 1 bottle at a time, from the impulse buy refrigerator).

[GreenGoo]

I had to extrapolate based on current trends. We'll see how things shake out.

[Isgrimnur]

So far nothing out of the ordinary on the home front. She does not have access to credit so she can't spend more than is in her account.

Are you sure about that? You’d be wise to review the overdraft settings on the account to ensure that it will behave as expected.

[GreenGoo]

So far nothing out of the ordinary on the home front. She does not have access to credit so she can't spend more than is in her account.

Are you sure about that? You’d be wise to review the overdraft settings on the account to ensure that it will behave as expected.

Overdraft is a maximum of 200 dollars. I can see the account now. As long as I check it semi-regularly (even once a week would be enough) I should be fine.

If she over spends by only 200 from now on, I'll consider it a major success.

I did mispeak however, because I said she couldn't spend more than was in the account.

[GreenGoo]

I've developed constant low grade nausea, acid reflux and mild headache. I'm starting to feel that this might be the manifestation of stress side effects. It's been pretty much constant all week, except for right when I wake up.

If it continues I guess I'll see a doctor, but it's just low level but always there. It is affecting my appetite because I fear putting anything in my stomach that might make it worse.

[Anonymous Bosch]

I've developed constant low grade nausea, acid reflux and mild headache. I'm starting to feel that this might be the manifestation of stress side effects. It's been pretty much constant all week, except for right when I wake up.

If it continues I guess I'll see a doctor, but it's just low level but always there. It is affecting my appetite because I fear putting anything in my stomach that might make it worse.

Every cloud has a silver lining; imagine how much you can now save on your profligate grocery spending!

[GreenGoo]

Every cloud has a silver lining; imagine how much you can now save on your profligate grocery spending!

I don't feel overly stressed. I've had something similar happen to me when I was 18, which is where my guess that it's stress related comes from.

I'm not lying in bed awake at night worrying. If it is stress, it's very much subconscious. I'm in the middle of some pretty stressful things in my life, which is another reason I'm guessing that the physical effects are stress related.

Who knows? Maybe I just have a bug or bowel issues or something. Just thought I'd write it down for posterity.

[LawBeefaroni]

The reason that I have it setup the way that I do is that every two weeks I get paid, and if I divide my paycheck up into these buckets with these amounts, I know with certainly that every single bill will be paid on time without having to stress about it. And I always know that regardless of how much money is in the bank, I know *exactly* how much of that money is actually mine. Which allows me to make better decisions about that money. It works for me because it's how I already thought about things.

I didn't last very long with YNAB. But I do get the idea. Every payday, I pay all my bills. I have a portion direct deposited into the spending account and everything gets paid out of that. Every payday regardless of due date. So except for mortgage, every two weeks my debt is zero and what is in the bank is actually mine.

[GreenGoo]

I'm thinking about "balancing" YNAB every weekend, like balancing your cheque book from decades ago. It saves me from having to pay attention every day which I still don't want to do but it makes me review that things are in order in a timely fashion.

[wonderpug]

I'm thinking about "balancing" YNAB every weekend, like balancing your cheque book from decades ago.

The 'reconcile' button in YNAB is intended for exactly that.

[GreenGoo]

I'm thinking about "balancing" YNAB every weekend, like balancing your cheque book from decades ago.

The 'reconcile' button in YNAB is intended for exactly that.

I mean the process of putting the past week's worth of transactions into YNAB.