Yikes! Again, the average user just won't do this. If you want a forecasting/tracking budget system, there are a lot of tools out there that will do that for you... and some of them are even free. Depending on timing, that movement is either automatic or it's not. It is a feature number in the user interface, and after all, I need a "budget". You go to the grocery store and you spend $110. You never carry a balance. (If you sign up for a new credit account (e.g., at the store), I'll address it at the end. From the main budget view, scroll to the top of the page where you see the name of the month and the year. Green Cup It's because YNAB won't let you manage your finances like an adult. Ben Khaki Storm Try putting vodka and some ice in one, you’ll remember then! Well, let’s say you have $1,000 to budget each month. I prepaid the vacation, so I had a negative red available in December, but in fact I have 3 months to pay for it, so I expect to budget money this money and to see the “available” money be the red amount from last month minus what I budget. Each month you repeat this. I move the funds from another category to cover every overspend in the month it occurs. We call it “turning the arrow to the right.” When I’ve overspent, I can click on the red category balance, and YNAB asks me if I want to subtract it from next month’s Available to Budget, or if I want to subtract it from next month’s category balance. Obviously, for some envelopes like "rent", each month you will be using the money you put in during the same month. Then, towards the end of the month, an old pal comes by and wants to catch up. Tomato Cobra said: I'm just trying to follow the YNAB approach and it seems like they put the budgeted amount front and center. Also it’s actually pretty offensive given the connotations. To be clear, the mindset is that you are not paying for the Home Furnishing on installment -- you are paying for debt on installment. Iremember that there was a way to carry over the budget to the next month so I don't have to start off with zero in every category and then adjust. … I don't know the exact amounts, and I feel the tool is forcing me into an unnatural framework. It forces me to budget by month, so I have to look at the previous month to see my budgeted amounts. In fact, it often means more success in the long run. The common workaround is to run PIF cards as checking accounts to absolutely prevent stealth debt growth. Patzer I’m not sure that starting to accuse each other of being in a cult is particularly helpful. If you use cash/debit, that's actual money you no longer have access to. It's silly - I know how much I earn, I know how much I want to spend on clothes in a year - YNAB won't let me allocate that money month to month with any flexibility (unless I create debt with a credit card rather than my own capital???). You can go back to view last month's budget or forward to next month's budget. What happens if we increase our retirement savings a percentage. If your work pays you, by cheque or bank transfer, an odd amount of money, not matching your salary, annotated ‘special payment’, reimbursement ‘, or ‘expenses ‘, how is it hard to remember that is your expenses being reimbursed? Green Cup When you overspend using your credit card, the category goes orange and negative, and as much money as possible is moved to the card payment category. Because that is what is happening in the real world. Zero out by changing next month's budget rather than this month's. Tomato Cobra OK, I'll do my best. Agent99 New CC debt (credit overspending) is shown in the individual CC register, but it makes far more sense to show it in the budget... After all, that's where it will be corrected. None of these taste as good as the old formula Coke Zero or Caffeine-Free Coke Zero. Add funds directly to the Credit Card Payment category in the current month. Yes, YNAB insists you mirror your budget to reality, so you can't construct any sensible concept of forecasts or allocation of funds over time, just real-time tracking and endless adjustments. YNAB is an allocation budget system, not a free for all, and you can't allocate money more money to categories than you have on-hand, because it makes the actual category balances invalid. You can have multiple of these, vacation, emergency, buffer, etc. Tomato Cobra There is a Quick Budget option to budget the same amount as the previous month. I take that back, apparently I haven't looked at the details in a while (we've only had it since the spring). If you used a CC, that may be true. Regardless, anything budgeted last month,  results in negative red numbers as I move things around this month, which leads into my second question. I realise YNAB isn't a commercial accounting system, it's personal finance system, but it is a mature product, and they could maintain a feature set that allows some flexibility thereby pleasing more of their customers. Any ideas? Perhaps in process, but this is more frustrating than it should be. My store brand has a diet cola, caffeine-free diet cola, Diet Dr Pepper knock-off, and a Coke Zero knock-off. 10 calories. We handle these situations a little differently. ($X is the sum of each installment's remaining balance / remaining months, and doesn't change unless one of the installments is paid off or you add a new one. In order to use a Tracking account to capture the cumulative balance of a subset of transactions, you will use transactions to update the balance. For a simple example, you have $200. Click that to open up the month navigator. YNAB is very focused on your plans for every single bit of money that you have at any given moment. Why have it at all in the interface? If you're carrying no debt, the amount you have available to pay down the card and the card's balance should always be equal (for example, balance is -$500, and you have +$500 available to pay the card.). What numbers will carry over into the new month? I assume this is on your normal CC. Iremember that there was a way to carry over the budget to the next month so I don't have to start off with zero in every category and then adjust. Additionally, not everything has an expense report to track amounts (e.g., between friends) and reimbursements aren't always paid without some prodding. I haven't seen it in a couple years. In this case, I think it's easiest to leave the initial purchase out of YNAB. That step currently requires some documentation that doesn't reside near the transactions, and must be intentionally left somewhere in the budget that will get looked at. Coke Zero became Coke Zero Sugar a while back, but the caffeine-free version took a little while to run out and have them start stocking the new formula. These forums are all the proof you need that there are lots of different preferences over how people want to use the system. Rww I really don’t understand this complaint. ), This naturally reduces the amount available elsewhere, but that is the case with any high priority category (e.g., Rent/Mortgage). Can you help me understand why that number is not important? YNAB puts me in an awkward situation. The option you're looking for is the Quick Budget feature! Why not let people who want the flexibility have it? If you want a forecasting/tracking budget system, there are a lot of tools out there that will do that for you... and some of them are even free. mamster perfect. This concept of giving every dollar a job (i.e. It doesn't matter when you receive your next paycheck, you'll know exactly where those dollars are needed as soon as they're in your account. But it is a tool and one that can be used wisely if you have moved beyond paycheck to paycheck. But it is not doing this. lindsay_g I was simply addressing your statement that you don't "get" the complaints. ), Working to Get Smart at budgeting, finances and life. Thank you. YNAB is simply asking you to do exactly that... distribute that capital to cover the overspending. And you need to know what to do in your budget when it does!IMPORTANT! Maybe you're saving for a vacation, pay a bill twice a year, or you’re planning for Christmas (hint: It comes in December this year). You can budget them in the next month: 1 In the header of the budget, scroll forward to the next month. In July I put $100 in it, then spent $50 from that envelope. It has all of our retirement accounts, all the bank accounts, the savings accounts, the investments, our debts, the mortgage, the kids' college accounts. Confusion could be eliminated with a simple UI addition to the header to summarize current month overspending. I read this in the help docs: If your category had been overspent in cash (negative red Available), that amount will be deducted from To be Budgeted in the new month. That is not ok as nolesrule said. I get paid at the end of the month, and following the YNAB rules, I give every dollar a job by answering the question "what do I need this money to do before I get paid again?" It doesn't feel fine. If you keep spending over $1,000 you’ll go into debt. Consequently, all of my budgeted amounts are visible to me for a day or two, then inconveniently disappear when the month rolls over. Otherwise, YNAB would have deducted the 650 from March's TBB or put it on your CC debt. so _every_ category in YNAB acts like a fund in EveryDollar. That's how you build up money to pay annual expenses or emergency expenses or over years to buy a car. Related to personal finance, budgeting, money and financial matters. If you paid out of a checking/current account then it did take it out of TBB. You get paid, and distribute that throughout the budget, including $100 in the CC Payment category. On the right hand side of your budget, in the web app, you'll see them listed there to auto-fill your budget with the amounts Budgeted Last Month, Spent Last Month, etc. That said, second thought -- I'll post Tracking account info in a subsequent post. Follow YNAB to get support and lots of great ideas on budgeting, If I were using envelopes, I'd know how much I budgeted when I look at the label on the envelope. You rock. Previously, I used to estimate about how much I'd spend per month on categories (ex: $200 on restaurants) and I'd enter this as my budget amount at the beginning of the month. Rww Any debt is shown in the difference between your card balance and the amount you have available to pay that card in your budget. lindsay_g You probably seeded all of those reimbursable categories with your own money, first. But the budgeting methodology took a hard turn towards mandating that everyone budget like they are living paycheck to paycheck. It's too late to do anything about it now.). If you're worried that you won't be able to "make it up" toward one of those supposedly less important things (after one of the more important things like an installment payment "drops off", freeing up money), that is a signal that it's really more important to you than you are acknowledging, and should be receiving money now. That way, you have 100% of the cash for the whole month on the first of the month. (If you budget for this month, you'll be able to advance to next month. You need to have money for that auto insurance renewal that comes up every 6 months, right? Here's to leaving all budgeting frustration back in 2017! bevocat I haven't looked at the generic sodas available near me lately. :). Forgot to mention how to handle a new credit account. And the iOS app is superior to the YNAB 4 iOS app. Yes, but where is the credit debt tracked except buried in the CC account balance? I'm paid once a month at the end of the month, so I used my July paycheque to fully fund all my August categories, so I have no orange. Like. I would strongly urge you to think about things a little differently than it would seem you are at present. Marketing Guy | Musician | Empath | Enthusiast, a category with a scheduled outflow that doesn't yet have enough to cover the outflow, I have the honor to be your obedient servant. I suspect, as Move Light Sound Life does, that you're floating your reimbursements from the budget rather than as CC debt. So you put $100 each month in the "rent" envelope and say $50 each month for the "new car" etc. In short, it is ok to take more money out of an envelope than you put in during that month or paycycle. That will turn off the orange in this month. The envelope label doesn't change to $0 when the month changes. When those red flags start appearing it causes great anxiety for me. Most of us just included amount or date reminders in the category names. If it's credit card overspending, add funds to the category if you can before the end of the month. I really like YNAB, but would like it better if it had a more flexible feature set. Simples. But your budget tells you you don't have anything left in Available in the eating out category. The software is written specifically to support the method. What happens if we pay more on the mortgage. You can go back to view last month's budget or forward to next month's budget. I budgeted the money last paycheck (last week in July) and since then, it's only time that has changed. If what's left unfunded is truly a lower priority, you should be OK without it for an indefinite period of time. where everydollar has you create a “new” budget every month (with all categories reseting to zero each month—unless you mark them as funds), YNAB is more fluid month-to-month. But if I travel during the last week of the month and don’t get reimbursed until next month, YNAB can’t handle this. Those are funds, and yes, they would carry over to the next month. If I go a little over or under each month, i shouldn't need to do a lot of pointless admin work to reconcile this. Your categories tell you how much you can spend from them right now. So if they are going to remove the Red Arrow, the need to provide some indication that you have created CC debt with your overspend and someone needs to give you your money (if a reimburse situation; one of the most common use cases). I need the flexibility to plan out over a years time not just month to month. nolesrule  Is that a community idea or something you heard from a YNAB representative? Your main menu is on the left side of the screen. dakinemaui , can you expand on your statement on an auxiliary tracking accounts. I was so frustrated - I knew there was a way to do it but couldn't find it! They discovered people were using it to lie to themselves about the true state of their budget, so decided to eliminate it. You put $100 in gas, $100 in groceries. That is absolutely fine, it simply means you took more money out of this category on that month than you put in. You Need a Budget. I send that money back to my UK bank account, and record it in the flights  category, not as TBB. But why the orange status? The key to getting a month ahead is prioritizing. If I get reimbursed during the same month, this is fine. Why do you think you have 3 months to pay for it? In This Article Until then, continually fretting over what should be -- by definition -- a lower priority is counter productive. If YNAB allows you to carry over the overspending in a category from month to month, then that also means you can leave that overspending in the category from month to month until the end of time, and that is doing you no favors. What would the workaround be in this case? You don't have to manage it. One day—probably more than one day—but less than 32 days after you’ve been using You Need a Budget (okay, definitely less, definitely), you’re going to start a new month in YNAB and the old month is going to roll over.And, with the new month, new YNABers across the land watch the budget screen in YNAB zooming forward into the now. When you overspend with cash, you spent all the money in that category, plus some money from your other categories, so there is a risk of over-drafting your actual bank account. So you move all the money out of that category to other categories. So there is a negative medical balance at the end of last month, and now there is too much in medical expenses for this month. Yes, I have to cover it from my own money first. The purchase is an outgoing transfer for $600 to the tracking account categorized as Home Furnishing, which goes yellow/overspent. Follow YNAB to get support and lots of great ideas on budgeting, YNAB converted the whole overspend into credit card debt when the month rolled over. Using my clothing envelope example, let's assume I have decided it's reasonable to add $100 to my clothing category every month. (Edit to clarify: I meant that you should do that in January. Split 2 adjusts the tracking account balance. Or let’s say I prefer to change the budget group currently titled “HOUSING” to “YO MOMMA’S HOUSE.” Easy peasy. I apologize for the connotations becoming offensive. That way, you don’t have to time paychecks for parts of your budget. If I were using envelopes, I'd know how much I budgeted when I look at the label on the envelope. Also I drink plain carbonated water. I’ve been having 2-3 categories slightly overspent at the end of each month and I haven’t corrected it. YNAB has another option, though. It's off to the left; it doesn't get a colored pill around it, and until they screwed up enhanced the display on the mobile apps, it wasn't visible on the phone. Am I just completely misunderstanding YNAB? Two thoughts... 1) you don't have to budget across months if you don't feel it is as effective. For instance, if I budget $100/mo of Bars/Drinks and spend only $57, I'd prefer my next month's available spending to … Been waiting 5 years for the Stealing From the Future fix... YNAB book topics online: https://support.youneedabudget.com/r/q5w48j, I have the honor to be your obedient servant, Not sure when I became a cheetah...but I'll run with it. Been waiting 5 years for the Stealing From the Future fix... the initial pot of money each month before you put it in envelopes is your To Be Budgeted. Now, as next month approaches, you're ready to create a new budget. So you need to eliminate the red in your budget, because YNAB is a plan for the money you have. When the month rolls over, the spending category goes back to zero. dakinemaui; dakinemaui; 4 wk ago; Reported - view; Gold Wrench Have you tried offsetting the category? I have a paper envelope, identified as clothing spending. What happens if we bump up the kids' college funds another $50 a month. Happy New Year to you, too! I'm perplexed and frustrated that budgeted amounts don't move to the next month. Budget the required monthly amount to a Home Furnishing Debt category and record the payment as a categorized transfer from checking to the tracking account. Godwins Law springs to mind. The less important have to wait -- that's reality. When the Month Rolls Over. Faness Hi there. Your spending isn't affected by where the money comes from. There just isn’t any difficulty about it. The general approach to budget toward the highest priority first, then on down the list ensures the important stuff gets money. 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