You Need A Budget Catch-all

I attended the class on credit cards but felt I had no way to budget before the bill was paid. Since I always pay the bill when I get paid I guess I don't need to budget for it I guess.

Really what I am trying to do is setup a system that tells me to pay something. Hence the categories. I can't schedule a transfer I don't think. I want on the 5th all my bills to show up as transactions in red (this extends mostly for non Cc stuff, cable, groceries, yadda yadda) then I get paid on the 6th I open YNAB and easily everything that needs to go out the door. I use the CC categories to do that for them.

As far as actually paying the bill, I do it as you say.

I see what you mean. If you can get to where you are paying this month's bills with last month's income it gets easier because then you don't have to worry about spending your pay check when you get it.

One thing that might help that I did was when I named my accounts and my bill categories I put the due date in the account name, like "Amex 7" as the account, or "Electric 24" for the electric bill category.

For those of you with an HSA account for your insurance, I track mine as an off-budget account. Makes it easy so I always know how much is in there.

I think Cobble it will help if you don't see the credit card transactions separate from others.
For example:

Let's say you usually buy $100 of groceries a week.
You would want to budget $400 for the month for groceries.

Over the course of the month you buy groceries (again for example) this way:
Week 1: a check
Week 2: cash
Week 3: credit card
Week 4: a check

The fact that you paid with the credit card is irrelevant because you record each payment as it occurs as hitting your grocery budget.

As LeapingGnome says, when you make a payment on the credit card that amount is transferred from checking (most likely) which will reduce what you show as your balance on the credit card side.

If you have credit card interest (darn) or make a payment towards your existing debt (yay) those transactions are reflected in that way.
Since you want to pay off your debt, one of your budget items might be 'paying off debt' and you budget money there at the beginning of the month so you don't spend it in another category like coffee shops.

Zoso1701 wrote:

I'm just now understanding this isn't some niche, simulation game.

I do need a budget. So, maybe I should pick this up.

The fact that Steam lists how many hours I've spent "playing" it doesn't help matters much.

As others said, unless you think you desperately need to start budgeting NOW, I'd wait for a sale.

Credit Cards and non-monthly paychecks really seem to be the high question area in regards to YNAB.
On credit cards the YNAB answer is try not to use them and if you do use a budget category. I'm not perfect though, so much of my credit card purchases go right back on the 'Pre-YNAB Debt' that it brings in when you initially set up a CC with a balance.
But the real answer is handle them how you want. The nicest thing about YNAB is the flexibility and there is no one 'right' way.

IMAGE(http://bordone.com/temp/BudgetScreen.png)

I get paid every two weeks and my wife gets paid monthly. The monthly bills are due around the same day each month and are pretty close in amounts throughout the year. Besides YNAB I also use the free financeworks that my credit union provides for free as a forecasting tool because it's easier than setting up a second budget in YNAB to see what future holds up to 6 weeks out. I am worried about paying down my one credit card (currently 16K).
I can't do anything about my monthly bills (except close them if I don't want phone, internet, cable TV etc) so for me what YNAB has done is shown me that budgeting means planning for the use of my money after I pay my bills.
As you see in the screenshot my monthly bills are sorted by date due with an approximate amount. When I get paid I add transactions for the bills in my register and then budget the 'extra' money into the various categories/envelopes. The more we live on the $1000 cash we take out each pay period the better we do. We use $400 of this money for 'scrip' cards our kids school sells to help with their tuition, $200 gas and $200 Walmart.
I budget into restaraunts for 'all family' dining out (usually about once a pay period so $100 with one stop at a real restaurant and one at fast food). The spending money is usually mostly me since my wife has the $600 for the household stuff but it is essentially a catch all for stuff that doesn't really fit in our other categories.
Using any tool to look at your finances to get them in order is a good thing. It can get overwhelming though so a support group to not get down in the dumps about debt can be very useful. Keep trying you aren't going to go out of debt overnight.

Edit: Also if credit card pay off is your primary thing, I would recommend the vertex 42 debt reduction spreadsheet.

dee - I took my Steam key and just put it in the stand-alone version, so I don't have to worry about going through Steam for it.

LeapingGnome wrote:

dee - I took my Steam key and just put it in the stand-alone version, so I don't have to worry about going through Steam for it.

Yeah, I know. I just like to joke about it, and also about the time where Steam decided that accounting software was one of my favorite game genres.

It's a really special kind of niche game. Next up, 1040 Simulator, 2014 GOTY version, with ObamaCare DLC.

LeapingGnome wrote:

dee - I took my Steam key and just put it in the stand-alone version, so I don't have to worry about going through Steam for it.

It's been mentioned here, but you can just create a shortcut to the .exe in steamapps folder (not create it through Steam) and you can run YNAB Steam-less. On the other hand, Steam then can't say how long you "played" YNAB.

And you may not get Trading Cards in the future.

Or TF2 hats.

I don't get it, what's so bad about Steam tracking your YNAB time?

Mermaidpirate wrote:

I don't get it, what's so bad about Steam tracking your YNAB time?

I'm not a huge fan of anything that tracks my time. Its just a thing.

Mermaidpirate wrote:

I don't get it, what's so bad about Steam tracking your YNAB time?

Just joking, really. Badly. Sorry for that.

Haha no need to apologise. I just noticed a lot of people not liking the idea and I wondered if there was something I was missing. Because I am missing a great many things a lot of the time, really

Mermaidpirate wrote:

I don't get it, what's so bad about Steam tracking your YNAB time?

Steam is for serious stuff, like video games.

So I'm trying out the free demo and liking it already, and the mobile client on my iPad is really great, maybe even better than the PC client.

I don't have a problem with Steam tracking the time, but with the standalone I can just drop it in my dock and I can get to it in one click instead of the several it takes if it is in my Steam library and looking through a Steam list.

Guys, how would you handle the work related expenses that get reimbursed later on?

For example, my wife travels for work from time to time. So our toll highway charges might be $50 one month and then $200 the next. Same with gas.

Similar story with dentist. We pay from our credit card after the visit, then it gets submitted and insurance pays back the following month.

Sure, we get the money back next month (with her paycheck) but budgeting and tracking it is a nightmare.

Hedinn wrote:

Guys, how would you handle the work related expenses that get reimbursed later on?

For example, my wife travels for work from time to time. So our toll highway charges might be $50 one month and then $200 the next. Same with gas.

Similar story with dentist. We pay from our credit card after the visit, then it gets submitted and insurance pays back the following month.

Sure, we get the money back next month (with her paycheck) but budgeting and tracking it is a nightmare.

Ad one line item as a debit and one line item as a payback income credit so they zero out over the time. So you treat it as a bill AND income.

Hedinn wrote:

Guys, how would you handle the work related expenses that get reimbursed later on?

For example, my wife travels for work from time to time. So our toll highway charges might be $50 one month and then $200 the next. Same with gas.

Similar story with dentist. We pay from our credit card after the visit, then it gets submitted and insurance pays back the following month.

Sure, we get the money back next month (with her paycheck) but budgeting and tracking it is a nightmare.

I just ballpark it, and am pretty flexible about how it gets tracked. My wife gets reimbursed for parking and gas, but I just input the later reimbursement as income in the Parking category. That reimbursement is a separate deposit from her paycheque though. Same thing with expenses reimbursed by benefits.

Setting the budgets for parking, gas, and tolls was in flux for a long time. Now that I've got a year+ of YNAB history, I can just use the average from whatever period of time. YNAB recommends doing it that way, so I was happy to oblige. And those budgets still get adjusted whenever I feel like it.

I'm not sure if that helps. Generally I'm just really loose about it. I don't try to account for every penny, but just have a good idea of how much what is costing us when. For instance, Parking also includes any amount we spend on parking, not just Mrs. Gravey parking at work—because I'm not going to bother teasing all that apart.

Edit: What Dr.Ghastly said.

Dr.Ghastly wrote:
Hedinn wrote:

Guys, how would you handle the work related expenses that get reimbursed later on?

For example, my wife travels for work from time to time. So our toll highway charges might be $50 one month and then $200 the next. Same with gas.

Similar story with dentist. We pay from our credit card after the visit, then it gets submitted and insurance pays back the following month.

Sure, we get the money back next month (with her paycheck) but budgeting and tracking it is a nightmare.

Ad one line item as a debit and one line item as a payback income credit so they zero out over the time. So you treat it as a bill AND income.

Please just shoot me.

My wife and I both get lots of travel and expense reimbursements, and sometimes I get very large (~$15000) travel advances which I spend slowly over several months. It all gets run through our bank accounts and credit cards along with our household expenses and income, so I run a separate category for reimbursables so that we know how much money is actually ours (or owed to us) at any given time. I never actually budget money for this in YNAB, instead I just use it as a sort of running total that flops between positive and negative depending on whether I've gotten a recent advance or not. When receipt submission time rolls around, It's pretty convenient to be able to search all of my transactions for anything I've marked as reimbursable.

YNAB has helped us budget for big purchases by slowly saving for them in a virtual envelope, but the biggest way it has reduced our stress is our use of individual spending money categories. We each get a set amount of money budgeted each month that with which we can do whatever we want without needing to consult (or benefit) the other at all. So if I want something for myself like a new game or a PC upgrade I don't need to feel guilty about it as long as I've saved up my allotments. If money gets tight we can decrease these allotments accordingly (or increase them if money is good, which could happen someday right), but we always keep them even, regardless of individual income levels.

When I was first ramping up with YNAB, I found it a bit difficult to build up a buffer so that this month's income pays next month's bills as they suggest. To 'catch up' I slowly built a buffer in every category by budgeting for typical (either expected or average) expenses and then adding 5%. It takes a while to build up a full month buffer this way, but you have a reasonably healthy cushion in only a few months without it making a huge impact on your day-to-day.

I had a hard time choosing categories at first, but it shakes out over time if you stick with it. If you have a transaction that doesn't seem to fit in any of your existing categories, and this type of transaction has come up more than 2 or 3 times, it's work thinking about creating another category. For example, I didn't figure that I'd need a parking category when I was setting everything up and I kept putting parking expenses into fuel, but after doing this a dozen times I decided to track it separately. After 6 months or so I could clearly see that we were spending WAY too much on parking and we started opting for cheaper options.

Hedinn wrote:
Dr.Ghastly wrote:
Hedinn wrote:

Guys, how would you handle the work related expenses that get reimbursed later on?

For example, my wife travels for work from time to time. So our toll highway charges might be $50 one month and then $200 the next. Same with gas.

Similar story with dentist. We pay from our credit card after the visit, then it gets submitted and insurance pays back the following month.

Sure, we get the money back next month (with her paycheck) but budgeting and tracking it is a nightmare.

Ad one line item as a debit and one line item as a payback income credit so they zero out over the time. So you treat it as a bill AND income.

Please just shoot me.

I would, but I already spent my ammunition budget for this month

dejanzie wrote:
Hedinn wrote:

Please just shoot me.

I would, but I already spent my ammunition budget for this month ;-)

I dunno, sounds like you could make a good case for taking this one out of the 'gifts' budget.

BushPilot wrote:
dejanzie wrote:
Hedinn wrote:

Please just shoot me.

I would, but I already spent my ammunition budget for this month ;-)

I dunno, sounds like you could make a good case for taking this one out of the 'gifts' budget.

Hmmm, decisions, decisions...

Hedinn wrote:
Dr.Ghastly wrote:
Hedinn wrote:

Guys, how would you handle the work related expenses that get reimbursed later on?

For example, my wife travels for work from time to time. So our toll highway charges might be $50 one month and then $200 the next. Same with gas.

Similar story with dentist. We pay from our credit card after the visit, then it gets submitted and insurance pays back the following month.

Sure, we get the money back next month (with her paycheck) but budgeting and tracking it is a nightmare.

Ad one line item as a debit and one line item as a payback income credit so they zero out over the time. So you treat it as a bill AND income.

Please just shoot me.

Then don't budget it at all, if it zeroes out anyway.

sometimesdee wrote:
Hedinn wrote:
Dr.Ghastly wrote:
Hedinn wrote:

Guys, how would you handle the work related expenses that get reimbursed later on?

For example, my wife travels for work from time to time. So our toll highway charges might be $50 one month and then $200 the next. Same with gas.

Similar story with dentist. We pay from our credit card after the visit, then it gets submitted and insurance pays back the following month.

Sure, we get the money back next month (with her paycheck) but budgeting and tracking it is a nightmare.

Ad one line item as a debit and one line item as a payback income credit so they zero out over the time. So you treat it as a bill AND income.

Please just shoot me.

Then don't budget it at all, if it zeroes out anyway.

One perk of putting 2 lines (one spending and one earning) is that you can ensure its correctly reimbursed each month.

Quick link for those mobile, but not in the iOS or Android space.

http://www.youneedabudget.com/blog/2...

Our average (for a household of 2 adults) for the last year is ~$350 CAD per person month spent at grocery stores. This is probably a bit high for an estimate of food, as it also includes any household items and toiletries/drugstore items that we also by at the grocery store. We also average about $125 CAD per person month on home delivery and food purchased while at work, and about $45 CAD per person month on dining out. We don't live extravagant food lives, in that we seldom eat out and we buy things on sale when it's convenient, but we don't seek out sales and stockpile cheap goods or drive around to several stores to get the best prices. I know when I started keeping decent track of our food budget several years ago we were shocked by how much we spend on food. Fruit and vegetables and generally anything that is remotely healthy is also often pretty expensive, but knowing the reality gives you more planning power than fooling yourself, as I had been.

In 2014, we spent an average of CA$210 per person per month on groceries, including toiletries and light bulbs. We're two adults and one child.

I have budget spreadsheets going back to 2005, and it looks like I've consistently spent an average of CA$200 per person per month on groceries, whether single or living with Ms.-then-Mrs. Gravey, inflation and rising cost of food/living be damned. No data for 2012-2013, as I was in between budgeting solutions, but adding a kid and a lot more natural/organic food (and CFL/halogen bulbs!) hasn't changed things very much. Crazy.

We buy no-name/store brand whenever possible, partly because it's cheaper but also because it's usually better (President's Choice), and I only buy the cereal that's on sale. When I lived by myself, I would only use one basket, and that was almost consistently $60 worth of groceries. That just always worked out.

Mermaidpirate, you're on track for AU$230 this month, and without knowing how much groceries cost in Australia, but knowing that the Australian dollar and Canadian dollar are basically identical right now, that seems alright.

dejanzie wrote:
Hedinn wrote:
Dr.Ghastly wrote:
Hedinn wrote:

Guys, how would you handle the work related expenses that get reimbursed later on?

For example, my wife travels for work from time to time. So our toll highway charges might be $50 one month and then $200 the next. Same with gas.

Similar story with dentist. We pay from our credit card after the visit, then it gets submitted and insurance pays back the following month.

Sure, we get the money back next month (with her paycheck) but budgeting and tracking it is a nightmare.

Ad one line item as a debit and one line item as a payback income credit so they zero out over the time. So you treat it as a bill AND income.

Please just shoot me.

I would, but I already spent my ammunition budget for this month ;-)

Oh god, you don't want to see what my ammunition budget is.

Messed around a little with the budget page last night, I cleaned up some numbers that didn't belong with the 'set this to 0' drop-down option. Felt a lot like illegally 'cooking the books' but whatever.

I'd like to know what people spend in food per person per month, for those that are OK with sharing. I'm not even going to get a comparable number since for most of you the currency is different, the price of food is way less in the US at least, and many are living with children who eat less, or sharing with spouses which is more efficient and so on. But I'm just going to ask anyway.

Where possible I'm just looking at food you eat at home, not counting dining out.

I'm on my phone right now and I can't see a way to check history but I can tell you I've spent $164.61 AUD so far this month, and it seems like a lot to me. I'll update with a monthly average or something when I get back to the desktop version.

Also, I just noticed that on the updated android app, you now add favourite categories by 'pinning' them from their individual category page.