Hey everyone! Today I wanted to discuss why we focus less on reports and more on the workflow that’s built around the present and planning for the near future.
Hey everyone! Today I wanted to discuss why we focus less on reports and more on the workflow that’s built around the present and planning for the near future.
Jesse,
Awesome product. My wife and I are up and running within a month of using it which I think is pretty amazing. The iPhone app is the reason why I bought the app in the first place for the benefit of doing POS changes.
It would nice to have you go through YNAB’s methodology/concept and implementation of the snowball affect/debt elimination. I don’t see a lot of that other than forum entries which require a nice jolt of energy to wade through.
Aaron
I think you’re right; reporting in personal finance applications is way overrated. I was just using YNAB reporting not 5 minutes ago but all I was doing was tracking my net worth.
You’ve got the right approach and will be rewarded for it.
Some interesting whiteboard Wednesdays for me:
* My friend wants to start budgeting but doesn’t know how. I tell him to look at YNAB and send him a link to a 10 minute video with you selling it to someone who is not budgeting-inclined. Where’s the video?
* How do you plan on sustaining your business without any upgrade fees?
* What’s your long-term plan for YNAB? Growing into the next Intuit? Being a small, niche shop?
* What are your plans for the iPhone app?
BTW, while I’m at it, it would be really nice if you added easy support for syncing 2 iphones to the same YNAB. I see that you’re improving the sync for 1 phone, & I’m not sure how may people have 2 but that’s our situation.
Hi Jesse – I purchased this great program a week or so ago so thanks.
I have an old phone so will wait for your ipad app.
I am in the process of putting the buffer in place and should be able to do that with a bonus in the next fortnight.
1. Should I use this bonus to pay off my credit card previous debts or put it to the buffer. My thought was pay off the debt first and then second, the buffer. Both should be possible but thought it might be a whiteboard wednesday idea.
2. I established the program without a buffer. I have recorded my weekly pay into the months available income as at the date it is deposited into my account. Should I use the scheduled transactions for this? If I did, I would probably see red in my budget. Not sure which is better. I presume once the buffer is in place the weekly paycheck is better listed in scheduled transactions.
3. Once I payout the previous debts with the bonus – I am not clear about when I record a paycheck as “Available next month”. At the moment I record it as Available this month. I presume once I have a months salary in “Green” as income available to budget this month, I will allocate it to categories and then record that months paychecks as “Available next month”. I am sure I will work this out over the next month or so – but thought the above may help for white board wednesday ideas.
Cheers!
John.
Jesse,
As I look at what we do with reports, I am becoming more and more convinced that we often fail to tell people about the biggest report we have – and the most useful and effective one.
The budget is THE most important report in YNAB, and that’s just what the budget is. A report of where you stand, where you are going and how you are going to get there.
Just my two cents. :)
Jesse, I happen to love listening to you on Wednesdays but since you mention you were “running a little bit dry” have you given any thought to accepting submissions from YNAB users who want to relate a particular way they found YNAB has helped them? I don’t mean only general testimonials but short clips with real, practical tips from users of the program and the philosophy.
If anyone wants to record their own Whiteboard Wednesday where they give some tips to users, how it “clicked” with them…I’d definitely put that up!
Great WW clip Jesse. I always really enjoy them, and I’ve learnt so much about not just budgeting but also the software design process. Having you speak about not wanting to invest coding time to the reports really makes me feel like we get value for money and that you always have our best interests at heart. If it were just the money, then you’d give us all that eye candy wouldn’t you? ;-) Keep it up!
If you want my honest, _honest_ opinion, I think the money works out better when focusing on the user in this way :) It’s just maybe a bit of a harder sell…but user impact is much higher. At least that’s my hope!
Some suggestions for White board Wednesday.
Pardon me if these have already been done. And I am sure some of these suggestions may be better as training videos, but just some suggestions.
You have spent some time on the buffer in Rule 4, how about some time on each of the rules.
An explanation of Rule 2: Save for a Rainy day, with a particular focus on just letting money sit in you accounts.
Rule 1: Give Every Dollar a Job, and why you do this. For me it is so that when I do go off budget, I have to figure out what I am giving up.
Rule 3: Roll with the punches. I think this has been done in a WBW, but I am not sure.
An Explanation of Whack-a-mole.
Thoughts on approaching credit card debt.
James
Just thought of this.
I’d like a history of YNAB. A little story. I know it came from a spreadsheet, and that you guy were both studying and really tight for money. But a more illustrated tale of from then to now because you built a very useful software product (more recently with the help of an excellent developer) out of your own imagination – and that’s an inspiring story!
Since I’m spending some time this morning thinking about potentially cutting down on my number of accounts or adding other accounts, maybe something on rate chasing. I know that could be taken more as Personal Finance (general) oriented rather than YNAB specifically, but in the context of simplification coupled with the fact that some people don’t REALLY understand the way interest works, it could be helpful.
Since starting YNAB I’ve lowered the interest rate on every bit of debt I have, except my student loans (grr.) Now I’m evaluating the flip side. I have access to a CU with a GREAT rate for educators as a summer saver account and I try to keep all the money I can in it. But I also am battling my own demons learning to ‘let money sit’. So I’m considering moving some savings to other accounts just to not make it so easy to transfer back to my everyday spending account.
If I’m talking about roughly a couple thousand dollars saved up over the course of a year, the difference between 3.9% and 2% and 1.1% REALLY isn’t enough to make it a huge deal which account I keep it in. And I’m thinking that the cost of keeping it in a lower interest account may be money well spent if I let the money actually sit.
For many people, an understanding of the pittance of current interest rates would lead to the simplification of accounts that’s possible with YNAB which you already did/touched on in a previous WW. You could do one that’s an extension to that one. For others, it may make it OK for them to realize that it’s ok to hide money somewhere other than the absolute highest interest account because the difference isn’t that great.
I like this approach and it makes sense. Not too much value on past charts. The only ones I ended up using in the past was related to the Net Worth and Cash Flow and nothing else. Since you already do these, I’m pretty happy with the reporting.
A discussion on how to set up the budgets might be useful.
Some budgets are very fixed. Use auto-pay to set those.
Others are arbitrary and we tend to have more discussion around those.
Then there are the harder ones. Some tend to cycle seasonally and if you don’t hit the budget just right you get pinched or overshoot, especially using a 3 month average. One approach I have on this is to take 12 months of bills and for my starting budget use Average + 1 Standard Deviation to start working up a Buffer specific to that one category. This should keep me from getting surprised at the end of the month. Later on I can lower my inflow to match outflow (Average) knowing I have some padding there to work with. But as an initial buffer, how much should you have in there? Two Standard Deviations?
Any other strategies or thoughts around “How much should you budget into category X?” and when should you adjust it up/down?