YNAB You Need A Budget

[sarahspangles]

Something that would help me get more out of the Forums is a post where some of the wilder terms are explained in one place! I don't mean the basic principles of YNAB because they are well covered. Nor so much American terms (I'm English) because I can look them up. I now know HVAC equates to "Boiler Service" on this side of the pond, as it's rare here to have Air Con here outside businesses.

What I mean is terms like Whack-a-Mole. Perhaps this is a term that is used outside budgeting. In the UK it would be illegal I deduce that this is the process when a budget category is unexpectedly over budget, you start to move £/$ from other lines to get the whole budget back in shape. Am I right? I'm sure I'll think of more.

I've worked out that typing T - A - X - anything gets you a smiley, it took me ages to come up with "cab" when I wanted to refer to the form of transport

[malisab]

On t-a-x, you can change a setting in your user profile and it will show up normally.

On whack-a-mole, the expression is based on this arcade game:

Keep adding to the thread, people will answer.

[Patzer]

What I mean is terms like Whack-a-Mole. Perhaps this is a term that is used outside budgeting.

I fear I'm responsible for that one. I never saw the real arcade game, but in the early 1980s, I played the handheld electronic game version of Whack-a-Mole. In this game, you played the part of a man with two hammers defending his yard from moles. As the moles burrowed up and poked their heads above the surface of the lawn, your job was to move back and forth, whacking the moles with the hammers to make them go away. The game got faster and faster, so the action became more and more frantic as you scrambled around to whack moles that would pop up in different places. Ultimately, the game ended when you became unable to move fast enough or anticipate moles well enough.

Early on in my use of YNAB, I experienced a bunch of expenses popping up that I hadn't planned well enough for. Dealing with them had a frantic feeling of running around in a hurry to plug holes, much like the feeling of the Whack-a-Mole game. I referred to that in a journal post, and the term caught on.

Patzer