YNAB You Need A Budget

[Jbean]

I just purchased YNAB and am looking forward to setting up my accounts in it after using Quicken for the last 10 years. I do graphic design and so just want a simple financial program rather than a more complex one for business, so I think this will work well. I spent yesterday looking at the tutorials and this program, to figure out how to do it. I would like to use the iPhone app as well, so it sounds like I should put it all into one budget (both my business account and my personal accounts. I am a sole proprietor and it all tends to get mixed together anyway, and I just separate out the business tax stuff using the payees and categories.

I am wondering, however about our main account. We have one of those manulife one accounts which contains our mortgage, line of credit and main account into one big pot, which supposedly saves more in interest costs and allows you to pay off your mortgage faster (if you don't get into the line of credit too much). So our main bank account is this one, and it has a bit negative balance because it is also our mortgage. Should I bring it in as is as a negative account? How will that affect my 'income available this month' if it is always negative? Or should I just try to do it manually using the income that goes into it as a positive and budget from that? Does anyone have any experience with this?
Any ideas on how to best handle this?

[YYC27]

If you create the Manulife One account as an on-budget account, YNAB should take your existing negative balance, and stick it in a "pre-ynab debt" category. Interest charges will be categorized there as well, increasing the debt amount, and each month you'll budget an amount to that category that represents the debt you're paying down.

If you look at the tutorials on handling credit card debt, the mechanisms are basically the same. Except you won't be sending a payment each month since your chequing/debt account are all-in-one.

[Jbean]

Can I still add the income we put in there as 'income available this month' though? Or will it just decrease the amount owing? I'd like to be able to use those funds to budget with.

[YYC27]

Can I still add the income we put in there as 'income available this month' though? Or will it just decrease the amount owing? I'd like to be able to use those funds to budget with.

Yes, your income would be categorized as Income: Available This Month. This increases your Available to Budget, which can be budgeted as you need.

[Jbean]

Thanks! I'll try it and see how it goes...