YNAB You Need A Budget

[blackdiamond]

I thought it would be interesting to see how YNAB has made an impact on our net worth. Obviously, I wouldn't expect people to post their actual numbers, but it's possible to simply crop a screen shot so that only the month's and graph show.

I'll post mine first. You'll notice that our our net worth took a significant hit when we first started YNAB, but we had several large expenses that were no reflection on how YNAB was working. The spike is a 3-paycheck month. You can see that we're starting a more consistent upward trend and August will be another 3-paycheck month for us. Things are looking up!

Edit: Just a note to state that all on-budget debt is a PIF credit card.

[mcintold]

Because I merged accounts after getting married, the net worth currently in YNAB does not correctly reflect my progress. So, I am showing what I once tracked in Excel and looked at least twice a month. It is nice to have this feature in YNAB 4 as I appreciate having an overview of my financial status.
Notes on the graph: October 2011 is when I purchased YNAB - what a difference! Below the line is a negative net worth; above the line is a positive net worth. The dip in Sep 2011 is when I bought a (used) car but had not sold my current car. While the trend was sloping downward, it actually rose, then leveled off in 2012.

[DeguelloTex]

The dip in December was Christmas, property taxes, and home owner's insurance. We had the money set aside in the appropriate categories, though.

This doesn't include an off-budget emergency fund or any of our investments. We're headed in the right general direction, so that's good.

[tindelsurf]

Ours is kind of boring...

We actually have a positive net worth if you consider the equity in our house and investments, but I don't track those in YNAB... Trying to get out of debt!

[blackdiamond]

I was wondering if anyone was going to post. My chart is just my on-budget accounts so basically checking and credit cards. It's all about trending up.

tindlesurf - I notice two positive thing in your chart. One is that your debt is slowly trending down and your resources are significantly trending up. It looks like July has about double March so it appears that you are living on a lot less than in the past. Excellent progress.

[Trevor]

This isn't the complete picture because my actual debt was much higher. I had a car loan and a loan against my retirement fund that I paid off completely during this time that I didn't track in YNAB. My debt bar won't ever be zero because I put as much as possible on a credit card that is paid in full each month.

YNABnetworth.jpg (98.66 KiB) Viewed 2109 times

[Patzer]

2012-07-29_1422_Net_Worth.png (18.59 KiB) Viewed 2100 times

I have to go to Quicken for a meaningful Net Worth graph, because I don't have that much of a timeline in YNAB 4, and I don't have investment accounts or the house in YNAB. This is really showing more of the impact of market fluctuations than the impact of YNAB, but the impact of YNAB was positive for a variety of reasons:

1. Control of expenses allowed cash to accumulate in Rainy Day funds and e-fund.
2. When the Rainy Day funds became full, YNAB told me it was safe to throw more money into the brokerage account.
3. With YNAB, I'm contributing more to the 401(k) than I would have without YNAB.
4. With YNAB, I wasn't dis-saving in 2008 or 2009. That was the concern that motivated me to get YNAB in the first place.

If I were to restrict the view to just what I have in YNAB, there would be drops corresponding to the Roth IRA contributions each January, and spikes up for tax refunds and bonus at work. In 2008 and 2009, it would show drops from some Murphy visits that are documented in my journal.

The dab of debt that's visible in the first half of 2008 is attributable to a credit card that gave me 12 months of no interest on purchases, which I paid off before interest would be charged. When I got that card in mid-2007, I could stash the cash in a savings account earning over 5%. Those were the days! After I paid that arbitrage card off, all my cards are PIF. There is always a balance on one or more cards, but it doesn't show on the scale of the net worth graph.

Patzer

[Joel]

networth.jpg (87.2 KiB) Viewed 2003 times

Here's my graph. I would like to add it does not include my retirement account, and you can see dips every January since I have been investing $5000 per year towards my retirement account. You will also notice in 2009, 2010, and 2011 booms during the summer months. That relates to fire season spikes. In 2011, I switched over a lot of my excess money into a brokerage account, so there is a lot of variability based on my brokerage account going up and down. I also decided to work an internship in the summer of 2011 in my field of choice (accounting) as opposed to another fire season. So the last year and half has been living off of scholarships and earnings from my brokerage account. (I am just happy that it has stayed roughly where it was at in October 2010) During April of 2012, I also purchased a $14,000 car, so that saw another big dip. Now that my post-college job is finally starting, this graph will start to trend back up again!

[smallLife]

I've noticed that two posters on this thread do their Roth contributions all at once - any particular reason why? I'll post my graph when I get home (can't access Drop Box at work so haven't activated CloudSync!)

[Patzer]

I've noticed that two posters on this thread do their Roth contributions all at once - any particular reason why?

I can't make the Roth contribution for Year 20XX before January 1, 20XX per tax law. January 1 is a holiday, so I put it in on January 2. (Okay, one year I spaced it off and didn't get it in until January 16.) This gets the funds into the account as soon as I am allowed to put them there.

People who don't know whether their income will allow them to make a Roth Contribution might prefer to wait until their income for the year is known; that would have them making a contribution for year 2012 in early 2013, when they know how much they're allowed to contribute. My numbers won't be close enough to have to worry about that.

The only reason I see to split the contribution up is if you don't have it all at the start of the year and you want to put it in as soon as possible. Dollar cost averaging would be a bogus reason to split it up; if I wanted to dollar cost average into a mutual fund, I could still deposit the cash on January 2 and make monthly purchases of a mutual fund throughout the year.

Patzer

[DeguelloTex]

I've noticed that two posters on this thread do their Roth contributions all at once - any particular reason why?

If you think the market is going up in the long term, the faster you get your money invested the longer it is there to compound (dividends) and grow (price appreciation).

[Joel]

I've noticed that two posters on this thread do their Roth contributions all at once - any particular reason why? I'll post my graph when I get home (can't access Drop Box at work so haven't activated CloudSync!)

I wait until the end of the year to see the tax benefit of contributing to a traditional vs. a roth. I would consider contributing to a traditional ira if my marginal tax rate is above 25%. Otherwise, I contribute to my roth ira.

Note: I save up in my retirement category every month using my ynab category. I suppose I could contribute earlier in the year, but I like to wait until I know my complete tax situation for the year. (It has been very different the last 5 years as my income has varied wildly dependent on fire season. Once I get a stable income, I might consider doing this earlier in the year.

[smallLife]

The only reason I see to split the contribution up is if you don't have it all at the start of the year and you want to put it in as soon as possible. Dollar cost averaging would be a bogus reason to split it up; if I wanted to dollar cost average into a mutual fund, I could still deposit the cash on January 2 and make monthly purchases of a mutual fund throughout the year.

Patzer

The biggest reason I see is that I don't have 5 grand lying around at the beginning of the year. It's the equivalent of a buffer/non-buffer situation but for investing. I'll max it out to the best of my abilities but I make a contribution each month to do so rather than all at once.

[YYC27]

Well, it's not a very exciting graph for me ....

[mailman-zero]

After years of using YNAB without a buffer and failing to get any traction on paying off debt, I decided to swear off using credit cards for emergencies. I started paying only the minimum payment on all my debts starting in December and focused all of my efforts on building the buffer. I accomplished that by March 1st (extra paycheck, cashed out whole life insurance and replaced with term, and had some other very well-timed windfalls) and since then it has been smooth sailing on the debt snowball. We've paid off 5 credit cards since then and will pay another off next month with the last one paid off in November. After that is paying off a car loan and a personal loan and we're debt free except for the house. Anyway, here's what the graph looks like.

Net Worth 20120730.png (21.46 KiB) Viewed 1969 times

This has been the best year of my life financially and the buffer and rainy day funds give me peace of mind. I can't wait to build up an emergency fund when we're done with the debt snowball. After that it's time to up our investments and pay off the house!