YNAB You Need A Budget

[Budget_Ninja]

I just read and re-read this thread...

Now I think I am more confused than I was before. I get paid bi-weekly (monthly) the 6th & the 21st! My husband get paid weekly. How on earth do I budget this?

When the money arrives, allocate the available income to jobs/categories in your budget.

My check usually pays the larger bills, mortgage, electric, water, gas, car payment & insurance. His is the food, gas for cars, spending, and weekly stuff. He cashes his check at the company bank on the way home from work on Friday so it is cash in hand, I have direct deposit into 2 checking accounts. I am seriously in trouble with how to do this.

Create a cash account for his income if it stays in cash, and 2 checking accounts to hold your income. When he gets paid allocate the money to food, gas, spending and other weekly stuff. When yours comes in allocate it to the larger bills - mortgage, electric, water, gas, car payments & insurance. You'll want to ensure during your budgeting that you have covered off everything you need before the next pay period.

Suggestion:
When you move from paycheck to paycheck to monthly budgeting, that income is just going to be one big pool. It might be easier to manage with one checking account and have your husbands cash deposited into that account. In addition try to hold back a little each pay to help build your buffer.

[RandomHandle]

Hi Momof3,

Your situation, as described, is actually fairly easy to accomodate in YNAB. I would recommend, however, that you make sure you understand the core of the YNAB system before you dive in too far. It sounds like you have a lot of enthusiam to get your budget going, and I want to make sure you get it started on the right track.

You can sign up for free classes or view recorded tutorials here: http://www.youneedabudget.com/support/training-and-education

Read through BudgetNinja's suggestions and if you still have questions, please let us know.

[momof3nj]

Thanks for the advice..so let's see if I got this. I really am ready to do this, for the hundredth time!

I start off doing it paycheck to paycheck, putting a little bit from each to the side. then say in a few months when we are pretty set we can start doing it monthly. I think depositing his paycheck is the key... when we have cash on hand it seems to just 'disappear' like it was never there! we have say $500 on Friday and $0 on Monday! WTH! there is no possible way NORMAL people can spend $500 in 2 days, and we do not even go anywhere, we usually just hang out in the yard and the kids play in the pool!

[Budget_Ninja]

...
I start off doing it paycheck to paycheck, putting a little bit from each to the side. then say in a few months when we are pretty set we can start doing it monthly.
...

Yup, in the begining your likely to do it paycheck to paycheck. Set aside a little each pay or month to use to build your buffer. Once that money set aside is big enough you can use it to budget out the entire month. From that point on you can just categorize all the income you make in the month as 'next months income'. You'll budget then spend down the money from last month in the current month and simultaneously build money to be used in the next month's budget.

[TPro]

It might help you to set up your categories according to the income checks, something like this:

HERS Check #1 (master category)
Water
Electric
(etc.)

HERS Check #2 (master category)
Mortgage
Gas
(etc.)

HIS (master category)
Food
Gasoline
pocket money (etc.)

Since he is paid weekly, just allocate his money to the categories that need it until he's paid again. For your categories, put the bills that are paid with the appropriate check in their own separate categories.

If you don't really need two separate checking accounts for your income, it would be easier on you to just use one. With YNAB it's easy to keep track of everything so it doesn't matter what you use to pay for things. If you use a lot of cash, make sure to enter all the cash transactions. I had trouble keeping track of cash and if you find it hard, consider using a checking account for his money too. With YNAB it won't confuse things at all because in YNAB it doesn't matter what account you use to pay for stuff.

[terrabyte]

I just read and re-read this thread...

Now I think I am more confused than I was before. I get paid bi-weekly (monthly) the 6th & the 21st! My husband get paid weekly. How on earth do I budget this?

My check usually pays the larger bills, mortgage, electric, water, gas, car payment & insurance. His is the food, gas for cars, spending, and weekly stuff. He cashes his check at the company bank on the way home from work on Friday so it is cash in hand, I have direct deposit into 2 checking accounts. I am seriously in trouble with how to do this.

In the ideal situation, you take every check you received in July, and not spend it on anything until August's budget.
Then it doesn't really matter which days you get paid on or how often. And if one keeps ALL of their receipts, then you can keep track of your cash, too.

[YYC27]

Let me ask my question another way. Should I budget paycheck-to-paycheck or month-to-month as YNAB is setup for? I'm doing paycheck to paycheck and we are basically ignoring the months. So we dont ask ourselves what do I need this money to do until the end of the month, but rather until I get paid again. YNAB is designed for monthly budgeting so it's throwing me off.

Budget based on what you have available. YNAB's designed to display your budget in a month-to-month fashion, but works perfectly well if you're budgeting paycheque-to-paycheque.

I'm a bit of a heretic, here, and don't follow the buffer method of budgeting monthly. I'm paid bi-weekly, and I mark all my income as Available: This Month. I have a spreadsheet that keeps track of my various categories, and their various amounts and frequencies. The spreadsheet calculates a normalized bi-weekly budget amount for each category, and that's what I budget (e.g., a monthly expense is multiplied by 12 and then divided by 26. Each category is buffered to the point that it shouldn't drop below zero, and I keep ample rainy day funds to deal with stuff that crops up. It works with how my brain looks at my finances, but I'll be the first to admit that it's more math and fiddling than most people are willing to deal with.

[rkhanso]

I'm also becoming a little more confused about this - maybe related to my unequal budgeting problem.

In the first half of the month, I have to pay out $ 2154 in bills/mortgage. In the 2nd half of the month, I pay out $ 467 in bills. This doesn't include food/gas, saving for gifts/car registration, etc. It's just mortgage and utilities and debt payment.

I get paid every 2 weeks. My check is divided between mine and my wife's checking account. My house payment is due on the 1st of the month and late on the 17th of the month...giving me a 16 day buffer of paying it before it's late, which is nice.

The amount I keep out of my paycheck (my wife is not into budgeting so much) is not enough to cover my house payment from a single paycheck. I'm constantly using my overdraft account at my bank to pay my house payment. I also have other bills due in the first half of the month. It seems I'll never build up a buffer. Or, should I not expect to get the buffer built until I go through an entire year and finally get those 2 months that have 3 pay periods in them to help me build up the buffer?

I can kind of grasp the idea of saving 1/2 of the house payment from each paycheck, but I'm still dipping into my overdraft reserve loan at the bank every month.

### BTW, this is the first month I've used YNAB and I haven't really budgeted before, so I'm new at this.

[Joel]

I'm also becoming a little more confused about this - maybe related to my unequal budgeting problem.

In the first half of the month, I have to pay out $ 2154 in bills/mortgage. In the 2nd half of the month, I pay out $ 467 in bills. This doesn't include food/gas, saving for gifts/car registration, etc. It's just mortgage and utilities and debt payment.

I get paid every 2 weeks. My check is divided between mine and my wife's checking account. My house payment is due on the 1st of the month and late on the 17th of the month...giving me a 16 day buffer of paying it before it's late, which is nice.

The amount I keep out of my paycheck (my wife is not into budgeting so much) is not enough to cover my house payment from a single paycheck. I'm constantly using my overdraft account at my bank to pay my house payment. I also have other bills due in the first half of the month. It seems I'll never build up a buffer. Or, should I not expect to get the buffer built until I go through an entire year and finally get those 2 months that have 3 pay periods in them to help me build up the buffer?

I can kind of grasp the idea of saving 1/2 of the house payment from each paycheck, but I'm still dipping into my overdraft reserve loan at the bank every month.

### BTW, this is the first month I've used YNAB and I haven't really budgeted before, so I'm new at this.

With your 2nd paycheck, you need to start budgeting money for your rent. In order to even it out some, I would budget about $800 towards bills/mortgage with your 2nd paycheck. That will stay in the category, and with the 1st paycheck, you will budget the remainder. Could that work and help even it out for you?

[los lobos marinos]

I agree with Joel. Since you have considerably more money going out in the during the first half of the monthly period, it might be good to budget extra money from the 2nd paycheck to carry over into budget categories for the first two weeks of each month. It might help to create master categories for each half month, to help facilitate this approach.

I'm also paid every two weeks. One of things I did was to contact the companies where there is a specific monthly statement/payment date. I asked them if I could change the payment dates to become more consistent with my (our) cashflow and income. All of the companies, except for one, allowed us to change the payment dates. Thus, the outflows became more evenly spread across the entire month and allowed us to manage our budget more effectively.

[litterbug]

I'll go back to RandomHandle's suggestion of watching some training videos or, better yet, signing up for some live online training. You can do both at http://www.youneedabudget.com/support/training-and-education. The software makes a whole lot more sense once you've learned more about the YNAB method. After all, the software just supports the method, not the other way around.

[rkhanso]

With your 2nd paycheck, you need to start budgeting money for your rent. In order to even it out some, I would budget about $800 towards bills/mortgage with your 2nd paycheck. That will stay in the category, and with the 1st paycheck, you will budget the remainder. Could that work and help even it out for you?

I will give it a try. I get paid in 2 days. Your answer is so simple. I guess I need to get my brain thinking the YNAB way instead of the non-working way it's been (not) working.