YNAB You Need A Budget

[supenguin]

I've been extremely busy with work and home life and have fallen out of the habit of budgeting a bit (shocking I know!) Here's where I'm at, trying to figure out the best way to proceed.

In May we did a normal real budget (we = my wife and I agreeing on the budget before the month started).

In June, I budgeted for all our expected bills plus the amount we normally put in cash envelopes for groceries, spending money, gasoline. I told my wife we'd figure out what to do with that money later. The leftover money (a few hundred bucks) is kind of floating in limbo not assigned to any category yet.

So far, July looks like a repeat of June. We've loaded up the cash envelopes, budgeted for bills, and let the rest sit there.

Now what? I'm thinking of doing a "money to spend later" category and assign that to other categories in July or August. Thoughts? Suggestions? And no, I won't be sending the money to you. With the possible exceptions of if you happen to be Steve Jobs or IKEA.

[malisab]

I did that for many months when I started. I only specifically budgeted for some categories of 'everyday spending'. I knew how much I wanted to spend in a month on what I call everyday spending, but I didn't care how it got divided up (beyond knowing that I wanted to watch groceries and eating out and limit them). I budgeted the few specific categories, then I budgeted the remaining monthly amount to 'This Month'. I negative budgeted in that category and budgeted to specific categories as I spent through the month. It worked well to help me develop my categories and see where we spent money, what were problem areas and what weren't.

It worked really well for me in the learning process. I can see that if you don't have problems overspending and end up with money left over, it's fine to do it going forward. Your budget and budgeting only need to be as granular as you need to meet your goals.

[supenguin]

You bring up a good point... The last few months, I've felt like I was getting sloppy in my budgeting. I was trying to track all money spent down to the penny and getting receipts for everything so if the question came up "Where did all my money go?" I could answer it.

I've found the receipts just kind of pile up and usually don't get entered unless I do them within a day or two - and this is with YNAB on my iPod Touch I usually have with me!

It seems the only places I tend to go a bit over budget are eating out and grocery shopping. I always have left over money for everything else.

I'm considering keep receipts for things that have warranties and situations like that, but for everything else just say cash in the envelope at the beginning of the money minus cash in there at the end of the month = how much I spent on that category for that month. Seems easier than trying to enter every receipt.