YNAB You Need A Budget

[adavant1]

Perfect sense - do you have an emergency fund or another category you could pull from (clothing, dining out, etc) until your new job starts?

Congrats on the new job!

Thanks! No I don't have any money available other than the $180 until payday for my husband this Friday. June 29.

[adavant1]

The question remains though, how did you pay the $301? Did you use actual money (check, cash, etc.)? Or was there credit involved? The answer as to how to best handle things between now and your first new paycheck will differ depending on the actions you're taking now.

I don't use credit anymore. I haven't paid the $301 yet. It was due 6/15 but they won't charge me a late fee until 6/30. My husband gets paid 6/29 so I guess I will just wait and pay it then.

[Malisa]

The question remains though, how did you pay the $301? Did you use actual money (check, cash, etc.)? Or was there credit involved? The answer as to how to best handle things between now and your first new paycheck will differ depending on the actions you're taking now.

I don't use credit anymore. I haven't paid the $301 yet. It was due 6/15 but they won't charge me a late fee until 6/30. My husband gets paid 6/29 so I guess I will just wait and pay it then.

Sounds like it. I've TOTALLY been there. It can get better.

[jessiebird]

This is the hard part when you start with YNAB: Sometimes it feels like you are getting a double-whammy. Not only are you supposed to be able to budget your month's income to cover all that month's expense AND part of your future expenses (a little toward Christmas, a little toward that semiannual insurance premium, etc), but sometimes you are still using that month's income to pay LAST MONTH's expenses.

You are here. (When you start your new job things will ease up, but for the moment this is where you're at.)

Take heart. It really does get easier as you pay closer attention to your finances. You will see that small decisions, such as cooking on a night when you wanted takeout ($20-$30 saved instantly) can make a difference in the bottom line at the end of the month.

It may be tight at first but please don't equate living within a budget as doing without the things that make you happy. You are at a particularly difficult time financially, but YNAB will help you make the best of it. Soon enough you'll be feeling free and, if you are like some of the rest of us, you will be amazed at how painless it is.

[adavant1]

I am behind on other things too. How do I account for those.

[Malisa]

Personally, I'd do my work up in a spreadsheet or on a sheet of paper. If you want them SOMEWHERE in YNAB, you can put things into the scheduler at the bottom of the register with the date that they're due. But know that they'll pop up into the register on that date and if you don't have the money to pay them, you'll need to delete them and change the date of the next iteration that's in the scheduler to reflect the one you haven't paid yet. Or, be pro-active and push the date forward BEFORE they pop up into the register.

I'd make columns with your husband's pay periods and, if you know when you've got some income coming in in the next bit of time (here's where a spreadsheet is better than paper, you can insert columns later) include columns for them too. I'd put up near the top of the column how much you expect to get at that time.

Down the side, I'd put my categories. You can even print your budget from YNAB and write on that. You can print it for some future or past month with no numbers in it, I think. (I'd say to export the budget and use that for this spreadsheet, but I think it might be a little involved...but if you're somewhat proficient on a spreadsheet, that'd be the way I'd go.)

Then I'd figure out how I'll probably slice up the 6/29 check and the next income after that if you can tell when that will be. You know you'll need $121 out of the 6/29 check for the car, then go back down the 4-walls list. Repeat with the next. If things get super tight this is when you see if you want to check into some kind of assistance to get through the next couple months, call some of the bills and see about getting a bit of extra time, or whatever.

YNAB tries to get away from projections, but when things are this tight you need to look ahead and just make sure the basics can be covered AND hopefully use it as a wake up call that there can be NO extras for the time being. AND use it as motivation towards, when the income situation improves (and in your case you know when that'll be) to get things into good shape ASAP.

[Budget_Ninja]

A little legwork.

Get a list of all your obligations and prioritize them. Ensure you have categories in your budget to accommodate each of them.
It might be helpful to put notes on each category where you could track outstanding balance and/or due date, some even use due date in the category name.
When you pay comes in allocate the dollars based on your values - I think you have this broadly outlined.

Shelter
Food
Utilities
Vehicle


Now here is what I did:
After I had gone thru all my bills and spending and had a good idea what each was costing me, I started hacking down on obligations.
--Gym membership
--Expensive cable package (in the end I got rid of it)
--Expensive cell phone package
...
I also started better managing my 'extra' spending. For a while we actually went to cash envelopes for thing like dining out, to help control spending. Once we got used to how much we could eat out on our allocated dollars we stopped using cash envelopes.

The effect of this is to free cash flow up to help catchup, then get ahead.

We sold my truck in March to help pay off our motorcycle loan.
Then sold that motorcycle to pay of the other motorcycle loan.
This freed up about $600 a month in cash flow from the loan payments and $85/month in insurance +maintenance costs ect...

We just bought a used car and paid in cash, and are getting ready to sell the last motorcycle. I will replace it with one for about 1/3 the price and spend $600 less a year in insurance.

The jist here is that we had some money wrapped up in leisure assets that could be better used else where. The decision was simple and I kinda stole the idea from YNAB - If I turned my assets into cash at market value, would I allocate those dollars to repurchase them? I can answer honestly that the motorcycles we have are not where I would be putting our money!

We are consumer debt free this month! Only the mortgage left for debt and we are starting to focus on building up our assets.

[Turf_Hacker]

Congratulations on being consumer debt free, Budget_Ninja!! It's a great feeling!