YNAB You Need A Budget

[kergoth]

Hey All,

I'm just wondering what people are currently doing to keep track of their rule 3 savings, with regard to budget categories. I don't particularly like the idea of creating temporary categories and transferring to the real category when spending it, yet having a single category with multiple rule 3 savings, or even with one rule 3 and some regular month to month expenses, things seem to get messy fairly quickly. If I end up moving money around between categories due to needing more for something else, if I'm not careful I could inadvertently steal away part of the rule 3 money rather than just the monthly money, or if that's what I really want, then I have to sit down and recalculate the monthly savings necessary from then on to still hit the target.

It seems like it would be nice if YNAB 3 had some sort of mechanism to record and track rule 3 savings goals, but I can see the desire to avoid this for multiple reasons.. avoiding bloat, as well as the difficulty in determining the ideal user experience for such a thing.. In the past, I had a spreadsheet set up showing all the rule 3 as well as the non-rule 3 monthly expenses, and it took the target date info, calculated the monthly amounts, and totaled up the categories, to give me starting points when creating my monthly budget with YNAB, but nowadays I'm trying to avoid that. Today, I have a single outline document listing the upcoming major savings goals, in the order we'll be targeting them in, which may be enough. So, I'm just curious about how others are managing it, today. Admittedly, it's not life or death to sit down and recalculate the necessary monthly amounts, but I'm always interested in optimizations for workflow and tools to help us make those optimizations.

I'm also curious about what people do for forecasting, if they do it at all. I realize that YNAB isn't designed for this, and focuses on the idea of there being no "normal" month, which I agree with, but I *can* see usefulness in making decisions now about when I'll be spending this or that, and to help determine ballpark figures of when I'll hit the various savings goals. I think that leveraging rule 3 to prepare for things, creating an emergency fund, etc, it's possible to do a certain amount of forecasting, if one's income is predictable and if one has accounted for a certain amount of unexpected expenses.

Thoughts?

Thanks.

[virago317]

I use notes if I need to remember anything in particular for rule 3 funds. You can put notes on both the category name and the cell for that month, so it's pretty flexible.

In terms of forecasting, now that I have a buffer, I sometimes pencil in my expected paychecks for the rest of the month (they are regular and predictable) or even the following month, if I feel like playing with budget numbers a little. I watch my balances like a hawk and make sure I don't make any forecasted payments without real-world availability. I also make it clear in the register that these are expected/estimated deposits and use a blue flag (red flags are for scheduled payments/deposits that there is no guesswork on). If you don't have a buffer yet, this is not recommended because it's easy to overdraft if you aren't paying close attention.

[malisab]

I'm just wondering what people are currently doing to keep track of their rule 3 savings, with regard to budget categories. I don't particularly like the idea of creating temporary categories and transferring to the real category when spending it, yet having a single category with multiple rule 3 savings, or even with one rule 3 and some regular month to month expenses, things seem to get messy fairly quickly. If I end up moving money around between categories due to needing more for something else, if I'm not careful I could inadvertently steal away part of the rule 3 money rather than just the monthly money, or if that's what I really want, then I have to sit down and recalculate the monthly savings necessary from then on to still hit the target.

I read this earlier in the day when I couldn't respond. I finally found it again.

Now that I am getting some rule 3 category balances built up, I'm wanting to do a little re-vamping. But I'm not sure how yet. I'd like to hear some more answers to your questions. Right now, I'm all over the map.

I have a rule 3 master category that roughly matches a certain savings account. I have several long term, build the category balances type categories under it. The only real spending I've done from there thus far was for a couple little trips in December and January. For those, I negative budgeted the amount that I budgeted for said trip out of the Rule 3: Travel Fund category and set up a master travel category with several sub categories (accommodations, transportation, food, etc.). I really liked the way it worked. And I am fine with that for travel. But now I'm starting to get other occurrences that I am not as sure about.

I had a murphy visitation in February in the form of surgery on one of my dogs. I did not have a vet expense rule 3 fund set up (I do now), so I just had to whack a mole and put it into my 'normal' pet expense category. I don't like it sitting up there. I was just looking at moving it down to the Rule 3: Vet Expense category. Then your very question arose...where should it be. I know that there's not one right answer. But it led me to come back to your post. I'm inclined to move the surgery-related expenses down to the rule 3 category along with the (retroactively) budgeted amounts.

Maybe this is more of an issue for me (and maybe the OP) since I don't have the 'traditional' master categories set up. My master categories are: Everyday Expenses (which is why a $700 dog surgery doesn't seem right up there), Rule 3 funds, and Bills (and a few hidden things not worth mentioning).

Any suggestions?