YNAB You Need A Budget

Fountain · by **Fountain** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 3:16 pm

I recently discovered YNAB, and I have to say the software and philosophy of this budgeting system really has me excited to focus on my budget.

Little bit of background: I'm recently married, and my wife and I are attempting to cope with combining our finances in addition to our debt.

We were fortunate enough to sell some stock to create our buffer thus start using this month's income for next month's budget. I'm pretty sure I added all our accounts properly, and this month's, August, budget laid out fairly well with just a few unexpected large expenses. No worries, that's why I left some money in the buffer on August's budget. However, the deposit's I am putting in the register as primary are not showing up as available on next months, September, budget. The only deposit I can get to show properly as primary was some cash-on-hand, but the other 4 paychecks we received in August are not. I do have them listed as primary-in's, and not as supplemental-in's in which I placed the stock sale. I guess I should also mention I have a MAC which always seems to make things more difficult. Any theories as to why this is happening?

Thanks in advance for any helpful tips, and I look forward to taking advantage of your forum in the future.

Mudie · by **Mudie** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 4:24 pm

Hi Fountain, welcome to YNAB and the forums.

It sounds like you have a fairly good grip on how YNAB works so about all I can offer is to have you double check the dates of the Primary inflows that you entered. If your deposits read an August date and are tagged with Primary then they should show themselves in September's Available.

Have you hovered over the Sept. Available to see if they are there?

Steve

PS: Congrats on starting being able to start out with a full buffer, you won't regret selling the stock to get there and you will LOVE the peace of mind that it provides.

Fountain · by **Fountain** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 4:43 pm

Thanks for the reply. I checked the dates, and I they correct. The only thing I can think of is where is the amount spent that was over-budget accounted for on the budget page? In other words, since I am just starting I had some expenses in categories in which I had nothing budgeted, thus the balance column for that category reads a negative ($$$$$) number. Does the software automatically debit those amounts from my next month's available budget although several other categories are holding a zero balance with large amounts budgeted but not yet spent?

Mudie · by **Mudie** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 5:30 pm

Fountain wrote:...since I am just starting I had some expenses in categories in which I had nothing budgeted, thus the balance column for that category reads a negative ($$$$$) number. Does the software automatically debit those amounts from my next month's available budget although several other categories are holding a zero balance with large amounts budgeted but not yet spent?

Yes, that is Rule 4 in action.

All overspending will be subtracted form the next month's Available which has the effect of spreading out the overspending across your entire budget instead of leaving it in that category.

Have you hovered over the September Available yet? The summary that shows up when you do so will help explain things for you.

Steve

malisab · by **malisab** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 6:25 pm

Mudie wrote:Have you hovered over the September Available yet? The summary that shows up when you do so will help explain things for you.

Steve

Do we get hover over summaries in Basic? Is my Excel just too old? Do I need to activate something?

Mudie · by **Mudie** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 11:19 pm

malisab wrote:Do we get hover over summaries in Basic? Is my Excel just too old? Do I need to activate something?

The hover over summary is only available in Pro. We'd like to have had it in Basic as well but the limited environment of being in a spreadsheet makes tricks like mouse over summaries all but impossible.

Steve

malisab · by **malisab** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 7:44 am

That's what I thought, but since this answer was in the Basic forum, I thought I might be missing out.

Mudie · by **Mudie** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 7:27 pm

malisab wrote:That's what I thought, but since this answer was in the Basic forum, I thought I might be missing out.

Yikes, you are correct, I was just browsing subjects via the active topics link and took it at face value without even paying attention to the forum that it was/is in. :oops:

In any case, I hope that anyone who reads this understands that the hover only applies to Pro and I apologize for any confusion that I may have caused! :wink: