YNAB You Need A Budget

[fadedevolution]

Hey guys, I'm as new as they come to YNAB... and I love the methodology. I actually dl'ed it a few months ago and tried to get started a few times, but made a few mistakes that after watching some of the seminars I think I can do better. However, here is my dilemma. I tried searching in existing topics but didn't find much to help so here it goes:

I am currently a student with one part time job that isn't giving me nearly as many hours as it used to and as much as I need. Essentially my cash flow is negative and I will be encountering more debt until the end of the semester. This makes it seem that getting a buffer would be impossible, and I simply want to make it so a budget will allow me know how much debt i'm going into instead of just losing track of all numbers and having it spiral into more debt than is necessary until summer.

Any Ideas on using YNAB software for this?

[chrish]

If I were in this situation I would create my budget for the month (using as little money as possible), then create a new budget category called Loan. I would budget a negative amount into the loan category to bring the Available to budget number back to 0. I would then use the rule 4 override on that category to keep that negative balance in that category. Similar to a reimbursement, but you have to pay it back.

[fadedevolution]

That understand the first part, and it seems like that would work, that essentially the amount that I negatively budget into Loan is the amount that I will go in debt, correct? However, I'm not sure what you mean when you say this:

I would then use the rule 4 override on that category to keep that negative balance in that category.

Thanks for your input.

[zebov]

That understand the first part, and it seems like that would work, that essentially the amount that I negatively budget into Loan is the amount that I will go in debt, correct? However, I'm not sure what you mean when you say this:

I would then use the rule 4 override on that category to keep that negative balance in that category.

Thanks for your input.

The "Rule 4 Override" is the option (Only in YNAB 3) to carry a negative balance in a budget category from month to month. The default is to have the negative balance subtract from the following month's available money to budget. You can change to have it carry the negative balance over in the same category by clicking the little red down arrow in the "Category Balance" cell of your budget.