YNAB You Need A Budget

[barrymeulen]

I love YNAB a lot. Especially with the iPhone application.

I only struggle with saving accounts. Not the budgeting, but when i actually going to spend of my 'saved' budgets. It is quite difficult to track how much money is remaining during the course of a year in for instance holiday savings. If you can not see how much is left then the possibility exists that you are spending money out of another saved budget.

I think the solution lies in the possibility to make 'virtual' accounts in YNAB, which accumulate in one saving account. So a hierarchal structure similar to the accounts structure.

Then it is possible to have one physical account separated in multiple accounts for the various purposes. Then it is also possible to see what is remaining in your saved budget after you took some money out of it.

Can this be implemented easily and on a short notice?

Thanks

[brown685]

What is generally suggested is to have savings account in YNAB which corresponds to actual savings accounts. Then in your budget you create a category called Holiday Savings. Then each month you budget some money to the category. Say $50. Then in November you go shopping for presents and buy $200 in gifts. These you record in your account registers with a category of Holiday Savings. This will spend the money you have budgeted to the Holiday savings.

Example:

Holiday Savings: Budgeted Outflows Balance
June $50 $0 $50
July $50 $0 $100
August $50 $0 $150
September $50 $0 $200
October $50 $0 $250
November $50 $200 $100
December $50 $150 $0

It does not matter which account the money is actually in. The category balance keeps track of how much money you can spend.

If you are making your holiday savings an off budget account, then you can simply spend the money from the account and not put a category on it, since it is not in your budget anymore.

James