YNAB You Need A Budget

[HelenD]

Hi! I'm a new user, trying to get going with YNAB Pro. I think I understand the basic idea of the zero budgeting, but I would like to be able to see a "big picture" of several months in advance to see how things will look when income fluctuations occur (for instance a !@#$ refund, or no benefits deductions are taken from pay during summer). How does this work in YNAB??

Thank you!

[WairereRose]

Hi there,

YNAB is a budgeting tool, not a forecasting tool. It is made to support the four rules of budgeting which basically mean giving jobs only to dollars that you already have.

If you want to do forecasting, I would suggest that you start a second file and make the entries in there so that you don't mix up money you expect with money that you have already, see if this will achieve what you are looking for.

[HelenD]

You astonish me. A budget generally extends ahead, not merely to the money available in hand. But I do take your meaning, and thank you for the reply!

[brendan]

I love planning ahead, so I do this a totally different way.

• I have an account called 'Future Income'.
• I have my salary set up as an entry in the scheduler
• I choose the option to send my monthly salary to Register from the scheduler 6 times. (This will allow me to budget out for the next 6 months).
• When my actual income comes, I need to remember to delete the income from the future income account.
• You might need to change the 'Number of months current balance stays visible' figure under File -> Settings
• On the first of every month I update my budget to make sure it balances to zero. If I overspent last month, rule 4 kicks my arse and forces me to cut back on what I budgeted.
  

This allowed me to forecast in October 2007 that I would have my buffer by March 2008. I cut some spending an achieved it by Feb.

It's helped me be more focused on saving for things I want, eg, I cut my drinking budget from $200 per month to $50, so that I could get some other stuff I wanted sooner.

I'm going on a 9 week holiday soon, so will receive big lump sum in December, no income in January and 1 weeks income in feb. I can can see how much I need to have on hand to keep my house running while i'm away.

[YYC27]

You astonish me. A budget generally extends ahead, not merely to the money available in hand. But I do take your meaning, and thank you for the reply!

It's true that YNAB differs from traditional ideas of a budget (forcasting future income against future expenses). It's focus is on managing the money you have already earned, and allocating it to current and future needs. It tends to be a rather conservative way of looking at your finances.

YNAB is, at it's heart an envelope budgetting system. YNAB keeps track of the virtual envelopes, as well as the physical accounts that feed into them. I think Jesse has expressed interest in finding ways to help people better plan ahead / forcast, but at this point it's not an integral part of the software.

[slipped_away]

But if I'm not mistaking the sneak peaks from YNAB 3 there will be a kind of forecasting tool in the report section. Or am I mistaking the word "trend" in the videos?

Because it would be nice to have som kind of feature that will show you how much you have in you different categories a year from now, or to just choose a month and see how things will look, IF I'm following the budget and don't make any changes. Just pick the categories you'd like to see, and then let YNAB calculate it for you. That would be niiiiice...

[HelenD]

I would still love to see this feature. As it is now, I have to maintain Quicken along with YNAB so I can see what bills are coming up and if I'll have enough to cover them.

[mrparson]

HelenD, you may want to take a look at Personal Finances Pro to take the place of Quicken. It has a beautiful calendar feature, and it shows your budget in the form of bar graphs with the amount you set and the percentage spent. It might serve what you are looking for while you continue to use YNAB. It also provides multiple ways to view your register which is quite creative. I personally enjoy the icons that can be set for each income or expense item; it makes it easy to scan that way.