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Look, can I just have some money? I don't want a lecture, bud.
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| # ? Jan 20, 2013 09:18 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 09:25 |
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If anyone else is kind of confused and occasionally disoriented about how to budget, I am quickly falling in love with You Need a Budget. Everyone should give it a try.
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| # ? Jan 20, 2013 15:22 |
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tuyop posted:If anyone else is kind of confused and occasionally disoriented about how to budget, I am quickly falling in love with You Need a Budget. Everyone should give it a try. Anyone else have an opinion on YNAB? I was looking at it but I don't have the knowledge to figure out if it's a waste of money or not.
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| # ? Jan 20, 2013 15:37 |
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I started using YNAB a couple of weeks ago and my impression is that it's really great at budgeting expenditures but not so hot for setting savings goals. It is nearly completely manual (think of your parents balancing their checkbook by hand) which initially turned me off. However, I quickly realized that I'm now much more aware of where money is going since I have to enter each transaction by hand. When I was using Mint I just looked at the little bars and went, "oh, I went over. Oh well." With the exception of the lack of savings goals I'm a huge fan of YNAB. edit: You can also download a 30+ day trial off their site to try it out and see if you like it.
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| # ? Jan 20, 2013 15:45 |
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TouchyMcFeely posted:I started using YNAB a couple of weeks ago and my impression is that it's really great at budgeting expenditures but not so hot for setting savings goals. I couldn't disagree more, my problem with mint + spreadsheet which I was using before was that I could not for the life of me keep track of savings. So I know, for instance, that each year I pay 450 to insurance in June, every two years I spend about 600 on new tires, and every year I spend about 320 on Christmas. So I need to save about 89 a month for those irregular expenses. So I set an automatic transfer 45 bucks every pay, no big deal. After about four months I have like 360 bucks in my savings that I can't help but think would be better spent on debt, so I dump it on a line of credit. When I need new tires I turn out to be short in a bunch of categories and lose my mind and try to only spend 90 bucks on groceries or something. With YNAB, I set a budget line of 50/month called "tires" and it rolls over every month. The balance grows, and since I look to the budget for balances instead of my bank account, I don't touch that amount. There turns out to be like 3k in my chequing account, but it's all earmarked for different savings goals and I just keep rolling them over without touching the balance because I don't even look at the physical location of the money. And if I mess up and spend an extra 100 bucks on groceries one month, I can steal from my future tire fund and Christmas fund and distribute the balance over the next two months to pay back my future self, rather than a credit card. I find it to be incredibly elegant. Edit: also, I still find mint handy for capturing every expense across all accounts. It makes it very easy to open my mint>transactions in one window and YNAB in another window twice a week and just add and categorize those transactions from Mint so that YNAB stays accurate. I still find Excel handy for long term goal tracking because I have like 28 months of debt repayment in a graph worksheet. The point of YNAB is just to keep a running balance of a category so that you don't look at your account balance, see 500 and spent 375 on groceries when you still have 200 bucks that are earmarked by future expenses. You constantly have the YNAB grocery balance telling you to make that 300 last until next month when you get more grocery money. tuyop fucked around with this message at Jan 20, 2013 around 16:03 |
| # ? Jan 20, 2013 15:58 |
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:I think it's a combo of some stupidity, but combined with so many lending institutions/bankers/mortgage brokers who will tell you that can in fact you can take out massive, ungainly loans and mortgages and of course you can afford them. Almost every interview I've seen with people who lost everything when the housing bubble burst and the economy went in the shitter talked about how their bank or mortgage specialist swore up and down that they could afford million+ loans even though they were a waitress or low paid office worker. These people were definitely dumb to believe them, but when a person in authority who's in charge of the money says you can afford it, many, many people are going to trust in that.  " But, the truth is that the debt situation is actually worse up here than it is in the U.S. In fact, Canadian household debt levels have approached the U.S. debt levels that were seen before the market shat itself in 2007. Canadians are bad with their money. And they're very complacent. Here's a typical conversation I've been having with a lot of clients:Me: "Hi Mr. Client. If we refinance your home and close out your maxed out credit cards and credit line, we'll save you $300 a month in interest and set you up on a structured repayment plan that will have everything paid off in 20 years, instead of the 35 years it would've otherwise taken." Client: "No, I don't want make any changes. We're satisfied with the way things are."  Also, a lot of Canadians still buy into the whole idea that real estate is the best investment that you can make. It's almost as if they don't realize that the housing market of our #1 trade partner just tanked a few years ago. I recently spoke to a woman who cashed out her kids Registered Education Savings Plans to invest in real estate. I strongly advised against this, she simply told me, "Why would I set up an RESP when I can just invest in real estate and get a guaranteed 10% rate of return year over year?" then rolled her eyes at me like I was the biggest dummy she ever met. And despite the tragic news we've all heard about the mass foreclosures in the U.S., I still have people coming to me to apply for a higher limit on their revolving credit to renovate their home, go on vacations, etc. I work for a very strict lender, and these people flip their poo poo when we decline their application and act like you've dishonoured their family, or something. The debt situation up here is bad, and will definitely get worse as interest rates start to climb upward. I'm glad to see people giving a lot of good advice in this thread. A lot of people make emotional decisions when it comes to their household finances, and it's great to see a thread that lays out the facts about getting your poo poo together. melon cat fucked around with this message at Jan 21, 2013 around 17:37 |
| # ? Jan 20, 2013 17:06 |
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Tuyop, those are a lot of the same reasons why I disliked Mint as well. I just downloaded the trial version of YNAB and I'm liking it so far. I feel like it will really help me be conscious of my spending while I'm spending money, instead of looking at my past habits and going "Welp, guess I shouldn't have bought that! Time to dip into savings!" Also, I hated how every time I opened mint, I had to answer a ton of security questions to reconcile all my accounts, and one of my banks refuses to let recognize mint. I'll see how much I like YNAB before I purchase it. The only downside I can see right off the bat is that half of the number keys on my keyboard are broken, and I have to use the onscreen keyboard. But I would have that issue with any budgeting software I guess. Guess it's time to budget for a new computer! monsieur fatso fucked around with this message at Jan 20, 2013 around 18:35 |
| # ? Jan 20, 2013 18:17 |
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tuyop posted:Good info here. Sounds like we have our finances setup a bit differently but are using YNAB similarly for the budgeting part. Don't know why it didn't dawn on me to do a recurring budget item for saving for specific things but I will have to give that a shot. Thanks for the tip.
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| # ? Jan 20, 2013 18:42 |
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How is YNAB for a freelancer? My income varies drastically month to month (some months I make <$1000, some months I make $10,000). If I wanted to setup a % based system for every payment where say 20% goes to a tax savings fund, 20% for living expenses, etc, is it doable?
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| # ? Jan 20, 2013 20:43 |
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What part of this can you not do with Excel or Google Spreadsheets, especially if you have to manually enter everything anyway?
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| # ? Jan 20, 2013 20:56 |
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/\/\ None, it's just a fancy front-end for a spreadsheet as far as I can tell, but for some reason mint + spreadsheet never worked for me. It's free to try as well, which may inform your design of your own solution? Who knows!Bottom Liner posted:How is YNAB for a freelancer? My income varies drastically month to month (some months I make <$1000, some months I make $10,000). If I wanted to setup a % based system for every payment where say 20% goes to a tax savings fund, 20% for living expenses, etc, is it doable? Yeah they have a bunch of videos and articles on freelancing on their website for free. I don't know much about it.
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| # ? Jan 20, 2013 21:00 |
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Cicero posted:Pillowpants was also a major BFC success story, although he didn't really have the dumb attitudes that CH and zaurg had. Haha, I pretty much had the same exact dumb attitude about getting in shape and have a failed Fitness Log to prove it  On the plus side, we're making an offer on a house this week!
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| # ? Jan 20, 2013 21:35 |
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This is more GBS/BFC so I'll mention it here: I went to the allergy doctor a few days ago and was prescribed a Nasal Steroid/Antihistamine. When I went to the pharmacy the pharmacist told me that they would have to contact the doctor to get some kind of approval for the medicine and that there wasn't a generic available. Me: Wait??? There isn't a generic available for a nasal steroid? Pharmacist: Well.. What they did was they mixed a nasal steroid and a antihistamine together,... *pauses* the antihistamine is available as a generic and so is the nasal steroid, but when mixed together it's only available as a name-brand.... Basically it's the drug companies way of screwing you. Me: Well, can you see if we can get those as generics but separate? Pharmacist: Sure.  drug companies/allergist, better luck next time you crafty fucks.Even with insurance the price difference is much better going with two separate medicines. Once again I get the impression most people would just ask for the generic and then take the name brand medicine when they were told a generic version wasn't available. Edit: Are there any other good long pre-Zaurg success/failure threads in BFC? I kinda joined the forums around the same time the first Z thread was in full swing so I wouldn't know. Edit2: Honestly I like Mint so much that I would change banks if the one I use suddenly decided they didn't want to work with Mint anymore. The only account I have that doesn't function with Mint at all is TreasuryDirect, but my solution for that is to just setup all of my taxable bonds as a cash account and adjust the interest manually if need be. melon cat posted:Canada... I'm glad to know there will be somewhat of a recession in Canada pretty soon, it will be a perfect time to make my move and I'm sure the Canadians will handle their recession a little better than we did. Orange_Lazarus fucked around with this message at Jan 21, 2013 around 02:26 |
| # ? Jan 21, 2013 02:14 |
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West SAAB Story posted:I wish I had this thread back in 2008. Oh my yes. If you buy a house for any reason other than wanting a stable, permanent living space for many years and willing to part with a great deal of money for this comfort, you are doing it wrong. maybe even then
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| # ? Jan 21, 2013 06:30 |
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Bottom Liner posted:How is YNAB for a freelancer? My income varies drastically month to month (some months I make <$1000, some months I make $10,000). If I wanted to setup a % based system for every payment where say 20% goes to a tax savings fund, 20% for living expenses, etc, is it doable? You won't necessarily be able to use a % based system for every payment (although you can just calculate that out via their on-screen calculator). Its a pretty simple system in general and really reflects the usage of "budgeting by envelope." Its also a bit cheaper on Steam I believe (its been on sale for $45 before). The method for YNAB is the following: http://www.youneedabudget.com/method 1. Only budget the money you actually have on-hand. - This is something I learned and really am putting for use. I have a good idea of what my monthly expenses are (I label my categories like this):  And then budget my available money up to the point where I have budgeted those out first. I then budget out my other categories including my savings goals:  2. Save for a rainy day. If you look at my previous category, my irregular expenses are already calculated along with a rainy day expense. I have a buffer in the sense that I have enough money to pay off a month of my everyday and irregular expenses in case something happened. 3. Roll with the punches I try to stay flexible and readjust within my categories as needed. 4. Live on last month's income They really emphasize slowly building a buffer and budgeting ahead over time. YNAB really works best if you are planning to budget like this. Any other method, which includes the method used by Mint.com really doesn't fit when you use YNAB (meaning you budget with money you think you're going to have in the future rather than available money that you have). I'd definitely recommend just sitting with the instructors and classes they have if you're planning on using this software. The classes are all free.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 00:51 |
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I've been using Mint.com for budgeting stuff. It's free but the downside is it will spit little ads at you about investing in bonds or something. It'll track your spending and categorize it for most things, (gas, food, utilities, etc...) You can set up savings goals too. I'm not sure how robust it is but for someone like myself who is just getting to really analyze my spending (and savings) it's helped a ton.  I know this sounds like an advertisement, but can someone notice any obvious red flags about it, does it lack any features I should be using?
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 01:56 |
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edit: my bad. I love Mint and unless you're the kind of person that really has to have everything in Excel I can't see a reason why not to use it. The second I log in I get the complete low-down of my financial situation, and with a couple clicks I can quickly look over my recent transactions and the state of my budget. It's really therapeutic for me because I need the constant reminder that my labor is moving me to a better position in life. I was also able to catch a charge on my debit card that I didn't make less than an hour after it happened. Luckily it was only $15 bucks but probably a "feeler" charge the thief made to see if the card even worked before he bought something bigger. Orange_Lazarus fucked around with this message at Feb 16, 2013 around 04:33 |
| # ? Feb 16, 2013 02:55 |
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Orange_Lazarus posted:edit: drat due 17k in a checking account? That the emergency fund? You should probably block out your username/email from that picture. No no, this isn't my account. The picture is from http://images.businessweek.com/ss/0...pioneers/14.htm
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 03:08 |
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I've been using Mint for a while now and it's pretty great as an overall financial dashboard. It lets me track my mortgage, my car loan, every checking and savings account I have, all of my investment accounts, etc. It's great although initially it might take you a while to get it set up nicely (sometimes they miscategorize things).
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 03:24 |
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I wish Mint would come to the UK 
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| # ? Feb 18, 2013 10:29 |
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I like Mint. I don't like how I don't check it as often as I should, or keep to my spending limits. I get a lot of messages, e-mails, and then pop ups saying I've spent more in this area then I should. I really need to keep to my budget. Once Valentine's Day hit, I went on a spending spree for that day, on that day, and this last weekend. I was doing pretty good by not spending anything, but not I've fallen off the wagon. Good thing I put a lot of money in savings and didn't touch that one bit.
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| # ? Feb 18, 2013 14:21 |
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Seeing as Mint isn't available in my country, and I'm too stingy to pay for YNAB (might change my mind on that...), I've prepared a spreadsheet for the coming month:   Salary is after tax, healthcare and gubmint pension fund. Anything I am forgetting/should add?
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| # ? Feb 18, 2013 18:47 |
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Mad Pino Rage posted:I like Mint. I don't like how I don't check it as often as I should, or keep to my spending limits. I get a lot of messages, e-mails, and then pop ups saying I've spent more in this area then I should. I really need to keep to my budget. Once Valentine's Day hit, I went on a spending spree for that day, on that day, and this last weekend. I was doing pretty good by not spending anything, but not I've fallen off the wagon. Good thing I put a lot of money in savings and didn't touch that one bit. I had it for about a year, then when I got a decent raise at work I slowly stopped sticking to my budget. It's slowly been dawning on me that I need to change how I use it. I'm going to force myself to be more reflective about my spending habits like I was in the past. The other thing I'm going to start doing is budgeting shopping trips and only carrying enough cash on me to buy the thing I'm shopping for. I did it for groceries this weekend and was able to cut down on a lot of impulse buys that I would have made if I had been using my debit card. Since I'm using the Mint phone app I also have to force myself to look at what I just spent money on since it will all be cash transactions. Mint's budgets aren't organized the way I would expect them to be. Basically every budget category acts as a container for the second-tier budgets, so for example you have the "Food & Dining" budget, and beneath that you have Restaurants, Groceries, Fast Food, Coffee Shops, and Bars. You can allocate money from the Food & Dining budget for each of these subcategories and track what you spend within the main budget, and if you blow your Coffee Shop budget for the month then it automatically takes the excess out of your main Food & Dining budget and you can decide to spend up to budget in your other areas, or just let them slide to cover the excess for the month. At the end of the month I'm going to adjust my budgets down and then just stick to them by only using cash. I was in the middle of the month before this hit me. It's going to be tough because I'm getting paid almost twice what I was when I started budgeting, and it's very tempting to justify overspending because my fixed expenses haven't changed by more than $300 or so since I started budgeting.
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| # ? Feb 18, 2013 20:25 |
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snorch posted:Seeing as Mint isn't available in my country, and I'm too stingy to pay for YNAB (might change my mind on that...), I've prepared a spreadsheet for the coming month:  I couldn't find a specific Hot Wheels ® section in your figures, so I just lumped it in under fun.
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| # ? Feb 18, 2013 22:07 |
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I've found Mint to be really useful; it's free, unlike YNAB(I'm not about to shell out $60 on something where I have to fiddle with entering every single transaction I make), it's good for tracking monthly spending, debt, AND savings, it reminds you of upcoming bill due dates, and the automatic transaction pulling/labelling is pretty accurate(think of the things you do have to relabel as forcing you to review where you've been spending money lately). The only bad parts are that it kind of freaks out when you make a big purchase you've saved up for*, since the one-time budget option doesn't seem to work that well, and that it may not be able to pull transactions from your account if you're not using a major bank. I also really wish there was a way to split transactions, since it's annoying if I, say, buy groceries at Target but also buy office supplies, since they both get lumped into one transaction. I still like it for the sheer convenience of it, and it does keep me aware of my spending. Then again, I haven't formed terrible spending habits that I now have to break, so your milage may vary on whether or not Mint works for you. *You are actually saving up for big purchases instead of financing them, right? Everdraed posted:Found an error in your percentages:  You never fail to impress.
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 04:16 |
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Haifisch posted:I also really wish there was a way to split transactions, since it's annoying if I, say, buy groceries at Target but also buy office supplies, since they both get lumped into one transaction. You can do this if you go into the Transactions screen, click on a transaction, and click Edit Details. There's a "Split" button in the top right. I use it about once a month.
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 04:34 |
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I mostly stopped using Mint after reading and implementing the processes detailed in Ramit Sethi's "I Will Teach You to be Rich". After that I mostly stopped paying attention to my money because everything takes care of itself. Now, I just use Mint to look at my savings accounts, 401k and Roth IRA, because it's less of a hassle and I can see them all in one place. Recently, I'll check my accounts every month or three and have no problems.
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 04:44 |
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mfcrocker posted:I wish Mint would come to the UK Yodlee MoneyCenter works in the UK and seems to do much the same thing. I've been using it for a while now and, while it has its quirks, it seems to do pretty much everything I need.
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 10:42 |
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zamin posted:I mostly stopped using Mint after reading and implementing the processes detailed in Ramit Sethi's "I Will Teach You to be Rich". After that I mostly stopped paying attention to my money because everything takes care of itself. Now, I just use Mint to look at my savings accounts, 401k and Roth IRA, because it's less of a hassle and I can see them all in one place. Recently, I'll check my accounts every month or three and have no problems. I'm interested in that system too. Is it pretty much just setting up automatic bill payments for everything and not worrying about it?
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 11:07 |
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Everdraed posted:Found an error in your percentages: I laughed so hard at this, well done! Also decided to graph an experimental metric of "Budget happiness", which is calculated from the difference between forecast and actual spending, and normalized between -100% and 100%. Let's see how happy I can keep this budget.
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 13:48 |
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I started using YNAB a few weeks ago and I find it much more useful than Mint. Giving every dollar a job is something I should have been doing long ago.
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 15:28 |
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I dumped my entire thousand dollar federal return on the smallest of my student loans the day I got it back. I guess I won't miss it since its extra and was never part of my income budget in the first place
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 15:50 |
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I find frivolous spending is a quick and masturbatory way to break up the monotony of my day-to-day life. Help.
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 15:57 |
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SpaceMost posted:I find frivolous spending is a quick and masturbatory way to break up the monotony of my day-to-day life. Help. Put it in your budget:
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 16:06 |
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SpaceMost posted:I find frivolous spending is a quick and masturbatory way to break up the monotony of my day-to-day life. Help. Holy poo poo. Anyone who finds the answer to this, please, please share it with me.
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 16:06 |
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Everdraed posted:Found an error in your percentages: You are the best person.
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 16:11 |
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nickutz posted:I started using YNAB a few weeks ago and I find it much more useful than Mint. drat, I may not get the software, but the "Rules" are definitely worth a read for anyone thinking about budgeting, starting out budgeting, or are old pros at it. I've only recently set up an emergency fund but Rule Four is something I want to strive for. The link if anyone's interested: http://www.youneedabudget.com/method/rule-one
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 16:19 |
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Everdraed posted:Found an error in your percentages: If I ever get a house paid for I'll dedicate a large chunk of my budget to Hot Wheels and Lego.
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 16:42 |
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DerpAlert posted:You can do this if you go into the Transactions screen, click on a transaction, and click Edit Details. There's a "Split" button in the top right. I use it about once a month. Wow, thanks for alerting people to this. Going to Shoppers Drug Mart usually fits into several categories at a time but I was just brushing it off and assigning the total to whichever category had the highest amount.
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 17:38 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 09:25 |
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SpaceMost posted:I find frivolous spending is a quick and masturbatory way to break up the monotony of my day-to-day life. Help. Trevor Hale posted:Holy poo poo. Anyone who finds the answer to this, please, please share it with me. Set some financial goals for yourself so that the money you save is being saved FOR A REASON. Find something else to take the place of stupid spending for no reason. Read a book. Write something. Learn something. Do something productive instead of consumer-related. And when all else fails, do what girls have been doing since time immemorial and window-shop without buying anything.
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 18:06 |
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