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Does YNAB link to your accounts and pull your transactions/balances automatically? Neither my wife nor I have smartphones, so if I need to input stuff myself it would mean keeping a physical ledger and entering it all at the end of the day. In which case, it seems like I might as well just be keeping my budget in a physical ledger to begin with. Having Mint able to automatically pull and sort things is a pretty big deal.
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May 17, 2013 20:27
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There are basically two ways to handle non-standard budgeting in Mint. 1) You can set up a budget category that is intended for a non-monthly purchase. So, for instance, my budget includes a 'seasonal spending' category that comes up twice a year. This is to account for when we switch from warm to cold weather (or vice versa) and discover that we need to get something because moths ate a wool coat/sheets are looking threadbare/etc. What this does in Mint is set aside 1/6 of that budget amount each month, and then has it available to spend in the scheduled month. 2) If you are talking about a totally one-off purchase, you can use the 'goal' function to account for this. Basically you can play with how much you want to contribute vs. your timeframe and establish a goal payment (say, $50 a month to buy a new computer until you reach $800 or whatever). That goal payment then becomes part of your budget each month until the goal is met. It works best if you connect it to a specific account, but that is more applicable to larger/longer goals like retirement or emergency funds, because it's not like you are going to open a separate savings account for your computer money.
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Jun 17, 2013 17:23
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DarkJC posted:Thanks! I like your idea of setting up categories like your seasonal spending category. One question, where is the Goal feature in Mint? I actually didn't realize it had such a feature, and exploring around the UI hasn't revealed anything to me. There is a series of categories across the top (Overview, Transactions, Budget, Goals, Trends, Investments). It should be pretty obvious! Not sure if you are using a mobile device or something that might force you to scroll over to see it. Most of Mint happens in the overview/transactions/budget screens.
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Jun 17, 2013 17:48
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I just took a look on the Mint forums and apparently it is something that hasn't been implemented for Canadian users yet? I have no idea why that would be the case, very strange. You could try manually changing the URL once you are logged in? I have it as https://wwws.mint.com/goal.event; see if that works!
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Jun 17, 2013 19:00
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Delta-Wye posted:However, what do I do with the charges that come through? If it was a single large purchase (just finished a goal, so I'm thinking of saving up for a $$ tube amplifier next) I think I would just exclude the transaction from Mint. However, I just finished saving a chunk of change for travel. Is it easiest to just exclude every charge from Mint? There will probably be a ton of small charges I have to admit that I am pretty terrible at actually dealing with this specific situation myself. Half the time I am traveling I am not able to get online and generally just can't cope with trying to keep up with my budget in addition to herding a two year old and talking to my nan. So it usually just fireballs into a mess that I try to clean up when I get back. Or I just let that month burn and start fresh the following month. This is not really a good plan. Having said that, I think that there is a way to handle it if you are a better person than me. You can create a once-off budget category in Mint that will not recur in future months. So the month you are planning to travel, you can just open a budget item called 'Vacation' or whatever, and set it for whatever you saved for this trip. When the transactions come in, you can flag them for that category to keep track of everything and know when you've broken your budget (vacations always break the budget somewhere). You'll have to find and flag those transactions, of course, and I am not sure that Mint could be told to filter off, say, foreign transactions into the category for you.
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Jun 28, 2013 15:20
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PhantomOfTheCopier posted:Please let us know where the new thread lives. Be aware that you'll probably get some similar attacks at the beginning It lives here. And yea, consensus is currently 'please find out where your money is currently going'.
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Jul 8, 2013 20:11
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but you'll want to plan to identify some small steps you can take to get on the corrective path. Likewise, don't overflow with so many 'new things' that you give up in two weeks because it's "too complicated".
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22 Eargesplitten posted:My main problem with mint is that it doesn't categorize things like I do. For example, I consider coffee shops and bars restaurants, Mint doesn't. quote:My main problem in general is that even the thought of checking my budget frequently makes me anxious. I'm also really bad at saying no to my wife when she wants to do something. I gave her my Mint credentials, but she doesn't look at the account much at all. Also, your wife has to be on board with this. Not tolerant of you fiddling with it and talking about it sometimes, she has to be part of this process and equally committed to it. Look at the way you are talking about this; 'saying no to your wife' means that you are being positioned as the gatekeeper on money because it's what you want, not because you are equally committed to budgeting. Then it's not a situation of 'saying no', its a situation of 'we don't have the money budgeted for that'. You guys need to sit down and talk about what your financial goals are, and get on the same page. This is probably not going to be a fun conversation, but it is one that needs to happen. Do you want to buy a house? Retire? Have kids? Have too many cats? A house for the cats? These things need money, and it has to come out of your budget. It's hard to pass up stuff you want right now, but it is a lot easier when you have had this conversation and can say 'I am going to pass on a big night out, because that money is for our house fund, and I have decided that I want a house more than I want a series of expensive meals'. It is really difficult to do this if only one person in the couple is on board. quote:The reason that I wanted to do different accounts is that I have been successful in building up a wedding/honeymoon fund while still being terrible at sticking to a budget. My hope was/is that I could stick with a budget better if cheating required transferring money into a different account.
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Oct 29, 2015 19:16
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There is nothing to stop you using both tools. If your problem with YNAB is actually entering all the transactions, then you could use Mint as a way to back-check things you have missed and add them to YNAB later. You can also use Mint to try and assemble a historical picture of your spending in way that you can't with YNAB. It's not going to be perfect because things may not categorize properly, but it will do stuff like show that you have been spending tons of money at lunches or something like that. Also, if you mess up and don't track everything, don't throw it all out. You aren't going to do it perfectly from the start, so just keep working on it and use the data you have (even if its not perfect). 'Starting fresh' over and over seems like a way to avoid having to deal with the situation, it's not really productive.
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Jan 10, 2016 14:27
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Mint has a little calendar that shows you when various bills and payments are occurring, but I don't think it provides an estimated balance at that time. It might be something you can do as an extended function though, it's not something I have tried to get from it.
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Apr 29, 2016 20:01
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I can't check in on Mint right now, but I believe the little calendar appears in the overview? It's just a little timeline for the next 30 days showing expected transactions with little bars for their relative size. But it doesn't do expected balances as a result, it just lets you know, hey, you have a credit card bill in five days, not what you can expect to have after you pay it. I don't think its going to compare to anything in Quicken, and probably isn't enough for what you want.
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Apr 29, 2016 20:13
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You can set a budget category to roll over instead of resetting every month. That way you budget $84 a month, and after five months it will have a carried balance of $415, and then when the bill hits you'll be on budget.
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May 6, 2016 02:05
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Well, first of all congratulations on working on this! What I would recommend is leaving the money where it is for now, and using Mint/whatever to check how your spending is matching your budget. How much money is there leftover in your grocery budget each month, for instance? If it is a large amount, rather than shuffling around the money, you may just want to adjust what you are budgeting for that need (although bear in mind that a grocery budget isn't going to be completely consistent, if it includes things that are somewhat seasonal and just from variation in your habits). Basically, if you are finding that you end up with $50 left over from your grocery spending, the question isn't really 'where does this money go' as much as it is 'have I budgeted correctly'. Don't be afraid to tweak your budget if you find that it doesn't match reality, as long as you are doing that for the right reasons (ie, reducing your grocery budget because you have worked out how to eat cheaper consistently is fine, increasing your fun budget so you can buy the game you really really want is not). Otherwise, I would just leave it where it is for now and allow it to accumulate as a contribution to the less common bills like vets and maintenance. You might want to work out what you think is a good buffer for this account to have - basically, what might be the highest bill you would get that isn't in itself an emergency. Look at your insurance deductibles and your past history for that. If the account is building well past that buffer, then maybe move some of it off into your savings. I think it is better to do this than to move it into savings too soon and have to pull it out. I think its bad practice to be shuffling money in and out of your emergency and savings account because its easy to get into the habit of doing that and mixing them with your regular finances. Ideally your emergency account or savings should be like an old-fashioned piggy bank where taking things out is a serious decision because you have to smash the thing open. Its better to have something spare in your operating account.
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Aug 24, 2016 19:08
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Your budget is insane because there are equal numbers of things that seem totally reasonable (entertainment, childcare) and completely bananas (eating, utilities) Do you have a plan for the MBA? Because you are already a doctor, so if you are going to spend $30,000 a year on more schooling it had better have a concrete payoff. You need to rethink that car situation, especially whatever is 'projected' there. If you absolutely need another car for commuting or something, buy a used car cheap until you have a handle on all your debt payments. You do not need a flashy new car while you are sitting on $15k of consumer debt. Edit: Ok, now I want to know what the $1350 car is. Speaking of which, I don't actually see a line item there on paying down your CC debt. Every time I look at the budget I find new things to confuse me. Did you make a mistake with your car registration costs? There is no way that can be right.
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Sep 27, 2016 22:04
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I am sorry if I was an rear end, I realize that isn't helpful when you're trying to work stuff out and I wasn't trying to wind you up. I really was/am confused because there are things all over the place in the budget - not meaning overspending, but that just seem strange or confusing. I can't imagine that you will end up paying $800 in utilities, for instance, but it is totally ok if that is your 'I don't know, let's not get blindsided by this' safety guess and it ends up coming in way below that. Then you have extra money to apply to your debts, not a shortfall. I'll make a more helpful post later tonight and make sure I am not a dick. Good job on actually tackling this head on.
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Sep 27, 2016 22:33
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If you are concerned about the Netflix thing and want to make sure it tracks correctly, you can set your Netflix category to roll over, so that any excess or shortfall will carry forward the balance. Then you can mark the $60 as a Netflix purchase. You will be over budget right now, but as you move forward and don't have to pay for it, the budgeted amount will be counted against the shortfall until its eliminated. Does that make sense?
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Sep 30, 2016 18:29
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Hi I am fixing your image:  Dante18907 posted:So a couple questions. A) Is there a better tool/software package than YNAB for this style of budgeting? B)Would I be better off trying to use YNAB the way they want me to use it, by only budgeting the cash I have now? C) Are there any glaring errors you guys can see (aside from the massive overbudgeting due to no income set)? If I am following what you want to do, you might want to look at Mint instead - although I am not sure if it works with australians banks and everything, you should be able to do exports/imports manually? If it syncs so that works best. Mostly, Mint operates in the way you seem to want to plan things, which is balancing your inflows and outflows against each other on a monthly basis. To address B, I don't use YNAB, but my understanding is that the theory is to deliberately only use money you have in hand, and not commit future income (which you do not have) to paying bills you know are due. This isn't a bad idea, especially if you are new to working out a budget, because one of the most common errors people have is 'pre-spending' money before they have it (Oh I get paid this Friday so I can put this meal on my card and pay it off...) particularly because people will do sloppy math and pre-spend more than their income before they get it (thus ending up deeper in debt). Committing to only spending money you actually have prevents this, which is good for building habits and understanding. But to 'work', it sort of means you need to have enough money in hand to cover your monthly dues. If you don't, well, then things look really dire (which is actually true, because if you don't have enough cash to cover your bills you are living way too close to the edge) but make sit difficult until you get that one-month cover under your belt. But if you are going to stick with YNAB, I would say that you should be trying to follows its guides and use it as intended - otherwise you are better off using something else or even going it on your own with a balance sheet. Re: your budget, what is 'Spending Money', and why is it budgeted to $800? You need to break down expenses so that you can track them better - is this for eating out, drinking, dates, buying toys? What is it? You have way too much debt and way too little savings to be treating a weeks paycheck and then some as walking around money. Itemize this out and then work out what you can eliminate here to clear up your debts and built your savings.
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Oct 7, 2016 01:25
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When I calculate my emergency fund I look at expenses that cannot be easily deferred or suspended. If I lose my job we can cut our entertainment and eating out, I won't go shopping, but we're going to have to keep paying our rent/insurance/phone bill. Sometimes this is complicated; for a situation where I lose my job but expect to get a new one soon, we wouldn't want to pull my daughter our of daycare because then we'd lose her spot and we'd have to find another place before I could go back to work. But if something happens where I am out of work for a long haul, that might be on the table to help us curb expenses. But ideally we plan our fund to include this and then have removing it as an option on the table to extend how long we can last. This can mean you end up with more money sitting around in checking or savings not 'working'. One option is to stagger how you keep your fund, so you have what you consider enough for an instant emergency in savings, and then additional amounts in accounts that might have a longer access period (like MMA or CDs I guess, although those rates have been pretty abysmal for ages.) Then if something happens you use your saving account while you unlock the other tiers (if needed). I don't put any emergency money in a form where it can't be accessed readily or could lose value though.
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Dec 8, 2016 15:40
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I don't think so. Unfortunately I don't think the sync issues are a fault of mint, they are usually from the bank site blocking logins and requiring additional verification- I have thus all the time with my retirement account, basically any time I want mint to sync they end up sending me a verification code by text I have to put into mint and then it will work for a couple days. If you find a better one let us know
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Dec 30, 2016 21:20
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I would say that you should put as much aside into your TFSA as you can without compromising your budget or making yourself unhappy (so, you know, don't eat gruel or forsake all fun). Money you can set aside now has that much more time to grow, and creating the habit of determined saving early on is also very valuable. I agree that the apartment looks pricey, especially relative to your income. I would look for a way to bring it down without making yourself miserable. I understand wanting to move out on your own and I think that's reasonable, but maybe you can find something cheaper, or even split something with a roommate? Remember that its much better to start with something too modest and move up next year than it is to start with something too expensive and be stuck bleeding dry the lease. I would try to get a three-month buffer before you move out. Unless you have a timeline that you are working toward, that extra cushion can be very important and also give you a lot of piece of mind. Moving and settling in can come with a number of unexpected expenses, too.
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Feb 14, 2017 22:55
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Ornithology posted:All of those are included in the rent of the places I've been looking at. Ok, credit where credit is due, you have budgeted out a good savings rate and definitely having no debts is a big positive. I don't bother coming down on people for their debts because by the time they post here they realize they hosed up, but once you have them you don't really have much choice but to pay them, so grilling people over it isn't really useful (unless its so bad they should just declare bankruptcy, I guess). BFC does give people heat on stupid car choices though, especially if they are in a position to get rid of it. The reason I am wary of your rent rate is because paying 40% of your income is a lot on anything, and doing it on rent is risky - you are probably going to be on the hook for a year lease, which means that if you decide that you hate the place you have very limited options. I have been in that position myself, and it sucks because you have to watch your income get poured into a dumpster fire that you hate, and it can embitter whole other aspects of your life. Are you confident that you are going to like this living situation enough to lock in that spending? Maybe you would be happier spending that much less on rent and having that much more to spend on doing things or going places. It also sounds like this is your first time living away from home, and you're moving in with your GF. That isn't bad, but it does mean that you might not have experience with all the costs of living under your own roof. Do you know what your move-in expenses will be? Are you going to need furniture? Do you currently rely on your parents for something that you won't be able to when you are on your own? For example, are you going to be ok doing all your shopping on transit, or do you need to budget something there? You should also think about how its going to feel when you are basically paying for everything for you and your girlfriend. Are you going to be ok with that? Some people are fine being a sole earner, but it is also really easy for people to get irritated when they are paying for everything in a household; beyond BFC advice, this is something you should really talk about with your girlfriend before you move in. If you feel like you have considered all those things and addressed them and you want to move ahead, then your budget isn't bad - you'll still be saving and you'll have money to spend on yourself. Just make sure you have done that before you lock yourself into it for a year.
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Feb 15, 2017 15:20
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I don't actually know the answer to that, but my understanding is that YNAB philosophy doesn't really agree with that sort of planning. You expect to get money next month, but you don't have it. Probably it will be there, but what if there is a delay? What if something gets screwed up and it doesn't clear when you expect? YNAB wants you to budget things against the money you actually have, so you know exactly what you can definitely cover. I don't know if Mint would work any better. You can set budget items for specific times (like 'I will get one payment on this date') but I've never used it in that way to really test to see how it handles it. It is generally more disposed to the approach you're talking about though.
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Mar 28, 2017 20:03
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Well yes, I'm forecasting that I can enter a post-budget state at some point, though it's difficult to predict exactly when. Statistically I think it will be a little longer for my wife to get there. I'm talking about death I think budgeting is always wise, but you can be more or less intense depending on your habits and situation. We aren't as thorough now as when we were living closer to the edge. I'm not sure there is a point where you should stop though, because many people se able to inflate their spending to match any income. You should always keep track and make sure you're not digging yourself a hole and are on track for any goals.
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Apr 4, 2017 21:07
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Yea, most annual or similar things I just break out over the year, so my budget has a line-item for Amazon Prime that accrues every month and is paid once a year. Granted that this can get a little dumb, especially if the annual amount is so small it vanishes in any meaningful budget. If you are consistently earning more than you budget, you can also simply put this in as a single item on the given month it comes up - so for instance, if you usually end up with some amount of money over your budget items, you can just tally 'Amazon Prime' for that month and reduce your overage that month (or if you are budgeting your complete earnings, reduce your contributions to a more flexible item). I think what exactly you do is sort of up to how you feel works best for you, as long as your answer isn't just 'ignore it and then fall out of budget regularly when these things come due'.
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May 31, 2017 00:57
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The issue with a percentage budget is that it isn't going to scale smoothly with income, so if you are making minimum wage and you post a budget that shows you are spending 30% of your income on rent, that is very different than if you are making six figures and doing the same - you can still do it, but you'll need to put the advice in context. Or give people an idea of where you are falling in income.
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Sep 6, 2017 03:05
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Yea, the fact that you are paying as much for lunches as all the rest of your groceries is probably not good, and you are paying twice that again on eating out and entertainment. You should probably look at that to get some of it under control. What is going on with your gas? Based on the ballpark, it looks like you're spending something like $250-$300 a month on gas for your car. I don't know if there is anything you can do about that, but it should be on your mind. You don't seem to have any amount pegged for shopping - stuff like clothes, hobbies, etc. Unless that is coming in under 'Misc Crap' and 'Entertainment'.
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Sep 11, 2017 17:52
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I get not wanting to post exact figures here, even if no one cares what you make - I've never posted a dollar budget here myself for the same reason, although initially that was mostly out of embarrassment over how poor I was  It does impact the advice you get, but you can still learn stuff without it. I'm going to move off your budget for a second to talk about what your goals are here. You don't have any rent/mortgage in this calculation, so I assume that right now you are living with friends/family/under a bridge to avoid that expense - but you're also talking about possibly buying a place? Not sure what exactly your life situation is, but I am always hesitant about people jumping straight from 0 - 100 like that. Renting isn't a waste unless you're getting ripped off, and it can give you a chance to test out different neighborhoods and living arrangements before you buy anything. Before you buy something you want to be really sure that's a place you are going to be happy living with for a while. This also works financially - if you bite off more than your can budget, as a renter the worst case scenario is to just stick it out and move - if you buy a place, its a lot more painful. Maybe you already have this all worked out, I don't know! For stuff like clothing, one option is to pull a large section of your credit card/debit card history and work out what you have spent in, say, the last six months. Then you can use that as a guess for your normal spending, and put it into your budget. I do most of my clothing shopping twice a year, basically when I switch seasonal clothing out of storage and into the wardrobe and discover what I no longer like or want to replace. This will at least give you something to work with. One of the big first steps on budgeting is just realizing where your money is going, so you're off to a start. Now you get to work out what you really want to be spending. I found that lunches were really my worst value spending - they tended to be expensive, but weren't really so much better for that cost than packed ones. I was spending a bunch of money to basically not have to bother with a few minutes of work. Once I started realizing how much money was getting flushed away like that, it was easier to switch habits.
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Sep 12, 2017 01:20
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I want to know what your income bracket is where you only spend 1% on a baby.
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Sep 12, 2017 16:24
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I missed the childcare line, so that definitely makes a difference (also two-doctor family). I wish that we could get childcare down to 2%, these little guys are crushingly BWM. Only one more year left and our youngest will be in kindergarten though! We'll still have aftercare costs and sitters sometimes, but wiping off that daycare fee will be a huge relief.
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Sep 12, 2017 16:34
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On your low months, is your income still enough to cover your expenses? Or are you in a situation where you need to use high months to cover low months? If your income is always over your expenses and it's just a matter of how much, then you can make a budget based around your lowest reliable income to cover all your expenses, and then allocate the excess in some organized way - ie, once your expenses are covered, the excess is split with X going to savings, Y going to retirement, Z going to discretionary, etc. So a low month, maybe you just cover your expenses, on a high month, you make sure you are putting money toward sensible savings/goals as well as actually spending some of it. If your low months don't cover your regular expenses, then you need to budget on a longer scale and make sure that on high months you are setting aside sufficient money to cover the lean times. So you work out, say, what three or six months of an expense would be, and 'fund' that buffer with any high earnings before you start putting money toward other spending.
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Feb 11, 2018 16:56
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