YNAB Q for my friend IRL

[Anonymous]

Basically - she has $48 in cash overspending in March. She thought it would take $48 out of RTA in April but it seems to have only taken $7 she says. She says everything is reconciled. But basically she’s asking me if she can trust her budget. Any advice on what happened here?

I always cover my overspending in the current month but occasionally I’ll have a work reimbursement that I want to leave temporarily overspent. If I think I’ll get the reimbursement soon and I have noticed that sometimes even when that’s credit card overspending only (as opposed to cash) that if I flip to the next month, it wants more money assigned in the next month and when I cover the overspending in the current month - that fixes the problem.

[Anonymous]

What are YNAB, Q, IRL, RTA?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What are YNAB, Q, IRL, RTA?

YNAB is You Need A Budget and RTA is a YNAB term only for Ready to Assign in that software. If you don’t know those, you can’t help here. Thanks though

Q is just question and IRL is in real life.

[Anonymous]

Can she just flip back to March and cover the overspending with another category?

[Anonymous]

Tell her to join the facebook group:

YNAB (You Need a Budget) Fans!

And ask that question. A few people there are very good at figuring out what went wrong.

[Anonymous]

And I can't help you ... I've used YNAB for two years now but I still don't quite understand what happens when you flip to a new month. I try to just keep everything in one month so I don't have to deal with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can she just flip back to March and cover the overspending with another category?

I do this all the time. Most of the Life Happens things can be covered that way in our budget.

I also pre-populate a miscellaneous category in future months and reallocate that money to categories that I underestimated when I was budgeting forward. Hth

[Anonymous]

Been using YNAB to great success for the last 2 years. Every day I log in to reconcile and move money around if needed.

With that said, sometimes things don’t add up, or drift off what I thought they would be. My checking account is off $200, those kinds of things.

As YNAB Rule 3 says, “Roll with the punches”.

I don’t let those things bother me. YNAB has transformed my financial life and if it’s not 100% all the time, I don’t let that bother me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Been using YNAB to great success for the last 2 years. Every day I log in to reconcile and move money around if needed.

With that said, sometimes things don’t add up, or drift off what I thought they would be. My checking account is off $200, those kinds of things.

As YNAB Rule 3 says, “Roll with the punches”.

I don’t let those things bother me. YNAB has transformed my financial life and if it’s not 100% all the time, I don’t let that bother me.

PP here. I want to add that YNAB isn’t something that will be turned in to auditors. It’s to drive behavior.

If your friend is $50 over her spending, just reallocate to fill the gaps.

The beauty of YNAB is making sure you can actually afford that $2000 purse you have your eyes on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tell her to join the facebook group:

YNAB (You Need a Budget) Fans!

And ask that question. A few people there are very good at figuring out what went wrong.

Thanks! I totally agree. The people in that group are great. I am in that group but she doesn’t want to be. She just wants to ask me her questions haha. And I usually can answer but I wasn’t sure what happened with this one. Now she thinks it got taken from whatever she put in ready to assign and I think that’s right. She just wanted to be able to trust what YNAB is showing her and not have extra money in YNAB that didn’t really exist in her bank account. But I guess she’s on.

[Anonymous]

On = ok

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tell her to join the facebook group:

YNAB (You Need a Budget) Fans!

And ask that question. A few people there are very good at figuring out what went wrong.

Thanks! I totally agree. The people in that group are great. I am in that group but she doesn’t want to be. She just wants to ask me her questions haha. And I usually can answer but I wasn’t sure what happened with this one. Now she thinks it got taken from whatever she put in ready to assign and I think that’s right. She just wanted to be able to trust what YNAB is showing her and not have extra money in YNAB that didn’t really exist in her bank account. But I guess she’s on.

She should always check her bank account and trust that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Basically - she has $48 in cash overspending in March. She thought it would take $48 out of RTA in April but it seems to have only taken $7 she says. She says everything is reconciled. But basically she’s asking me if she can trust her budget. Any advice on what happened here?

I always cover my overspending in the current month but occasionally I’ll have a work reimbursement that I want to leave temporarily overspent. If I think I’ll get the reimbursement soon and I have noticed that sometimes even when that’s credit card overspending only (as opposed to cash) that if I flip to the next month, it wants more money assigned in the next month and when I cover the overspending in the current month - that fixes the problem.

I think YNAB must have taken 41 from somewhere in her March allocated funds then. She should check those.

[Anonymous]

I've been using YNAB since Mint went away, but I still have no clue how to do my budget.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've been using YNAB since Mint went away, but I still have no clue how to do my budget.

Post your questions here. We will help you! Try that FB group linked above too.