Anonymous wrote:NP, Fairfax County, and I am wondering if we have a hidden water leak. Just paid $336 for 24,000 gallons of water use, which seems incredibly high. Lots of showers, dishes, laundry, but we don't water our yard.

We pay separately for trash (American, included in HOA fee). A few years we moved from Fairfax City, where the city handled trash collection, and I would move back in a heartbeat if interest rates were lower. Not a fan of the county.

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Arlingtonian703 wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks. It's a bit crazy that some of us are paying per month nearly what others are paying per quarter!

That is crazy - but I just remembered something, our Arlington bills also include trash and recycling!

So for our $315 bill that was 15,000 gallons:

$87 or $29/month was for water
$154 or $51/month was for sewer
$75 or $25/month was for trash and recycling

Maybe other jurisdictions cover sewer expenses through taxes instead of billing it alongside water usage?

Oh - thank you! I don't pay for this in DC (or I guess I do through taxes, but I don't pay any monthly bill).

Outside of Arlington, in FFX county (Burke, Springfield, Annandale, etc.), do I need to tack on sewer/trash/recycling services?

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks. It's a bit crazy that some of us are paying per month nearly what others are paying per quarter!

Anonymous wrote:We just bought a newer 5000+ sq ft house after living in a drafty 2500 sqf 1950s house. Surprisingly the gas bills have been cheaper in the new house ($55 vs $68 last bill) but the electric is way higher in the new house than the old house ($250 vs $25 last bill). What have been your electric and gas bills the last two months if you're in the dc area and you're in the same-ish size house? We have gas heating, stove, and water, and everything else electric. TIA!

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Anonymous wrote:I stopped using it because it can't handle credit cards. I don't know how people do it.

It handles credit cards beautifully, perhaps you don’t understand it.

+1 The credit cards are all in the setup. If you set up correctly on day 1, it's easy.

Two super helpful responses for the OP who already said she doesn't know how CC work for YNAB.

Anonymous wrote:and processing refunds is tough too.

i made a category just for the credit card refunds. i put the refunds here. then, i will use the refund to cover any additional spends. i coudnt figure out a better way, so i choose to apply the refund to another category, rather than putting the money back into the original category.

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Anonymous wrote:Or better yet, I can explain how credit cards work! Let me know if you have a specific aspect you’d like clarified

Yes, don’t go back to Reddit for me thank you for the offer!! I’ll try to respond here or page you when I have an actual specific question. Thank u again!

No, I love talking about You Need a Budget (YNAB)! My wife and I have been using it for five years and I've helped family members get on board with it. I'll do my best to explain the credit card (CC) system in its basics here.

YNAB's system uses both Accounts and Categories. Accounts represent real world accounts where you money sits, Categories in your budget are the "jobs" you've given those real world dollars in YNAB. A CC account is basically just an account with a negative balance and the CC payment category is the category where dollars you've assigned the "pay off your CC" job are located. And YNAB's system is so slick it moves these dollars around seamlessly.

An Example

Let's say you have $1,000 in your checking account. You have a credit card account you've just paid off so it has a $0 balance. And in your budget you've assigned $250 to your grocery category.

You go to Whole Foods and spend $100 on groceries, here's what happens:

1. You enter the transaction in YNAB - Whole Foods is the payee, Groceries is the category, and your CC is the account
2. When you hit enter $100 moves from your Grocery category to your CC category - so now your grocery category has $150 ($250 less $100), your CC category has $100 in it, your CC account now has a ($100) balance (that's negative $100), and your checking account balance is unchanged at $1,000
3. Now you go to your CC's website and pay it off using your checking account. In YNAB you go to your CC account and click 'Record Payment' and the amount that pops up will be equal to what you have in that CC category (but you can manually change this to whatever payment amount you're making). When you hit enter your checking account will go down by $100, your CC account will go from negative $100 to $0, and your CC category will go from $100 to $0.

I don't know if that helps at all but basically spending money on a credit card will make your CC account more and more negative and YNAB will move the money from the category you spent from into the CC payment category. Paying the CC off is just transferring money from your checking account to your CC account.

Everything is right with the world if the total amount assigned to your categories is equal to the amount in your cash accounts (like checking) and your CC payment category has the same amount as your CC account (but opposite, if you have a negative $100 balance you'll have positive $100 in your CC payment category)

This assumes you're paying your CC off each month, things work the same but it's a bit different if you spend more on CC than you have money in the bank.

Anyway, hope this helps! Happy to answer specific questions if you think of any.

NP here but I wonder if this has changed in the past 10 or so years. When we tried to use YNAB about 10+ years ago, we really struggled with (a) using credit cards and (b) having multiple bank accounts. Does YNAB still preach that you should only have one credit card and one bank account?

If you tried YNAB a decade ago it was YNAB4. They completely revamped everything (now called New YNAB or nYNAB) around 2016. I don’t have any experience with YNAB4 but you can certainly have as many cards and accounts as you want.

I do know some people like to continue keeping separate accounts for different types of spending. Like an account just for real estate taxes. An account for presents. That sort of thing is a ton of extra hassle for zero benefit with YNAB. You can do everything with one account and then use categories in YNAB to allocate money to different jobs.

Current YNAB4 user here (yes you read that correctly) with multiple credit cards and bank accounts. I believe that YNAB handles cc's and bank accounts similarly. The main difference with New YNAB is that it moves away from the envelope system. You don't know where you stand budget-wise on a day-to-day basis like you did with YNAB4. If you want something similar to YNAB4, I think Buckets is your best move. I posted upthread that the key to cc's is in the setup. If you are set up right, making purchases is applied to the card account and paying the bill is done every month with a transfer from the bank account.