What are Reddit's favorite Budgeting Apps?

ynab.com (You Need A Budget Student Program) Is still offering students a free year online budgeting. There's also an app. It's done wonders for me (and plenty of others according to their videos). Congrats on getting a hold of this. It won't be too long before you're out of this hole and in a better financial space.

This is called price anchoring, not price fixing.

Price anchoring is about establishing value in the potential consumer's mind by giving you a higher price to compare to. https://www.mint.com/blog/how-to/price-anchoring/

Price fixing is about colluding with competitors.

It isn't worth going into debt for your wedding. While yes, it is an important day, the important part is marrying each other and starting your lives together. Don't begin that with a bunch of unsecured debt looming over you!

If you want help budgeting and figuring how much you can save each month, /r/personalfinance is a great resource. I also highly recommend both Mint for expense tracking, and You Need A Budget for budgeting.

Start off your marriage on the right foot :)

When you're saying you're overbudget, do you mean your "To Be Budgeted" is sitting at a negative number?

Undo that right now by unbudgeting everything. That's not how YNAB is supposed to work. Budget only the money you have right now. If that doesn't go very far, so be it. When your To Be Budgeted amount hits zero, stop. That's the reality of the situation you have in front of you.

You're riding what's known as the "credit card float" where you're essentially paying last month's expenditure with this month's money. That article gives you two options on how to deal with this.

If you want to break the credit card float cycle quickly, you need to stop paying off your cards in full, and instead treat them like any other debt. Whatever your credit card balance is right now becomes your debt. You stop using the card completely. When you get your monthly income, you budget that money to your bills, etc. and spend from your debit card, and whatever is left goes towards the credit card bills. This will incur interest. But it means you'll be working only with money that you actually have and you can actually budget properly. The debt will get paid off eventually.

Breaking it slowly would mean still riding the float, but it means you cannot budget money the proper way. It means you'd need to budget money towards making sure your credit card is fully covered, and budgeting whatever is left wherever it needs to go. It means your YNAB will have a lot of "overspent" categories.

I really like YNAB (https://www.youneedabudget.com/). It's a $5 a month budgeting tool, but also lets you add your investment accounts and track your net worth.

Do you budget right now? If not, it's really one of the best things you can do on your path to FI. YNAB will help you:

• See where your money is going which will in turn help you manage it better
• Make sure you're not spending more than you earn
• Help you save for and meet goals like paying off loans or saving up for a vacation.

You'll basically set up a bunch of categories (groceries, rent, bars/restaurants, electric bill, etc) and when you spend money it goes against what you've budgeted for the month for that category. What's nice is that it's flexible, so if you overspend on one category you can just take money from another category to cover it.

What's really great is how it helps you save up for expenses that come every few months. Let's say your car insurance is paid every three months. You would set up a Car Insurance category and put 1/3 of the amount you'll owe for each of the three months leading up to when you have to pay it. This is really helpful and will make expenses like that hurt a lot less.

If you're interested, sign up for the free month trial, then watch a webinar or one of their videos on how to get set up. It will probably take an hour to two to get it going, then a few minutes every day to update and manage.

After using it for a bit, you'll wonder how you ever got by without it.

It's also a good idea to cross-check your receipt with the amount you're actually charged. That way, you can protect yourself from waitstaff taking liberties with their tips.

In terms of budgeting, though, you might want to check out Mint.

First of all, relax. You've got three grand in debt. Most people have tens of thousands. You're in such good shape it's kind of irritating...

You make three grand a month, and pay 20% of your income in rent. You should have have no problem whatsoever coming up with a budget that would have that debt paid off in under 2 years. Buy a copy of You Need A Budget, install it and follow the instructions. You'll be right as rain in no time.

In terms of freaking out about the world ending...grow up. Being an adult means staring potential disaster in the face on the daily. You think you are stressed out about news in North Korea; try keeping a toddler alive. Freaking out about the world ending is some emo teenager bullshit, so knock it off.

Understandable! We all hear you, and were all there ourselves, at some point. It’s a lot to deal with at first, and it may not end up being for you. But the whole mass of people that you have read about, for whom it works, will walk you through absolutely ever step, if you feel like giving it another chance. Also, remember about the live chat feature in the app and on the website, the official support should be able to walk you through any issues. And lastly, there are a few people here who volunteer to tutor people via chat, myself included. Reach out if you need specific detailed help (but there is no question that is too stupid, and this sub is great for all of it!), or even just to gripe! A lot of it is changing your mindset along with learning the app, so maybe the people at r/personalfinance might be helpful for some other issues, or even some other methods of managing everything. Good luck! PS, check out the YNAB Forum, maybe doing a journal might help you get it all out and see how far you’ve come, in a bit. PPS, did you look at the budget template? you shouldn’t have to necessarily feel overwhelmed with your priorities, they are yours, you can choose to put some on hold, and it works just as well that way.

It’s not quite what you are asking for, but YNAB is what I use for budgeting. With it, you can add a monthly goal for savings on a specific category. I would definitely recommend checking it out.

https://www.youneedabudget.com/

1. Increase your income. This means get a second job.
2. Reduce your expenses. Your rent is an acceptable rent for your income (towards the high end), but your other debt makes your rent too high. Rent a room instead of an apartment. Or share a room.
3. Pay down your debt fast. The best mathematical way is to target the highest interest debt first. Basically, you go after the credit card (CC) with the highest APR.
4. Start budgeting. Track every dollar that comes in and where you spend it. Online tools like Personal Capital and Mint make this easy. But a real budget is more complex than these online tools. Ideally you either make a spreadsheet or use something like YNAB ( https://www.youneedabudget.com )
5. Start looking at making an emergency fund. With CC debt, emergency funds cannot be a priority, but having at least a one month emergency fund (one month of expenses) is worth slowing down on the CC payments. After your CC debt is paid, make sure you keep a 3-6 month emergency fund (6 months is ideal for many people though this fund can be smaller or larger based on your individual situation).

Assuming you're in the US, or someplace with the same "credit score" racket, I would offer this: You're pretty much in the same situation I was at your age. I did end up opening a credit card that year, and that account is still open to this day. That gives me a long credit history with good payment records, and has been great for my credit score as well as ability to get other financial services. I'd say go for it.

My word of warning: I'm assuming since you said you have no expenses that you're living with your folks or similar. Not long after I turned 18, I started working fewer hours (to make time for college classes) but expenses started to rise because I wasn't living with the folks anymore. Watch out for that shift. The first time I couldn't make the payment in full, I felt just sick. I thought I'd never be "stupid enough" to end up in credit card debt, but it did happen even if it wasn't a deep hole. This didn't happen because of the credit card, but with a credit card, I accidentally mentally separated the "money I have" and the "money I was spending" at a time when my income-to-expense balance totally shifted and I was distracted with school. When you put a charge on a debit card, it draws from your account as soon as it clears; treat your credit card the same way. You can do it in your head, or you can use a tool: YNAB (/r/ynab) has been great for financial planning and is what I use, Mint is automatic at the expense of being less robust. So it's not about the credit card (you could be writing hot checks, too), but about watching for the financial changes that happen around that age when you use a method of payment that doesn't cut you off if you run out of cash (similarly, watch out for overdraft "protection").

Watch this video. Seriously.

It has helped many, many people understand how YNAB functions.

It's a different way of thinking about budgeting. It's an envelope system. You have a pile of dollars (real dollars - these are all the dollars you own, right now, in your accounts), and a pile of envelopes. You begin stuffing dollar bills into envelopes - some into the bills coming due before you get paid again, some for groceries until you get paid again, some for gas until you get paid again, and with the smaller pile of dollars after those needs are taken care of, you begin to stuff dollars into your True Expenses - things like Car Maintenance, Insurance Payment, etc. When you run out of dollars, you STOP.

You stop, because you can't put imaginary dollars into envelopes.

YNAB is all about the now - about giving jobs to the money you have. Not to the money you might have later on. It is a different way of thinking, but once you make that mental shift, it comes clear and works beautifully.

Watch the video and see if it doesn't help things.

Also, read the How To Create A Budget article. It explains setting up goals for categories, and scheduled transactions. (That's how you plan ahead for dollars you don't have yet. You can make a goal for a category you don't yet have dollars for, but you can't stuff dollars into those envelopes until you have those dollars.)

You are still thinking of 'budgeting for your credit card payment.'

Don't do that. Stop.

What you are supposed to do is budget for the things you are buying. Groceries. Clothing. Fuel.

So, you budget $100 to Groceries. This is real money, real dollars that you have, in your checking account.

You spend $75 on groceries, using your credit card. You enter that transaction in your credit card's ledger as Payee:Grocery Store, Category:Groceries, Outflow:$75.00.

Now, you will see a green $25 in your Groceries category, and a green $75 in your credit card Payment column. That's because the $75 you spent 'moved' from having the job of paying for groceries, to having the job of being reserved to make your credit card Payment. You will need to pay your card for the amount you borrowed from them - so YNAB helps you by setting aside the money that you 'spend' on a card, so you can make your payment with that money.

This article gives some tips for getting off the credit card float - when you don't have enough money to budget for your month's expenses, AND pay your previous credit card bill in full. You can either stop paying in full, but budget properly for your expenses, and budget an amount to pay down your card, or you keep paying in full, but trim your spending back as much as possible, so you're overspending your budget categories less and less over time. (I prefer the option to stop paying in full - it's painful, but debt always is, and that pain makes you move faster. The option to trim expenses and keep paying in full instead requires a lot of discipline, plus, you aren't really using YNAB 'properly' in the meantime, and that habit can be hard to break after a while.)

Your current rent is 600/mon plus shared internet+utilities/mon. When you move, your costs will be 1000/mon plus individual internet+ utilities/mon. Also, if you plan on overhauling your wardrobe to match your new gender, that could be expensive, too. This means that for you to live in a place that is 400+ more, you need to cut at least 400+/mon expenses elsewhere or earn at least 400+/mon more with a side job/gig.

Have you looked into ways to either increase your pay or decrease your other costs? Now's a great time to budget your expenses and see what's easiest to cut.

For example, to increase pay:

• If you think you can handle it, can you ask your boss for more responsibilities and thus more pay? Can you see what's out there and try to look for and apply for different jobs now? It doesn't hurt to ask and show interest. If nothing is currently available, you can ask them to please keep you in mind for future openings.

• If you think you can work more than 40 hr/wk, can you find a side job/gig?

For example, to decrease other costs:

• Is there room to bring your monthly food costs down, while keeping healthy? Maybe you could start brown bagging lunch, make your own daily coffee, decrease the amount of meat in your diet, r/mealprepsunday, etc.?

• Can you change cell phone providers to decrease your monthly cell phone bill? For example, if you're on Verizon, but Google Fi service is great in your area, even if you save $35/mon with that change, all these little changes add up and can help you out.

These are just some examples. I'm sure you can think of a way to optimize your budget that you didn't look into before.

I just closed my account. I had signed up to see what it was like. With YNAB, it just kind of got in the way, stealing money from one account to an other. It didn't help me save more money because I don't use my checking account balance to decide if I can spend money. Digit is a neat concept for people who "can't save", but I not in their target demographic. I wish them well.

You Need A Budget is fantastic, and syncs across devices using Dropbox. It's the most logical budgeting / finance package I've used and they have loads of tutorials on how to budget better.

https://www.youneedabudget.com/

It's a zero-based budgeting tool, i.e. all your money is assigned a use prior to spending.

They switched from a desktop client to a subscription-based product ($7/month). There is an app for any platform you want (iOS, Android, Web).

/r/ynab

YNAB official site

It is budgeting software. I work in the tech industry and I spent a long time trying out different money management programs. It was the best I found. They key is to take the time to do the training and fully understand the concepts as well as how the app works. There is a whole method that goes with it.
https://www.youneedabudget.com/

Start out with a 4-month free trial:

https://www.youneedabudget.com/landing/stack-social/

Watch YouTube videos (Nick True's are great), and sign up for YNAB's free classes. (It's fine to take the same class more than once.)

The first month is tough, confusing, and often discouraging. YNAB is almost certainly different from any budget you may have used before. Stick with it. Ask for help. Four months should be long enough to see whether YNAB is going to help you feel more in charge of your money and whether it's worth the $111(?) Canadian. Best of luck!

>if i have 20 in the bank the first i do is “hey i got some money let’s spend time together”

A bit off topic for this subreddit, but that is an incredibly stupid financial decision. If you only have 20 in the bank, then your finances are fucked, and any unexpected emergency that requires significant monetary outlay will ruin your financially for years.

You need a budget.

came here to say this. Broke is a "how not to do things" for people that come into windfalls.

basic investing: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Video:Bogleheads%C2%AE_investment_philosophy

MMM audio podcast though: https://www.youneedabudget.com/blog/post/jesse-interviews-mr-money-mustache-the-full-transcript

Yes. Absolutely. 100%!

I have used Mint for a little over 2 years and I have never had a single problem with it. My thinking behind it is that since Mint handles all those bank accounts, it should be a prime target for hackers. Since it has been rock solid for 2 years without a single problem then they must be pros at security. You can also check what they have to say about security here : https://www.mint.com/how-it-works/security/

No...

The counter argument here is always take the guaranteed return on your money. By paying down your mortgage quicker, you're getting a guaranteed 4.5%.

The stock market has no guarantees. Sure, the markets have been absolutely great for the last few years. I completely understand your thinking. However, sometimes you might only make 2-3%. If that happens, you were better off taking the guaranteed 4.5% from paying down your mortgage faster.

Check out an article on the subject here: https://www.mint.com/blog/goals/paying-down-debt-vs-saving-more-which-one-comes-first-0114/

Let's start with the slam dunk decision - buy the house cash. That opens up houses you otherwise couldn't make an offer on (such as foreclosures) and will get you a significant discount on a property. Once you own the house, you can get a mortgage on it without issue.

Once you are sitting in your house, fully paid off, you'll begin to question the wisdom of taking out a very large loan in order to buy stocks. First, you can read the simple explanation or the complicated explanation of the issue at hand. Using a mortgage to invest adds the component of leverage which magnifies the ups and downs of your portfolio. It also carries interest which acts as a drag on the overall performance.

Your CFP and most people in this thread have completely glossed over the issue of risk and are focusing only on return. An intelligent investor attempts to have a portfolio that achieves the desired amount of return with a minimum of risk. If your stock/bond portfolio is fairly conservative, it makes no sense to leverage it to increase your returns. It would almost always be better to move your portfolio into higher return asset classes like small cap or value stock indexes. In fact, unless you are 90%+ invested in stocks, leveraging your portfolio is probably a bad idea. It's simpler, safer and easier to just rebalance into higher return investments.

You WANT to budget your savings. Really!

You're probably thinking of your 'budget' being your 'spending plan', and you naturally don't want to 'spend' your savings, so you think you don't want it on-budget. But that's the wrong way to think about it.

YNAB is all about giving your dollars a job. ALL of your dollars. And one very important job for some of your dollars is savings.

So, what you do is, you create some savings categories, and then you allocate ('budget') your savings dollars to those categories. THIS is what keeps your savings dollars safe from being spent on anything else, and giving those dollars jobs in categories is the magic of YNAB.

Here's an article that explains it, and here's another article about the relationship between your budget, and your accounts.

Tracking accounts are only really recommended for things like investments, where the value regularly fluctuates, and/or for money that is not liquid, and you will not need to use it for a LONG time (like, decades...i.e., investments).

Tough love time; YNAB isn’t the problem here. You are.

YNAB is telling you exactly how you’re doing. You don’t have enough money to cover your bills in the first half of the month and buy groceries.

If when confronted with that reality, you throw your toys out the pram and start ignoring your budget, how do you expect YNAB to help?

It’s not YNABs fault you’re overspending. That’s on you. Nothing anybody says here will help unless you’re prepared to start paying attention to your budget, even when it tells you things you don’t want to hear.

Once you’ve done that you have a couple of options,

1. Spread the bills due dates across the month so they’re not all due from one pay packet.

2. Once you’ve paid off your mid month credit card debt with your second pay check, put some of it toward bills the following month, so you’ve got a little extra to play with next time. Then budget the remainder to the things you need in the second half of the current month and stick to that budget militantly.

3. Read this

I’ll third YNAB - they also have lots of training videos/articles - at least one is for variable income like you mention

• https://youtu.be/BTEOEbt8lBY
• https://www.youneedabudget.com/slaying-the-variable-income-dragon/

I use mint to keep track of budgets and stuff. Works pretty well. Not really a site to go for advice, but a good way to keep track of your money and have a good sense of what is going on. It alerts you if your over budget and stuff like that. Plus its free!

It's not your FICO score. From mint's info page:

>The credit score provided to you is an Equifax® credit score, based on a proprietary credit model developed by Equifax, which may use information in your Equifax, Experian and TransUnion credit files.

Source: https://www.mint.com/how-it-works/security/mint-credit-score-terms-of-use/

YNAB's Wish Farm article has a technique that I started using. It's towards the very bottom.

Create a category for your specific trip, but before you spend it, transfer the balance into a more general category, like Vacation. Then spend out of your Vacation budget. Then delete the now empty category for the specific trip.

You get the benefit of seeing a specific goal in your budget and watching it fill up, but when you spend it it'll show up in a more reasonable way in your reports.

Every time you spend money write it down (on paper, on a phone app, doesn't matter). Do this for a whole month. Seeing a giant list of all your wasted expenditures can shock you into being more responsible.

Then make a fucking budget, man. You're living above your means.

https://www.youneedabudget.com/

Make an account for cash, not a category - and budget the cash just like you would your checking account.

When you withdraw, make a transfer to the cash account, and record the spending as usual. They recommend rounding up to the nearest dollar so you don't lose your mind when trying to reconcile.

Video: https://www.youneedabudget.com/support/video/handling-cash

You don't want to delete a category that has transactions attached to it. Hide it instead.

Or, move the transactions to a different category, and then you can delete it. Normally I'd say don't bother, it isn't worth the hassle.....but if you've had this category for one month, it's probably do-able.

Normally, the best way to handle categories that you know will be a one-off, is with the wish farm method. Basically, let's say I want to buy a fancy new garden rake. I create a category for Fancy New Garden Rake, and I save up for it. BUT. I don't use that category for the transaction when I purchase the fancy new garden rake. Instead, I move that money to my Home Maintenance category, and then I buy the rake, and assign the Home Maintenance category (maybe putting Fancy New Rake into the memo field). This way, I assign a category that I'm keeping around for a while, and I can now delete, or rename the Fancy New Garden Rake category, with no ill effects.

"she said girls of their cultural would respect her..." I'm DYING with laughter because my auntie is Chamorro (Guam), and we have a lot of Polynesian people at church. I've never met any islander women who would put up with this shit. Glad your BF is finally seeing the light.

Edit: If he's trying to learn how to budget, try this. Works great. https://www.youneedabudget.com/

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> Do you just set the "Target Category Budget by Date" every year?

Yup. In fact I have a whole category group just for non-monthly bills. I set goals on these categories, due the month before the bill is due.

But I treat it like a Wish Farm in that I don't spend out of these categories. Instead, when the bill is due, I move the money in them to a more general category, then reset the goal.

For example, my car insurance is due next month (I pay every 6 months). I will move that money into Car Maintenance, and pay my insurance out of there.

This way, if I stop having one of these bills in the future (unlikely with car insurance, but maybe I'll drop Amazon Prime or AAA Evernote some day) I can just delete these categories without losing any history.

Save for specific things like that in a category, but then move the money to a more general category before spending it. So in your example, I'd save in an "Apple Watch" category. But then when I was ready to buy it, I'd move the money to my "technology" category and categorize the transaction there instead. Then you can freely delete the apple watch category and you have more accurate reports.

Check out the wish farm blog. It's a good method. - https://www.youneedabudget.com/wish-lists/

Sounds to me like you're living the credit card float.

You're not using your savings to pay for your bills, so YNAB doesn't care that you have money to cover your bills in that account.

https://classic.youneedabudget.com/support/article/understanding-the-credit-card-float

https://www.youneedabudget.com/are-you-riding-the-credit-card-float/

TL;DR - You Need A Budget!

No really, YNAB. It's fantastic. /r/hailcorporate and all, but in this context, it's really helped the wife and I stick to a budget and gives me all sorts of shiny graphs and charts.

For the truly Frugal route, add it to your Steam wishlist and wait for the summer sales. Managed to pick it up for 75% off that way.

>However, that made it so I didn't put anything towards my savings goal

Your savings goal should be a part of what you budget for each month. Enter it in, just like a 'bill'. The Budget Template should help you with arranging for this.

Your money will naturally age, as you put away more and more of it that you don't spend for a while. This includes savings for a down payment (if those savings are on-budget). If you send money off-budget for any reason, then the age of your on-budget money will naturally (potentially) drop. (It depends on the calculation of the last 10 cash-based transactions.)

Regardless, Age of Money is a slightly weird metric, easily gamed or manipulated in all sorts of ways, both deliberate and accidental, and you shouldn't make trying to increase it a goal - rather, just do your budgeting thing, set money aside for the future (however you do it), and your AoM will naturally increase as a result.

YNAB (You Need A Budget)... it saved my life. If you are a student you can even use it for free. https://www.youneedabudget.com/ no joke. try it out.

EDIT: it is a flexible budget that you don't have to stick to 100% like you obviously have a hard time doing.

They do.

> We hack our own site. Intuit runs thousands of tests on its own software to ensure security. We scan our ports, test for SQL injection, and protect against cross-site scripting. We also employ Hackersafe to test our site daily.

https://www.mint.com/how-it-works/security/security-technology/

So, my SO has recently switched to self-employment. For our situation this means that we have one fixed (mine) and one variable (his) income, and I've found that the YNAB method is perfect for this, because of YNAB's central question: "What does this money have to do before I get paid again?" Even if you don't know exactly when or how much that is, it really puts the focus on your immediate priorities.

YNAB expressly tells you *not* to budget with anticipated income. It's easy to fall for that trap when you have a fixed income you can expect on the same day every time. You can't do that, which is exactly what YNAB wants from you. To work only with the dollars you have.

YNAB has a great 9-part series called Mastering a Variable Income, which I think you'll find very useful to read.

First, congratulations on the progress. Depression sucks, and the progress you've described can take a lot out of a person. Don't expect to be able to get all your sh*t together at once.

Second, in terms of mindset: since you're having a hard time thinking of money as something to save, I would ask what you're saving for. Do you have savings goals? If you're trying to save just for the sake of saving, and you're not getting there, maybe the goal isn't meaningful to you. Set a goal that means something. If you're saving for, say, a new phone, or an emergency fund, or a gift for your SO, you'd have to really think: do I want to pull this money out of savings and spend it on something silly? Is it worth being short x for [meaningful goal]?

Third, I can't tell if you're familiar with the YNAB system. If you aren't, do check out the method. YNAB is about giving every dollar a meaningful job.

Finally, do you and your SO talk openly about finances? If they make 3x what you make and are expecting you to keep pace with their spending, the discrepancy is going to get bigger and bigger the longer you let it go on.

May I suggest establishing a budget, tracking your expenses (to the cent, not just rough estimates), and getting in the habit of sticking to it and checking it before spending any money? You can set up your recurring expenses and allocate your income to the essential bills before funding your savings and spending categories to ensure that your essentials are always covered at the very least. But you need to also develop the self control to stick with this.

YNAB is a great tool for this, and students can get it free for a year. https://www.youneedabudget.com/landing/students/

Budget template

Workshop - although it's titled 'Budgeting when you're broke', it provides a pretty good overview of how to enter things, etc.

However - some of this might not be as useful to you, because if you purchased it on Steam, then you've probably got YNAB4, not nYNAB, which is the web app. Most things are the same or similar, but not all.

I'd recommend YNAB, go check out r/YNAB and try a free trial from https://www.youneedabudget.com/

YNAB isn't just an income/expense tracker, it's also a bit of a different mindset from other things. Like Mint for example, Mint is great for tracking where your money went but not where it is going. YNAB takes the philosophy of giving every dollar a job as soon as you get that dollar, not before, and then updating your budget when you actually spend that money.

I had a budget sheet in excel for bills and income, then I had Mint, but when I got YNAB I really got a much better idea where my money was going and I've been able to save so much more money with it.

Hey there! I actually did the same thing last month, so I think I can help you.

What you're talking about doing is called front-loading your 401k. If you can do it, it's a pretty good move for the following reasons:

• Time in the market is better than trying to time the market. Basically this means that the sooner you can get your money into the market, the better your chances are of making money over a long period of time.
• After you finish, your remaining paychecks for the year will feel a lot bigger (even though the math works out to about the same).

Things to consider:

• How are you with budgeting? It's weird not getting paychecks, so make sure to set aside the money for each month and do NOT touch it until that month. I'd highly recommend checking out YNAB (https://www.youneedabudget.com/). It will help for this, but is also an amazing tool in general for managing your money and making sure you're hitting all your goals.
• How does putting 100% in affect your other deductions (like for health and dental insurance, etc). If you put 100% of your check into your 401k, you may not have enough for those. My HR recommended putting 80% in because of this, but I would double check with your HR on that.
• I'd say check to make sure you don't miss out on your employer match, but I can see you already did that.

EDIT: I recommend reading jorge1209's comment below - for this situation, it would actually be better to put the $24k in a taxable account and fill his 401k normally throughout the year, so that he doesn't have a bunch of cash sitting around uninvested.

well initially I had no idea what AoM was or how it might benefit me. In the beginning I was putting a lot of money in the “Stuff I Forgot to Budget For” category. That category, for me, acted as a mini-buffer and a catchall for any random transactions that didn’t fit cleanly into categories I had already established. But it didn’t seem like I was utilizing that category correctly. So I started looking in to what a true buffer is and what it can do.

I found that if you want to Age Your Money (YNAB rule #4) you have to create a buffer in your main account that is equal to 1 months worth of expenses. This allows you to “free up” your reoccurring income and not worry so much about a drawing your account down to zero. It helps you to roll with the punches a bit better and pay bills a little easier.

For example, my internet bill is due at an awkward time during the month. I used to be late paying it all the time. I’d try to pay half of it across 2 paychecks just so I wouldn’t go negative in my bank account but I would end up always paying a late fee. I’ve noticed that since I’ve been able to increase my AoM, I’m actually able to set the money for that bill aside ahead of time, which is honestly huge for me. I know now that if anything crazy comes up, I won’t be scrambling trying to figure out where that money will come from, and my buffer will protect me from having to dip into my emergency fund.

I feel like that’s a horrible explanation, haha. Really focusing on building a buffer and getting more granular with my categories so that there were fewer “forgotten” expenses popping up really helped me.

Here is a link to YNABs website that get into the nitty gritty of it and really helped me out

Age Your Money

Consider using something like You Need A Budget https://www.reddit.com/r/ynab https://www.youneedabudget.com

Budgeting and accounting software to help with personal finances. Changed my life when I started using it a few years ago.

To save for your "wants", you need a Wish Farm.

Beyond that, my personal recommendation is to save a small emergency fund first and then focus on paying down your debts one at a time. It will free up so much cash flow to water your wish farm and YNAB is awesome in helping you do this. For me, the Snowball method has paid down debt much more rapidly than the Avalanche method ever did.

I've just started using YNAB for the past two months and it has helped me a ton so far. It imports all my transactions from my Bank (RBC); you can check to see if it is compatible with yours. https://www.youneedabudget.com/

I switch off between calling it my Emergency Fund and Fuck You Money, but Fuck Off Fund sounds good too.

For anyone here living paycheck-to-paycheck and can't build one up at the moment, I recommend YNAB - first month is free and it can be very useful!

While using cash instead of plastic could be a step in the right direction, it still doesn't really address one of the main issues here, which is that you really have no idea where your money is going - you have no plan for your money, aka no budget for your money.

I highly recommend checking out the YNAB method and trying it out. For someone with your high salary AND living paycheck-to-paycheck AND in debt, you can't afford to not have a budget.

Here's some details on how they manage security. https://www.mint.com/how-mint-works/security They use a lot of the same tactics that your actual bank uses to protect information. That being said, there's no such thing as unhackable, so your caution isn't without merit, but Mint isn't necessarily less secure than your bank itself.

Not mainly an app but more of a service:

I use YNAB since I grew familiar with YNAB4 through the Desktop-Version and now use the webbased Version in combination with my Mobile app as it's a lot more comfortable to budget on Desktop and then just enter transactions on the go

linkme: YNAB

i commend your will power to save! i do want to say, though, that this is a symptom of not having a real budget. check out YNAB www.youneedabudget.com and /r/ynab

the stress that comes with checking your account balance and dropping some into your ally bucket sounds brutal.

why not set up a budget, earmark all your money today, then you'll know what you have left over and can move it all into ally. allot funds to cover expenses necessary to make it to your next paycheck, and save the rest.

you don't have to trick yourself into saving, there is a better way!

Make a category called "Emergency Fund" and budget that $3,100 there.

Remember, unspent positive amounts roll over month to month. When you budget money, you're not saying you're going to spend it anytime soon. Money you budget today may be spent tomorrow, a few months from now, a few years from now, or in the case of your emergency fund, it might just sit there indefinitely, available if you need it.

You should check out the savings workshop, one of the free online classes. That will help a lot.

YNAB the software won't help you with your personal motivation issues. YNAB the philosophy might (https://www.youneedabudget.com/learn). You don't even need YNAB to use the YNAB philosophy. If you are any good with spreadsheets, then you can just build some nifty spreadsheets to implement them. That is all the software is. The main thing you need to do is alter your own internal motivations. If you set spending and savings goals, that are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Tangible), you will feel that little reward each time you achieve one (something along the lines of, "this week, I will only spend £30 on pints at the pub" or "this month, I will save $100 toward a new top-hat"). The goal must have a time frame, be reasonable and achievable, and have a tangible element to the finality of the goal (eg the new top-hat, or the £30s worth of pints). The mind works by visualisation - it cannot visualise a negative image. For example, you might try to set a goal of "not spending as much". How can you visualise that? Instead, set a tangible goal, with small, achievable milestones, like "today, I will spend 5% less than this day last week, and that saving will go toward my new top-hat.". The reward will come once you sink those sweet pints, or place that neat top-hat on your noggin (there is a nice top-hat on etsy. Not linking because im not spam).

If you are entering your transactions as they happen, they will be in YNAB before they show up in your bank. If you are reconciling you only want to compare "cleared" transactions", otherwise you won't know if your balance is accurate.

https://www.youneedabudget.com/support/article/how-to-reconcile

Yeah that guy obviously has never read anything about Mint. It's pretty clear in their FAQ that they do store passwords.

> Your login user name and passwords are stored securely in a separate database using multi-layered hardware and software encryption. We only store the information needed to save you the trouble of updating, syncing or uploading financial information manually.

https://www.mint.com/how-mint-works/security

Hey man good effort post. Adding to the budgeting section:

1. An alternative to excel is mint. You just set it up to hook onto your bank, allocate some budgets, and revise / reiterate your budget if needed. No need to manually punch in your transactions day after day. I started using mint during college and I still use it to this day in my professional life.
2. You want to open up a credit card ASAP once you hit 18. Pay off your balance every month. If you're scared, use it to buy a coffee every month and pay it off at the end of the month. You want it to start your credit history, your mid 20 year old self will thank you when your 800+ credit score qualifies for the lowest interest rate for your car/mortgage loan. Highly recommend capital one or a chase freedom if you qualify for your first card.

He's talking about the $20 purchase every 6 months to keep the cardholder from canceling your card. If you never use the card, you're costing them money, so eventually they'll just cancel your card for you. If you want to keep the card open and active spend $20 every 6 months to keep your oldest credit card open as a form of long term creditworthiness.

https://www.mint.com/blog/credit/how-credit-card-inactivity-impacts-your-credit-scores-042012/

It's possible that she is listed as an authorized user of her father's credit card. Assuming that is the reason that card is there and as long as the card has a good history, leaving it on her credit report is almost certainly improving her credit given how old that card is.

15% of the FICO score is length of credit history.

Here's a little more information on how being an authorized user affects your score.

"Financial automation" means different things to different people, but here are some things I do:

1. Automatic payment for all bills, including credit cards. (Entered as recurring transactions in YNAB.)
2. Automatic investment for college and retirement savings.
3. Budget template to make my first-of-the-month budgeting easier.

edit: Also, automatic monthly charitable giving.

You can use manual entry and direct import together! It's not one or the other, and the complement each other really well. Imported transactions will not duplicate manual transactions - they 'match' instead.

Budget Template. It took me far too long to let go of my on-paper forecasting method, and trust the budget template to reassure me that I had enough income to cover my needs, if I just budgeted according to the template.

Reconcile every day. It sounds like it will take a lot of time but reconciling daily or every other day saves you time because it makes it so easy. It will seriously take less than a couple minutes a day if you do it this way. But letting those transactions piles up makes it a huge chore.

Also, create a budget template. It will make budgeting much faster.

Have a budget meeting at the beginning of the month with your wife. That way you can plan for things in the coming month all at once and it won’t feel like a constant grind.

I've been using You Need A Budget (YNAB) for years and love it. I don't use the automatic import function as I prefer to manually enter everything as I spend, but it is a feature.

There's a month long trial: https://www.youneedabudget.com/

Since you mention Steam, it sounds like you're using YNAB4. It's probably worth noting that YNAB4 is the old version of the software, and the current version (often referred to as "nYNAB", or "new YNAB", which released in Jan 2016) is significantly different, with a full web-based interface that is, IMO, much more pleasant to look at and work with. You can see screenshots of what nYNAB looks like at https://www.youneedabudget.com/.

Best of luck finding financial software that works for you!

The US budget as a pie chart might be useful to you.

The equivalent for the UK is probably also useful.

Also something to note, is that a lot of government in the US is done at levels other than at a federal level. Only around 55% of money is spent at that level, the rest is spent in roughly equal percentages at the local and state level.

budgeting software can take care of this for you:

https://www.mint.com/

http://www.youneedabudget.com/

I see from other comments that you took a look at your spending, and you see that it is too high. The next step is to reduce that spending.

You have to be consciously aware of where your money is going, when and why you are spending.

I recommend, for the remainder of the month of April, carry a small notepad and pen around with you in your pocket. Any time you make a purchase, write it down in the notepad. Include the final price (with tax!), and what the item or service is. This goes for any time money leaves your hands or your accounts, whether it is on a computer screen, at a bank, from a plastic card, or hard currency. A coin into a gumball machine counts, too!

At the end of April, go through this notebook. Put all of the purchases into a spreadsheet and add up the totals. Assign categories, decide which items are priorities, which are actual necessities (such as groceries), and which are unnecessary or "just because" (such as bar tabs, for example).

> Banks do not transmit your credentials over the inter webs

Yes they do. How do you think they get from your computer to the bank website when you log in? On the internet. Where they bounce through over a dozen routers, switches and computers on the path between you and your bank's web server. Luckily the data's encrypted with the exact same SSL/TLS technology Mint and every other secure website uses, so nobody along the path can understand what was sent except the intended recipient.

> No company does anything truly free. Why is mint free?

Referral commissions. They recommend bank accounts, credit cards with better rates, retirement accounts, car insurance quotes that beat what you're paying, etc. If you sign up for one of those accounts/services, they pay Intuit a commission for the referral.

https://www.mint.com/how-it-works/save/

You sound like a loon implying that Mint is free because it's a conspiracy by Intuit to get your bank information and steal it to make a profit. As if the $17 billion dollar company that's made the accounting software most businesses have used for the past 24 years is suddenly scheming to trick people into using a personal finance manager to scam them.

You need help. See a doctor. Get medication. This kind of paranoia is not healthy.

It absolutely doesn't matter.

https://www.youneedabudget.com/the-relationship-between-your-budget-your-accounts-its-complicated/

I think this feels weird to everyone at first, but it's one of the best features of YNAB, IMO.

Badically you’re riding the credit card float. Have a read of this article

https://www.youneedabudget.com/are-you-riding-the-credit-card-float/

You can get off the float fast or slow. Fast means acknowledge the debt, stop using the card and pay it off slowly. Yes, you’ll pay interest but that debt will hopefully spur you on to get it paid off quicker. Or is a 0% balance transfer card an option?

Try You Need a Budget (YNAB).

https://www.youneedabudget.com

It will let you get a real good view of your money in little chunks. So when that big pile of money appears on pay day you can split it up into all the jobs it needs to do over the month, quarter and year.

Rent is $300 a week? On monthly pay day put away $1,300 into the rent category. $60 a week on petrol? Put $260 into the fuel category. All of a sudden your big pile off cash on payday is split up into jobs and you don't feel so 'rich' on payday that you splurge on whatever it is you like to treat yourself with.

Or on the longer scale, your car insurance is $700 a year, so every month you put $58.33 aside. Then when it's time to pay it you don't have to have a poor month because you've saved up over the year for it. The fact it was due the same month as an electricity bill and your rego doesn't matter because you've planned for those as well.

It does cost about $80 a year but in my opinion well worth it.

wait, what is "credit card" 900-1000? is that just untracked spending or something?

you should keep a real budget: www.youneedabudget.com and /r/ynab

and track every transaction. in YNAB, cash and credit cards are more or less the same since all cc spending is backed by real dollars

i don't know what that category is but it sounds like a catch-all of inefficiency or something

someone else chimed in, but here's my opinion. tricking yourself into investing is a symptom of not having a budget. first, make a budget www.youneedabudget.com and /r/ynab. after that, you'll have a crystal clear picture of how much you can invest after your monthly obligations; no need to trick yourself and hope the stars align

secondly, the fee for lower amounts is really high. $1 / month under $5k. with $1k invested thats 1.2% / year fee, that's really high. betterment is a flat $0.25%, which is good for the value they offer.

that said, i think it's a good onramp to investing in general and just making people want to learn more about it is a good value, so i'm not knocking acorns for people just getting started.

it's easy to get started with betterment.com. open account, move money in, choose risk tolerance, and let it do it's thing.

https://www.mint.com/blog/planning/the-cost-of-raising-a-special-needs-child-0713/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/08/18/raising-child-cost-2013/14236535/

Summary: typical cost of raising a child: $245,340 typical cost of raising a child with austism/downs: $1.4mil to $2.3mil

I realize that money isn't everything, but knowingly having a child with downs syndrome is setting yourself up for a rough life financially.

If not being able to afford to provide for your child's need isn't on the list valid reasons to have an abortion, then what exactly is?

You don't want to add your loan as a line of credit. It doesn't work like a credit card. If you want to see the loan balance in YNAB, add it as a Tracking: Liability account. Also consider not adding it:

https://www.youneedabudget.com/why-you-think-you-want-to-track-your-car-loan-in-ynab-but-you-dont-really-w/

I think they suggest not doing this as it detracts from the point of YNAB in the sense it’s a budgeting tool rather than an asset tracking tool. Whatever works for you though :)

This is what I read to come to that conclusion: https://www.youneedabudget.com/why-you-think-you-want-to-track-your-car-loan-in-ynab-but-you-dont-really-w/ Although I think this was before they added the net worth reports to nYNAB so may not be applicable anymore!

> and I realized this morning that I should actually transfer the funds from my checking account to my savings account specifically designated to hold my true expenses

You actually don't need to do this (though of course you can if you want). YNAB does not care where your money 'lives'. The Relationship Between Your Budget And Your Accounts

> So I hopped on to my mobile banking and transferred the funds. Do I actually need to do anything in YNAB?

But, since you did, you will need to reflect that transfer in YNAB. Any action you take that moves money in the real world, will need to be reflected in YNAB. Simply go into the YNAB ledger for one of your accounts, and enter a transaction, using the To/From: dropdown Payee for the other account - the 'category' will be grayed out, as it is simply a transfer from one on-budget account to another, and enter the rest of the information.

Use YNAB to create a budget and record all of your spending. Here's the wiki page to get started.

Edit: Based on the amount in your 401k, it sounds like you might not be taking full advantage of your employer match. You should aim to always reach the match amount before you attempt any other savings goals.

Yeah but that's not how it works. If you want to start using YNAB today, you use your current account balances.

You should probably take the free online courses and watch some videos before you do too much more with YNAB.

I've tried Ontrees and Moneydashboard but they are both quite basic, and I decided I wasn't so keen giving them access to my bank accounts such as in the way they work.

I settled with https://www.youneedabudget.com/ which has the same kinds of views and breakdowns, but some extra features if you care about budgeting. I just use it as a visualisation tool though.

/r/personalfinance is really more for this stuff, but I have some very, very hard-won experience with parents with zero financial sense. My own mother is so much like yours that it's almost deju vu to read your post. Given that it's a choice of being a human practice dummy or losing her teeth altogether, consider helping your mother find a dental school that will give her free/low cost dental care.

>I have lent my father 5k+, which is more than I had ever had to my name.

You don't do this. That money is gone.

>nothing has seemed to work to make ends meet

Nothing ever will, until they decide they need to visit /r/personalfinance, YNAB or similar resources and get themselves together. If they can't figure out how to spend less than they make, they can't ever dig out of that hole.

If you want to help them, take /u/feelsgg's advice. Get written in as an owner of the condo if you're going to help with that bill. Consider finding them a lower-cost living solution. If they move in with you, they will never, ever move out unless you do everything for them, as if they're 18 year olds teenagers. They've already demonstrated that they're not capable of taking care of themselves, and that won't suddenly change because you make it easier for them.

Using Mint for this would likely be easier and more effective. Link up your bank accounts, see your average expenses, adjust your budget accordingly within the app. Been using it for years and can't recommend it enough.

Budgeting future months can make you susceptible to the stealing from the future issue.

I put my income into a "Future Months" category, and budget the month on the 1st using a budget template by simply clicking the unfunded button. In fact, waiting until (at least) the first of the new month is the only way to make a "monthly spending goal" work properly - if you use the unfunded button prior to the fill in the (for example) February budget while it's still January, it won't account for any unspent money from January (because you might still spend that in January).

You can still continue to use Classic. If you're in iOS click your user icon > Purchased > Not on this iPhone. Search for YNAB and YNAB Classic should appear. Classic just isn't in the App Store anymore.

If you're interested in how to make nYNAB work for you coming from YNAB4, check out the transition guide. If you think your import messed everything up, you can always reach out to YNAB support to see if they can investigate what may have happened.

It is hard to get your head round initially but no, it's not impossible ;)

If you want to 'forecast' ahead then set up a budget template

Can I recommend watching Budgeting while you're broke, even if you're not broke.

How to create a budget template

I can't help with linked accounts not syncing as I do everything manually but you can enter your pay as a scheduled transaction

That's what https://www.youneedabudget.com/release_notes/ is usually for. It isn't updated absolutely every time (I usually assume minor updates that don't get a release notes entry are primarily minor bugfixes), but it's a good guide.

They also recently launched https://www.youneedabudget.com/up-next/, which can give some ideas of some of what they are actively working on.

Huge congrats, this is just so so so awesome and we love to see successes like this. :)

Would you be interested in us sharing your story on the YNAB blog? If so, reach out to me via PM!

Also, if you decide to send the wedding present, here's some wedding cards: https://www.youneedabudget.com/best-wedding-gift-ever/

YNAB also has a great website and breakdown of their 4 "rules" for budgeting. Even if you don't use YNAB it's a great starting place for what to do when budgeting:

https://www.youneedabudget.com/method/

So agreed. If I won the lottery I'd have someone literally build a web version of YNAB with right-red-arrow. That is the only deal breaker for me with nYNAB. I can ignore most of the unneeded changes, but I simply can't accept the absurdity of disallowing me to deal with reimbursements in such a simple way. Funding phantom line items with money, simply to draw down and reimburse back up is ridiculous and hard to track.

Have you taken a look at Actual Budget? It's 99% there AND flawlessly imports YNAB4 data. I just miss a few minor features that still has me heading back to YNAB4 out of familiarity, but Actual is getting so darn close.....

Offering a different approach: have you tried Firefly III?

It is a self hosted financial planning tool that has just enough complexity to be helpful without requiring an accounting background to use. It will probably offer more value than a generic spreadsheet too by making it easier to view how your finances move around over time.

Link: https://firefly-iii.org/

Firefly 3 is pretty good.

One design decision that might not be everybody's cup of tea is that it strongly discourages automatic data filing and instead promotes daily manual logging of expenses to help keep you mindful of your spending.

I recommend You Need a Budget, it's where I learned this concept. The idea is that you stop seeing a big number in your bank account and instead see $600 of food money, $150 of alcohol money, and so on. It means that if you go over budget on one thing, you can just say "okay that means I have less alcohol money". You can cut back on luxuries while still saving up for living a paycheck ahead.

That's all basic budgeting, but where the software gets useful is that whenever you spend less than your monthly budget it carries over into next months allowance. Gradually, you start managing this month's budget and next month's budget using the money already in your bank account. Instead of being under budget and thinking "wa-hey that means an extra night out!" you're already focused on living within the fixed amount of savings you've allowed yourself, you simply add more of next month's paycheck into other projects. It makes saving up for multiple things at once extremely easy, and you end up having different pots of cash all increasing in value every month. It's great. Can't recommend it enough.

YNAB handles variable income better than any other budgeting tool I've tried using. The philosophy behind YNAB is designed around you NOT projecting your future income, instead you figure out how to spend the money you have and make last until you think you'll be paid again (Rule 1 and 2).

YNAB is also extremely forgiving when you break you budget. Your budget is just an educated case which will most likely not work out exactly as you plan. So Rule 3 is there to help you out when life doesn't go according to plan and you need to re-prioritize your money.

Eventually you'll work toward the buffer (Rule 4 of living on last month's income). As /u/TalkingRaccoon mentioned, this may look different for your situation. As you use YNAB more and more, you'll find your buffer sweet-spot to account for your variable income.

At least try out the 34-day free trial to see how the software works. And definitely take all the live online classes. These are free and you'll have a chance to win a free copy of YNAB just by attending and learning.

Mother flipping YNAB

It's a budgeting programme called "You Need A Budget" and it has seriously changed my life. I/we used to be so so bad at frivolous spending and could never save. We earned a pretty darned good combined income and were still living from paycheck to paycheck some times.

Early this year someone on reddit suggested I have a look and, honestly, I haven't looked back - but I have recommended it to others who have found it equally good. Purely because of YNAB, and despite being on a lower salary than last year, we were able to buy a house and currently have $6000 in the bank.

Have a look at the website, look at reviews, and/or check out the subreddit /r/ynab. You can get a free trial of the program which I recommend, but watch the videos to get the full idea of how to use it - it can take a while to "get it" properly but when you do it will completely change your relationship with your money

Signing up for something like Mint.com should help with this. You input all of your bills and bank accounts that you use. Then you get nice reminders and summaries about where your money is going and how it is being spent(dining out, clothes, etc.). You can also pay bills directly through mint.

Change is cash.

You can sort and roll them yourself using wrappers available at most stores. Banks will typically accept rolled coins for deposit or exchange without imposing a fee, and some stores will accept coin rolls for purchases.

You can check with your bank, or other banks in your area, to see if they have a coin-sorter machine and what their policy is. For example, they may allow customers to deposit unwrapped coins for free, but charge a small fee for non-customers. They may also only allow you to bring in unwrapped coins on a certain day. You'd just have to check with them and ask.

There are commercial coin-wrapping machines, most notably Coinstar, which seems to have a machine in the front of every grocery store. I've never used one but I believe they charge a fee if you want bills, or for no fee you can get a gift card for the store. Check https://www.coinstar.com/

Also, here's an article you may find useful: https://www.mint.com/blog/how-to/whats-the-best-way-to-cash-in-loose-change-0314/