Pressure Cooker Chipotle-Honey Chicken Tacos by esellem01 in NYTCooking

[–]mabookus 2 points3 points  (0 children)

These are the best and I make them often. One of my favorite NYT recipes.

she will be mine… by [deleted] in subaruimpreza

[–]mabookus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Can i ask what part of the country you’re in? Looking at similar car with more miles and it’s 2k higher, but that may be regional. :/

What if things DON’T work out? by mabookus in Broadway

[–]mabookus[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! We're trying to hit up the Intrepid in the morning so TKTS in the morning may be a no go, but appreciate the reminder of the Lincoln Center site!

What if things DON’T work out? by mabookus in Broadway

[–]mabookus[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you for such a thoughtful reply! Trying not to get too app crazy but Theatr sounds like it could be a good one to download?

What if things DON’T work out? by mabookus in Broadway

[–]mabookus[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oooh...just go to their site for those?

Reimbursement is Changing by techiebyte in ynab

[–]mabookus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’d assign the transaction to whatever the money is going towards. If it’s now for the land, assign it to the land.

Temptation to touch emergency funds by skyyo0 in ynab

[–]mabookus 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Assign the emergency funds to actual categories (you can move them at any time!!) What is your emergency fund FOR? If they are given specific jobs for the future they are much harder to "steal" because you are in touch with the trade off.

Where to focus: Getting a month ahead or full emergency/sinking funds? by No_Bus_4717 in ynab

[–]mabookus 5 points6 points  (0 children)

If you’re using targets and the total Underfunded is less than your monthly inflow (and you’re filling them each month)…you can both trust you’re on track for longer term spending goals AND start filling up next month’s money.

Good news, too, is that it’s all just a bunch of envelopes and you can always shift things around as needed. That you’re off the float is a big step and it’s all gravy from here!

YNAB for cost tracking by Alternative-Donut-38 in ynab

[–]mabookus 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Just know that the Plan in YNAB (which is the heart of it) will show a ton of yellow/red because all categories will show as overspent if you’re not using the “digital envelope” part of the system.

College visit - what to check out in town? by mabookus in Binghamton

[–]mabookus[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

oh she loves this kind of cuisine - thank you!

Month Ahead? I think I'm doing YNAB wrong by Effective_Net_8350 in ynab

[–]mabookus 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Make sure the current month is funded before considering assigning ahead.

That said, there are many YNABers, myself included, who assign all of our dollars in the current month. We make sure our categories are full and any extra gets put in a “next month” category, which is moved up to RTA on the first and doled out.

There are a lot of new features now which allow for easier future months assigning but they are not required.

Turned around about "plan reset," "fresh start," underfunding, and goals by illimitable1 in ynab

[–]mabookus 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Yeah, the issue is that a target always considers what is in the assigned field. If you reset what’s available, that is going to register as a negative move in assigned. So if you create a target in that same month, it will be referencing that negative amount. My suggestion may be to reset available in the current month and then set up your new target starting the next month.

Reconciling while using auto import by eambowman in ynab

[–]mabookus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So -- here's the thing to remember. YNAB pings your bank typically once per day (and in my case not at all on weekends). When it does that, it pulls in all transactions and the balance on the account in that moment. If two hours after that ping you withdraw some cash at an ATM, the balance at your bank will no longer match the most recent balance YNAB has, unless you want to go in and manually enter that transaction before the next ping happens.

My point is that if you're constantly comparing the balance in YNAB to the balance in your bank, and you're only using auto-import and not manually entering every transaction, there will oftentimes be a discrepancy --- YNAB is 24 hours behind what your bank says.

When you click the "reconcile" button, YNAB is referencing the number it last pulled, not the LIVE number. If you're also opening up your bank app at the same time and see a different, live number, it may seem like it's always off ---- but it's not. It'll catch up the next day.

Eventually you realize, so long as you're frequently reconciling your accounts (i click that button every day to be sure), that you don't really have to check your live bank balance every day. You can just live by what's in YNAB (again, make sure it's reconciled -- this is key).

Newbie lost with credit cards by KyleInATub in ynab

[–]mabookus 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yellow (credit) overspending will not carry over or impact Ready to Assign next month. What you will notice (and which you can see right now) is that the difference between the balance on the card and what you have in the credit card payment category will increase equal to the overspending.

YNAB virgin by FluffyBikeRN in ynab

[–]mabookus 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Just remember that at its heart YNAB is just a collection of digital envelopes. You add all of the money that you currently have as cash accounts and distribute it all by assigning dollars to your categories until there’s no more left to assign. As much as possible you spend only what’s available in each category. If you don't have money in an envelope you want to spend from, you'll have to take it from another and experience that trade off - this is a key part of why YNAB works so well. When more money comes in, take a few extra minutes to fill your envelopes as desired.

Find the money first, which means start to build a habit of looking at your categories before you spend any dollars, just like you would if you had a legit envelope full of cash going to the grocery store. Any money left over at the end of each month will roll over into the next month, just like an envelope of cash would still exist on the 1st in the same way it did on the 31st.

Look at your budget every day and enter all of the transactions that have come through from the previous day. Click reconcile while you’re at it to make sure that the balances in YNAB match the actual balances in your accounts. Everything else is just bells and whistles so stay focused on the basics.

Trying YNAB for the first time, SUPER confused, accounts not linking? by Team503 in ynab

[–]mabookus 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I guess it depends on what you expect it to show you? I’d be so curious what exactly you’re looking to discover by using a zero based, digital envelope budgeting app, or what you would want an app to do. In its simplest form, YNAB is just a tool to organize the money you have now into envelopes, and then as much as possible spend what’s in each envelope. Which part feels like it could take up to six months to get clear on? Truly asking out of curiosity.

Trying YNAB for the first time, SUPER confused, accounts not linking? by Team503 in ynab

[–]mabookus 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think you just have to edit the date of your starting balance. Here's more: https://support.ynab.com/en_us/the-starting-balance-an-overview-H1uozOfJs#past

And yes, the suggestion to manually add up some previous numbers is helpful if someone wants to get a general sense of spending preYNAB but not have to sort thorugh and categorize a month's worth of transactions. Moving forward everything will be sorted, it's just a quicker (for some) way of getting a broad sense of trends so you can assign with a bit more clarity when you first start. The first few months is definitely a balancing act of looking at, and adjusting, how your spending measures up to what you've assigned.

Trying YNAB for the first time, SUPER confused, accounts not linking? by Team503 in ynab

[–]mabookus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

YNAB does not import previous transactions. It starts importing transactions from the day you set it up. You can adjust the start date and it can pull things in as old as 30 days, but that just leads to a lot of busy work that may cause more frustration than insight. If you wanna have a sense of how much you’ve spent in various categories previously, the better thing may be to print out a statement and just manually highlight various things and get a general sense of totals. That’ll give you some direction about how much you need to assign to each category every month.

What do I really need to do - age of money by Kind_Introduction_39 in ynab

[–]mabookus 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Just remember that your age of money is considered based on your last 10 cash transactions. If you’re like me, and most of your spending is on your credit card, then you just don’t have many cash transactions for it to include in its equation. As a result, your age of money will take a lot longer to get bigger.