
Overspending not transferring to next month
So today is June 1st, which means the budget has adjusted to the next month. I also got paid today, and since i ran out of funds last week, i happen to over spend just a smidge in a few categories, with plans to cover it with the paycheck i got today. However, while the leftover funds from May transferred to June in the given category, it doesn't transfer the negative amount. Instead i am having to budget money i got today in May's budget, which then shows may as over budgeted? If i just put in in June's budget, it doesn't calculate the negative from last month and it is just overall not working. There has to be a better work around for this. Why cant the negative amount just transfer along with all the positives?
Maybe i am missing something, please help.
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My understanding is when overspending happens in one month on a credit card, it does not roll over, or rather, it rolls into the credit card balance. To cover that overspending, if it was on a credit card, budget to the card, not the overspent categories..
Personally, I will WAM to prevent overspending in the month it occurs, which eliminates some of these problems.
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It is a design feature of YNAB to zero out negative categories at month rollover. The money comes out of TBB in the new month. This forces you to recognize that the money is gone, which can make the new month over budget if you had budgeted it before the month started. What you need to do is find which categories you are willing to reduce *AND SPEND LESS FROM* in sufficient amounts to eliminate the over budget condition.
I really dislike doing this in the new month, so I arrange to cover any overspends and make the decision where I will spend less during the month the overspend happens. But the feature of automatically zeroing out the overspend and taking it from TBB in the new month exists in case the user neglects to do as I do; then at month rollover, the user needs to decide how to deal with the fact that more money was spent from some categories than was planned.
This is Rule 3 in action. YNAB calls it "Roll with the Punches," which doesn't resonate with me because I have never been a boxing fan. I'd prefer to call Rule 3, "The Money's Gotta Come from Somewhere." Overspends don't exist in isolation. They borrow from the nebulous "rest of the budget," and the best practice is to cover them by reducing the rest of the budget appropriately. This is where the budgeter discovers his true priorities; it was worth it to me to spend $20 more than planned eating out. Do I want to reduce Groceries by $20? Or have $20 less toward my next vacation? Or does any option of taking $20 from somewhere else hurt so much that next time, I just don't overspend Dining in the first place?
Those little decisions are how my financial position is optimized to my true priorities, which may not have been the same as I thought they were when I budgeted last month.
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Hi Gray Drum (1d39fb44f280) !
This is mentioned in the comments above, but we removed the ability to carry over negative amounts in the new YNAB. This was possible in YNAB 4, but it allowed your budget to be dishonest. If you have -$50 in a category, that means there isn't $50 in one of your other categories - even if just briefly at the turn of the month.
Negative available balances are subtracted from your To Be Budgeted, so those negatives are accounted for in the new month - you don't have to budget more towards those categories to make up for the negatives. Instead, your To Be Budgeted will be lower by the negative amounts, as long as it was cash overspending (credit overspending won't be subtracted from your To Be Budgeted).
We also have an article about when the month rolls over, so check it out and let me know if you have any other questions! :)
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TryingToGetAhead said:
... I will WAM to prevent...Water Anchor Mustache?
Google was less helpful than I thought in trying to figure out the acronym :)
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Silver Hammerhead said:
How do you manage that? (I'm thinking... either fudge the date of the refund, or decrease the November budget by the refund amount so it balances yearly...?)From what you wrote, I think that you are trying to make the amount budgeted every single month be the exact same number. That will certainly force the annual amount (and monthly amounts) to be exactly what you want them to be, but it will be frustrating if you don't have a pad in the category to deal with spending that is sporadic and irregular. You really will get the same annual total and annualized monthly average by budgeting $20 more this month because you need it and $20 less next month because you don't. After 12 months, the average budgeted and average spent will be what you intended to budget monthly, and without going through fudging or work-arounds.
I find the average monthly spent a really valuable metric. It tells me when my costs are trending up. If that happens in an essential category, say prescriptions, then I know I need to revise my monthly budgeted up. If it starts trending up in a discretionary category, say entertainment, I need to review my spending and lifestyle expectations for either a budget change or a behaviour change. If I artificially create workarounds so that the amount budgeted and spent are fudged to fit an arbitrary monthly number (while I owe a future category balance), then the reported average monthly spent becomes a useless number that gives me no guidance at all.
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I'm no expert and am still learning the basics of YNAB, but it seems to me that the simplest thing to do is to reduce the category budget next month by the amount overspent the month before. I'll give you an example. My wife and I get £150 each month to spend on ourselves. She spends £200 in November, so she has a -£50 'red' showing in the 'available' column. I reduce her December allowance by £50, which means she only gets £100 for December. If she continues to overspend, then her 'red' figure will continue to rise as the negative continues to be deducted from future months unless she puts some money in there from her personal account to cover it (or just doesn't spend in this category until it's back in credit). This also means that the £50 that she didn't receive in her budget for December goes elsewhere (if I have it available from my inflow) rather than supporting her overspending. BTW, she's not a serial overspender, but I'm just using her by way of example. That said, this is an area where we are both less careful than we ought to be at times, but after 34 years of marriage, we're both happy with how this works. Effectively, we're both borrowing on future budgets - not ideal but overall YNAB has taken us from a £2k overdraft to a £6k positive, so it works on balance bar these small inconsistencies in our financial rigour. I am sure there are holes in this strategy and I'd be happy and grateful to have them pointed out. I guess we all make YNAB our own in different ways. That's one of the good things about the system.
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Hi, I've just landed on YNAB.
This happens in my case for recurring expenses that are not exactly the same each month. For instance for electricity budget I divide the estimated total between each month. For instance, 50€ each month. But it happens that one month it is 55 and next 40. So yearly budget is fulfilled but some months are red. May I correct this automatically?
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gmartin said:
shouldn't I get money from next month in same category?I'm not sure what that means. Yes, if you move money into a category and you don't spend it this month, you will have it there next month.
You can't borrow against money you're going to receive next month but haven't received yet, if that's what you mean. You don't get to budget money you don't have yet. You can move money from another category this month to cover the electricity overspending and then add extra money back to that category next month if you so desire. But if you don't cover your overspending this month you can't trust your category balances, and you need to be able to do that to guide your spending decisions.
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I have a problem that I initially thought the OP was desribing, but apparently mine is different. I just started with nYNAB; I had used YNAB3&4 for years, then fell out of budgeting for the last 6-8 months. I am in my first month and have a category that is overspent. I plan to shift money in this months budget to cover, but havent done so yet. The overpsend us NOT reflected in the next month, either in the category, or in overspent from January, or in TBB. The current month, January, is budgeted to zero, so I thought, maybe since next month (Feb) TBB is currently zero, that it wouldnt reflect last month's overspend properly becuase it was coded not to allo a negative TBB. To testthe theory, I unbudgetted money in January, so that there was both a positive caryover to Feb TBB and a January overspend that should be deducted from the Feb TBB. It didnt work. So, in summary, my January actegory overspend is not reflected in anyway in the Feb budget. If I budget Jan to 0 or if I purposely leave money to budget in Feb, the January overspend stays in January. Eitehr this is undamentally roken in the current release, in which I have ound a bug (please fix.) or I am missing something. Like I said in the beginning, my intention is to "roll with the punches" and cover the January overspend from another January category, but nonetheless, I think the behavior is unexpected. Assuming no silver bullet is idenified by the users here, is there a way to open a ticket with YNAB?
~Jed
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what's the best way to handle tracking business expenses or other things (managing a soccer team) where you spend from your own credit card and get reimbursed at a later date. I'd like for the category I've spent to not to get zeroed out, so I can track the reduction of the negative as I receive the reimbursements.