Age of money 2018
And because we want our money to age in 2018 as well:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DfIxW9iq9MzDWoL2Ds4uLEufaRu7VqllJxdJORqysmk/edit?usp=sharing
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I have ended the month with an AOM of 43 days.
The last week of September money has been flowing out in large amounts so the number is down on what I thought it might be.
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Forgot to check at the end of August.
And here is my end of September.
My big expensive months are behind me for another year, thank goodness. This year I decided to buy a yearly premium gym membership, so it got even more spendy. Now it's just the usual monthly stuff, Christmas, and some charity/donations to the end of the year, so my AoM should continue to inch its way up toward the 200 mark.
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September
Vacation time for me, so an unusual month with unusual expenses. -1 AoM, +2 DoB.
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Coral Wizard said:
My goals is to get to 210 before the end of the year.As of today, my AoM is 211 days (DoB is 288). So, I met my goal earlier than expected!
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Coral Wizard Congratulations!!
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Wow, I did not know about this challenge thread. Are we going to have one for next year? If yes, I will join.
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Tomato Wildcat There are still a couple of months left, so you still have time to join. Just start now and make your best guess at your December AoM. I surpassed my yearly AoM goal after one month, and it hasn't dropped under since, so you can't really guess much worse than I. 😉
I'm sure there will be a new challenge for 2019.
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Just a quick (not end of the month) update to reveal that I have passed my original AOM goal!
I joined this challenge at the end of August and have only been using YNAB since the tail end of May. My initial goal was 45 days and today it is 53. I'm going to keep going and try to get to 65 by the end of the year.
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End of the month check-in to report AOM is 59 days!
My stretch goal is to now get to 65-70 days (not sure whether to extend more because Christmas is such a spendy time period)
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I got all the way up to 205 in October, but then I bought a pack of gum for $1.35 and watch my AOM plummet by 20 days after I entered that outflow, clearly the transaction that used the last of one month-end paycheque and when I began using the next month's income. I still expect to hit/exceed 200 by the end of 2018.
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How interesting!
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AoM 328 for October.
328 days prior to October 31st was December 7th, 2017 - not long after November payday. I won't make predictions, but 365 would be a funny number and might be possible to reach?
If I could see some visualization in YNAB of the various cash buckets they use for AoM calculation that would be interesting if nothing else. 🙂
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AOM is 44 days!
This is due to the unplanned buying of a used car and on top of the planned Christmas spending I’ve been doing this month.
So the stretch goal is off the table and I’ll be aiming for my original target of 45 days.
:)
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November AoM is at 340 days which is a nice +14 since last month. Days of Buffering is now at 481 days.
This means AoM just exceeded my previous high score of 333 days from back in 2015, just before the apartment down payment. 🏆😀
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I coasted up over 200 (my original 2018 goal) in November and finished with an AOM of 209. 👏 🙂
That suggests to me that the money I'm now spending is money earned in May? hmmm. My low-spend months were January to May, so how this AOM work, the fast moving number up, is beginning to make sense.
My really big expense months this year were June, August, and October -- big spending for me -- while July, September, and November were not as big spending wise, but with a low or negative NET savings rate, so that data suggests to me that my AOM will struggle to stay above 200 as my expenses are now using the funds earned in my biggest outflow months.
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HappyDance How big your outflows from last May were doesn't matter now. Your AoM will go up if your outflows now are less than your inflows from 209 days ago. It will go down if your outflows now are greater than they were 209 days ago. It's lumpy, going up over time as spending from one bucket gets further from the inflow, then going down when you start averaging in outflows from a later bucket.
You can talk about it going up in high spend months and going down in low spend months; but that makes sense only if the historical inflows were fairly steady and close to the level of your current average outflows. AoM would start going down if you got a 50% raise, increased your budget by 50% per month, and started actually spending 20% more per month. This, in spite of just banking 60% of that large raise. Then after you worked through the buckets of the pre-raise inflows, it would start going up again.
AoM iss a fascinating metric to watch. It's rather impressive how it's affected by things that are essentially irrelevant to managing the budget well.
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HappyDance: Congrats on reaching your goal a month early!
Age of Money isn't really a complicated concept(?), but it's kinda hard to explain in a few words or paragraphs. As far as I know, how much money you spent in May doesn't affect the size of the 'May' grain silo (or bucket, if you prefer) - only income does affect the silo size. But spending little back then does help your current AoM. If you on average spend less than you earn, then AoM should rise over time. If you spend more than you earn, then AoM should fall over time. If a one-time expense equals three months income, then your AoM would probably fall about 90 days.
My AoM did drop ~230 days when I spent (as far as YNAB is concerned) about 2/3 of my net yearly income in a single transaction. Which makes sense - it would eat through a lot of income silos/buckets at once.
The YNAB documentation is quite extensive and does try to explain the concept. Of course, I may also have misunderstood just how this works. 😉
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Will there be an Age of money challenge 2019?
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Cadet Blue Barnacle
I was going to ask this too. Sadly I did not make it to my goal in 2018 :\
Here is to a new year!
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Cadet Blue Barnacle
Not yet sure. Standby for an update. I pinged waterkip in the old forum and in this forum (by way of this post) to ask the question about an updated spreadsheet for 2019, or if there was someone else posting a challenge.
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Final check in for 2018:
I finished 2018 with an AoM of 214 (up 64 from my 150 start). Yesterday, I moved a tracking account back on-budget and my AoM jumped an additional 28 days to 242. I fully expect it to exceed 300 before the end of 2019.
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December ended with AoM of 350, which is spot on the stretch goal I set in November(?). 119 days above the Dec'17 number, and 110 days above my initial goal of 240. Days of buffering currently at 502.
I'll try setting a better goal for 2019. 🙂
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Moohouse How do you do it? It seems I can never get ahead always 2 steps back. I get ahead then something goes horribly wrong. I have had many issues with my house this year (car issues as well). Just keep feeling defeated :\
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VoltaicShock
Don't give in to gloomy thoughts. You are right on track. If you are paying down debt aggressively, cashflowing some big irregular expenses (car and home, etc) or transferring gobs of greenbacks to retirement funds, your AoM will limp along. If any of that describes your situation, you might find it more helpful to monitor your networth report for the progressive improvement. I know I found that really encouraging in my debt smackdown years (2015-2016) where I can click back and see that my AoM rarely exceeded 30 days. Once you get past the debt stuff and catching up on true expenses and irregular expenses that have been waiting a long time, your number may surprise you in a remarkable way.
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VoltaicShock
I have a rather small mortgage as my only debt, and I currently see no reason to pay it down any faster. This leaves me with quite a lot of spending money - or savings. In my case, I don't feel I'm being frugal at all, but I never was a big spender in the first place.
About 6% of my income is spent on interest payments and another 6% on supplemental retirement. I have of course spent quite some time drilling down my recurring expenses. Adding 119 days should equal saving (and not subsequently spending) just about 1/3 of my income. For the year and a half before buying my apartment I saved about half my income for the upcoming down payment.
If you spend much money on debt payments and haven't tried using a tracking spreadsheet then I highly recommend trying one. It's hard to do efficiently without one. Something like the free spreadsheet at https://www.vertex42.com/Calculators/debt-reduction-calculator.html (LibreOffice only seems to work with the Excel spreadsheet. There's also a free Google Sheets template)
If you don't have much debt then either expenses must sink lower or income must rise higher to gain momentum for changing things for the better.
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HappyDance Thanks! Yeah it's tough just trying to get stuff cleaned up over the past few years due to me being stupid with my money.
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VoltaicShock
Agree 100% on the tough part of your comment. Having been through the process, I can also say that it can be done, and it is soooo worth it. Stay the course.
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