Ruff16965 (05bd62cee897) 

Are you aggressively paying down debt or transferring funds to investments?  Both of those activities will keep your AoM low, but at the same time your financial situation and net worth could well be increasing and improving by leaps and bounds.

HappyDance I cleaned up about $8K in old debt last year. Also accumulating the items I need to furnish my own place after a divorce, a very toxic rebound relationship and moving halfway across the country to get away from it.

All bills are paid, every month, my set-asides are funded. I have been able to handle emergencies, blowing 2 truck tires and needing a tow and new tires is a good example, without adding credit card debt.

HappyDance I did not know that paying down debt aggressively would negatively affect the AoM. Makes sense. Thanks

Ruff16965 (05bd62cee897) I can't seem to get past the 30 mark either. However, March is fully budgeted (funded) and so is April. That happened mostly due to the tax refund I just received, so maybe as time rolls on AoM will increase, not sure.

Ben Khaki Storm If April is already fully funded I predict you will see a big jump in your AOM as long as you don't go wild.

Ruff16965 (05bd62cee897) It is.  No going wild here.  This is also after using YNAB for about 4 months and adding True Expense categories I wasnt really tracking before.  

Ben Khaki Storm I have been using YNAB for almost 2 years now, my biggest problem is that I am on a fixed income and there is no way to increase it. This is the longest that I have ever stuck to a budget, probably because it all makes perfect sense and I see where my money goes. I have heard YNAB described as "the roadmap to get you where you want to go."

Ruff16965 (05bd62cee897) That's great to hear! There's definitely some long term strategy built into the 4 rules, no doubt!

kittenpants  Thats pretty impressive!

Bamadiva - regarding Days of Buffering - the comment quoted below is from a developer of the YNAB Toolkit (which is an extension for your computer's browser, created independently of official YNAB by the community)

Ben

Toolkit for YNAB Designer & Developer

furiousfalcon

5 mths ago 

Jannelle Just FYI: Days of Buffering tells the users how many days their current money would last based on their average daily spending.

Bamadiva They’re slightly different formulas, and as Formal Dribble says the Days of Buffering metric is from the YNAB Toolkit extension for Chrome. 

My understanding is that Age of Money looks at how long ago you deposited the money that you’ll spend next.

Days of Buffering is how long the money in your account could last if you spend as usual. The Toolkit allows you to change how many months it looks back to decide what your “usual” spending pattern is.

Oh, and neither of these is the same as “being buffered”. 😆

kittenpants  - this is clear as mud😂

Rachael Loucks 

When I was in debt smackdown mode, I didn't let money sit in my account for long.  It was out the door asap and paying off debt, and my AoM pretty much stayed at around 30 because I use all of this month's income to budget next month. Building up my true expenses categories and emergency funds after paying off debt has increased that number pretty steadily.

My 247 just dropped to 219 on Saturday when I entered my usual handful of weekend shopping transactions, and that tells me I used up the last of one month-end paycheque and began using the next month-end paycheque which was deposited 28 days later.

HappyDance  :-) This is good to know and where we are kind of at (smacking down debt).

Rachael Loucks 

In debt smack down mode I enjoyed watching my progress in the net worth report.

HappyDance I love this!  What I'm not sure how to categorize are things like collections.   We're working on "live debt" first and then collections; unless I've made a payment arrangement with collection agency--then I'm treating the collection as live debt.  I do see our net worth rising but it is so slow!

Moohouse That seems like the logical way that it *should* work, but in my experience, it sits at the same level for quite awhile, then jumps up or down as is appropriate. For example, mine has been at 24 days for about a week now. I don't quite get it, but I'm also not too bothered as we're just updating the spreadsheet monthly.

Pink Mixer Yeah, it's also averaged over the last 10 transactions, so if you have few transactions weekly it will move quite slowly. If you mostly pay expenses with untracked cash or a credit card, then AoM won't move as fluidly as it averages over a longer period.

lindsay_g Yes and no. AoM looks at the 'age' of money you spend, while the (on budget) emergency fund is a budget allocation of money to use in an emergency. Having an emergency fund (or other on budget savings) will, however, make it easier to increase AoM since these funds (hopefully) won't be spent in the immediate future.

Which label you put on your budget categories doesn't matter to AoM - it only cares about income and outflows, and you should be easier able to cover an emergency expense with a cost of say a month's income with AoM 45 opposed to with AoM 15. And it should be easier to build and maintain an emergency fund, or cover an emergency expense.

And you could, of course, have AoM 15 with a sizable off-budget emergency fund, making you well prepared for pretty much anything. Since you, as I understand it, hold two different budgets, keeping duplicate emergency funds might not be your top priority?

Moohouse But let’s say you have AOM 200 , and some posters on here have that and more, then that’s a 7 months buffer, in effect. So isn’t it the same as the 6-month emergency fund many advocate? Because you are fully funded six months into the future.

As for me, yes (you’re good!) I do have two budgets and recently decided to only save one emergency fund. :)

lindsay_g There are edge cases where you could have AoM 200 because you're saving up something big like a college education or a pension in an on-budget account (normally this would be off-budget) or a down payment of some sort, but in general, yes. Money is money, no matter what the budgeted purpose may be, so reallocating it into a 6-month emergency fund should be achievable if so desired. My emergency fund is currently inflated to 10x monthly expenses, way above my last EF target of 3x monthly expenses. This, in turn, pushes my AoM to where it stands now at 355.

Karen Harris Best of luck! Paying down debt is a great way to improve cash flow, net worth, sleep, happiness, credit and what not but it isn't really the fast track to (steady and) high AoM.

AoM will grow naturally once your expenses are (well) below your income and this will normally not happen while you have a lot of high-interest debt. YNAB is a great tool for getting there in any event and helps out in both (all?) situations. 🙂

Moohouse Oh, you are absolutely right. The fact that we want to pay down a lot of debt will certainly have an affect on the AoM.  The way our budget is currently set up (but always a work in progress, ha) allows for us to contribute a little bit to our buffer each month, and I'm expecting that will help us reach the 30 AoM. (We are budgeting a little extra to all of our utilities right now until we are a full month ahead, and then we will branch out category by category).    As for the 45 AoM, I may be dreaming a bit too big! But I am hoping for some extra income from side jobs and selling some things that will hopefully make a difference in our debt and AoM.  We are also looking at cutting back on some discretionary spending (dining out is a big one!) - so if we can do that, it will help us progress as well. 

We have been paying down debt at a tortoise pace, and I don't think we are ready for 'gazelle intense' so I am probably looking at a nice 'rabbit/hare' pace for now that will hopefully be a happy medium!   If we don't reach our AoM goals, it will be OK, because reducing our debt is my most important goal.  I stayed out of the Savings Challenge because outside of our tiny attempt to grow our buffer a few dollars at a time, that just ain't happening until the debt is gone!  LOL