Faness  I came here to ask the same question for the same reason. I Don't want to spend over $420 a year on clothes, but I don't buy clothes every month. So I saved $35 for January and February, then took advantage of a sale in March and spent $200. So in order to figure out my monthly budget for the rest of the year, I have to do some really annoying math. ((annual budget - spent so far) / remaining number of months.) It's particularly hard because I have to go into the reports section and hide everything but my clothing budget in order to see the accurate number fo how much I've spent so far. You have a method of planning for predictable annual or bi-annual expenses, but nothing for unpredictable annual expenses. To add to the frustration, YNAB is pretending that this is not a valuable method of controlling your spending when it's actually a great way to do it. It would be nice if there were a type of goal that would adjust my monthly budget in clothes to $24.44 now that I've spent a lot of my planned yearly budget three months in. 

Hi Tomato Sidewinder !

I'll pass this along to our development team as a feature request for further consideration! :)

For now, to save a step, after you know how much you want to spend the rest of the year, you can set a Category Balance by Date goal to help with the math. YNAB will calculate how much to budget each month between now and the date you select (such as December 2018) to stay on track for that goal. :)

Faness  Oh man! That's actually a great workaround for now. Thanks for your help!

Tomato Sidewinder Happy that helps! :)

Faness  Sorry, I'm back, that actually doesn't work because the math will show me how much I need to save to have net $500, not $500 total budgeted for the year with my debits taken into account. 

Tomato Sidewinder No need to apologize! For that goal to work, you'd still have to do the first portion of the math you laid out. So, if you wanted to spend $500 total for the year, but spent $200 on a sale, you'd have to enter $300 as the goal amount by December to fix those amounts. Also, you'd want to create the goal the following month so that the $200 in spending isn't included.

Faness Just wanted to say +1 on Tomato Sidewinder's request. :)

Hi Dave Mackey ! We've add new goal types since Faness' last message. Give the By Date goal a try, that allows you to set aside money until you have budgeted a certain amount by a set date—and spend from it too.

If that isn't quite what you're looking for you can let our product team know by submitting a Feature Request. Thanks so much!

Green Drum  I agree! Please add another vote for this option. It is nice to set annual goals (including savings) to see what the annual plan will look like.  It is a motivator for me. 😊 Even better if you can see the expenses already spent as the year progresses. 

Lavender Transistor You can actually do this now! Use the Spending By Date goal type, and set the date  to be a year from now. It will break up the target amount into 12 monthly chunks for you to save iteratively, but it will also allow you to spend from that category as you go. You can see the progress by looking at the goal details, where "Funded" is the combination of what you've spent and saved so far.

If you happen to spend more than the amount you've already saved (but less than your annual budget) in a single month, then you can simply cover your overspending with another category like usual, and the goal will automatically adjust how much you need to save each month for the rest of the year to ensure you don't go over.

For example, say you want to spend $1200 this year on vacation. If you set your Vacation category goal to a target of $1200 by December 2020, YNAB will budget $100 per month in that category. If you decide to take a $600 trip in March, when you've only saved $300 so far, you can cover the $300 of overspending with another category (rainy day fund?). You'll then notice if you look at the goal details that the amount funded will be $600, and the target will still be $1200. As a result, YNAB knows that you should only save $600 more for the rest of the year, and will divide that up per month. Thus, in April it will automatically budget $66.67 ($600/9) instead of $100.

It's not a perfect system because it doesn't truly prevent you from overspending your annual budget if you're not careful, but it's a major improvement in terms of being able to iteratively save and spend from the same category.

Hi Powder Blue Yeti !

We haven't released any new goal types yet, but there are a number of tools you can use to help stay on top of spending in a certain category. You can use the different goals mentioned above if you're trying to save or put aside a certain amount and you can use the Spending Report to check on how much you've spent so far. :)

Alexander Thompson Why? There are much better uses for money than sitting around for a year unnecessarily.

Alexander Thompson What kind of clarity does it give you to categorize all outgoing transactions as "spending"? Hopefully I'm mistaken that that's what you're doing.

bevocat I think it's dual categories for each single category.... or at least I hope it is.

nolesrule So it's either a ton of unnecessary busywork creating and babysitting a buffer category for each category OR no category spending guidance of any kind (and even then it only shows you how much you have to make last until the next time your annual budget ticks over-- not a good pacing strategy). And also you have to sit on everything until you have a year's worth of money to budget.

Either way, it's not a very appealing situation.

bevocat Yeah. I'm not a fan of having more cash in the budget than is actually necessary. That money could be put to better uses.

nolesrule I’m on an extremely variable income and I need to be six months ahead, so saving for future months is vital in situations like that - or do you mean that you’d categorise the money differently? 

Powder Blue Yeti The best way to handle variable income is to have an income smoothing holding category that allows you to budget the same amount to your categories each month whether it's a high income month or a low income month. In low income months, you pull from the category and in high income months, you add to the category.

nolesrule said:
bevocat I think it's dual categories for each single category.... or at least I hope it is.

 I don't think it applies to every category (or at least I wouldn't) - just the ones like clothing that tend to attract this sort of irregular spending pattern. Fund your 2019 clothing category TODAY with whatever your annual spending cap is, and then create a separate category for next year with a target date savings goal. It's actually a pretty clever way of working around YNAB's goal limitations, if you have the resources to fully fund the category for the first year, which it sounds like Alexander Thompson does.

Vibrant The aim should be to fund every category the same monthly. Using the same clothing example, in 5 years of using YNAB, we've never hit our cap, and we've never spent it down to zero. You don't need to start the year with a full year's worth of money, because you'll be replenishing it as you go. For variable categories, you budget monthly the annual average spend and let it build up in months where you spend less. Your target cap doesn't need to be a full year, but only the sum of amounts spent above the average at the end of any given month (or for a start of month target, also add one month's average).

I do this for electricity, gas, and natural gas, but it could also apply to other categories with irregular spending. It'll prevent you from holding too much money in a category needleslly that could be better used elsewhere.

Vibrant That makes sense - thanks!

nolesrule Yep, that’s what I’m trying to do by saving six months’ worth of expenses. It’s just a pretty major smoothing category! ;)

Powder Blue Yeti If you want a year's worth of expenses, just figure out the sum of the money you budget to each category, multiply by 12. Save extra money each month to an Emergency Fund with a goal equal to that number. Done.

Alexander Thompson No, that makes fine sense! I just wanted to make sure you weren't creating an entire shadow budget within a budget or collapsing all your categories down to just saving and spending!

Alexander Thompson Ah, I get it - good idea! Thank you. 

If the plan is to spend (for example) $1200/year, just budget $100/month. If you need to seed it because you're just getting started and need more up front, so be it. It just means you hadn't been adding $100/month in previous months... whether because a new category, deciding you want to change the monthly amount or because you just started using YNAB.

This is how you turn lumpy spending or infrequent recurring spending into monthly budgeting. It's what Rule 2 is all about. There's no need to jump through hoops with excessive funding or multiple categories. It can all be done in a single category with regular funding.

Another option would be to budget for the large expenses separately, so you'll know you have the money when it comes time to spend it. Having a single category filled for your entire annual spending doesn't help you if you spend to much on the small stuff before it's time to pay for the bigger spending.

Alexander Thompson Using your example, I guess what you are trying to do is to limit your vacation spending to $1200 over a 12 months window (not from January to December, but over 12 months whatever the date is). So if you start YNAB in January, you have to figure out how much you spent on vacations during the 12 months previously (or make a guess). Then seed the vacation category with the left-over + $100 (monthly saving amount for January). Then when you arrive to March there are 2 cases:
   - the category doesn't contain $800: well you can't go on holidays without violating your rule/goal of not spending more than $1200 per 12 months period.

  - the category contains $800: you can go on holidays and follow your rule/goal

I feel what you are trying to do is floating your holiday expenses: that is counting on future income to cover today's expenses. In other words, you are saying: I don't have earmarked $800 for vacations yet but I'm going to earmark $100/month going forward so I'll have more than enough to cover this before next March without spending more than my $1200 per 12 months goal. That is violating the very premise of the YNAB method, so YNAB will never help you do it.

Ceeses I believe he is saying that in 2019 he will fund vacation savings category such that $1200 is available on January 1, 2020 to be transferred to vacation spending category for spending in 2020. Which is fine.

jenmas It's not what the example shows. It shows floating future income. If you don't float, then when you start YNAB you have to properly seed the category which is what nolesrule said. I understand what he wants to do and I agree YNAB doesn't help with that. But it works well without work around if you change from $1200/year to $100/month. If you properly seed the category when you start, then you won't spend more than $100/month if you never spend more than the available for that category and budget $100 every single month. Which I guess is what @nolesrule  was saying. 

If you are budgeting $100 per month with seeding the category properly etc. , then you need to spend more than what's available in your category at some point and you think it's fine as you won't spend any more for the rest of the year so you won't spend more than your $1200 cap per year, then you are floating. 

I guess the spending/saving categories are useful if you are dead set on not spending more than $1200 over a year. If you save in the same category you spend from, then you could have a year (or a 12 months period) where you overspend on your cap but then since you only budget $100 per month that means you will have to underspend in the following months. Which means, over the years you will still be spending on average $1200 per year, but some years you might be spending $1500 and others $900. For the holiday example, it makes sense to allow some variations from year to year on the exact spending (not on the saving/budgeting) as some trips can cost more than others.

Ceeses yes but up in an earlier post he said:

Alexander Thompson said:
Like I said, this approach only works if you can either fund the first year up front or wait a year to start spending in that category. However, you can accomplish the same thing and cut the savings time down if you do this in shorter time blocks, like 6 or even 3 months (and cut the budget size proportionally). 

 That implies that he is starting the year with the funds in hand having saved up in advance.

Alexander Thompson I'm afraid I still don't understand the value in a 'saving' and 'spending' category for the same expense. It just feels like double-handling?

Also, I'm finding the 'vacation' scenario misleading as I can't shake the 'if you don't have the money, dont spend it' mentality. So let's shift the description, if you'll allow?

.....

I have an annual target of $1,200 for medical expenses, so I try to allocate $100 per month.

3 months after it's been zeroed, I need to get an MRI for $500 (feel free to ask me about my country's Public Health system later, if you like). I can't decide to not have this MRI (for serious, they thought I'd had a stroke last year), so I have to find $200 from other allocated categories (or, I guess, find more income). This isn't a case of deciding if my MRI is an 'emergency' or an 'overspend', it's simply a case of deciding which category(ies) are able to cover the MRI cost.

Then, once I've spent the money (and the MRI was all clear, yay), the category balance is back to $0, and $1,200 below my goal target. Poor Old Michael Finnegan Begin Again.

...

Despite all this, I feel like I'm missing something important in your approach...Something else you're doing, or a basic premise you follow. What is it though?!

The Late Heavy Bombardment my health insurance has a $2000 annual out of pocket maximum. My plan year is October 1 - September 30. Therefore I make sure that my Medical OOPM has $2000 in it on October 1. I have 2 categories - OOPM This Year and OOPM Next Year. On September 30 2018 there was $1,172.32 in the "This Year" category and $1473.23 in the "Next Year" category. So in the October budget, I used the Move Money Tool to move $827.68 into the "This Year" category, leaving $645.55 in the "Next Year" category. As I have received FSA reimbursements since October 1, I have allocated those funds to the "Next Year" category and it currently stands at $949.87. Closer to September if I think there won't be enough to have $2000 on Oct 1 for my "This Year" category, I will reallocate from some other categories, but I'm not overly worried.

Alexander Thompson Makes perfect sense to me - will aim to achieve this over the next couple of years. Thanks for the good idea!