
Dealing with my Foodie Category Group
Hello YNABers,
An easy one for you. When I started with YNAB in January, I had only one single category for "Eating Out". It was working well with my but I found out that it would be helpful for me to know in a year from now on what type of meal I spent my money. So I have decided to create a few categories for this purpose: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, snacks, Coffee/Drinks, and Happy Hour Drink . So far so go.
Now, I can easily budget money in all of them. Which I did, but obviously I keep WAMing money around according to what I spend. I do not care that much, but I was wondering if I could simply the management there. What I was thinking was to create an additional Category named "Food Fund", from which I would never expense anything, but put the expected Budget of all the meals types. Then, I would simply never budget the meal, but always cover the Overspending with the Food Fund.
Does it make sense? Is that a good way to do it? I am still debating,
Thoughts?
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You'll still need to WAM before month end otherwise the overspending will be added to credit card debt (if yellow) or removed from next month's TBB (if red).
I sometimes do things as you've originally suggested - funding the top category in a group (for us - joint spending) and then WAMing to more specific categories (theatre tickets, sports events etc). An alternative is to only have one group but then put #breakfast, #lunch in the memo tab. This lets you budget to one category, does not need WAMing and you can still look at the breakdown by searching for your hashtags. The downside is that you they won't show separately in reports.
(The hashtags aren't necessary. Any emoji or word will do and is searchable but in the absence of tags you need to make sure you have a consistent approach to labelling.) -
Very good point. So the good news is that I do not mind at all covering the overspending right away from the over arching Foodie Group. So I should never end up in a situation where I forget some categories in negative (red).
As for the hashtag, it is another good point but I really want the report, and like you said it needs to be isolated for this.
Right now, my Foodie Category group looks like this:
- Snacks
- Breakfast
- Lunch
- Dinner
- Happy Drinks (Beer, etc)
- Regular Drinks (Coffee / Tea, etc)
So the idea I suggested above would be for that group to look like this:
- Food Fund
- Snacks
- Breakfast
- Lunch
- Dinner
- Happy Drinks (Beer, etc)
- Regular Drinks (Coffee / Tea, etc)
So every time I spend against a category, I cover the overspend with the Food Fund. Does not take long to do, especially in mobile app. But instead of the Food Fund, this make me wonders if instead I should simply leave the money in TBB?
I will see... Maybe I will still put money in these category based on Average Spent, and WAM when needed... that might be a better way.
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I would counsel you against leaving the money in TBB. This violates rule one, because you aren't giving your dollars jobs...which means you aren't really feeling the scarcity when you make your spending decisions.
In the interest of simplifying your life, what are you hoping to learn from this level of detail? What behavior do you want to change based upon what you learn?
I have just two eating out categories: Work Lunches/Snacks, and Dining Out. That's because Work Lunches gets really out of line if I don't plan ahead and pack lunches: either the night before or for several days at a time. I kind of resent the money I spend in the Work category, whereas if I'm going out for ricotta pancakes with lemon curd and raspberries, or hitting an amazing noodle and dumpling house, or grabbing a mocha with a friend, it's not money that I'm necessarily looking to trim, unless it gets too excessive. So Dining Out gets its own budget. But within that budget, I don't really care if it was Breakfast, Lunch, or Dinner.
I can think of reasons to track at the level that you do...especially if you're actively dating and trying to judge your coffee/alcohol budget, but I don't think that most people need to track ALL of those categories. I'm not saying NOT to, just, would you do anything different with the information? Will that change your decisions next month? Because if not, maybe you're just giving yourself extra work for no reason.
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Eric Poulin
"I found out that it would be helpful for me to know in a year from now on what type of meal I spent my money".....mmmmm...and what exactly would you actually USE that information for - a year from now? Let's say you HAD this information from last year and it showed your spent 75% on breakfast out and 25% on dinner out..so what? Wouldn't it just be the TOTAL amount spent on eating out that is significant rather than the meal-type??? Or is it your plan to say: in 2019 I spent too much on breakfast out, I need to reduce my breakfast spending and need to concentrate on spending that money on dinner out instead?