Keep track of WAMed categories?
Is there a way I can view which budget categories I WAMed throughout the month. I typically budget and use about $150/month for unexpected expenses. Some of the money goes to categories where I overspent in a budgeted categories.
I can easily see the expenses, like a parking ticket, I covered using the unexpected expenses categories, but I can't review at the end of the month which categories I overspent and covered with money from my unexpected expenses. What could I do to review those overspent categories?
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Something I have used at times is the notes section. When taking money out of your unexpected expenses categories, make a note of it, how much was moved, when and possibly why.
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TryingToGetAhead Yep, I thought about that, but I was hoping for an automated method. I'm thinking what I might try is splitting those transactions in overspent categories, so I can how see much I'm having to use from the unexpected category each month. My hunch is that I'm overspending in my computer software, books, and gadgets areas. $150/month in unexpected money is probably too and it means I'm not realistically budgeting some variable expenses categories.
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Bakari
Can't you use the actual spent and average spent in that category to tell you how much more you are spending than you are comfortable assigning to that purpose?
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HappyDance it seems like when money is used from one category to make up the overspent difference in another category, that difference is not recorded. YNAB will indicate of course when a category is overspent, but after it's covered, then it's no longer recorded as an overspent category. I could be wrong on this, but that's what I've noticed.
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Bakari That's correct. Because if you move money into the category it is in fact no longer overspent. It's just different than your initial plan for you money. But plans change.
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Bakari
Yes. I know it doesn't show me a chronological list of budget adjustments. But it does show the final amount that was budgeted and the total I spent. After a few months, the actuals give me a better and truer sense of my spending patterns. A list of changes would just tell me I guessed wrong or changed my mind along the way. That's what I meant when I asked if you can't just use the actuals. The trail of changes would not be helpful information to me. But since you asked about this, I'm now curious and wondering how do you intend to use those details?
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Can someone please tell me what WAM means? I keep seeing it around but there's no YNAB dictionary to refer to.
Thank You!
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Merc Whack-A-Mole. Whenever you see a red category pop up, you cover it with money from a green category.
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jenmas Ahhh thank you!
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I submitted this as a feature request recently
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HappyDance said:
But since you asked about this, I'm now curious and wondering how do you intend to use those details?Thanks for your feedback. I think I'm just curious about keeping track of my unexpected payments category, which has been about $150 per month for the last several months.
I'm glad the category is there because I try very hard not to WAM other categories.
But I would like to lower that unexpected category money, so I need to figure which categories I seem to be overspending regularly. Last month I think it was gas and software budgets. Maybe I'm underfunding those areas, or maybe I need to be more hardline about staying within budget in those areas.
Hope the above makes sense.
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Bakari
Yes. You make perfect sense. I went through exactly the analysis you are attempting, I really don't think that seeing a series or list of adjustments would have been helpful to that task, but since that data was not available, I guess it wouldn't be fair to say it wouldn't be useful.
For most of us, it really comes down to time. You get really good at this the longer you do it. A common saying on the old forum was that it takes a good three months to get good at budgeting, at least to get to the point where you aren't totally wrong about everything. I found significant improvement at the three-month mark, and then again around the six-month mark, and it kept getting better the longer I worked at it.
The actuals of my spending, and eventually the averages over time is what helped me really pin down my more slippery numbers. Some categories I was overspending due to spending behaviours, some I was underfunding due to unreasonable expectations, and some that I worried about initially turned out to be just fine because they actually averaged to the right amount even though some months I spent more and some I spent less.
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HappyDance Yeah I’ve been using YNAB for over two years now, so much of what I'm posting about comes from me trying to fine tune and maximize my budget, as much as possible. Because I don’t really have a lot of expendable income, I need my money to stretch as far as possible for the different things I'm trying to do. Never in my lifetime has my finances been so good as they are now, even though I don’t make the income I used to make. Again, thanks for your feedback.
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Bakari
Totally hear you on that. The only thing YNAB can't do is speed up time for us. You can see that it's going to be great in a year or two, it's just getting there while doing a whole lot of living that's the trouble. It's really just a matter of letting time run its course while you stay diligent and disciplined. Here I am closing in on my four-year anniversary, and my numbers are delightful. 🙂
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