Our Month doesn’t start on the 1st
Budgeting is getting confusing, as I get paid on the 25th of each month, and YNAB is working on a month by month basis.
As most of our bills are paid after we get paid, and before the 1st, I can’t seem to keep the money to be budgeted in the green, as our recurring payments take them into the red.
Any ideas ??
#Newbie. #BeingThick.
Andy & Bryony. 🤔
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Hi, Andy & Bryony
Welcome to the YNAB forum.
Are you able to cover the expenses in the last week-ish of this month with funds you already have? If yes, then you can simply use January's income to fully budget February. That is the most efficient and awesome way to budget.
I'm a single who is paid once a month on the second last business day of each month, and all of the money received in January is budgeted/allocated in February.
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And if you don't have funds to get you to the end of the month, then you'll have to budget money in the current month to cover those end of month bills.
Two things to keep in mind.
1. Only budget money you have
2. The money needs to be in the category before you spend it.
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At present, you'll have to split your check across two months, making sure the end-of-month categories are funded. Red categories mean you planned poorly and have implicitly stolen funds from some other category (which is, in turn, misleading).
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On a larger note, it's worthwhile to transition away from needing, for example, any of your January check for expenses that will be paid in January. Strive to budget some of Jan's check toward those end-of-month expenses in Feb's area (as well as covering the January outflow). This means those categories in Feb. have a head-start, so when Feb's check arrives, more of it can be pushed toward those categories in March. Etc.
Eventually, you'll not need any of your check in the current month and you're therefore aligned to budget on the 1st with a couple clicks (leveraging goals/scheduled transactions/Quick Budget Last Month). You'll also note that you can tolerate some amount of delay in when you receive your check (since it's not needed until the following month).
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Perhaps consider using a separate Category Group on your budget called “End of month bills”.
This will provide you with visibility into which categories you need to budget for after you receive your pay check (categories in this group) and which categories you need to budget for with last month’s pay check (categories in other groups).
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This all seems like a long way of stating the YNAB 4 rule #1 of budget on last month's income and highlighting the psychological benefit of walled months in a budget. What a crazy world we live in.
I wonder why there isn't a GUI switch for nYNAB that transforms it to the YNAB4 layout and philosophy. Oh well.
