Using monthly goals options when paid bi-weekly?
We are paid every 2 weeks and I take set amounts out of each paycheck for come categories (eg $75 for Christmas each paycheck for a total of $150 each month). In fact, most of my budget is set up around twice a month checks with some things coming out just once a month (rent, allowances) and some things being split between checks (groceries, gas).
I'm getting confused about how I would could use the nifty Quick Budget and/or Goals options to make my life easier. And yes, I've been to the class :/
Thank you for your patience!
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Hi Blue Camera !
When it comes to Goals, the amounts needed will adjust as you budget for them. For instance, if you set a goal that requires you to budget $50 a month towards a category, you can budget $25 when you receive your first paycheck of the month. That goal will tell you another $25 is still needed to stay on track and you can add that once you receive your second paycheck.
As for the Quick Budget options, it depends on which ones you're using. If you plan to budget the same amount each month (like the Budgeted Last Month or Spent Last Month) options, you'd want to use those Quick Budget options once you have enough to cover the full amount needed.
The Underfunded option is a favorite because it prompts you to budget for any Scheduled Transactions. If you have a bill due soon and you've entered it as a scheduled transaction, the Underfunded Quick Budget option will budget enough to cover the upcoming expense.
A combination of the two comes down to preference. If you have a moment, take a look at this blog post on How to Create a Budget Template.
I'm hoping some others will weigh in on how they use Goals and the Quick Budget feature, but feel free to mention me if you have any specific questions! :)
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Another option is to change how you handle things. Say you want to put a total of $100 in categories A & B. Currently you put $50 in each on each paycheck. Instead, you could "quick budget" category A with your first check and category B with your second check. You end up with $100 in each category either way.
Personally I would probably go with a dollar amount in the category title and put that there when the first payday happens, then with the second paycheck finish it off with "quick budget," if you want to continue using your current system.
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TryingToGetAhead -Yeah, the first option would be uber-complicated. Can you explain the second a little more? Do you mean to set a monthly goal (is that possible?), put $ in categories the first of the month and then literally "quick budget" on the 15th?
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Blue Camera
Let's say you set all your monthly goals, then you budget 1/2 of what you need in each one with your first paycheque. So far, so good. Now, when you get your next paycheque and there are funds in the TBB waiting to be assigned, select all your categories and click on the appropriate quick budget option.
The underfunded quick click will bring each category up to meet your goal or scheduled expenses in that category this month.
You can also do different quick budgeting for different groups of categories. Bear with me, here. The nice thing about the quick budget features is that you can select the categories you want to adjust in any combination. You can select one here, one there, or all the subcategories of just one master category, or all your categories then deselect one or two. Once you figure out which categories you want to adjust, now you can click on one of the quick budget features. Play with it a bit. And of course, you can always manually adjust here and there afterward.
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Thank you HappyDance.
I'm a YNAB4 user and the Quick Budget feature, while cool, seems to be alluding me. That makes good sense.
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I get paid 2x a month too. The Quick Budget for Underfunded is my favorite. However, I only use it on my second payday for the month because in the first pay day I don't yet have the money to fund the whole category. It would be great it we had a quick budget option to fund a category to 50%.
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kayjenx Yes! How to tell the programers?!?!?!?
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Blue Camera I think there is a feature request category here somewhere.
Faness how do we submit this as a feature request?
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kayjenx Blue Camera Got it! :)
Thanks for caring enough about YNAB and budgeting to share your feedback with us!
We ask that all Feature Requests be submitted here.
I went ahead forwarded your feedback to our Design Team :) They collect it—every last bit of it—in a database. Just about every day, they go through all of it and code it, asking questions like Where is this person in their budgeting journey? What problem are they wanting to solve? Then, in regular research cycles they analyze all this collected feedback to plan for what’s next in YNAB. :)
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Faness Thank you so much!
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Faness Add me as another vote for the "Fund 50%" Quick Budget option! :)
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kayjenx It's my pleasure! :)
Resistant Punch Roller You got it!
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Faness Count me in for the "Fund 50%" option, as well!
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Euneed Aboogeet Got it! Thanks for weighing in! :)
P.S. I love your username! 😂
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Faness Another bi-weekly YNABer here. Count me in for a Fund 50% option as well please!
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Neuroflux (and everyone else here!),
In case you missed the announcement, we have a new fancy form for gathering feature requests here in the forum! This goes straight to our Design Team so submit away :)
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Oops... Thanks!
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Blue Camera I get paid every other week. I personally enjoy allocating my funds manually (I like details and flexibility). And for a long time, the options on the right eluded me - though some of these explanations here help make much more sense of them. I just learned what "underfunded" budget means -- and does. While it's pretty neat - I do enjoy that YNAB takes care of the rolling over of funds for me without me having to worry about it. I've been using YNAB for 2 years now, and at first, I was allocating only what I need now, and then some for next month, but that got very confusing. Now I just let it roll over, and it works great for me! I started out a month ahead, when I got YNAB was in between jobs and had an 'extra' paycheck to fill up my categories.
One thing I've noticed is the goals don't always work for me. I spend my money in a category that I'm also using as saving towards bigger or one time purchases - I've thought about breaking them out, but I like having them in the same place. Anyway - one thing we do in our budgets is in the name, we add an amount and a max for the category so that we can manage our goals that way. Here's an example: Groceries (100<300), I'll budget 100 each paycheck, until I get to 300 and then I have TBB for other things. For items you want to split in half if you get paid 2x a month - you can do the half, and you'll always have enough as long as it lines up with your due dates, etc.
I've used this in ALL my categories, and it seems to be pretty magical and useful for me. Let me know if you end up trying it!
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Orange Wildcat I was following you right up until here: " Here's an example: Groceries (100<300), I'll budget 100 each paycheck, until I get to 300..... AND THEN I HAVE TBB FOR OTHER THINGS." Could you explain that a little further please? I could use a little magical in my budget :-)
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Blue Camera sure! Using the deposit x to max helps make sure that I budget only what I want in that area, and I use the name as the goal, if you will. If I didn't have a max bc the goals don't work for me, I'd over budget in areas I don't care to have money sitting around. This way, when I hit the max, I have more from TBB to allocate elsewhere. I like to think of it as little raises in my budget, since that's what it feels like to me. If I'm only $10 short, when normally I'd allocate $100, I now have $90 that goes elsewhere! Also, I change my max often depending on previous spending, averages, and by how much I'd like to be ahead on a particular category.
On more close thought, I suppose you could use the monthly budgeting goal, and deposit to that end since YNAB will tell you how much you're missing. What it won't do is tell you how much to deposit each time, which I place in the name to make it easy peasy when it comes time to split out my paycheck.
Hope that makes sense and adds some magic to your budget!
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