You Need A Budget... help?

[Mynyel]

Sweetbasil suggested this to me so I downloaded the free trial to check it out.

 

I am confused. I added a credit card and it takes it out of my income? For instance I have $600 in my bank account, the credit card balance is $900 so it says I have $-300? I can't pay off my bills like that every month.

 

Am I doing something wrong?

[Lily_Grace]

If I remember correctly, YNAB is for getting to a point where you live off last month's paycheck (always having one in the bank). The credit card will hinder that. It's not money, it's debt, and YNAB helps to move people away from debt.

[Gooblink]

I believe there's an option when you set up an account or credit card that allows you to omit it from your working balance. I'm new to ynab, too...but when I set up my savings account, I was given that option.

[Mynyel]

OK so what about when I pay the CC bill? It reduces the balance by the payment amount but doesn't take into consideration interest and such. Do I need to adjust the balance every month or is there a way to have it account for interest?

[Soror]

I don't use YNAB although I tried the trail. Mint.com is another program to use that is free. It does not set up accounts in that way. I found Mint easier to set up and use.

[Hypatia.]

We didn't add our CC to YNAB. We enter the payment as a bill, but we don't use YNAB to track the CC balance.

[Hannah C.]

YNAB's philosophy revolves around using credit cards as basically debit cards. So, you enter transactions on your credit card and it takes it away from your total. When you first enter a credit card, if I remember correctly, the idea is that you *owe* that money and therefore need to pay it off. Make sure that debt is going to the next month - that may fix your problem. But yes, it will tell you that you are at -$300 if your bank account balance is less than the balance on your credit card!

 

Yes, you have to add the credit card interest manually.

 

I would highly recommend checking out the YNAB help and the YNAB forums - the folks over there are great, very friendly, and much more educated on YNAB than I am, even though I've been using it for months. :)

[FeFe]

Do a "credit card" search on YNAB or go to their website. They have all kinds of articles and videos to help you understand.

[DawnM]

I have to manipulate YNAB to some degree. I do NOT put my savings accounts in there as it shows it is "available to budget" and I don't want to budget with my savings......I only want to budget with my actual checking account.

 

So, you may have to remove your CC from YNAB and just put a category of payments out to "debt" or whatever you wish to call it, and give it a number you would like it to be from your budget.

[kim.4dogs]

I use YNAB. When you say it shows -$300 do you mean for your money for the month? Or for your net worth? I had a credit card balance for the first few months I used the program, and there was a way to categorize your credit card debt as "pre-YNAB debt". That way it was just another bill, and you could decide how much to budget towards it each month. Definitely check out the forums! People are very knowledgeable and super helpful!

[jujsky]

You need to set the credit card under Pre-YNAB debt, then it shouldn't give you a negative amount in your bank-account. We have more debt that we're paying off than we currently have in our account, but our account reflects we have money as does our monthly income cell.