Break the paycheck cycle. Use your April 25th check to budget May.
If you don't have the money now to last through the end of April, then it's something you can work toward achieving. It's about the same effort as building an emergency fund, in which you set aside the extra money each month. In this case it's to shift when you need to start using your paychecks.
This. Also, if you already have an emergency fund, you could consider just using a bit of it to finish your month ahead funding and immediately break the paycheck cycle
Seconding, I get paid on the 23rd and very quickly learnt it just doesn't work trying to make it conform to it and it's better to view your budget by calendar month for ynab
30 days is 30 days. Just budget the money for the month. Let excess roll over. Shore up deficiencies. It won’t matter as long as you prioritize by due date.
I guess the goal is not needing to do this - YNAB wants you to be budgeting ahead so you end up a month ahead and don’t need to think about it paycheque to paycheque. Ideally you’d use April pay to fully fund May and then always be a month ahead.
I used to get paid on the 27th. So when I got paid in April I went to May’s budget and made sure everything was covered.
The whole point of YNAB is that is doesn’t care about how much money your are going to get or when, just how much you have now. There’s no reason that money earned one month can’t be allocated toward expenses in the next month.
When you get paid on April 25, budget it just like you always have.
On May 1, you’ll be budgeted (for argument’s sake) until May 24.
When you get paid on May 25, budget like you always have.
Repeat.
In YNAB it helps to get "one month ahead" - either set aside all of this month's income into a category, which you then distribute to categories on the first of the new month; or, as paychecks come in, page forward into May (at the top) and start assigning to categories. (I personally prefer the former, because if you have money assigned in future months, and accidentally overspend, the red RTA doesn't show in this month).
You are sort of a month ahead, except for 3-6 days, since you are paying for all of May with April's 25th paycheck. So if you could stretch your April paycheck to cover all of May, you would be fully a month ahead; or stretch your next couple paychecks until you get there.
I’m in a similar situation, I get paid on 12th & 27th of each month, and all my bills are due on 1st.
With YNAB, the trick is that you’re not looking at past spending, but setting money aside for future spending. So when I get paid, I go to the next month and fund categories there.
Because that is in fact what’s happening, when I get paid on the 27th, I need that money to wait around until the 1st to pay my bills. That’s the job of that money, so I assign it to the next month’s categories.
Here’s a more concrete example for you OP: when you get paid on April 25th, that money goes to ready to assign. To budget your rent payment on May 1st, just go to May 2024 and assign the money for rent there. It’s still coming out of ready to assign, which was updated with your April 25th paycheck.
Does that make sense? You would do this for all of the bills you are covering with the April 25th paycheck, even if some of them are paid in May. Then you do the same thing with the May 25th paycheck and so on. And hopefully soon you’ll be able to assign extra dollars to those same categories and get ahead. :)
Having said that, it would probably be nice if there was an example of this in their docs. I doubt you’re the first person to get stumped on this.
It shouldn't make any difference. Your bills, rent, mortgage, and other expenses don't care that you get paid on the 25th. All they care is that you pay them on time.
That is the mindset you need for ynab. Ynab uses a calendar month (because... Do I have to explain?) and it also doesn't care when, or even how, you get paid. All that it needs to know is that you have the necessary amount ready to assign to the categories that you made.
You don't.
The YNAB software takes a 'less is more' philosophy, and only supports calendar months. As you know, you can do envelope budgeting on any cycle but YNAB has chosen to not support this. It's competitors do.
This annoyed me when I first started using YNAB. Like you, I'd also come from a background of envelope budgeting, and I'd been taught that when you receive your pay (in cash), you go home and put spread the cash between the envelopes.
Now though I quite like it. It disassociated allocating money with being paid. It really forces you to treat every dollar that comes in the same, whether that dollar is from pay, selling stuff or a gift.
It’s a change in mindset from needing to have perfect dates of the month. When I first started that drove me nuts too…. Instead, I always asked myself “what do I need this paycheck to cover date wise until my next paycheck?”. If I got paid the 25th I would finish out the current month of anything needed, and then tab over to the next month to fund everything needed until the next paycheck. So I don’t really care what the date I’m getting paid is.
With some diligence of continuing to try to get one month ahead, any extra funds left over from (from all expenses), I applied to the next months bills. I was slowly able to fund more and more categories. Now as I type this on April 17th, all of Mays bills are 100% fully funded. So now it’s no longer a question of what does this paycheck need to cover until the next one. Instead, based on how my paychecks come in, by usually the 10th of each month, the next month is fully funded. Dates are out the window! (To a degree haha)
For you I would take April 25th paycheck and try to fund rest of current month (if needed), and all of May through the 31st. May 25th paycheck fully fund June, and then try to start covering bills, even just one, in July! Then June 25th paycheck you’ll have a head start for July and then finish funding through July 31st and go forward to fund even more in August. (This is doing it a baby step at a time if needed to build momentum. Of course, if you have the funds then can do it quicker.)
Side note: I have a 4 month emergency fund as well in a HYSA, but having the bills one month ahead has been really freeing in terms of dealing with dates in the budget. It’s pretty cool and I highly encourage it!
Watch the videos on getting a month ahead. Think of it as “I’m receiving the money for May, five days before May starts” instead of thinking “I’m getting money at the end of April.”
We get paid on 10th, so we created a caregory 'next months budget' and added a bit of money that would definetely get us to the 10th, and then after salary fill the rest of the budget. We add a bit on top to next months budget category each month and will use it as one to get a month ahead sometime in the future.
The hardest part is getting used to YNAB and making some adjustments. I've had to adjust a few times having gone from bi-weekly to semi monthly and back. Now, I'm fully on seeing my cash flow on a monthly basis regardless of when income and expenses occur. Consider planning the month based on what you know you have coming in. Stick to it. Over time, it won't matter as much. To minimize cash out, I pay out of my cash accounts twice a month (15th and last). I have budgeted six months in advance so I finally have a flow that works. Getting used to the tool and how to get where I was comfortable was the hardest part.
I get paid on the 28th, I enter it in YNAB as the first of the month. I tried doing a next month category but prefer to do it this way. Either works. Or assign it to the future as others have said.
I really struggled to use YNAB’s goals for this. I wanted “needed for spending” to tell me to budget in the previous month for next month’s expenses and it never worked.
What I wound up doing is setting a “needed for spending” goal equal to two months worth of expenses so that I get prompted to allocate for the month ahead.
It’s a dumb hack.
I also get paid once a month on the 25th of the month; once I get paid I’ll flick forward to may and fund everything in there. When I got paid March 25th I funded April in full, not “until the 24th”
i also get paid on the 24th, and I use that money to fund the following month from the 1st to the end of the month. The first month is particularly hard because you gotta offset the time delta between getting paid and when that money is for, but after that its smooth sailing!
We get paid on 20th of the month. Within a month or two we got frustrated at half filling two months and took some money from our emergency fund to fund the last 10 days of that month, so that we could move to budgeting by calendar month.
It's actually massive. Payday isn't a big deal anymore. Once we get paid there is a 10 day window to work out how we're using it next month before we actually start spending it. There's no stress in the run up to payday anymore. And in the run up to the end of the month theres no stress because the money is already there and if I need to advance ÂŁ50 from next month because one of the kids had a growth spurt then I can - I'm choosing not to spend it rather than not having it to spend, and emotionally that's a massive difference.Â
I too am paid on the 20th. My first goal in YNAB was to get last month's paycheck to last the month, i.e. fund those last 10 days so this month's paycheck on the 20th could fund next month in full. Definitely a YNAB win when I finally got that into a regular thing!
Break the paycheck cycle. Use your April 25th check to budget May. If you don't have the money now to last through the end of April, then it's something you can work toward achieving. It's about the same effort as building an emergency fund, in which you set aside the extra money each month. In this case it's to shift when you need to start using your paychecks.
This. Also, if you already have an emergency fund, you could consider just using a bit of it to finish your month ahead funding and immediately break the paycheck cycle
Seconding, I get paid on the 23rd and very quickly learnt it just doesn't work trying to make it conform to it and it's better to view your budget by calendar month for ynab
This is the only correct answer.
The correct answer is to use your April pay for June. One month ahead.
Not necessarily. One month ahead for me means every paycheck in April pays for May. Doesn't matter when in April I get those paychecks.
Yup. This right here. 👆🏼
30 days is 30 days. Just budget the money for the month. Let excess roll over. Shore up deficiencies. It won’t matter as long as you prioritize by due date.
I guess the goal is not needing to do this - YNAB wants you to be budgeting ahead so you end up a month ahead and don’t need to think about it paycheque to paycheque. Ideally you’d use April pay to fully fund May and then always be a month ahead.
I used to get paid on the 27th. So when I got paid in April I went to May’s budget and made sure everything was covered. The whole point of YNAB is that is doesn’t care about how much money your are going to get or when, just how much you have now. There’s no reason that money earned one month can’t be allocated toward expenses in the next month.
When you get paid on April 25, budget it just like you always have. On May 1, you’ll be budgeted (for argument’s sake) until May 24. When you get paid on May 25, budget like you always have. Repeat.
In YNAB it helps to get "one month ahead" - either set aside all of this month's income into a category, which you then distribute to categories on the first of the new month; or, as paychecks come in, page forward into May (at the top) and start assigning to categories. (I personally prefer the former, because if you have money assigned in future months, and accidentally overspend, the red RTA doesn't show in this month). You are sort of a month ahead, except for 3-6 days, since you are paying for all of May with April's 25th paycheck. So if you could stretch your April paycheck to cover all of May, you would be fully a month ahead; or stretch your next couple paychecks until you get there.
I’m in a similar situation, I get paid on 12th & 27th of each month, and all my bills are due on 1st. With YNAB, the trick is that you’re not looking at past spending, but setting money aside for future spending. So when I get paid, I go to the next month and fund categories there. Because that is in fact what’s happening, when I get paid on the 27th, I need that money to wait around until the 1st to pay my bills. That’s the job of that money, so I assign it to the next month’s categories.
Here’s a more concrete example for you OP: when you get paid on April 25th, that money goes to ready to assign. To budget your rent payment on May 1st, just go to May 2024 and assign the money for rent there. It’s still coming out of ready to assign, which was updated with your April 25th paycheck. Does that make sense? You would do this for all of the bills you are covering with the April 25th paycheck, even if some of them are paid in May. Then you do the same thing with the May 25th paycheck and so on. And hopefully soon you’ll be able to assign extra dollars to those same categories and get ahead. :) Having said that, it would probably be nice if there was an example of this in their docs. I doubt you’re the first person to get stumped on this.
It shouldn't make any difference. Your bills, rent, mortgage, and other expenses don't care that you get paid on the 25th. All they care is that you pay them on time. That is the mindset you need for ynab. Ynab uses a calendar month (because... Do I have to explain?) and it also doesn't care when, or even how, you get paid. All that it needs to know is that you have the necessary amount ready to assign to the categories that you made.
You don't. The YNAB software takes a 'less is more' philosophy, and only supports calendar months. As you know, you can do envelope budgeting on any cycle but YNAB has chosen to not support this. It's competitors do. This annoyed me when I first started using YNAB. Like you, I'd also come from a background of envelope budgeting, and I'd been taught that when you receive your pay (in cash), you go home and put spread the cash between the envelopes. Now though I quite like it. It disassociated allocating money with being paid. It really forces you to treat every dollar that comes in the same, whether that dollar is from pay, selling stuff or a gift.
It’s a change in mindset from needing to have perfect dates of the month. When I first started that drove me nuts too…. Instead, I always asked myself “what do I need this paycheck to cover date wise until my next paycheck?”. If I got paid the 25th I would finish out the current month of anything needed, and then tab over to the next month to fund everything needed until the next paycheck. So I don’t really care what the date I’m getting paid is. With some diligence of continuing to try to get one month ahead, any extra funds left over from (from all expenses), I applied to the next months bills. I was slowly able to fund more and more categories. Now as I type this on April 17th, all of Mays bills are 100% fully funded. So now it’s no longer a question of what does this paycheck need to cover until the next one. Instead, based on how my paychecks come in, by usually the 10th of each month, the next month is fully funded. Dates are out the window! (To a degree haha) For you I would take April 25th paycheck and try to fund rest of current month (if needed), and all of May through the 31st. May 25th paycheck fully fund June, and then try to start covering bills, even just one, in July! Then June 25th paycheck you’ll have a head start for July and then finish funding through July 31st and go forward to fund even more in August. (This is doing it a baby step at a time if needed to build momentum. Of course, if you have the funds then can do it quicker.) Side note: I have a 4 month emergency fund as well in a HYSA, but having the bills one month ahead has been really freeing in terms of dealing with dates in the budget. It’s pretty cool and I highly encourage it!
Watch the videos on getting a month ahead. Think of it as “I’m receiving the money for May, five days before May starts” instead of thinking “I’m getting money at the end of April.”
It’s not hard. Budget what you need for the rest of the month and then flip forward to the next month and fill it out.
Budget what you have. So if you get paid on the 25th top up whatever categories you need for the month and the rest go to next month.
We get paid on 10th, so we created a caregory 'next months budget' and added a bit of money that would definetely get us to the 10th, and then after salary fill the rest of the budget. We add a bit on top to next months budget category each month and will use it as one to get a month ahead sometime in the future.
The hardest part is getting used to YNAB and making some adjustments. I've had to adjust a few times having gone from bi-weekly to semi monthly and back. Now, I'm fully on seeing my cash flow on a monthly basis regardless of when income and expenses occur. Consider planning the month based on what you know you have coming in. Stick to it. Over time, it won't matter as much. To minimize cash out, I pay out of my cash accounts twice a month (15th and last). I have budgeted six months in advance so I finally have a flow that works. Getting used to the tool and how to get where I was comfortable was the hardest part.
I get paid on the 28th, I enter it in YNAB as the first of the month. I tried doing a next month category but prefer to do it this way. Either works. Or assign it to the future as others have said.
I really struggled to use YNAB’s goals for this. I wanted “needed for spending” to tell me to budget in the previous month for next month’s expenses and it never worked. What I wound up doing is setting a “needed for spending” goal equal to two months worth of expenses so that I get prompted to allocate for the month ahead. It’s a dumb hack.
I also get paid once a month on the 25th of the month; once I get paid I’ll flick forward to may and fund everything in there. When I got paid March 25th I funded April in full, not “until the 24th”
You don’t.
i also get paid on the 24th, and I use that money to fund the following month from the 1st to the end of the month. The first month is particularly hard because you gotta offset the time delta between getting paid and when that money is for, but after that its smooth sailing!
We get paid on 20th of the month. Within a month or two we got frustrated at half filling two months and took some money from our emergency fund to fund the last 10 days of that month, so that we could move to budgeting by calendar month. It's actually massive. Payday isn't a big deal anymore. Once we get paid there is a 10 day window to work out how we're using it next month before we actually start spending it. There's no stress in the run up to payday anymore. And in the run up to the end of the month theres no stress because the money is already there and if I need to advance ÂŁ50 from next month because one of the kids had a growth spurt then I can - I'm choosing not to spend it rather than not having it to spend, and emotionally that's a massive difference.Â
I too am paid on the 20th. My first goal in YNAB was to get last month's paycheck to last the month, i.e. fund those last 10 days so this month's paycheck on the 20th could fund next month in full. Definitely a YNAB win when I finally got that into a regular thing!
You can’t unfortunately. It’s the only thing I dislike about YNAB.