Well, yeah, I did spend last night (a Friday night, for those keeping track) planning out my next year of budgeting.
I’ve been using YNAB for a couple years now. I think we’re heading at…year three? Maybe. Anywhoo. I got YNAB because I wanted to get my sh!t together and buy a house, and then I was able to buy a house way faster than I expected to be able to buy a house, but it threw everything else off and getting my sh!t together didn’t happen as quickly as I’d hoped.
I think, now, I might finally be getting my sh!t(TM) together.
We’ll see, of course. I have made a lot of declarations on this blog, and I can’t think of a single one that has actually stuck. (Speaking of, I took an ADHD quiz today and the results were basically “hoo boy howdy are you even asking?” We’ll have to see if I can do anything about that.)
Ahem. I like writing because it helps me remember what the fish I was doing.
YNAB. Sh!t. Yes.
One reason YNAB is great is it won’t actually let you plan ahead. You have to decide what to do with your money NOW, not make pie-in-the-sky promises for later. You can move it later if needed, of course, but to do YNAB you have to sit down and ask yourself “what do I need THIS MONEY, THAT I HAVE RIGHT NOW to do until I have more money?” You can’t be all “oh, I’ll pay that bill next payday” if it’s due before next payday.
Like lots of people, before YNAB if I thought about “can I afford this” at all (which would only happen when the money was particularly low, because really the answer was ALWAYS “no, I can’t afford it” and who wants to live like that?) (yeah, some choices were made,) I looked at my bank balance. Well, that’s great–if I also remembered that “hey, I don’t get paid for another week and we don’t have any TP at home” or the like.
You can guess how often I did NOT remember that we were nearly out of TP at home.
So anyway. YNAB has been a lifesaver for that. I’ve learned to check it often, and admire the pretty green categories as I put my money where I’ve decided it needs to be.
YNAB, in short, doesn’t tell me what I can’t spend–it tells me what I /can./
Anywhoo, after nearly three years (I think) of YNAB, I’ve reached the point where I’m looking farther ahead than just one paycheck. For the last few months, I’ve scribbled on a post-it my plan for each paycheck of the month. The post-it stays in my ledger-book, but I take a picture so if I’m out and want to see the plan for the month, it’s in my phone.
Last night I decided I wanted to go farther than a month. I started on the post-it, then decided Excel would probably serve me better.
I got out of hand. I plotted out the next four months. And I liked it so much, I did another sheet in the workbook, for four months after that. And hey…why stop at 8 months? I just went one more sheet forward and did a year.
Will I stick to it? Probably not exactly, no. But I can see my way out of debt, which I couldn’t do before YNAB, and now I can see more clearly how to get there (not in a year, no, but probably within two!) (except the mortgage, of course, but once I’m done paying off the higher-interest debts…)
So I took a picture (of my screen, yes) of the next three months. We’ll see how it goes!
YNAB costs ~$60/year, but I heartily believe it’s totally worth it. If you want to check it out for a month for free, let me know and I’ll send you a code and I’ll get a free month. 🙂
In other news, I’m still editing Flame. I’m super excited about improving this story! Just…having a hard time getting it done.
Blargh.
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