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We have Brothers Keeper. My bills last year ended up over $1.3mil. The silver plan wouldn't even begin to touch that.Originally Posted by CavSct1983
Well, since we are both in BK I'm glad to have helped!
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It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged. - The Cleveland Press, March 1, 1921, GK Chesterton
Unfortunately, I wasn't on the gold plan/BK when that all happened. I upgraded to that afterwards. Thankfully other sources of aid/support were provided to cover that whole fiasco.Well, since we are both in BK I'm glad to have helped!
The fact that I went from feeling "off" on a Sunday to starting my 40 days in the hospital on Friday the same week, and then 2.5 months at home with home care, just reinforced the need for catastrophic to be unlimited. So, up the coverage went...
I use https://fuerstfinancial.website.raymondjames.com/. I have a SEP IRA, created by a former employer, that I converted to a standard IRA with the previously linked guy.
Jordan is a great guy, who has shown good returns with my IRA even through the slump that most were happy to just not loose much.
I've spent a few hours looking into this, and this was the best explanation of the main self-employment retirement accounts I could find.
Solo 401(k) vs SIMPLE IRA vs SEP IRA
http://www.obliviousinvestor.com/sep...-vs-solo-401k/
You can even do a Solo Roth 401(k) which will allow you to have both pre-tax, and post-tax funds, for those of you who aren't sure if you'll be in a higher, or lower tax bracket when you retire. Best of both worlds? Worst of both worlds? I don't know, I haven't researched that position yet.
Anyway, with a possible max annual contribution of $54,000 for a both a Solo 401(k) and a SEP IRA, (but easier to do with Solo 401(k)), those both look way more useful than the standard IRA or Roth IRA with a max annual contribution of $5,500. I think for me, the above two mentioned are the way I'll go.
Grant H. I just now saw your response (thank you) and am off to read the link you posted.
Last edited by Irving; 01-09-2017 at 02:29.
I'm half way through my free 34-day trial with YNAB. I really like what they have going, and I completely understand the concept, BUT I can't wrap my head around the way their system works. I've spent hours looking through the FAQ and How-To pages, watched some videos, but I can't get it. I'm missing something, but I'm not sure what it is. How long did it take everyone using it to feel comfortable with the software? I feel like I'm creating a ton of categories (too many) to put all the spending somewhere. I don't understand why the system doesn't understand what a credit card payment is, or what a finance charge is. How do you categorize a transfer from another account? What about a transfer from another bank? I really want to use this system, and even pay to use it, but not until I can get it to run smoothly.
Where did everyone start? Maybe I just jumped in and tried to do everything and missed a step.
Do you have your credit card accounts set up as "on budget" accounts? Thats the default option. In that case, when you make a payment to a credit card, you set the payee as "Transfer to [cc account name]". A corresponding deposit transaction will automatically be created in the credit card account. If you manually entered or imported a payment transaction, match it with the auto created one.
Do the same thing when transferring money between any other accounts...don't assign a category to it, change the payee to "transfer to ..."
I'll try to respond more later, my kid just got out of bed....
I saw the video about changing the payee. I'll try to find that again. I had a whole page of How-to's at one point, but I can't seem to find that page again.
I'm not sure I have the credit card accounts as "on budget" accounts, and don't really know how to set that up. I'm eagerly awaiting your response, but of course take your time. It's the weekend.
ETA: OK, I know this is a huge wall of text. I'm sorry for being so verbose but I didn't have time to write a shorter message. Hope this is helpful.
I assume you are using the web application version of YNAB (sometimes referred to as nYNAB) as opposed to the old version that you install locally on your computer. Is that correct?
When you went to add your credit card account, you probably clicked on Add Account and then in the Account Type drop-down box selected "Budget -> Credit Card". If so then you're good, this account is considered an on-budget account and it will enable more functionality.
The way nYNAB handles credit cards is pretty wonky. I've only been using nYNAB since July and I still don't feel like I understand it 100%. But here's what I do know. nYNAB handles them pretty much like a checking account in that anything you spend on it immediately impacts your budget. If you're used to handling a credit card like a monthly payment or as one step removed from your day to day finances you need to cut that out. To go further, let's set up a hypothetical scenario which should be illustrative.
Let's say you go out to dinner and spend $50 at a restaurant using your credit card. You add/import the transaction to YNAB and assign it to the Restaurants budget category. When you go back to the Budget screen you will see a yellow "-$50" in the right-hand column of the Restaurants category (let's just assume you have not budgeted anything for that category this month and this was the only transaction for that category). The yellow means that you have overspent this category and the overspending is on a credit card. If you had used your bank card instead, the "-$50" would be red. More on this in a sec. So now you allocate $100 from your "To Be Budgeted" pool to the Restaurants category. Now you have a green "$50" bubble in the Available column of the Restaurants budget category. But something else has changed as well. Scroll down in the Budget screen until you get to the Credit Card Payments section. Your credit card has a line in this section like it's another budget category, but it behaves differently from the others. Whenever you cover your credit card spending by budgeting funds to a category that contains credit card spending, YNAB automatically updates the Available column for your credit card. So if you click on the line in your budget for your credit card account, it will show you that the number in the Available column is what is available for you to pay off your card. So whatever that line had before, when you budgeted enough to cover your new restaurant spending, the Available number increased by $50.
Now it's the end of the month and you've gotten rid of all the yellow bubbles in your budget by allocating enough from your To Be Budgeted pool to each of the budget categories. Now go back to the credit card line in your budget and whatever's in the Available column is what you should pay on your card. Make that payment, and then create a Transfer transaction in your checking account register, with the payee as your credit card account. YNAB will recognize this as a "credit card payment" and the Available amount on the credit card budget line will go to zero (or be reduced by whatever your payment was). If you close out a month with any yellow bubbles left in the budget and/or any green amount left in the credit card line, you will be increasing the debt on your credit card.
But here's where we get back to the red bubbles. Those are uncovered expenditures from your checking account (i.e., hard dollars that are gone). When you're going through the month and attending to your budget, you need to close out all the red bubbles first, because that money is gone daddy gone. You cannot budget $5000 to your vacation fund and leave 10 categories red...YNAB will not be in sync with reality and you'll think you have more money than you really do. Then once you have covered all your hard spending with funds from your To Be Budgeted pool, now you can go on and allocate funds to budget categories that have yellow bubbles. Once all those are gone, now is when you get to start saving money by allocating it to whatever budget category you want to save up for. If you don't have enough funds to close out all the yellow bubbles, whatever the bubbles add up to is the additional debt you've created that month.
So budgeting in YNAB is supposed to be a fluid thing. You're not supposed to just do $300 for groceries, $200 for restaurants, $200 for gas (or whatever) every single month. YNAB sets you free from that unrealistic rigidity. This is one of the things I love about budgeting with YNAB...it's flexible and you adapt it on the fly to meet your needs. It still takes self discipline to attain your goals and not spend too much on things you shouldn't, but at least the budget itself is not beating you over the head with how much you suck. I forget which YNAB rule this supports, but once you know the system it works beautifully, at least compared to the other budgeting programs I've used before. You get structure to support your goals, but enough flexibility to keep up with real life and not get discouraged.
Ideally once you are able to start saving, you can build up to pre-funding your budget categories for next month. So you allocate $1000 for rent (or whatever) on this month's budget, and it stays there green and pretty until it gets spent next month. Then once you get paid next month, allocate some of that money towards the following month's rent. And so on. Once you are able to do this for most of your expenses, now you're riding a one-month cushion.
Oh yeah, one more thing. When you're going to look at whether you can "afford to" (within your budget) go out to another restaurant or whatever you want to do, DO NOT look at your bank account balance. I almost never log in to my bank's website anymore. You may only look at your Category balances within YNAB. For this I love using the YNAB app on my phone. It's not very useful for adjusting your budget, but it's great for entering transactions as you go (the best way to do it...when you import from your bank it'll automatically match imported transactions with the ones you manually entered) and for checking your category balances before you make that purchase.
Last edited by Rumline; 02-13-2017 at 11:44.
I meant to tell you that I saw your response today, but was driving so I've yet to read it yet. Thank you.
Just read through and you answered a lot of my questions, even ones I haven't asked yet. Thank you again. I'll have to go through my accounts and re-read your help here a few times to square everything away.
If you're not looking at your bank account to see what you can afford, where do you look? For example, I buy a gun maybe once every two years or so, but don't plan on creating a budget category for gun purchases. Where would I look for spending availability, To Be Budgeted?
Last edited by Irving; 02-14-2017 at 01:10.
I forgot you asked about budget categories. I just looked and I have 48 budget categories divided up among 11 category groups. Here they are. I order them by which ones we tend to overspend in most so that every time I open the budget, those categories are font and center.
- Food - restaurants, groceries, lunches
- Discretionary - big ticket items, gifts, entertainment, slush funds*
- Everyday Expenses - haircare, hygeine, clothing, household goods, dogs
- Cars - car payment, insurance, gas, maintenance, taxes & registration
- House - mortgage, repairs, improvements
- Monthly Bills - Student loans, cable/internet, phone, utilities, daycare, gardening
- Credit Card Payments
- Health - medical, dental, vision, doggie medical
- Education - (anything that is tax-deductible W/R/T education) Tuition, classroom supplies (my wife is a teacher), books & supplies, misc
- Misc - (catch-all category for bad stuff, should be $0 in this section) off-budget payments, interest & fees, Target uncategorized**
- Savings Goals - vacation, retirement, Health Savings Account, college
* Slush Funds: My wife and I each have our own "slush fund" budget categories. After all the bills are paid and before we start saving money, we allocate equal amounts of money per month to each of our slush fund categories. The amount changes every month based on our available funds. I like to think of this as the "marriage saver" category. We can save/spend that money however we want and the other spouse can't whine about it. This is where I save up for gun purchases or any other cool toys I want. Cool stuff that she and I both want or are otherwise for the whole family come out of the "big ticket items" category.
** Target Uncategorized: When you shop at a big box store like Target or Walmart and if you don't parse the receipt to break up the total into the several budget categories, then you really have no idea what you spent that money on. So this category is for stuff like that, and I HATE when stuff ends up here. We have an envelope in the "misc drawer" in our kitchen where we stick receipts from stores like that, and then I go through them once or twice a month when I'm balancing the budget. I just break out a calculator and add up all the line items from the receipt that belong in the same category. Then I go to that transaction line in the account register and in the budget category drop-down box I hit the "Split - Multiple Categories" button. Then just add whatever categories you need and the respective amounts, and it keeps track of how much from that transaction you have left to account for. So the only time that stuff ends up in the Target Uncategorized category is when we lost the receipt.
I'm just showing you what works for me, so far, subject to change. It's not "the" way to do it, but hopefully this gives you some ideas on how to organize your own budget.
I showed you what I do to handle gun/toy purchases, but to address the broader concern you expressed, you have to fit everything in to some category somehow. So your categories may need to be broad in scope sometimes. I think you can see that in my list above: some are very specific and some are pretty open-ended. And it's never perfect. Sometimes something you buy doesn't really fit anywhere. So you either say F it and stick it somewhere, or you re-organize your categories slightly. No harm no foul.
If you look at your bank account balance to determine if you can afford something, you will think you have Tons O Cash!! The problem is all of those dollars already have jobs: some is your next month's mortgage payment, some is for that car repair you need to make, some is for your car insurance bill which is about to hit in two months. You keep track of what dollar has what job in your YNAB budget; if you try to do that in your head, you're going to forget something and prematurely spend money that you really need for something else. So you have to break yourself of the habit of looking at your bank account and trying to remember what else needs to come out of that money. Account balances are useless now, YNAB Category Balances are all you should be caring about.
Yes you can just keep rolling money forward in the To Be Budgeted pool, but that's not using the tool to it's fullest. Don't worry about assigning it somewhere and then changing your mind later. If you assign money to a category and later on it turns out you need to spend that on a different category, it's a piece of cake: just click on the green bubble in the Available column that you want to move money from. A little box will pop up asking you how much money you want to move, and to what category. Problem solved, problem staying solved, Rangers lead the way.
Last edited by Rumline; 02-14-2017 at 11:20.
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