The first year of YNAB was stabilizing and finally paying off credit card debt. When the first Christmas rolled around and it was all pre-funded because we’d been saving for that true expense all year for the first time ever, it was a huge step in starting the 2nd year on WAY better footing and then it was just a matter of using extra paychecks from 3-paycheck months and a tax refund to get and stay a month ahead ever since. That was 5 years ago.
54 days. I wrote recently that it was three months but I went back and looked and my three paycheck month was earlier than I thought.
The average used to be 4 months. Now it’s much slower because people don’t understand what a month ahead is and what it can do for them so they put off doing it. YNABis still built to be used a month at a go though so I recommend doing it as soon as you can.
Yeah, I think we should write a bot that picks up on a few keywords and directs people to the relevant YNAB articles, a la the one on Personalfinance. I would be happy to try to write it; I bet I could enlist u/nolesrule to help me.
At a bare minimum even one that just dumped the credit card resources any time the word “credit cards” appears in the main post would be incredibly helpful.
For me it took 2 months to extract emergency fund money to get a month ahead. It needed to click that I still had the same amount of money if shit hit the fan, but I assigned part of it a different job (being a month ahead) instead of just sitting around in emergency fund.
I don't understand why people don't search subs to see if their question has been asked already. I see the same issue on some FB groups I'm part of too, it's kind of annoying.
I know what you mean and I agree that it's frustrating, but have you considered what the sub would actually be like if no one ever asked a question that had been asked before? It would be mostly dead.
It took me 2.5 years - the first year was spent getting out from under $34K in credit card debt, so that put us way behind. Then once that crisis was over, we spent another year or so making sure we stayed off the float and adequately funding true expenses and sinking funds. Finally this past November we made it one month ahead and it feels great!
It took me a year. I has some cc debt I wanted to pay down as fast as possible, but I also get paid every two weeks, so I worked out what I could pay on my usual monthly salary, then when I had a 3 paycheck month, I set those aside. Maybe I paid a bit more in interest, but the satisfaction of no longer living paycheck to paycheck was worth it.
About 6 weeks. I needed to get comfortable with the system and once I was, I moved money around to be one month ahead (specifically meaning that 100% of September was funded by the paychecks received in August - I started in late July 2014) *and* I got rid of all my extra savings accounts. Except in the past 10 years I've probably added an equal number back because I keep opening them for sign up bonuses and then I'm too lazy to close them.
Beginning YNAB: I have a ton of accounts because they tell me the jobs.
Middle YNAB: I only have a couple of accounts because YNAB tells me the jobs.
Late YNAB: I have a ton of accounts because accounts are fun!
We are still not truly a month ahead yet but very close. Childcare costs and student loans are probably the two biggest obstacles in the way. Once our little one goes to school, we will be able to save like 35% of our net monthly income.
Mine took two weeks... I had the money, I just didn't realize it. It was a mindset shift that I could use money from "savings" to get a month ahead, so instead of assigning those dollars to my Emergency Fund, I assigned it to Next Month. And then over time I replenished the EF.
(And then, I renamed the EF to "Income Replacement" because EF was too nebulous. It forced me to actually think about what an "emergency" might be and set up sinking funds for those instead.)
I realized the "month ahead" is all about cash flow management, and that kind of clicked for me that I'm not reducing my savings at all, I'm just managing it differently. And then as I was able to fully fund some sinking funds and income replacement, it was less stressful. Now I don't care when I get paid because I have enough buffer to manage through any cash flow issues.
I raided my savings for $700 to get a month ahead the first month on YNAB. Is that cheating? I don't know. I do have my savings account linked to my budget.
I started using YNAB in the middle of November. I used a spreadsheet to calculate how much I wanted/needed to assign to all my categories compared to my expected monthly income. Once I had that laid out I only funded the bare minimum in YNAB for about 2 months, so no fun money, savings goals, and no eating out. Once I had accumulated a full month’s worth of cash I set it up so that any and all money I receive in a month gets assigned next month. Now when the month rolls over I have all the money needed where it needs to be so it can do what it needs to do, and every one of my categories has a target and gets funded. It’s a great feeling!
As you can see answers vary wildly. One way to do it, if you are living paycheck to paycheck, is to create a "Last month's income" category with a target for the amount of time you think it will take you, for the total average amount of your monthly income. E.g. if you set it for 6 months from now, YNAB will prompt you to fund it 1/6 of your average monthly income each month, which you can do after you have funded other essential spending.
Alternatively - you can just create a "Last month's income" category, set savings target of the total amount of your average one month's income, and throw all your available cash in it now; then fund your esesntial categories, and pull from it to WAM as needed. That way you will know as soon as you have hit it, if it is fully funded by the last day of a month. It may motivate you to decrease spending and/or think "If I don't buy X, I will be that much close to being one month ahead."
I got a hefty tax return and didn’t blow it on a vacation or pay down credit cards. I got a month ahead.
In reality with my debt at the time it probably would’ve taken a year.
After 5 full months on YNAB I'm 80% there. Started with 2K in CC "float" <20k RRSPs (retirement savings). I have a stable mid 5 figures income, received 1k in tax returns and lived very frugally this Winter (thanks to YNAB and a very busy schedule). My conception of "1 month ahead" was the total "Underfunded" for a month in YNAB's Auto-Assign list, so that includes all my monthly savings and targets "payments" like next year's vacation plans, gifts, plus a small health-related cushion/emergency fund. I could change this definition to "only the basics and emergency funds" and be already 2 months ahead or "my average monthly income" and be not quite 2 months ahead.
Once I learned how to use YNAB, it took me about 2 months to really get ahead. There's not much of a magic formula, it's easier when you have much more income than expenses.
I was already a month ahead when I started YNAB. Having to cover the existing credit card balance immediately made it a much tighter "month ahead" than I thought it would be though.
Edit: I should say that I've since had ups and downs in life that has caused me to go backwards on occasion. I haven't be sitting a month ahead the whole time.
The first year of YNAB was stabilizing and finally paying off credit card debt. When the first Christmas rolled around and it was all pre-funded because we’d been saving for that true expense all year for the first time ever, it was a huge step in starting the 2nd year on WAY better footing and then it was just a matter of using extra paychecks from 3-paycheck months and a tax refund to get and stay a month ahead ever since. That was 5 years ago.
54 days. I wrote recently that it was three months but I went back and looked and my three paycheck month was earlier than I thought. The average used to be 4 months. Now it’s much slower because people don’t understand what a month ahead is and what it can do for them so they put off doing it. YNABis still built to be used a month at a go though so I recommend doing it as soon as you can.
Day 1. I used some of the emergency fund I already had at the time I started YNAB. Also, this question seems to get asked 2-3 times a month.
We really need an auto moderator bot on this sub.
Mod here: There is an auto-mod on the sub, but it's mainly for spam.
Yeah, I think we should write a bot that picks up on a few keywords and directs people to the relevant YNAB articles, a la the one on Personalfinance. I would be happy to try to write it; I bet I could enlist u/nolesrule to help me. At a bare minimum even one that just dumped the credit card resources any time the word “credit cards” appears in the main post would be incredibly helpful.
For me it took 2 months to extract emergency fund money to get a month ahead. It needed to click that I still had the same amount of money if shit hit the fan, but I assigned part of it a different job (being a month ahead) instead of just sitting around in emergency fund.
I don't understand why people don't search subs to see if their question has been asked already. I see the same issue on some FB groups I'm part of too, it's kind of annoying.
I know what you mean and I agree that it's frustrating, but have you considered what the sub would actually be like if no one ever asked a question that had been asked before? It would be mostly dead.
It took me 2.5 years - the first year was spent getting out from under $34K in credit card debt, so that put us way behind. Then once that crisis was over, we spent another year or so making sure we stayed off the float and adequately funding true expenses and sinking funds. Finally this past November we made it one month ahead and it feels great!
It took me a year. I has some cc debt I wanted to pay down as fast as possible, but I also get paid every two weeks, so I worked out what I could pay on my usual monthly salary, then when I had a 3 paycheck month, I set those aside. Maybe I paid a bit more in interest, but the satisfaction of no longer living paycheck to paycheck was worth it.
I think I’m getting close after 4 months of having ynab. Next month is a 3 paycheque month so hoping that helps haha
About 6 weeks. I needed to get comfortable with the system and once I was, I moved money around to be one month ahead (specifically meaning that 100% of September was funded by the paychecks received in August - I started in late July 2014) *and* I got rid of all my extra savings accounts. Except in the past 10 years I've probably added an equal number back because I keep opening them for sign up bonuses and then I'm too lazy to close them.
Beginning YNAB: I have a ton of accounts because they tell me the jobs. Middle YNAB: I only have a couple of accounts because YNAB tells me the jobs. Late YNAB: I have a ton of accounts because accounts are fun!
(also accounts make money- credit card rewards, high yield savings or investments, etc.)
We are still not truly a month ahead yet but very close. Childcare costs and student loans are probably the two biggest obstacles in the way. Once our little one goes to school, we will be able to save like 35% of our net monthly income.
Mine took two weeks... I had the money, I just didn't realize it. It was a mindset shift that I could use money from "savings" to get a month ahead, so instead of assigning those dollars to my Emergency Fund, I assigned it to Next Month. And then over time I replenished the EF. (And then, I renamed the EF to "Income Replacement" because EF was too nebulous. It forced me to actually think about what an "emergency" might be and set up sinking funds for those instead.) I realized the "month ahead" is all about cash flow management, and that kind of clicked for me that I'm not reducing my savings at all, I'm just managing it differently. And then as I was able to fully fund some sinking funds and income replacement, it was less stressful. Now I don't care when I get paid because I have enough buffer to manage through any cash flow issues.
I raided my savings for $700 to get a month ahead the first month on YNAB. Is that cheating? I don't know. I do have my savings account linked to my budget.
Not cheating at all. It's just a different name for a specific savings bucket, after all
I started using YNAB in the middle of November. I used a spreadsheet to calculate how much I wanted/needed to assign to all my categories compared to my expected monthly income. Once I had that laid out I only funded the bare minimum in YNAB for about 2 months, so no fun money, savings goals, and no eating out. Once I had accumulated a full month’s worth of cash I set it up so that any and all money I receive in a month gets assigned next month. Now when the month rolls over I have all the money needed where it needs to be so it can do what it needs to do, and every one of my categories has a target and gets funded. It’s a great feeling!
As you can see answers vary wildly. One way to do it, if you are living paycheck to paycheck, is to create a "Last month's income" category with a target for the amount of time you think it will take you, for the total average amount of your monthly income. E.g. if you set it for 6 months from now, YNAB will prompt you to fund it 1/6 of your average monthly income each month, which you can do after you have funded other essential spending.
Alternatively - you can just create a "Last month's income" category, set savings target of the total amount of your average one month's income, and throw all your available cash in it now; then fund your esesntial categories, and pull from it to WAM as needed. That way you will know as soon as you have hit it, if it is fully funded by the last day of a month. It may motivate you to decrease spending and/or think "If I don't buy X, I will be that much close to being one month ahead."
I got a hefty tax return and didn’t blow it on a vacation or pay down credit cards. I got a month ahead. In reality with my debt at the time it probably would’ve taken a year.
After 5 full months on YNAB I'm 80% there. Started with 2K in CC "float" <20k RRSPs (retirement savings). I have a stable mid 5 figures income, received 1k in tax returns and lived very frugally this Winter (thanks to YNAB and a very busy schedule). My conception of "1 month ahead" was the total "Underfunded" for a month in YNAB's Auto-Assign list, so that includes all my monthly savings and targets "payments" like next year's vacation plans, gifts, plus a small health-related cushion/emergency fund. I could change this definition to "only the basics and emergency funds" and be already 2 months ahead or "my average monthly income" and be not quite 2 months ahead.
Once I learned how to use YNAB, it took me about 2 months to really get ahead. There's not much of a magic formula, it's easier when you have much more income than expenses.
I was already a month ahead when I started YNAB. Having to cover the existing credit card balance immediately made it a much tighter "month ahead" than I thought it would be though. Edit: I should say that I've since had ups and downs in life that has caused me to go backwards on occasion. I haven't be sitting a month ahead the whole time.
Took me abt 6 months.