YNAB – February Update

February was the first full month in which I used the YNAB system. My thoughts so far?

I love it. I don’t think I can recommend it enough.

This month, and for the next few months, I have to keep my spending very tight. I have some major expenses coming up, and I need to make sure that I have the money to spend on them. Pre-YNAB, I would have just tried to not spend much money, but not paid too much attention to what I was spending and where it is going. Now, I’m setting budget amounts and making sure I stay within them.

I admit, I do flex my budget. Right now, I’m working on building up a buffer, so when I had to put down a robe deposit for my choir robe, I just reduced my buffer by that amount. But in terms of smaller amounts, I just make my budget work for me. Overspent on eating out? Pull it from the grocery budget. And things like that. I managed to increase my buffer, as well as save a significant portion of money for my upcoming bills and vacation.

I’m still not to the point of living on last month’s income, which is what YNAB is built on. I’m close though, and I’m hoping that with the addition of my federal tax refund (which doesn’t so much feel like a refund, since it’s $300 less than what I owed to the state) and that by keeping March’s budget tight, I will be there by April.

I’m very impressed with my ability to keep my grocery budget down. Before, I struggled to keep it under $200. Now that I’ve been using YNAB, my grocery budget has easily been under $200, and this month, was the lowest it’s probably ever been.

Of course, my fridge is empty, so come Saturday, there will be some big grocery spending. But still, I think I can keep it under control. I take a calculator to the grocery store. I pay attention to what I’m spending, and what I should be spending on.

YNAB has been a great resource for me, and if you haven’t already, clearly, I recommend you check it out.

Megan Smith

Megan is a 30-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:

In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance.  It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information.  It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck.  While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.

While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.

Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.

So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan.  I needed to budget.  I needed to know what I was spending my money on.  I needed to prepare for the future.

I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way.  I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.