YNAB "on-the-fly" budget balancing

  • Hi all, this is related to a old thread about YNAB. I thought I'd create a new one since the other has had no activity since 2012. Please excuse the English, I do speak German but it is my third language and I am not very proficient with it.


    So, I have been using WISO MeinGeld Professional 365 for about a year now and have set up Rules, Categories and Budgets, among others. I recently made up budgets for each (custom) Lebensbereich I have set up. Some are Monthly and other are Yearly budgets. I would like to be able to redirect money from one budget to the other, so that I can balance all budgets each month. As a concrete example consider:


    Lebensbereich A: Monthly budget €100

    Lebensbereich B: Monthly budget €100

    Lebensbereich C: Monthly budget €100

    Lebensbereich D: Monthly budget €100

    Lebensbereich E: Yearly budget €500


    Let's say that by March I have already spent:

    - for A: €180 (€80 over budget)

    - for B: €80 (still €20 unspent)

    - for C: €60 (still €40 unspent)

    - for D: €110 (€10 over budget)

    - for E: €200 (€300 available)


    What YNAB enables, is to easily redirect money (for March only), from the budgets of B, C and E to A and D.


    This is explained in this short YNAB video:

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    I'd love to see this implemented in WISO MeinGeld or, if already available, learn how it could be done.


    Cheers and thanks a lot,

    Derio

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Please excuse the English

    Please excuse my English, too ;)

    What YNAB enables, is to easily redirect money (for March only), from the budgets of B, C and E to A and D.

    I don't understand the use of that procedure. The budget ist only relevant for the current month.

  • Hi Billy, thanks for taking the time to answer.


    You said

    Zitat

    The budget is only relevant for the current month.

    Let me be sure I get this straight. Each budget has a table with a bunch of rows, each of which sets the budget for that month ("Gültig ab"):



    So you say that I can adjust the budget each month (or leave it at the last value). That feels a bit clunky but it's ultimately fine. It's flexible and customizable as is the rest of MeinGeld.


    The main selling point of YNAB (the one differentiating it from the others) is actually: "Giving each dollar a job".. What I call it is "flexible budgeting" which eases moving money from one budget to the next, according to the needs of each month.


    How would I do this with MeinGeld?


    Example 1: Expected expense

    Let's say I know that my Transport budget will be €500 higher this month because my car's insurance is due. I do want to keep my Overall budget under control so I will move money around (subtract from "Freizeit" and "Hobby" let's say) so that these €500 are "covered"


    The way to do this in MeinGeld would be something like:

    - Realise I need to budget for car insurance

    - add €500 to Transport to the month's budget

    - subtract €300 from Freizeit's monthly budget

    - subtract €200 from Hobby's monthly budget

    - then, next month, I need to remind myself to reset these values to their "baseline".


    Example 2: Damage control

    At the end of the month I notice that the budgets of two of my Lebensbereiche are in the red. This is the example from my original post.

    If I want to have all budgets "green", in MeinGeld I would need to:

    - look for unspent € in budgets (if any!)

    - manually add and subtract from various budgets, while making sure I don't over or undershoot.

    - then, for next month, remind myself to reset these values to their "baseline".


    Case in point, this is how my MeinGeld budgets look for a specific month.


    The YNAB "rebalancing" approach would help to eliminate most of these reds, without breaking the budget. Doing it manually in MeinGeld though, like I just described, would be more trouble than it's worth..


    I do love MeinGeld more and more as I am getting the hang of it. But I think this feature cannot be "simulated" using the current budget tooling. A "transfer" function would be needed.


    Or am I missing something?


    Thank you for your input!

    derio

  • Have you additionally tried to use the "Finanzprognose" which will show you the cashflow from the selected account? If you use "Zahlungsverkehr" to setup all known and expected payments in date and value and select the correspondnd "Buchungsstandort" in the details of these area, you will see the resulting cashflow in "Finanzprognose". These is another way to control your assets.


    Falk

  • Hi Falk,


    I looked into Finanzprognose a bit. It seems useful so that you can know what to expect when you have many regular transactions. My problem is the opposite. While my income is pretty stable, my spending in each category can be irregular. So by"rebalancing" I would be able to more easily keep the total expenses stable even when the individual budgets might vary from month to month.


    Regards

    derio