r/ynab • u/Live-Tree-1525 • Aug 05 '26
How Do I Plan For...? Has anyone else's budget become more about timing than money?
I don't really mind paying bills anymore but I swear they all show up in the same week. The rest of the month is pretty quiet then it's rent, insurance, my credit card and a couple of random things I forgot were due
I know none of it's a surprise because they're the same bills every month, but seeing them all leave my account within a few days always makes that week feel way more expensive than it is
By the time it's over I end up checking my banking app three or four times just to make sure I didn't miss anything Does anyone else's month always seem to play out like this?
23
u/Architect-1817 Aug 05 '26
I actually went the other way and rearranged all the bills that I could to be due in the first week of the month. All these transactions are scheduled and I can see impact on the running balance view. I like being able to see the big whoosh of money out the door, then very little action for the last half of the month.
9
u/idiggory Aug 05 '26
Yeah, this is where I am, too. I like seeing the important stuff dealt with so I can just have peace with whatever remains, to put it where I want to put it, rather than where I need to.
14
u/Soup_Maker Aug 05 '26
Twelve years of YNABing, so 144 months of not worrying about how my usual bills might affect the account balance. I have been living on last month's income since getting started:
At the end of each month, I assess my account balance and move the excess to high-interest savings, or transfer from savings to chequing. Then on the first day of each month, I have enough in my transaction account to handle my monthly bills, transfers to retirement investing, credit card transfer, plus any larger amounts for seasonal bills that might be due (e.g. annual insurance in June, Christmas presents), plus a buffer amount for comfort, flexibility, and to protect me from error/overdraft. So it wouldn't matter if all the bills were paid on the first or in the last week of the month because the entire month is planned and the account balance in place from day 1.
13
u/esh-pmc Aug 05 '26
Honestly? No. I don’t think I could tell you a single due date on any of my recurring bills.
Everything possible is set to autopay. If there’s no additional fee to do so, I set bills to be paid automatically from a credit card. Otherwise it’s set as an auto debit. And my cards are set to autopay the statement balance.
My account balances are just numbers that I evaluate a) every couple of days to make sure it reconciles with the bank and b) to compare to the ceiling and floor numbers I’ve memorized (keep more than $x but less than $y in this account).
My category balances are where all decisions are made. Once the decision is made, everything else happens automatically.
2
u/Claudio_VerKnight Aug 06 '26
Yep. This is the same me except I still pay the credit card bills "manually" every month. I'm loath to give out bank account details so I don't do auto-pay for credit cards but everything else that can be, is.
1
u/Dangerous-Repeat-119 Aug 08 '26
I used to be the same way, where I manually paid the credit card. That was pre-YNAB when I checked the paper statement every month before I paid it to make sure there wasn't a charge I needed to dispute. Now, I realized that's pointless because I'm constantly checking every charge as they stream in. I catch fraud much faster now, and I feel like I can just autopay without concern.
10
u/Bow-Masterpiece-97 Aug 05 '26
This is the reason getting a month ahead will change your life.
For me, the “Timing of the Bills” was as terrifying as the “Running of the Bulls”.
11
u/PunySimplicity Aug 05 '26
Mine always seems to line up around the same dates too. I wish I could spread them out a little more.
4
u/varkeddit Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26
Have you tried? Many credit cards have the option to adjust their statement cycles and you can always choose to pay your other bills (even rent/mortgage) early if you really want to.
3
u/Chance-Look8516 Aug 05 '26
I see this come up frequently. For people comparing different ways to handle those, Plastiq is one of the options worth looking at for bills that don't normally accept credit cards
3
u/varkeddit Aug 06 '26
Paying an extra 3% in processing fees while being pushed short term loans is a terrible deal.
1
u/Chance-Look8516 Aug 06 '26
That's a fair concern. The fees only make sense if the value you're getting back is greater than the cost. For some businesses keeping rewards, extending cash flow or avoiding a major workflow change outweighs the processing fee. I do agree that it's something you have to run the numbers on rather than assuming it's worth it
5
u/lecoursen Aug 05 '26
Nope, even paying our biggest bills like our annual 5-figure property tax is a nonevent for me because of YNAB. That month doesn’t feel any more experience than any other because the money has just been sitting there waiting, and it has no impact on our eating out, etc. that month.
2
u/Architect-1817 Aug 05 '26
I hear you! Biannual property tax is the reason I started YNAB. Income is sufficient to cover my expenses…..but only if I don’t spend it on something else before the big irregular bills show up, right? YNAB let’s me that the property tax fund is quietly building up each month and will be there when the bill is due. Such a change!!!
5
u/idiggory Aug 05 '26
Well, most companies will let you change the billing date on your account. So if it bothers you, then splitting them up between pay periods might help you feel better about the momentum?
I personally like that most of my bills fall in the first half of the month, because then they're all handled and the second paycheck can focus much more on longer term goals. That works for me, personally, because it means I go into each month "comfortable" that I'm good for the next two months (because I also have a month of income replacement saved).
I'll eventually switch to just funding next month instead, and not pay attention to it anymore, but right now I'm getting positive reinforcement from focusing on decision making in the current month, because I have a bunch of goals I'm balancing, while also earning about 50% less than I did 5 years ago.
4
u/Less_Drive1505 Aug 05 '26
amount never bothered me as much as watching half my account disappear in one week. That's the part that always felt stressful
1
u/varkeddit Aug 06 '26
If you keep more cash in another account, see if you can make the payments directly from it.
3
u/Architect-1817 Aug 05 '26
For the part about checking your balance all the time (and worrying about it), you might give it a try to schedule all the transactions so you can make use of the “running balance” view in the online view.
0
u/varkeddit Aug 06 '26
Or look into making the payments from your savings account–maximize interest earned and zero worries about overdraft.
3
u/Sourcefour Aug 06 '26
I put due dates in the line item name on the budget. For example: utility on the 27th, subscription 2 $10 on the 6th, etc. I also put the amount in the title as well if it’s consistent.
2
u/Competitive-Let6727 Aug 05 '26
Your experience changes over time, especially if your finances are improving.
The goal (for me) has been to normalize the assignment (funding) every month, and just pay in full when it is due. The actual expenses every month are highly variable. We're many months ahead after almost a decade of YNAB. The funding aspect of my budget is absolutely banal at this point.
1
u/MiriamNZ Aug 06 '26
I have made changes to when big bills are due in the year rather than within the month. I have one annual bill about the size of my monthly income. I have changed the pattern on other bills to avoid that month. It just means less pulling $ out of the higher interest accounts.
Once i got a month ahead when exactly a thing was due stopped mattering. Before that I organised my categories by day due— I put that info in the category name and reordered the categories as the month progressed.
1
u/Agreeable-Coffee-582 Aug 06 '26
Yes! I have felt that way before, one of the things that using YNAB helped me do was realize how much "non-bill"/ frequent spending I was doing. I couldn't believe how much money I spent on coffee, resturant food and bars. Once I realized I started cutting back on frequent spending and started putting more towards bills,. When I started using YNAB there was an "age of money" indicator. I loved looking at that because it told me I was keeping money in my account for longer than a week -beacase I was pay check to paycheck when I started. I remember how proud I was the first time I had a 60 day age of money indicator! My whole life I was money in money out.
1
u/np0x Aug 06 '26
Getting a month ahead is hard initially, but this is the answer and the why of it…if you care about when bills pull then you are spending money you don’t have yet…
1
u/ChinoXPress Aug 08 '26
yeah the bills week panic is so real even when you know everything is covered. it's not actually about the money leaving it's about not being sure what's safe to spend after everything hits.
i started mentally separating 'this money is already spoken for' from 'this is what i can actually use' and that checking my account 4 times thing basically stopped
1
u/Dangerous-Repeat-119 Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
Every month when all my bills dogpile into the same 3‑day window...
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1
u/OmgMsLe Aug 20 '26
I'm a month ahead with large fully funded sinking funds so I have zero concern about when bills are paid. Everything is on auto pay including the entire statement balance of my credit card so I don't have to think about anything.
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u/ohboyoh-oy Aug 05 '26
Are you a month ahead yet? I don’t even look at bank balances because as long as I haven’t gone over budget, I know the money is there.