I find myself increasingly annoyed that I can't find budgeting software that forecasts money flow on a weekly basis. Quicken comes relatively close, but it treats future expenses as though they are bills and not "envelopes". All I really want it to do is simply not try to reconcile my projected with my actuals. That and it's inability to handle pending payments makes it nearly completely useless to me.

YNAB is fine for beginners, but doesn't forecast. Same thing with mint.

I used to use Excel for budget balancing and projection. It worked fine, but was extremely tedious if we got behind by a week or two. Is there not professionally made software out there that can budget and forecast? Seems like such a simple ask.

Maybe something like QuickBooks online?

Never used this but this came up in a search and looked like what you were mentioning: https://www.mvelopes.com/plans/

That's exactly how my spreadsheet worked. I'd budget our future bills, gas/groceries, etc and we could estimate how much we could put towards savings and which week we'd be low.

I honestly don't know how people budget with the available tools out there right now. Seems like they only work for people who get paid once a month.

What are the limitations in YNAB? I use it exclusively.

Make your own categories. I have them grouped by "fixed," "variable," and "lifestyle." Fixed would be mortgage, insurance, property taxes, car payment. Variable would electricity, water, daycare, groceries, transportation, pay for use type bills. Lifestyle being the dining out, vacation, shopping, things I don't need but want to set money aside for.

These act as my envelopes. With my savings/checking I can forecast out say 6 months of fixed and variable expenses and then fill in the lifestyle stuff monthly with what is left over. As income comes in fund the next 6th months budget then your balance is lifestyle or savings. If you run short then budget less lifestyle.

Best I can tell, YNAB only does budgeting. Does not do forecasting...at least not on a weekly basis. Maybe I'm missing something.

YNAB's mentality is against forecasting, basically. You don't give dollars jobs before you have the dollars.

YNAB forecasts just fine.
I forecast for next month where I'm spending money I earn this month.

Week to week?

I'm getting the impression that you have irregular income or have a income structure that's highly variable.

No tool works well with this, as not many people actually fall into this category...and the math is difficult.

To put more words to the "buffer" - when you budget for the month using only dollars you have in your possession, then week to week doesn't matter...

diehard03 said:

---

YNAB's mentality is against forecasting, basically. You don't give dollars jobs before you have the dollars.

---

if you are doing YNAB correctly you are forecasting dollars in the bank out 90-120 days so that you are aging your money. Basically it wants you to the paycheck to paycheck mentality.

Philip J Fry said:

---

Week to week?

---

just find your spending envelopes in YNAB the first of the week. The fund the next week by adding more money to the monthly budget. Shouldn't be any worse than how your spreadsheet likely worked.

Might be best to spend some time and build your own spreadsheet. Not easy, nor fun, but payoff is a completely personal tailored approach.

Quote:

---

if you are doing YNAB correctly you are forecasting dollars in the bank out 90-120 days so that you are aging your money. Basically it wants you to the paycheck to paycheck mentality.

---

Sure, I am realizing that he's doesn't have a full months income banked to properly "buffer".

YNAB is pretty strange before that because you basically don't budget something you don't have the money for.

diehard03 said:

---

Quote:

---

if you are doing YNAB correctly you are forecasting dollars in the bank out 90-120 days so that you are aging your money. Basically it wants you to the paycheck to paycheck mentality.

---

Sure, I am realizing that he's doesn't have a full months income banked to properly "buffer".

YNAB is pretty strange before that because you basically don't budget something you don't have the money for.

---

You can set a monthly spending target per category, and it will show you if you have fully "filled the envelope" that month separate from how much is currently in it or spent. The goal is to fill the envelopes for future months with current income, but don't have to.

You can also set longer term goals in a category for savings and see your target vs timeline.

This must be what they've added to the online version over time.

Yeah, that really isn't compatible with how I like to budget. I don't like having extra money in a zero interest checking account. What gets us in trouble is rent week in California where pretty much my entire paycheck that hits checking is used up so smearing a month of income/bills over 4 weeks isn't helpful.

That said, I have allocations set up for bills, groceries, and misc. We've been doing so well financially that we've gotten a little lazy with keeping track of every penny. I'd like to get back to that as I think I can easily squeeze a little more out into the investment funds than we have been.

This process works for me. May not be for everybody, but it's gotten me out of my college debt and I'm happy with it.

It's tough to visualize what you're running up against. How often do you get paid in a month? Weekly?

I think I operate in a similar manner to OP and have tried a bunch of apps...always come back to my spreadsheet.

I do not live paycheck to paycheck and I have regular bi-weekly income. However I like to keep my checking account pretty bare and automate as much savings as possible into higher yield savings & investment accounts direct from my paychecks.

So because I keep my balance low, I like to keep an eye on weekly cash flow to make sure major bills don't stack up next to each other.

I know there are other ways to manage, but it's worked well for me for 15+ years. Except that I'm stuck with spreadsheets instead of apps...

Weekly.

Seems like a lot of work just to avoid having a months worth of expenses in your bank account.

It really shouldn't be though. All it takes is something that downloads the current bank transactions plus pending transactions and appends our future projected bills out a few months. Not a huge ask, but I've decided to revamp the ole spreadsheet and just do it myself.

I can think of better things to do with 4-5K than sit in a dumb checking account.

If you make a functional app that does this well, I would try/probably buy it. I've always managed cash to be bare minimum and use spreadsheets for that. almost like an escrow analysis.

I rarely have done this on the regular expenses of life, but like it at a high level for estimated taxes, irregular investment/debt retirements, out of the ordinary purchases/trips, etc... Essentially sensitivity testing cash balances before committing to new/big decisions and/or syncing up timing appropriately.

Are you on a Mac or PC?

I would actually like to see some spreadsheet examples if someone wouldn't mind sending. Obviously you can cut all the numbers out of course...I would just like to see the template.

Quote:

---

I can think of better things to do with 4-5K than sit in a dumb checking account.

---

You've pretty nailed why there's no product that does this. it's not something anyone really wants to deal with. There's very little value added for 99.99% interested in buying a financial product.

it's 5k once....ever. It's not like it's 5k a year or something. (and obviously, it's only as large as your expenses)

Huh. Not sure why you are taking this so personal. I like what I like. And just based on this thread alone, you're estimate of 0.01% of the population interested in something like this is incorrect.

And I should point out, YNAB is militantly opposed to forecasting. Even so far as calling it a "farce" on their page. It's hardly a farce. It's pretty ****ing simple math.

Quote:

---

Huh. Not sure why you are taking this so personal. I like what I like. And just based on this thread alone, you're estimate of 0.01% of the population interested in something like this is incorrect.

And I should point out, YNAB is militantly opposed to forecasting. Even so far as calling it a "farce" on their page. It's hardly a farce. It's pretty ****ing simple math.

---

I am not taking this personally. I was just trying to understand your use case. You are allowed to like what you like, but I don't know that you're getting a ton of real monetary value out of it. But that's ok too.

YNAB is opposed to it for human behavioral reasons. Their target market is getting overwhelmed with paying the bills of today and they are taking steps to ensure that you get off this "bill to bill" mindset.

If you manage to leave $25k in a high yield savings account rather thank your bank checking account, it might net you $300 or so over a year. I just don't see it as worth the effort to track, and only use the "move from checking" method non-monthly items like vacation savings, property tax, insurance, etc.

YNAB will allow for multiple accounts for one budget. It doesn't care if the money is in checking or high yield savings. It all shows up in categories.

But for what you want as a custom product a personalized spreadsheet is probably the way to go. If it's worth the return or piece of mind is a personal decision, as most things in personal finance

Comes down to our spending habits. I've learned long ago that money in the checking account will be spent and no amount of enveloping is going to correct that. This method is what works for us and has worked well for 20 years.

I don't get why this is so hard to grasp. Budgeting monthly is no different than how I do it. It's just on a different time scale.

Not hard to grasp what you are looking for now with further explanation.

No one makes a product like you want because:
-Most all work on monthly basis.
-The envelope systems only let you budget cash you have on hand, because that's the whole point of an envelope budget. Where that cash is doesn't matter.

Quote:

---

Comes down to our spending habits. I've learned long ago that money in the checking account will be spent and no amount of enveloping is going to correct that. This method is what works for us and has worked well for 20 years.

I don't get why this is so hard to grasp. Budgeting monthly is no different than how I do it. It's just on a different time scale.

---

If you're spending money in your account when you don't want to, then you simply aren't budgeting. That's the reality of it. Secondly, the logic of the envelope system is that you never look at your account balances. Income comes in and goes into an envelope...and you only ever look at an envelope when you are spending. What digital account those dollars are actually in are completely irrelevant.

I will give it to you - if you refuse to keep a months work of expenses in your checking account, then implementing an envelope system is hard because so much stuff get paid on non-weekly basis. That's why you keep a months of expenses in your account and it becomes moot.

Meh. Spent the weekend coding in VBA. problem solved.

And yes, we have a budget. We have allocations for bills and debt reduction. Just because just isn't how you do it, doesn't mean we are doing it wrong or not at all.

Quote:

---

Meh. Spent the weekend coding in VBA. problem solved.

And yes, we have a budget. We have allocations for bills and debt reduction. Just because just isn't how you do it, doesn't mean we are doing it wrong or not at all.

---

No one really cares whether you're doing it right or wrong. How you handle your money is your business.

You just seemed to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the envelope system is all. You were making blanket statements on how certain things do or do not work while having a very niche use case compared to how others might use it.