How the “No Forecasting Expenses” Thing is Going

Posted on by Debt Dummy

Here is a quick update on my decision not to forecast in my budget.

So since I wrote this post about no longer forecasting expenses, I have had one try at budgeting without the spreadsheet.   I have to say that it was a bit of a difficult transition, that is, I really wanted to look at the spreadsheet.  I was worried that without the spreadsheet, I would forget about some category and fail to allocate money toward it.  I resisted the urge to look at the spreadsheet until I had budgeted all the money from that current paycheck, and then I allowed myself to look at it at the end, just to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything major.  It turns out, I hadn’t missed anything, and I was able to do my budgeting quite successfully without the spreadsheet.  To be clear, I am budgeting with the app called YNAB, which has my goals, my upcoming expenses, and my monthly data all plugged into it already, so I really didn’t need the spreadsheet, but it was still hard to let go.

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So while I didn’t technically use the spreadsheet to budget this week per se, I still consulted it at the end.  The real challenge will be ditching it entirely, and functioning solely out of the YNAB budgeting software.  I will update later on how this goes. Wish me luck!

As always, thank you for reading,

Debt Dummy

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Published by Debt Dummy

I am a recent graduate and Registered Psychotherapist who was NOT brought up with any knowledge about personal finance, nor any real examples to look to. Now, with my mountain of student debt, I begin my foray into the world of personal finance.

4 thoughts on “How the “No Forecasting Expenses” Thing is Going”

  2. I want to take a closer look at the podcast you reference where budget forecasting is bad. That seems intriguing to me. I have been using YNAB for 3-4 years and absolutely love it, but generally, our budget categories don’t change too much from month to month. In fact, I forecast future months by putting “testing deposits” that I never mark cleared (I then adjust them as the money gets deposited). This has helped me in planning where our debt should hopefully be in the future. It has worked well, but we have a fairly steady amount of income we bring in every month. I can see how that would be much harder to do with fluctuating income. I will say that we end up moving money around from categories to cover overspending when it happens (looking at you dining out fund!). Thanks for sharing!

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    1. Hi Chris! I totally hear you, I end up moving money around all the time! The episode is number 348 of the YNAB podcast. Here is the link: https://youtu.be/UwFRADMdQGc
      I never put future money in YNAB, but I used to do it in an excel spreadsheet but I found I was making bargains with my spreadsheet and saying “oh, well I can buy this thing now, because look at this money I will have in the future in my spreadsheet!” The result for me was that I was sabotaging my longer term goals a bit. I am hoping that this new no forecasting thing will help me avoid that! You’ll have to tell me what you think about that podcast once you listen to it. 😊

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