I’m struggling to wrap my head around the best way to replace YNAB by making use of pots and budgets. YNAB uses the envelope system where you allocate all your money to certain things such as bills as soon as you get paid.
I understand that I can create pots for DDs and SOs and other fixed expenses (even savings), that’s the easy part.
The bit I’m struggling with is, how can I handle variable expenses such as groceries and fuel ect? How do people handle variables in Monzo?
As for goals, is there any way to set a target date? I want to know if i’m going to hit my xmas saving goal on time.
“Salary sorter” is the feature that divvy’s up your income into pots automatically.
Personally I use pots for all expenses aside from the variable spends (groceries and eating out). All of my monthly direct debits come straight out of pots, and have standing orders to top up those pots with about 20% more than they need each month to build up an emergency fund. I have the goals for those pots set to 12 months worth of expenses as that’s my emergency fund goal, that way I can see how close I am to reaching my emergency fund.
For those variable spends, I leave enough in my account after topping up the pots to cover a typical month. Then I use category budgets to keep track of whether I’m under/over spending.
I also export the data and have my own financial spreadsheets that give me more detailed insights into how well I’m doing