Speaking of YNAB, one of my buddies is a developer there, and I’m seeing him next week. Anything I should bug him about?
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In.
For the first time in over a decade I haven’t budgeted for the past three months. It’s been incredibly liberating but I’m starting to have anxiety after adding a few recurring expenses last month.
My favorite Halloween creature are bats! I love bats. They are adorable and eat Junebugs and mosquitoes.
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Good job, Will! I loved it. 
I’m realizing that October is going to be a super spendy month, even if we don’t have to buy any cat stuff. I’m planning to buy extra food (to meal prep for NaNoWriMo), the quarterly water bill is due, and the car insurance is due. But it will all be budgeted!
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Oh, are we voting for favorite Halloween animals? Black cat, obviously.
(I have a black cat, does that make me a witch?)
I am tentatively, in… I stopped tracking when my parents were here (although I have all the receipts), and UGH.
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ALL OF THESE KITTIES ARE SO PRETTY
I love that this is just turning into “black cat appreciation thread”. The OMD hive mind will turn any personal finance discussion into pets or plants.
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Mostly tell him I love YNAB. I do wish I had a short url I could bookmark to my main budget.
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I’ve just decided that I need to buy craft supplies so my spider plants can go as spiders for Halloween. I’m still deciding on what costumes to try with the kittens. My grown up cat doesn’t do clothing, collars or hats so I guess she’ll be going as herself.
Will include a detailed breakout of Halloween spending in my budget because sometimes I talk about money too!
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Yes, yes it will. 
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Oof, I really should do this. I just dropped a shitton of money, I’m embarrassed to say how much, on a bucket-list vacation that is scheduled for February, so my discretionary spending needs to go WAY down so that I can pay that off (or more accurately, so that I can rebuild my e-fund because I’m probably going to take a chunk out of savings, pay this off so I don’t accrue interest, and then put the money back into savings).
October is like the absolute hardest time of year for me to do this, though; my personal aesthetic runs toward the goth and spooky so at this time of year I buy things that I use all year round (currently eyeing some skeleton plates I saw at Pier 1, and, like, I buy enough Halloween-scented body/bath products for the entire year…).
Those of you who read my journal over at the other forum know that I struggle mightily with budgeting. Because I have not been able to max either my 401k nor my IRA. So, it’s like, how do I justify a budget for anything other than the absolute bare necessities? I feel like I shouldn’t, like I should have zero fun money and a very austere grocery budget, and, like, never ever take a Lyft even if it’s below zero or snowing or thunderstorming because my public transport is already paid for (unlimited pretax monthly pass through my work).
We all know that that’s a recipe for budget failure, if you don’t block out any money at all for spending or fun. Yet, I find it impossible to figure out a reasonable number for non-needs, when I’m not meeting my savings goals - which in my mind means that a “reasonable number” should be zero!
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THIS MAKES ME SO HAPPY
I cannot afford to max out my 401(k) and I contribute something like $60/month to an IRA. I cannot imagine how much stress I would feel if I had to make those numbers fit; I have a lot of admiration for how tight you work your numbers!
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Seriously, though, SO much money, SO SO SO much money. Boyfriend is going to reimburse me some of his share in chunks, but he probably can’t manage a 50-50 split, which is fine because this is my thing that I was pushing for. Credit card says OUCH and is crying in agony.
(Like, so much money that I’m not admitting that I’ve even done this on my journal because I’m going to get facepunches.)
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I dunno; I kinda think that a lot of your journal followers would be happy you’re doing this for yourselves 
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Okay. I spent alllll the money last month.
October challenge!
Cc and debit card allowed for transit, Christmas gifts, emergencies, baby stuff
Cash only for
food
entertainment
Toiletries
household
Maternity stuff
etc
I will withdraw 300 and put 100 in the backup wallet in the secret place. I will prebook camping, but if I need to charge something for camping, that’s okay too.
Realistically this is more than I normally spend except since July I have spent every thing.
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I’m pretty sure @aaronpk has mentioned the way they do credit cards is different from YNAB4 and really weird and awkward if you aren’t a person who holds credit card debt over month to month, IE if you pay it off every month it’s really uncomfortable to use the latest version of YNAB. This has pretty much put me off upgrading (that and the annual fee BUT I’d honestly come around to the idea of the annual fee IF the credit card thing worked well for me.)
Never have I felt so at home as when I’m embraced into the fold of the OMD Hive Mind.
EDIT: I forgot to mention my favourite halloween animal thing in my first post because I didn’t read properly. Um. We don’t do halloween here, but I’m pretty sure my cats sleeping inside a pumpkin or dressed up as a pumpkin would be my favourite thing.
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Not quite. I don’t hold a balance on any cards and it works fine for those. I don’t want to turn this into a YNAB support thread, but this problem definitely still exists and is kind of confusing, so I’m starting a new forum thread to document it and we can talk about it there.
Please check out the new forum thread and share this example with your friend!
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It pains me to pass up a cat sticker, but I’ve officially reached the “don’t care about money, buying food for health and convenience” point and my grocery bill is the one main area where I actually have to work at sticking to a budget. Solved that by deciding I don’t care right now! But I’ll be cheering everyone on and appreciating the black cats.
@TrisPrior, where are you going on vacation?
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Yep, same here, that’s why I skipped that bit.
Trying to work out how I’ll handle the “month” as we get paid fortnightly.
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I just joined the forums to participate in this challenge. I’m recently debt-free - end of August, actually - and trying to re-formulate my budget. I want to enjoy myself a bit more than I did while in repayment mode but I also have some big savings goals (emergency fund and trip to Europe).
One of the ways I “treated myself” while in repayment mode was too much fast food. So, my Budgetober goal is to spend no more than $25 on fast food and no more than $75 on eating out. I track my spending in YNAB, so I’ll just keep to that.
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Welcome and congratulations on becoming debt free! 
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