The Advantage of Having the Fewest Possible Moving Parts in your Budget

Remember, the goal is to make small improvements when attacking our goals.

We’ve learned from James Clear that we want to make small 1% improvements every single day. While this feels like we’re not making any progress in the moment, after a year of this steady progress, we find ourselves being 37x better over the previous year.

So if our goal becomes to live to budget another month as opposed to moving worlds to get that debt paid off your first month of budgeting, then we’re going to want to keep our budgets simple. Especially at the beginning.

I love YNAB. I literally have a shirt. And I like to wear it in public(shoutout to the other budget nerd dude who came up to talk because of that shirt).

But I’m going to be honest with you. YNAB is a little complicated. It really is a power tool that can do anything. I can really get my budget to behave in any way I want. But that will also mean that there is more of a learning curve with YNAB.

So how do you move forward with YNAB when it’s a little complicated?

First, you’re going to focus on living to budget another day. Second, you want to make your budget simple at first.

Stick with Your Debit Card at First

So, whenever you create a budget using software, you have the option to add and link all of your accounts to get your complete financial picture. This may be good if you’re using Mint or Personal Capital, but with every account and card you add, you’re adding another cog to your budget machine.

I recommend only adding your checking account at first. This keeps things easy. You’re only spending from one account.

If you have a credit card that you spend with to gain points, just hold off on that right now, yes even if you pay it off every month.

It doesn’t have to be forever, but it’s really wise to take some time to get used to a budget.

When You’re Only Spending from One Account, It’s Easy

It just really makes things easier and clearer. 

With your main checking account, you’re going to take the money that you have there and assign those dollars to jobs. If it’s only one account, that’s simple enough. With more, now we start getting complicated.

You won’t have to worry about which account the money is in.

You won’t have to learn how to transfer money at the beginning.

You won’t have to have to wrap your head around the way credit cards work in YNAB(It’s different, but genius).

All you have to worry about is the money that’s sitting in your checking account. It makes budgeting so much simpler. The cash sitting in your checking account is the only money that you’ll be planning to spend.

1. You’ll assign those dollars to categories.
2. Work to spend within your means by sticking to only spending the amounts that you budgeted.
3. Adjust when needed.

But that’s it. You won’t need to transfer money, update multiple accounts, or figure out how the juggling act will continue.

You Can Get More Complicated Later On

We certainly have a more complicated budgeting system. But we do try to keep it pretty simple.

If you’re someone who has to put everything on a credit card for the points, there’s a way you can do that, but try to add that in later. For now, set it aside and get used to spending cash using your debit card.

If you have other accounts you want to add and track, you can certainly do that later.

You can add savings accounts, other checking accounts, multiple credit cards, your mortgage. You can add all of that and as you confidently learn how the program works, you can just add layer by layer until it has your whole financial picture.

Keep it as Simple as Possible

Remember what the goal is here. The goal isn’t to be perfect your first month of budgeting. It’s to budget again the next month.

Remember how those new years resolutions always work? Your goal is to not be that person that stops. Your goal is to be the type of person that keeps it up with this, even if you don’t always do as well as you want.

Keeping it simple helps you do that.