Author Topic: Help calculating savings rate in YNAB or use Personal Capital/Mint  (Read 2197 times)

dmac680chi

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Hello forum members,

This officially I think is my first actual post so here it goes. I'm a YNAB user and love to use it for basic budgeting. I say basic because I'm unemployed (recently graduated) but should be getting a job rather soon. As such I would like to monitor my savings rate and ensure that I try to increase this every year if I can.

I understand that savings rate can be a complicated issue. That said I thought it would be easy with using YNAB as it shows your income and expenses. The thing is though this doesn't take into account tracking accounts into the income and expenses report.

I'm a user of Personal Capital and could start checking Mint if needed with my accounts if this would work.

Specifically, as for savings rate, I'd like to calculate the amount of money I've added to investment accounts each month in addition to living expenses and divide that against my salary. I think that makes sense unless it makes sense only in my head.

The goal would be to maintain a spreadsheet that I would update at the start of every month with recording the previous month's savings rate. Then I'd like to track on a per month basis and per year to hope to constantly go up.

I'd greatly appreciate any assistance or help, thanks!


catccc

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Re: Help calculating savings rate in YNAB or use Personal Capital/Mint
« Reply #1 on: June 15, 2017, 07:47:57 AM »
There are so many threads about calculating savings rates:
https://www.google.com/search?q=calculate+savings+rate+site%3Aforum.mrmoneymustache.com


Specifically for YNAB, you can put your investment accounts in as off budget accounts, create a budget category for investments, and basically track contributions, but not the actual investment account balance.  One tricky thing in YNAB will be accounting for savings that are already taken out of your paycheck if you report your income net in YNAB.  You'll have to add back things like 401K deductions as "income" and then have it "expensed" in the budget category for investments.

SheepDog

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Re: Help calculating savings rate in YNAB or use Personal Capital/Mint
« Reply #2 on: June 15, 2017, 09:05:51 AM »
After you do all those things catccc stated, you can go to the reports tab and click on the net worth button.

It will show you a nice little bar graph and a stats column showing you if each month was a positive or negative on your NW and how much you increased or decreased it since you started tracking it.

Also check out the income VS expense tab and it breaks down exactly where your money is going.  While YNAB doesn't flat out calculate the savings rate for you, its pretty easy to extrapolate the info needed and figure it out.

I've been a YNAB user for many years and it has helped so much in keeping an eye on my money.

 

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