{"id":47,"date":"2014-10-03T22:37:11","date_gmt":"2014-10-03T21:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portugalcrew.de\/wordpress\/?p=47"},"modified":"2016-01-09T10:25:54","modified_gmt":"2016-01-09T09:25:54","slug":"handling-debts-with-friends-in-ynab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/portugalcrew.de\/wordpress\/2014\/10\/handling-debts-with-friends-in-ynab\/","title":{"rendered":"Handling debts with friends in YNAB"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hi there,<\/p>\n<p>I was searching a solution for handling debts with friends in ynab.  And I would share my thoughts here, probably it will help You.<\/p>\n<p>If You think about debts You will find out that there are 2 types of them, regarding if You are the debitor or the creditor.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Type 1:<\/strong><br \/>\nI lend money to somebody<br \/>\nexample: I am in a restaurant with my friend. He has no money to pay his  meal so he asks me if I can give him 20$ to pay the bill.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Type 2:<\/strong><br \/>\nI borrow money off somebody<br \/>\nexample: I am shopping with a friend and want to buy a new album of my  favorite artist. Unfortunately I have no money with me so I ask my  friend if he can give me 20$ for the cd.<\/p>\n<p>How can this be done in YNAB ? In case 1 I have less money in my pocket than I can spent.<br \/>\nAnd in case 2 I have more money in my pocket than I can spent.<\/p>\n<p>The easiest solution would be: Write the debts down on a paper and ignore them in YNAB.<br \/>\nThis is because debts are 2 money transfers, which happens to different  times. I give some money to my friend and one week later he (hopefully)  will give it back to me. Or I borrow off my friend and next month I will  pay them back. So all things are ok then.<\/p>\n<p>The critical situation is the timeframe between both transactions,  because the money is out of balance. I cannot make a reconcile in this  phase because my spends differ from my accounts.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Solution with categories<\/strong><br \/>\nMy first solution was creating a new category in YNAB called \u201edebts for  peter\u201c. \u00a0When I lend money to peter I put this in this category. But  there was one problem: When my friend bought the cd for me there was no  money transfer. How could I enter it in YNAB ? The solution was: You can  split the action in two sub actions: My friend gives me 20$ and I buy  the cd by myself.<br \/>\nThe transactions in YNAB are:<br \/>\n<em>Type: Transaction, Account: Cash, Category: debts for peter, value: +20$<br \/>\nType: Transaction, Account: Cash, Category: music, value: -20$<\/em><\/p>\n<p>One week later I give the money back to peter:<br \/>\n<em>Type: Transaction, Account: Cash, Category: debts for peter, value: -20$<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And the Type 1 case worked also in this way:<br \/>\n<em>Type: Transaction, Account: Cash, Category: debts for peter, value: -20$<\/em><br \/>\n(because I do not spend anything there is only 1 Transaction)<\/p>\n<p>One week later peter gives the money back to me<br \/>\n<em>Type: Transaction, Account: Cash, Category: debts for peter, value: +20$<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This worked well for me. But there was a better solution.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Solution with accounts<\/strong><br \/>\nInstead of a category I created a debt-account. I choosed to make it an on budget account.<\/p>\n<p>Why was this a better way ? Because on categories You should only  having spends. But debts are in fact only money transactions (WHERE IS  MY MONEY ?)<\/p>\n<p>So the transfers in YNAB looks like:<\/p>\n<p><em>Type: Transfer to account \u201edebts for peter\u201c, Account: cash, \u00a0Category: not needed, value: +20$<\/em><br \/>\nNow I can buy the cd because I have enough money:<br \/>\n<em>Type: Transaction, Account: Cash, Category: music, value: -20$<\/em><\/p>\n<p>One week later:<br \/>\n<em>Type: Transfer to account \u201edebts for peter\u201c, Account: cash, \u00a0Category: not needed, value: -20$<\/em><\/p>\n<p>If I take a look the my accounts I can easily see the debts for peter  in red. Because it is an on budget account it affects my money  directly: I have 20$ more than I can spent because the owner of the 20$  is peter and not me.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Conclusion:<\/strong><br \/>\nIn general You can use categories or accounts for handling debts. But  accounts are better because categories are for spending purposes only.<br \/>\n<strong><br \/>\nOne last thing:<\/strong><br \/>\nThis system works even if the transactions are swapped and You have different payees.<br \/>\nExample: You grandmother put 100$ on You bank account and say: Merry christmas, 50$ is for You and 50$ is for Your brother.<\/p>\n<p>This is a type 2 debt because I owe my brother money. But the  direction differs: First I get the money, than I give it to my brother.  And I give the money to another person than the person from which I\u2019ve  got the money.<\/p>\n<p>Lets take a look how this can be handled in YNAB: Because I split the money I will make a Split Transaction:<\/p>\n<p><em>Payee: Granma, Category: Split, Value: 100$<br \/>\nSplit1: Type: Transaction, Account: mybank, \u00a0Category: Income, value: +50$<br \/>\nSplit2: Type: Transfer to account \u201eBrother debts&#8220;, Account: mybank, \u00a0Category: Not needed, \u00a0value: +50$<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Thanks for any feedback.<br \/>\nGreetings, Andy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi there, I was searching a solution for handling debts with friends in ynab. And I would share my thoughts here, probably it will help You. If You think about debts You will find out that there are 2 types of them, regarding if You are the debitor or the creditor. Type 1: I lend [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allgemein","category-computer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/portugalcrew.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/portugalcrew.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/portugalcrew.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portugalcrew.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portugalcrew.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/portugalcrew.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48,"href":"https:\/\/portugalcrew.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions\/48"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/portugalcrew.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portugalcrew.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portugalcrew.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}