JackMorrissey / beyond-rule-4

YNAB Financial Independence (FIRE) Calculator
https://beyondrule4.jmmorrissey.com
MIT License
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Using Actual Expenses vs Budgeted for Monthly Expenses #70

Closed JackMorrissey closed 2 years ago

JackMorrissey commented 2 years ago

From email conversation with Jason:

The initial data I input to YNAB is the only current year, and your tool worked perfectly. But after I add the 2021 expense, I found that your tool is unable to pick up any expense numbers, all zeros, min 0, max 0, and mean 0. I logged out and logged in, still the same. I'm just wondering that is this a bug?

I found the reason. The data you are using is the assigned number, not the expenses. I only record the expenses but didn't assign the number, that's why the tool can not pick up any number. I'm just wondering if you can add an option that switches between assigned numbers and real expenses?

After thinking about this, isn't this just a bug? You can say I spend 300 on groceries every month, but if you actually spend 700, those numbers you're pulling in from the past are lies. Based on the new UI, YNAB will tell you next month starting money is "Left Over from Last Month". Pretty sure this used to also say "overspending from last month" and this number takes that into account. So that means that overspending just sort of disappears currently for BR4.

After patching this, my FI date went up 2 months 😭 haha. So you know it's correct. I also learned I was horrible at balancing the grocery budget in 2018. Would be cool if you could see this somehow... future tool opportunity.

/internal dialog. PR coming.

I'm just going to fix this and not add another option. So if you are here because your FI date just got farther, sorry ha. But here's the reason.