How to Budget for Cheerleading Expenses with YNAB: Part 1

I’m about to share my number 1 favorite digital budgeting tool of all time. (Yes, the My Cheer Budget workbooks are also amazing–but I print those out rather than use them in digital format). I’ve used YNAB (You Need a Budget) for my family budget for about 5 years, and it is truly a game-changer. 

You may be familiar with envelope budgeting, or cash stuffing. That’s where you have physical envelopes for various categories of spending and you put actual cash into each envelope. You might have an envelope for cheer uniforms, for competition travel, for monthly tuition. But personally, I almost never carry cash and don’t like the idea of keeping large amounts of cash in my house (and you know it would be a ton of cash just for cheer!). So the YNAB app will feel like a digital version of that same envelope system, designed to help you plan ahead and make every precious dollar work for you. In this series, I’ll show you how to set up a cheer-specific budget within YNAB, step-by-step. Let’s get started!

1. What is YNAB? YNAB is a budgeting app that uses zero-based budgeting, where you only work with the money you already have. Unlike many other budgeting methods, you won’t forecast and predict your monthly income. Just work with what you have: you will give every dollar a job. This helps you to control and plan your spending more efficiently and accurately throughout the year. Instead of using physical envelopes, YNAB helps you allocate funds to digital “envelopes” for each spending category.
2. Why Use YNAB for Cheer Expenses? YNAB’s approach will help you set aside money for mandatory fees, travel, apparel, and anything else cheer-related in one organized digital space.
3. What You’ll Learn in This Series: Over the next few posts, we’ll cover setting up your YNAB account, creating categories for cheer expenses, setting goals for each category, and planning ahead to stay organized all year. Stick around, and we’ll help make budgeting for cheer easy and customized to your exact needs!

Whether you’re a veteran budgeter or completely new to managing cheer costs, this series will guide you through everything you need to set up a cheer budget in YNAB. Let’s dive in and take control of those cheer expenses!

See you next time!

-Lexie

PS: Ready to take control of your cheer expenses? Try YNAB free and test out this proactive budgeting method yourself. Use our referral link to start your free month—no strings attached—and make your cheer budget work for you.