u/Mammoth_Temporary905

There is definitely something humbling about setting a target based on calculations and realizing you spend way more on something than you thought you did!!

For me it's been the price of car ownership. Pre kids i biked everywhere except the occasional car rental for road trips. I would see media quotes about how many hundreds of dollars a month it costs to own a car and I secretly didn't believe them. Like surely they are exaggerating!

I bought a used car soon after restarting YNAB a few years back, just under 100k miles on it so I did a lot of major maintenance when I bought it, and I set time based targets for scheduled maintenance based on the costs then. And we are low mileage (like 6-7k/year) drivers!!!

- Gas: $60/month (of course it's gone up a lot in the past few months so I should up that target

- Insurance: $128/month

- Monthly/annual maintenance: $35/month (car washes, oil change, change air filters myself, change wipers myself, wheel alignment)

- Biannual tags: $12/month

- Fluid changes ~every 3 years: $11/month (Brake, transmission, PS)

- Battery ~4 years: $6/month (change myself)

- Brake pads ~5 years: $17/month

- Tires ~6 years: $40/month

- Major maintenance ~7 years: $18/month (belts, spark plugs, coolant)

- Parking: $1/month (we pay for it very rarely)

So that's $328/month just operationally! And that's with me doing some stuff myself. Plus, I saved $3,000 over the first couple years for misc major repairs (NOT standard maintenance) and to have the deductible covered in case of major damage, so the budget was even higher then.

I also put aside $82/month (which is about how fast this car is depreciating by my guess) so that when this car dies we will have a fund for a new car. So that brings us to over $400 in our budget a month on car(s).

2012 EX, Have owned for about 2.5 years, ~113k miles on her now. Car is parked outside.

A/C has been working fine though I haven't barely used it this summer. Yesterday it was in the 90s and muggy outside. Got in the car and the only "cold" air seemed to be coming from the front passenger vents, hasn't been a problem in the past. Driver vents were not blowing hot air, but they didn't have that "cold" feeling that you usually get when you put your hand against the vent either. Kids reported middle row vents were "sorta" cold so I'm thinking they were getting what I was getting.

We were in a hurry to get somewhere so I did a quick google, and drove with windows down for a few minutes before turning A/C back on with recirculate to a temp in the 70s. Problem with only "cold" feeling coming out of passenger vents persisted. I turned the passenger temp up to 70s and 80s in hopes that more "cold" air would come out of driver vents but it didn't change anything. The car slowly cooled though. Engine temp seemed fine/normal.

When I take it to shop, what should I be expecting them to look for/go over?

Anything I should double check first before taking it in? I am comfortable changing filters and doing some minor work like that you can do with household tools, I replaced the cracked engine filter hose, put on VCM tuner etc.

I am "one month ahead" and was having trouble separating incomes by month, so here's my first of the month budget cleanup how I keep ynab up to date and fund this month, in case it helps anyone else:

PLAN

1. Check last month for straggler categories that are un/derfunded, and fund them from whatever other category.

ACCOUNTS/TRANSACTIONS

2. I have scheduled repeating transactions for inflows (paychecks, bank account interest, credit card rewards). I actually have 2 sets: one set categorized to "Even month income" and repeating every 2 months, one set categorized as "odd month income" and repeating every 2 months.

I make sure they are "matched" with any actual imported transactions. If there are any that aren't matched, I figure out why and fix it (or wait for the actual transaction to import if that's the only thing).

3. I have repeating transactions for credit card cash rewards for the last day of the month. I log in to all credit cards that have cash rewards and redeem the rewards that have accrued in the last month, and update the ynab transaction so it'll match when it inflows. I also have credit cards set to autopay the statement balance on the due date, so while I'm in there, I also update the credit card outflow transaction with the new statement balance amount (so YNAB knows the correct amount for this month's CC payment). If I paid $700 to my CC last month and YNAB repeated the $700 transaction into this month, but my CC balance is only $500 in reality, YNAB is gonna see that $700 transaction and think I need to fund another $200 into my CC payment category.

4. I browse my "spending" tab (on mobile, or "all accounts" on desktop) for "uncleared" and "unreconciled" transactions (thank you ynab devs for adding the search filters to the app!!!) And see if there's any old transactions that need to be updated, deleted, matched, cleared, etc.

5. Reconcile accounts. I try to do this weekly if not daily, on frequently used accounts because it's 2 button presses if everything is up to date.

6. Update any remaining scheduled transactions for this month that vary from month to month: new utility bill statement/payment amounts, if a fixed price went up (as they seem to be constantly), etc. If I have any unusual/one off expenses coming up this month, I also try to make estimated scheduled transactions for those.

7. Search for all the inflows in last month's income category. So today, I pulled up my "even month income" category. Select all the transactions and reassign them to RTA.

I started doing this because it was hard to keep track of how much income I had last month. One of our regular paychecks comes on the 1st, but often comes a day or two early, so i might have two of those paychecks in one month and none the next month. So my January 1 paycheck is scheduled for 12/31 and categorized to "odd month income," my January 31 (early) paycheck is scheduled for 1/31 and categorized to "even month income" so I dont spend from that paycheck in February. Bank account interest is always dated the last day of the month but always rolls in/imports on the 1st, so i just made a unilateral decisión to classify them as last month (but it could go either way). Ditto CC cash rewards, they all have different dates they become available, I just decided to redeem and update all of them on the last day of the month.

All of this month's (May) income transactions are or will be categorized into "odd month income." Then on June 1st, all those transactions get recategorized as RTA.

BACK TO THE PLAN

8. In my budget/plan, I first view filter for "overfunded." Especially when you get cash rewards or reimbursements, this can be a pleasant little couch cushion change digging. Use the "auto assign" button to reduce overfunding.

9. Then i use filter view for underfunded and use the auto assign button to assign all underfunded. It will fund all my approved and scheduled transactions first, and then targets by date, roughly. If I don't have enough...move money from another category. If I have extra leftover... figure out where I want to assign it. :)

Hope this helps someone!