u/timffn

Short backstory: YNAB helped me get out of debt, helped me stop living paycheck to paycheck, and taught me to be much better with my money. But, after I got out of debt, got married, had a kid, and started being more financially stable, YNAB's core philosophy and the way it does things became less and less important. I'm more interested in seeing where money went, sinking funds, and reports.

Currently, my wife and I are very much a HIS, HERS and OURS financial household. We have our own personal checking/savings/credit cards, and joint checking/savings/credits cards. (please, let's not turn this into a discussion about combining finances, this works for us right now)

I am the YNAB user, and I handle basically all of our shared accounts.

In YNAB, I have a MINE budget and an OURS budget. And I basically treat OURS like a tracker. At the end of the month, I will budget for next month...lets say that's $3000 worth of expenses (bills, spending, sinking funds) and I note any overspending for the current month...let's say we went $500 over budget (I purposely let RTA go red) and I will add that together, $3500, divide it by two, $1750...and on the 1st, we will both transfer $1750 to the joint account, and the RTA will go green again.

I'm having a hard time kind of wrapping my head around how I might do this in Monarch.

Would there be an easy, accurate way of knowing how much each of us should transfer to our joint account on the 1st of every month?

Long time YNABer here who likes a lot of what Monarch has to offer, and would love to fully make the switch, but I am having a hard time retraining my brain from a strict zero based budgeting philosophy to a more relaxed cash flow philosophy.

I don't particularly want or need the strict zero based budgeting of YNAB anymore (it was great when I was in debt and strapped for cash)...but when I look at Monarch, my brain can't comprehend what I'm supposed to do.

I started fresh a new budget in YNAB. A refund for a returned product just posted to my credit card. But the original purchase isn't in the budget since it's new. How should I handle this?

Basically, we currently have an EV, and are looking to adding a second car. A hybrid is the consensus, for those times we just don’t want to worry about charging on long trips.

That being said, I’d hate to give up the convenience of an EV for everyday driving.

So the 2026’s…how much of an EV experience does it provide?

My commute is about 15 miles each way (with free charging at work) Mix of city and highway. Can I stay in 100% EV mode? Or does the car decide when it needs to use gas, even if I have charge?

Can I sit idle in the car with the AC running for 30 minutes while the kid is at karate?

Can I cool or heat the car from the app?

I know it won’t be just like having an EV…but for my particular everyday use, 30 mile round trip, etc, would it be close?

Longtime YNAB'er here, making the switch to Zerosum.

We are a Mine/Hers/Shared expenses household. I do all my personal spending on my own credit cards, I have my own checking/savings...and she does the same. And we put all shared expenses on a shared credit card, and we have shared checking/savings.

(I don't want to get into the conversation of combining finances...like it like this for now)

Anyway, she's not a big budgeter, I am. But she likes to peak at it every once in a while to see where our money went.

So for years, I've had two budgets, "Mine" and "Ours" in YNAB.

One thing that bugs me is that I will "transfer" money from my checking to our shared checking every month. It's obviously not a real transfer because you can't transfer between budgets. So I had a category "Send to shared"...but this way skews the reports, because that looks like spending.

Any tips or tricks to handle this better?

Secondly, I see that I can add her as a member in Zerosum. If I do that, can I set it so she only sees the shared budget?

I love Monarch Money's handling of this situation...and I almost stuck with that....but I missed zero based budgeting.

I am in the middle of interviewing for a full time position (same role, different department)
Recruiter (and referral) said they want to lock it down soon, maybe end of month.
But my current team is definitely going to extend my contract, I should expect that email to come in the next week or so.

I know nothing’s guaranteed, but I feel good about this full time position.

My contract is booked by quarter.

So if the contract extension happens, say, 3rd week of June, and the FT position is shooting for a last week of June…any advice of how to handle that?