r/ynab

I have loved YNAB. I call our condo, "the home that YNAB bought." I've talked so many people into it, and it's been incredible for helping me get my finances organized for more than a decade. However, my renewal is up and I think I'm going to cancel, even though the idea of being without it makes me a little terrified! Not to sound like a fuddy dud, but I just cannot keep up with the changes to the app and it's frustrating that there are a ton of hidden rules that I don't know about. I'm staring down the barrel of a new month trying to understand the side panel and none of the information looks right. So I'm reading through help articles to see what has changed that I've missed and it feels like I need a phD in YNAB to keep up. For context, I'm a technology consultant professionally and I run my own business (incl. bookkeeping) so I feel pretty confident with these topics. But the more I try to slog through 15 linked help articles explaining how x will trigger y and you should perform this upkeep task weekly, etc etc...I find myself joining the "gee I wish I could still be on YNAB 4" crowd. The whole point of its brilliance was that it was simple, and the current version feels anything but.

I know I don't need to announce my departure, but I just feel so disappointed and honestly kind of lost. I need to figure out a new solution but I loved my old solution and I'm reluctant to let it go, even though it's not serving me well. I'm interested if anyone who's used the tool for a long time has found an easy way to keep up with the changes without having to spend hours learning new UI and mindsets?

I prefer to enter manual transactions into YNAB.

I’m now considering spending money all over town in small transactions from various accounts (joint, checking, saving..ETC) just to become more proficient at budgeting.

I’m also thinking about opening a few complicated financial accounts (credit cards, HELOC, maybe liquidating some investments) so I can really “master the system.”

My goal is to become more disciplined at using YNAB, my partner thinks this is a bad idea but if I know how to use the app sooner then I'll be more competent faster.

https://preview.redd.it/rcc0w0tsugbh1.png?width=395&format=png&auto=webp&s=9d434e597133bbbb7b9e43f055bda9dc0fed81eb

Not even sure how to fix this. I don't have anything assigned in August. I had the rest of the year fully funded and it started in January, so I unassigned all the money from August to December. But it won't go away, I am not even sure what checks to do to find out what's wrong. Any ideas?

We have a credit card that we use for a majority of expenses and do a pretty good job of allocating funds to categories to cover those. However in May we got hit with a couple unexpected medical expenses and didn't have the cash to cover them. So next CC payment I paid as much as I could. Then a few weeks later the hospital refunded some money back to the credit card. Initially when I was going through CC transactions in YNAB I saw the transaction (the CC account is linked w/YNAB) and the category was set (or maybe I set it) to a "medical deductibles etc." category we have so that inflow was added to that. However we didn't have that $ amount in that category in the first place. So now it appears we have that cash available but we really don't.

What's the best way to handle that? Simply deleting the inflow transaction from the CC can't be correct. I guess I need a "add to CC balance" category of sorts. I'm sure this has happened to others. Any suggestions?

The web version of YNAB is not working on laptop, stuck on loading screen. I'm using Chrome and have tried hard refresh and also incognito. Nothing works. Anyone got a clue?

Context: I never budgeted and always had a "winging it" attitude with money. I tried unsuccessfully to use YNAB for 3 to 4 years (I would use it for one month then get overwhelmed and avoidant and then stop). Two years ago, I finally committed to using it month after month, and I then finally got it. Things started clicking, and I felt like I had a clear picture of my finances for the first time in my life.

In those two years, my expenses (e.g. rent, medical expenses) have gone up and my income has gone down (i.e. I took a pay cut to pursue a different job within my field). My budget is very tight month-to-month, and I have stopped being able to save 10 to 20% of my paycheck, like I used to do when I was younger. I don't have any debt, but still, not saving doesn't feel good. (I do contribute to my 401k, but ideally, I'd like be able put away more money month-to-month.)

Some months, I am effectively *paying* to work in my field, because I have to dip into my savings to support myself. (I work in news/media, which is competitive and has consolidated a lot over the last decade plus, basically the entire time I've been working.) For the first time in my life, I have been seriously considering leaving the profession I've dedicated most of my adult life to, or leaving the city where I've live. I'm single and a renter, and while I know I could be partnered in near/mid-term future, I prefer to focus on things I can directly control right now.

Maybe I am thinking about this all wrong, but I feel like I have cut my expenses almost everywhere I could, barring leaving the city where I live (rent is my biggest expense). I know that I am in an OK place, in the sense that I *did* save for many years, and I have both a cushion and retirement savings. But I want to be able to plan for the future (i.e. have kids one day), and the path to do that seems to involve some really hard decisions. I'm just wondering if anyone can relate to this, or has gone through a similar experience. If you've read this far, thank you.

tldr: I've been using YNAB for 2 years and realized my expenses almost always outweigh my income. I am seriously considering moving to a cheaper city, or leaving my field to support myself. feeling discouraged, and wondering if anyone can relate.

I use Wealthsimple, how do you guys go about transferring funds from chequing account to Wealthsimple? I tried doing a transfer on YNAB but it keeps asking me a category but I think a transfer would be easier in my opinion. I also do have a WS chequing account but I think it might ask a category once the money is invested. I would love to hear yall opinion

I've been using YNAB for almost 8 months. The hardest lessons were immediate, such as getting off the credit card float and realizing I had been masking an overspending problem by dipping into savings. I've made some tough decisions all these months, cutting back drastically on anything that wasn't necessary until I could reliably come in under budget. YNAB poor, you know.

I've also changed my habits in other ways, such as closing a number of separate savings accounts I don't need now that everything is tracked in the app. I started putting everything on the credit card and got one that pays better cashback, since I can now trust myself to always have the money set aside in advance and not overspend.

This month, as I was doing some more tidying up of accounts, I noticed that I've accumulated over $7k of cash for eventual expenses. Nothing urgent. Just the cumulation of small amounts saved up. When I started YNAB, I would occasionally go into overdraft, or at the very least have to be careful to avoid it right before getting paid. Now, with the running total and the savings, that's not a concern.

So I took $5k and put it in a HISA. It's just one more way that this system is putting money back in my pocket!

I have two credit cards linked to my Ynab.

I paid for something using the CC, entered the transaction and attached it to a category and the CC, but the money didn’t money from the category to the “available for payment“ category on the CC. Is that not how it should work?

I paid $50 for an item, that amount leaves the items category, and now that $50 should be reallocated to the amount I use to pay my credit cards. Instead, when I enter the transaction, the money just leaves the category and is gone

Edit: I read the sticky below and it seems that’s exactly how it should be working but for some reason it’s not

I've used YNAB since 2022, love it. It's the first system I tried for managing money/budgeting (I still lived at home at the time). Love the clarity it gives to money, love seeing the numbers grow.

My wife and I don't have the same types of brains, at all. So it's been a constant struggle to get on the same page financially. She doesn't really have any awareness of our finances other than a very general sense of things. I handle all the bills, investments, retirement, saving, budget, etc.

I've tried to get her involved repeatedly. I try different things. I ask her to look at the budget categories before making a purchase (this is the baseline of budgeting). Because she doesn't do that, our "budgeting" has slowly devolved to retroactively tracking expenses. So I try to get her involved in the "squaring up" process of making sure the YNAB accounts match the bank accounts, and then fix overspending in the budget (since this can give awareness of our spending relative to our budget). She gets irritated when trying to walk her through this. I've even asked her to do the minimal effort of adding a memo for ambiguous purchases (I'm not even asking her to categorize things, literally just add context to what the purchase is so I can categorize it). She'll do that a couple of times then stop.

Overall she says that YNAB just isn't a good system for her brain and it's too complicated for her. So I'm curious if anyone has suggestions for this. I'm guessing most people here are "left brained" and naturally enjoy numbers and ordered systems and tracking and all that good stuff, and therefore enjoy YNAB. That doesn't mean YNAB doesn't have a learning curve, though, which is something I've said to my wife (it took me a while to understand how to use it myself). She says she's a more visual person, and all the numbers make her feel like she's just looking at a spreadsheet.

Does YNAB only work for people who already have an inclination towards similar systems? Any insights or pieces of advice??

I prefer reading to watching videos. I know and do the basics of YNAB but want to see if I can be exposed to more interesting uses or applications or more effective methods.

Hey y’all! I’ve been using YNAB since the beginning of this year, and I am absolutely obsessed! I have gone from a net worth of approximately -11k when I started to almost 7k today, and almost debt free.

One of the debts I paid off thanks to YNAB was what was left of my auto loan, and I had an auto loan category. This worked for actually saving up to have enough for my payment, but now that I’m a little more seasoned with YNAB I have gotten really into using it for tracking in addition to planning. I’d love to have my net-worth chart more accurately depict how it actually has changed over time, and I never actually added in my auto loan as debt that I was holding.

Is there any way to retroactively add in the auto loan that I have already paid off and migrate my old auto loan category activity there?

Thanks guys! I have been loving keeping up with posts from this community, YNAB has really helped pull me from feeling like I was in financial ruin to having hope for my financial future.

I saw recently that Plaid has an agreement with banks like RBC in Canada to provide secure non-credentials access to user accounts. Why does YNAB still only use credential access for bank account connections? Is it still like this for US users?

Often asked question when searching on this sub, but wanted to see if there was any updated info out there.

I currently have a traditional checking account that my direct deposits flow in to. Other than Zelle payments (which includes rent) and ACH bills (WiFi, utilities, etc) I only really use my checking account for paying off my CCs (which is where the majority of my spend is) and a rare ATM withdrawal.

Was looking at swapping to a fidelity CMA to earn good APR on my cash while it sits throughout the month waiting to pay bills. It seems that due to fidelity’s swap to Akoya, the link between the CMA and YNAB is broken (or very bad) these days. I know many people just do manual transactions, which I’m open to, but want to see if there are any recommended alternatives (Wealthfront? Schwab?) that offer a similar product that will link properly.

Zelle is a big plus as well but don’t think that’s a thing anywhere since these are brokerage accounts.

Curious what everyone has found works for them.

Thanks!

So I connected/synced my TD bank account and Wealthsimple to YNAB (the budgeting app) through Plaid a little while back, and now I'm kind of spiraling about whether that was a dumb move. If someone actually gets into my account and steals money, is the bank going to turn around and say "well you shared access with a third party app so that's on you"?

What I actually want to know is whether this has happened to anyone here. Did you have fraud on an account that was linked to a budgeting app, file a claim, and actually get denied or have your bank push back because of the link?

Also wondering if I should just unlink everything and eat the inconvenience, or if I'm overthinking this. Would appreciate hearing from anyone with real experience or if you work at a big bank. Trying to figure out if I should move my money around to Questtrade or if I'm just being paranoid.

Thanks in advance.

I just set up my accounts and I don’t understand why when I look at the Spending Tab, the credit card accounts say Income to be Assigned. The cards show up as negative, as expected.
This is my 2nd time trying to use YNAB. I tried a year or so ago and just felt like an idiot because I struggled to understand how to handle the credit cards and CC payments.

Update- Answered- thank you!!

Quick Q: I am loaning a large sum of money to my parents for a term of only 5 months as a partial bridge loan. They are buying a house now but then need to put their current house on the market. I’m not worried about the loan itself, (I have the money, my parents have plenty of money, their current house is worth more than the one they’re buying, and there was a contract with interest drawn up and signed by both parties)

What I need to know is how to handle in YNAB- the money is sitting in my on-budget, unlinked HYSA account until I wire it to them next week. How do I handle the outflow, and then eventual inflow (with interest) back into the HYSA?

Thanks in advance…

I like YNAB and have limited options where I live, but I don’t want to use it for the budgeting/ zero budgeting side and it drives me nuts having to constantly fiddle with the allocations and overspend.

I just want to use it for tracking actual spend - has anyone done this and managed to workaround the zero based budgeting aspects? Otherwise will move to Emma, but it’s a lot more expensive.

Quick update for fellow Canadians using YNAB or similar budgeting tools:

The Consumer-Driven Banking Act is now law (Royal Assent March 26, 2026). On June 27, the Department of Finance pre-published the proposed regulations in the Canada Gazette. There is a 60-day public consultation period open until August 26, 2026.

Once finalized, this will enable secure, consent-based access to your banking data through standardized APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). For users, this should mean:

More reliable automatic transaction imports into YNAB (no more flaky screen-scraping)

Stronger fraud protection (no need to share banking passwords with third parties)

Better overall control and security

We’re still in the “build” phase under Bank of Canada oversight. Phase 1 (read access for data sharing) remains targeted for sometime in 2026, with no confirmed launch date yet. Write access is expected by mid-2027.

It’s steady progress toward a much better system. I’ll post another update once the consultation closes or when more concrete timelines are announced.