r/ynab

I am just now (starting about 1 week ago) working to get a month a head. (I previously was budgeting a bi-weekly schedule).

So would it be wise to zero out my available funds for non-sinking funds on September 1st, and then reassign it to September?

Moving forward, I am putting my 2nd paycheck in my "Hold for Next month" category. Eventually I would like to build it up where I have all expenses covered before the month begins.

So for example: Lets say my planned gas budget for the month is $400. But on the 1st I have $150 left (because I am just now working a monthly plan vs a bi-weekly plan). Should I move that $150 to RTA for 1 September?

I hope this question makes sense.

As the header says I am new to YNAB. My Wells Fargo account hasn't been updating at all. My other cards are updating. Capital one updates every 4 hours, Chase does twice a day but wells fargo hasn't updated once. I tried reseting and deleting and reconnecting nothing seems to work. Is this normal with wells fargo?

Any tips on how to use this app better are appreciated.
Thanks.

Solved!

I redeemed some points for a statement credit on my card and it's behaving differently than I expect. The transactions are as follows:

• Charged $476.89
• Received statement credit of $108.47

My payment due currently shows $368.42. This makes sense to me because 476.89-108.47=368.42. The statement credit is lowering my payment.

Now, YNAB is requiring me to categorize the statement credit transaction. According to YNAB's documentation, this should go to Ready to Assign. Doing so keeps my RTA at the same amount but my payment goes up to $476.89. The YNAB docs state the payment should not change at and if it does I should move the credit amount into RTA. I did that and my payment went back down to $368.42 and my RTA went up by $108.47. This feels like it's double-crediting me because my payment was reduced AND I now have extra money.

Is this the correct way to handle this? If not, what is the right strategy?

Hey, folks! We're changing how auto-categorization works so a one-off purchase can't override a payee's established category.

Previously, YNAB auto-categorized based on the last category used for a payee. That's a problem when a payee has an established pattern that gets temporarily interrupted. Say your "Grocery Store" payee is almost always "Groceries," but one time you buy a gift card there and categorize it to "Gifts." Next time a Grocery Store transaction imports, it defaults to "Gifts," following the last pick even though that's not what's typical.

So we’re changing that behavior. Now, the default category only changes when 2 of the 3 most recent transactions agree on a different category.

This should stabilize auto-categorization significantly so one-off exceptions don’t change the default. In our Grocery Store example, since only 1 of the last 3 transactions was Gifts, the default stays Groceries.

For payees with fewer than 3 transactions, the default will be the last category used with that payee.

As part of this change, we’re adding some more options in Manage Payees (see screenshot).

1. Let YNAB auto-categorize based on payee history (shows an explanation and the current default category)
2. Always use my choice. (Set a default that never changes.)
3. Do not auto-categorize [payee name].

This release began rolling out on all platforms on August 17 and should be out to everyone soon if all goes well.

https://preview.redd.it/nojnngc4o5kh1.jpg?width=1218&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1d5557ed4b80a12c4f26f450c2f72076f9f565f9

My wife and I have a category for Emergency funds that we contribute to monthly. Last month we had to pay for a car repair out of the emergency fund. What is the best way to do this for data tracking?

We currently will log the expense under car repairs and then transfer the money from the Emergency fund category to the car repair category to balance it out. In this way we can keep track of how much we spend each year in all categories. The only issue here is that there is no record of how much money we have spent out of our emergency fund.

2nd option - log the transaction under emergency fund and be done with it. This flips the above and we now know how much we spent out of emergency fund but do not track the expense under car repairs.

One solution - I dont really want to do this and we have in the past : Have a separate account for emergency fund account. When needing to use it transfer from emergency fund account to operating account and then log the expense under the appropriate category. The transfer entry from the emergency fund account to operating would track the yearly changes in the emergency fund.
* The main reason I dont like doing this, may not be justifiable, is that I prefer all funds to be in one account and YNAB just tell me where everything is. That way I avoid assigning funds to emergency fund each month and then needing to actually transfer the funds. Same for if they were ever needed. Also easier to have a lump sum in one high yield savings account for the interest benefit.

Just curious how everyone else approaches this.

The worst mistake I made was purchasing the YNAB app from the Google Play store. Not because of the app -the app was great and has helped me so much. But because of play store rules. First, they only bill annually, so I was dinged for the full year when I had been expecting to pay monthly.

And now that I've cancelled YNAB (moved to a competitor), I can't figure out how to get a partial refund. I understood I needed to contact the developer so I reached out to YNAB. They replied that I should contact Google.

I tried to follow Google's instructions for getting a refund on a subscription, but the steps they say to take don't exist (selecting Report problem on the subscription in my account, but that option doesn't exist).

Has anyone done this successfully? How do I get a partial refund for the unused part of my annual YNAB subscription?

Thanks!

I've been using YNAB for almost a year now. I have had very little trouble with my banking connections. Right now, my Target REDCard is using a Plaid connector, and recently it has been requiring reauthorization almost daily. It's getting really annoying. None of my other connections are having this problem.

Anyone else experiencing this?

Could it be related to sharing the connection in 2 plans? It's a joint card card (well, I'm primary and my wife is an authorized user). I have separate plans for me and my wife. My plan has all of the transactions, and my wife's plan has only her transactions. Both plans have a connection to import transactions.

EDIT: SOLVED!!

>The issue is not your credit card account. You currently have zero dollars in your only on-budget cash-based account. Your only accounts with money in them are in the tracking section of the accounts. Tracking accounts are off-budget. You need to set up your accounts as on-budget cash-based accounts, if you want their starting balances to contribute to Ready to Assign.

Hi! I'm just setting up my account on a free trial, and this is round 2 of trying YNAB. I understand the concept of digital envelopes, funding them, etc.

What I'm not understanding (and I've tried to read other related posts) is how my existing credit card debt factors into my plan.

I started with around 15k credit card debt, and around 10k cash in my checking/savings accounts. I'm not going to pay off the lump sum of credit card debt, but it feels like it's preventing me from trying the rest of the software.

My money to assign is showing as zero, so I'm not able to fund any categories with the 10k I have in cash. I tried assigning the credit card payments to categories and now the categories are overspent.

What am I missing?

EDIT: All I have done at this point is linked my checking and savings, linked my AMEX Credit Card, assigned a budget to a few categories, and categorized the payments in on my Credit Card.

https://preview.redd.it/s5cswtktr4kh1.png?width=2200&format=png&auto=webp&s=601baf21ecce5d5d321e1d61924d8bbd6d0bb648

For example, I might put $10k into my TFSA, but some of that could be from a tax refund, selling a car, or another one time source. I’d like to be able to say, “I saved X% of my regular income this year.”

I was thinking of using transaction memos/tags to distinguish contributions funded by regular income from other sources.

How do you handle this? Is there a cleaner way to track it in YNAB?

My wife and I both have been using YNAB for about a month and things are going great. We're both on-board with targets and categories, and etc. One thing I'm hoping for some insight on is how do we buy eachother gifts but keep it a secret from the other? We both agree to spend a certain amount of money on each other for birthdays and Christmas so it's not like we are trying to be sneaky necessarily. I just don't want to buy her something and have it show up in our spending because she would see the merchant that it was purchased from which could really spoil the gift. How do I keep the actual item a secret from her and her from me in YNAB? Again, we agree on the money being spent but want more anonymity of the item.

Thanks!

I am seriously looking for someone to essentially be my YNAB bookkeeper. I'm not sure how to find help. I know there are coaches, but I want someone to maintain my plan for me, as well. I currently have a virtual assistant, but I'm struggling to train them on how to use YNAB because I barely know how to use it well myself.

Hi!

I’m new to ynab but have done cash envelopes in the past, which were great but also really challenging because it’s annoying to use cash to try and pay for your Spotify subscription, y’know?

But my husband and I have been sort of spending willy nilly for a while, doing big house projects, buying a newer vehicle, etc; and I’m trying to get us back on track. I’ve gone through all of our joint/household expenses and with each paycheck we’re each going to transfer the amount we need to cover joint expenses into a joint checking acct to cover those, and leave the remainder in our own accts. (We are fairly equal earners and are ok going 50/50)

From there, I’m going to break my personal checking acct down into categories. But husby isn’t interested. Can I just categorize “his” money as like “Husby fun money” and not worry about it? Or is there a reason that I can’t see why that wouldn’t work?

Hi everyone!

New to YNAB and loving it. Unfortunately, historically, I hyper fixate on a new personal finance tool and fall off within a few months. Does anyone have any good personal finance podcasts that they listen to help keep them on task for the long-term?

I’m not so much interested in investing advice or economics (I ascribe to JL Collins’ index fund holding philosophy) - but instead looking for something more about tips, ideas, and stories around managing spending, savings, and financial life.

Reflect isn’t giving me a positive outlook. It’s pointing out that I’m spending lots and the biggest category is long term savings. This is the category I use to fund my off budget accounts.

Net worth takes the off budget accounts into place but the other areas of reflect don’t appear to. Is it better to have everything in budget? Is that not harder to manage if investments jump around?

When I first started using YNAB over 7 years ago, I was preparing to buy my first home and had so little margin that I truly needed it, loved it, and proselytized it. I was successful getting my brain right around money, and YNAB helped me navigate shifting life circumstances. Even though I’ve been annoyed with some of the changes over the last couple of years like so many other users, I could justify the use.

But now life has shifted again, and I’m wondering not only whether I still need YNAB but also whether I can justify keeping it when I’m annoyed by so much of the company shenanigans lately. And yes, I’m calling the book a shenanigan.

I’m lucky to have a solid income and now married to my partner with an even more solid income, and we live in a LCOL area. We’re pretty frugal naturally, and so needing the level of detail I needed in previous years just isn’t where I am now. I do manual transactions, and now I often only input and reconcile them every couple of weeks.

This might be a fool’s errand since people I who might’ve been in similar positions and left YNAB probably won’t be in this sub anymore; but for people in my position, what makes you stay with YNAB even when you may not need it anymore?

ETA: thank y’all for the great discussion here! Want to make it clear that tracking/broadly budgeting is always going to be part of my financial system. I guess what I didn’t communicate well is, even if I simplify my categories and check in once a month to make sure I’m still aligned, is it worth it to keep paying YNAB $100+ ad infinitum? Is there enough inherent worth specific to YNAB to justify its cost?