Welcome to /r/YNAB! Check out the wiki, and new users please read this helpful page!

I've been a YNAB user since YNAB4, over a decade now. I've changed the way I use YNAB a couple of times (I never did it 100% the way its taught), but I've been dedicated to balancing my accounts every morning. In fact, if I don't do it every morning I feel anxious - even though I know I have space to work with.

I recently sat with a family member to help them get into YNAB and have watched it click with them. In the last 6 months they've gone from anxiety and fear about their financial situation to relief, even though their income and expenses haven't really changed!

I cannot begin to describe how much of a difference this program has made for me. I am the child of poor parents who didn't have enough money to budget, so I never learned to balance a checkbook until I already owned a house! Now I am teaching people how to get their financial houses in order and it is amazing to watch.

I love this program! Also, after posting I realized my post and my title aren't exactly congruent...

Hello new to YNAB (2-3 months) so my budget still adjusting, and i have a bunch of overspend categories, how do i tackle those? Do i assign money to them before closing the month? Also some of the overspending categories are red others are yellow what does it mean? Also what should i do for next month? Does YNAB auto adjust categories based in their previous months averages?

I hadnt considered this much before doing it. Included in my weekly budget was a 100$ cash payment. I happened to be getting a cheap water bottle and got 100 cash back as well.

I tried entering it before leaving the store. But.

The total was $101.29 withdrawn from my checking. $1.29 going to the store, and $100 to cash in my hand.

The payee will come up as the market in my bank. And YNAB wont let me use two payees (market and transfer to cash account)

Currently ive entered it as two transactions. And noted that in the memo. When the full transaction synchs I intend just delete it knowing Ive already entered it as two.

How would you do this?

I’ve been using YNAB for four months. I just got home from a Vegas vacation I’ve been planning with friends for awhile. The financial stress of traveling with friends would have been awful a year ago. Feeling confident enough paying for all the dining and experiences was a total change of pace from my pre-YNAB life. I’ve been so thankful for YNAB for helping bring understanding to my finances and increasing my confidence.

I did go over budget a smidge. But hey, we’ll roll with the punches and take advantage of a credit card’s promo period to make it work. I would have been wrecked by a trip like this without YNAB. Reading about everyone’s successes and accidents in this group has been so encouraging! Thank you YNAB and everyone here.

Or maybe I just need guidance on how to handle my funds designated to savings?

I have been using YNAB since this past December and finally got to a point where I would have enough funds "ready to assign" rolling into the next month to cover my mortgage on the first and then some. Our vehicle was then totaled in an accident on the 3rd (no one was harmed) and we had to scramble to get a new car. Large sums of money were moved around for a couple weeks but between the insurance settlement and financing, the immediate out of pocket expense was about $2,000 (and have the savings to cover it), right about the amount of money I had rolling forward. So, I am clearing this month with a whopping $176 heading into next month but I feel like this isn't the right approach to the system. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, TIA!

Might be worth adding - thanks to a tip on here, I have been putting all my money, savings and otherwise into a HYSA and paying from there as needed.

So I’ve budgeted a month ahead for all of May. Now that we’re entering May and I have another pay due next week, do I go ahead and start to budget for June already or use the money for other things like sinking funds or extra debt repayments ? I get paid every second week in my main job and monthly in my second job so I will still have three more pay checks coming in during the month of May and it’s already funded.

Why is the goal to get one month ahead in YNAB and how does achieving this goal benefit financial planning and stability ?

Isn't it like you've saved money for one month or is there any other reason ?

I have a savings account with €1,316.42 in it. I can withdraw part or all of that capital & within 10 working days it would be available to spend. Since it is not as liquid as my checking account, I was just wondering whether I should be tracking this balance as an asset (separate from my budget) or as a savings account (included in my budget).

I have been manually entering my transactions then they link up once they’re imported from my bank. Except one today didn’t link up and I didn’t notice until after I approved it. Now it’s making one of my categories seem overspent.

How do I fix this? I can’t find the manually entered transaction to just delete it. Can I delete and re-import the one from the bank?

Edited to add: I deleted the imported transaction but now it’s still showing the category as fully spent and the manually entered transaction isn’t there. Do I just have to wait until my bank exports again?

Is it possible to make a rule for which category a transaction should be assigned to based on the amount? For example, my husband and son both take classes at the same place. My son’s weekly classes are $44, and my husband’s are $38.

I have a category for kids activty expenses, and one for our fitness expenses. Is there a way to tell YNAB where to categorize it based on the transaction amount?

I was able to do this with Monarch. Thanks

Hello, newbie here. The first time I went to add a bank, it asked me where my "most important bank card" was located. I use a finance app which is in Europe, so I chose Europe, but while there are options for the app I use, all of them have different language tags (ES, FR, FI), none for English. It seems like I chose the wrong thing because I didn't understand how it worked, and now I can't find out how to change it.

Does anyone know how to set my region to US instead of UK? I am a student and took advantage of the year-long trial, so creating a new account altogether isn't really an option.

Hey all

Long time YNAB user here (6+ years). But it was only recently that I finally became fully debt free which is now allowing me to totally re-imagine my budget including the ability to start saving for long term goals in addition to retirement etc!

My question is..... when it comes to long term goals or long term "true expenses", how far out do you start saving for them? I am not sure I want to be super granular when it comes to expenses that may not happen for another 5 years as example.

Like, do any of you all start saving for the time you will need a new mattress 5-7 years from now? Or the inevitable new TV you will need 6 years from now? Or do you think of these things as something you wouldn't really be saving for until it gets closer , say like 6 months to 1 year?

I am wondering instead if I want to make this simpler by having a general "Saving for later" category and within it, I could use the "Notes" section to include all the things I will eventually need to use this money for. Anyone do something like this?

Would love to hear other's methods and thought processes on this type of thing. Being Debt free is absolutely a wonderful feeling but it certainly now causes one to rethink how a budget works all together LOL Thanks all!

Hi all,

My husband and I have been using YNAB since January, and I have been loving it. I have primarily taken control of the budget/finances/paying the bills, and set up YNAB in a way that makes sense to me. I try to communicate with my husband by having weekly and monthly money meetings together to keep him in the loop. We have also made significant money strides since January, which has been amazing.

However, we have different philosophies on a few budget approaches and it is creating conflict. I would prefer that the person who is managing the budget manage it in a way that makes sense to them, as much as possible (without totally cutting out the second person), but I recognize this requires a level of trust. My husband also has a lot of money anxiety, so I think sometimes it can be hard for him to feel like he doesn't have a lot of input or control over the budget, which is why I try to make sure to communicate and keep him involved in what is going on in the budget every week, but it only helps so much.

We have had two main sticking points:

• "Fun" money. My husband wants us each to have $150 a month sent to our personal accounts to do whatever we want with, whenever we want. So he could decide one day to spend that money on a cruise with a friend, or he could use it to buy little things or go out to dinner with friends throughout the month, or some combination- basically just a pot of money he can use as he wants. I told him I'd prefer that we just spend money as needed, keeping each other in the loop for big purchases (like $250+), rather than have it go into a generic "fun" account. Like, if I want to go on a cruise with a friend, that's still a lot of money, and I'd want to run it by him to see what his thoughts were, and if he approves, to create it as a goal and save up for it. I don't want/need $150 off the books for myself a month. But then he feels that puts him in a position where he can't say no, even though I do want him to when needed. I suggested a compromise of moving his personal account off YNAB so that we "spend" that money each month but then don't track the money in his account as an asset- it is officially off the books at that point. He wants to keep his personal accounts in YNAB to track it as an asset, and we never settled the disagreement.
• Variable expenses. For things like groceries, we have allocated $x/month. If we spend less that month, I might move it to other categories where we spend more than expected (e.g., accessories- if we unexpectedly need new shoes that month and we didn't see it coming) or put it back in the pot to add to savings if we have extra money. I view our targets for these goals as approximate/maximum spending guidelines, not hard-and-fast rules. So for the variable expenses categories, I frequently snooze budgets and adjust things a tiny bit day by day to make everything work. My husband wants these to be hard-and-fast rules with rollovers, so that we can spend more the following month on groceries if we want. We aren't financially comfortable enough in my view to say "hey, now we can go out for a $500 dinner" just because we have extra money in that row. I'd rather it go somewhere where we need it (e.g., debt repayment), or somewhere else where we want to use it for quality of life (e.g., surprise new shoes).

So I guess I am asking for advice on how you would handle the two above scenarios in your budget- what are the pros and cons you see for each approach? From a broader picture, how do you handle budgeting as partners or as a family? Is one person the main person, but the second person has veto power? How do you settle disputes about budgeting logistics when you both have strong opposing preferences?

Edit: I do want to clarify that I don't judge my husband's purchases, and in fact, I was hoping we could get to a point where we could spend without feeling guilt or judgment. I was hoping to feel more like a partner when working towards goals together (e.g., if he did want to go on a trip with a friend, I was more than happy to work that into the budget together). However, the consensus seems to be that sometimes, a generic "fun money" category for your partner to use as they want is the way to go. I think the only conflict we will have with this is what falls under fun money versus joint money. If my husband goes out to dinner with a friend, I would have no issue putting it into "eating out", but he would say it would come from his personal "fun money." I think I would feel resentment having to pull from my "fun money" for that. But we will work on where to draw that line together. Thanks!

I’ve been using YNAB for about two months. I really enjoy the app and think it will benefit me. My problem is, I have a hard time understanding and utilizing credit cards in YNAB. I just can’t grasp how it works. I also split grocery bills with my significant other and that can sometimes make things complicated when I try to input it.

I’m just having a difficult time overall trying to understand it. I’ve watched YouTube and read some articles. For you, what made YNAB click for you? What made you say ‘oh I get it now!’ and really use the app properly?

Thanks!

I made a thing: https://github.com/aelzeiny/YNAB_GPT

It attempts to categorize uncategorized transactions using ChatGPT. You can choose the categories, and it always leaves behind a blue flag visible in-app.

Keep in mind that you still have to approve the transactions. ChatGPT sometimes hallucinates so use this tool with caution. For what it’s worth, I tested the prompt by comparing it to the transactions from the “copilot.money” app and got a 80% match; however Copilot seemed more accurate than this tool.

Why did I make this? Because I’m new to YNAB and spent a lot of time in 2 budgeting apps: CopilotMoney and MonarchMoney. I have extensive opinions on all three. My use-case right now makes me a YNAB customer because I do in fact need a budget. However YNAB is the only app at this price range that doesn’t even attempt to categorize unknown transactions. The YNAB purists will argue and say this is by design. But nowhere in the 4 fundamental tenants of YNAB does it say that budgeting has to be a monotonous chore. Anyways, enjoy.

Hi all,

I started YNAB in January of this year, am loving it so far and generally feel like I’ve got a pretty good handle on it, but there’s one thing I struggle with as I’ve been refining my budget.

I just added a new category called “Hair” after previously using my “Personal Care” category but realizing it should really be its own.

I have a transaction in this category from March for $280. I moved the funds over from personal care to cover the cost. After that transaction, I created a new recurring target to refill up to $400 by my next appointment (every 4 months), but it’s counting the $280 as funded even though the available amount is $0. So now it’s only asking for $40/month instead of $100/month.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had this issue. How do I fix it and what are the best practices around crating new category targets?

Apologies for the repeat question! I know I have seen a similar question asked here before, but I cannot find the post.

How do you all track gift cards and credit card cash\reward balances? I'm assuming you just create an unlinked account for each card and assign the income to the appropriate categories. Is there a better, more efficient, or more aesthetically pleasing way of doing this?

Note: I am not redeeming credit card rewards/cash back yet, just want to track the amount over time so I am aware of how much money I have for each card.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: The option is in TK4YNAB, I'm just a moron.

I like to only see unreconciled transactions in my budget so I have the view option UNchecked. However, sometimes a transaction needs to be approved after reconciliation, or I want to quickly look at old transactions.

The "Show Reconciled Transactions" button is basically the only thing I use in the View menu. It would be awesome of this were just a toggle on the account screen, or maybe a YNAB ToolKit option.

Anyone else?

Is Apple Card sync broken? Mine is stuck on 'syncing'. Things I have tried: re-installing the app, re adding the Apple Wallet connections. I even took the drastic measure of erasing and re-doing my entire iPhone! Guess what? Did not fix the issue! SUPER annoyed now.

https://preview.redd.it/27j2fe36rexc1.jpg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=92133b20a34be86c3e978af83133b0c05905e076

Am I missing something? Is there a way to get 2 months free? Is there an order in which i should register and use a referral link? Im a tiny bit confused.

When initially entered, or wait until the matching transaction imports through the linked account? And why?

I’m graduating this spring from college and will be starting my first job in August and really want to start making good financial decisions and plan intentionally from the very beginning. Throughout college, I’ve not really budgeted because everything is fairly random and inconsistent, but I am fortunate enough to be graduating with no student loans.

That said, I’ve been following YNAB for a bit and did try the one free year that college students get but with the randomness, didn’t really stick to it although I did like the program overall. I want to use YNAB post grad to make it so that I can stay on top of my money from the beginning, and would appreciate any advice that you guys have for creating a budget for when I start working! I figure if the advice is to be a month ahead I don’t need to get a month behind!

I am saving up for a vacation and set up a certain $ amount as a savings goal. This month I made a large purchase for accommodation (a little more than what I had saved in the category) on credit and plan to pay it off next month. However, the overspending in the category goes away when I move to the next month. How can I make sure I pay this off next month and also have it count towards my saving goal so that it doesn’t throw off my savings goal numbers? Thank you!!!

I have been unable to log in for days with an error 500 on the web app and the iOS app. I have reset my password multiple times and nothing helps.

Anyone else experiencing this?

I've been using YNAB since the beginning of the year and faithfully logging all transactions, however, it really hasn't helped as a budgeting tool, because our expenses are currently (and unavoidably) more than we earn (we're a family of 5 and both my wife and I are entrepreneurs).

This is largely due to the fact that I have been building a new business practice, which has not covered expenses over the past year but, because it is a franchise model, has fairly predictable income per client. My current client base means that I'll be earning significantly more towards the end of the year, and should continue to grow from there.

(For the record, we have a large amount of equity in our home, and a comfortable amount of investments/savings in our registered retirement accounts, so our overall net worth is positive)

In the meantime, we've been using a line of credit to make up any short falls, but this is really defeating the whole point of YNAB, since it is built around the idea of only spending what you have. It's also been confusing for me to track inflows and outflows from the line of credit, since anytime we pay funds back onto the line of credit YNAB seems to consider those re-allocatable (or maybe, I'm just missing something!)

My latest thinking is that I should use my projected annual income to work out a monthly budget and work from that, however I would love some other perspectives on how best to manage a budget under these circumstances.

Hopefully that's clear - thanks in advance!

So I had a category in my budget that was way too broad and I wanted to recategorize some of the recurring transactions into their own categories to provide better visibility and reporting.

Well, I did that.

And now my entire budget going all of the way back to when I created it in 2021 is now underfunded by a significant amount of money for every month up to the present. I tried shifting some available money around in the 2021 months to clear the underfunded categories but there's somehow more underfunded categories than available money even though these months were all fine prior.

How do I fix this easily without going through 2ish years of my budget to clean up? I reached out to support but I have not heard back yet.

I have other spending categories as well but figured it wasn't necessary to include in the screenshot considering the spending on the bills category alone is more than what YNAB is saying my total spending is on the month. Any thoughts on what is causing this issue? Thanks!

https://preview.redd.it/2jk4lekuu9xc1.png?width=499&format=png&auto=webp&s=3def25d5eec1f4eb6f26e5edd9440c677eed8d93

Dear mods, I've noticed over the last couple weeks a reposting of memes on this sub. There are reposts of some of the memes found when you sort by top of all time. Many of these titles are very similar with only a small variation in the title, and the accounts posting are very new. Now, I like to come to get and give advice, see people's progress, and laugh at memes only we could relate to. I am worried about the state of this sub if we don't consider this blatant, lazy reposting. I'm sorry I haven't brought this up before, I should have when I saw the Man Drowning meme. Please help us keep this sub as engaging as it is, I would hate to see this rot ruin our subreddit.

• Bernie Sanders meme

  • Are memes allowed? Ive never felt more seen. (28 Apr 2024) (redditor for 5 days
  • Are memes allowed? I’ve never felt more seen. (21 Jan 2021)

• Man Drowning meme

  • This has been me since using YNAB! I am still broke but definitely leaning more towards ynab broke whilst I save for those true expenses (15 Apr 2024)(redditor for 16 days)
  • This has been me since using YNAB! I am still broke but definitely leaning more towards ynab broke whilst I save for those true expenses (09 Mar 2020)

• Minions Meme

  • Explaining YNAB to my partner (01 Apr 2024) (redditor page not found)
  • Explaining YNAB to my partner 😆(01 Jun 2021)

New to YNAB and starting to get the hang of it, but feel like I could use some help to understand it a little better with my situation. I work 3 jobs at an hourly wage, all which have various hours—sometimes I cover shifts and sometimes I don't need to go in. I get paid weekly, biweekly, and monthly, so I am having a hard time assigning money, especially since my largest paycheck comes at the end of the month.

Is anyone else in a situation similar to this?