I’m new to YNAB and am excited about paying down my credit card debt. Should I save for a modest emergency fund (6 month’s salary) or pay off my $30K credit card debt first? Or do both at a slower pace?

I have to pay for some things out of pocket for work and then I submit a reimbursement request and I get the money back later. So, for instance, I have X dollars I spent out of pocket in January. I have until Feb 5 to submit for reimbursement. I do that tomorrow, it takes a week or so to process, and then I get the money back later in Feb. How do I put that in my budget?

I recently ran into an issue when tracking a loan. If you’re using YNAB and struggling with how loans affect your spending reports, this might help. Sharing this in case it saves someone else the headache!

TL;DR: If YNAB is messing up your spending reports for linked to loan category, use a virtual (intermediate) account for recording initial transaction with loan and link the category at the final step.

The Problem

When you create a loan account in YNAB and link it to a category, the loan amount shows up as positive activity in that category for the month. This can mess up your spending reports if you don’t spend the entire loan amount right away.

Example:

• You took out a $30k loan for house repairs.
• You linked the loan to a "Repairs" category.
• You spent $25k on repairs and moved the remaining $5k to another category.

In your reports, YNAB will show a +$5k monthly activity for the "Repairs" category, even though you actually spent $25k on repairs.

+30k loan - 25k spending = +5k monthly activity

This skews your average and annual spending numbers, making it look like you spent on repairs less than you actually did.

The Solution

To avoid this, you can use an intermediate account. Here’s how:

1. Create an intermediate checking account (this is just a virtual paper account to help with tracking). I call it "Journal".

2. Create the loan account. Don’t link it to any category yet. Set the initial balance to $0.

3. Record a split transaction in the Journal account with a $0 total:

Inflow = $30k; Payee = Loan Account, Category = Not Needed.

Outflow= $30k; Payee = Your Bank Account (where the loan was deposited), Category = Ready to Assign.

4. Now link the Loan account to your "Repairs" category (or whatever category you’re using).

Bonus Tip

This method will show the loan as Income in your Income vs. Expense report. If you don’t want that (and you are totally right as it is not income at all), simply deselect the Journal account when generating the report.

Hope this helps! Tell me if there’s a better way to handle this.

For example, if you had a normal checking account and a savings account, do you keep track of what account has what money in YNAB? Or do you just leave each category unlabeled and not worry what account the money needs to come out from?

If I sync an Amex (Canada) to YNAB, would that void my fraud protection?

Anyone else having issues with this card? I’ve gotten “upgrading connection” for the past 5 days.

Basically the title.

I did not think this would happen for me. My overall goal is to use that money to pay down debt but I developed a few new rules that I’m sticking to. But I am so happy!!!

The main one is, no grocery shopping during the week. None. I have plenty of food and I can get creative.

I also noticed when I’m likely to spend money and was able to prioritize what I want my money to really do for me.

Had to make a couple of exceptions for the dine out part of this challenge for special occasions, but other than that, I did not miss dining out at fast food restaurants or many places, at all.

Very proud of myself! Anyone else do the challenge?

I have 6-7 things in my amazon s&s . Some of it is household stuff(paper towels, toilet paper, tooth paste) some of it is pet stuff(dental chews, hay, supplements). I have a a household category and pet necessity category. Most of the time the house hold and pet items are shipped/paid for in the same transaction. Am I able to spread out a transaction between 2 categories? Or should I make an amazon s&s category to make it easier?

Hey all, YNAB seems to be around creating budgets which ultimately may be the underlying issue but I am curious if it can solve our immediate needs.

We made good money but somehow we are spending well over what we make. It's difficult (yes I understand doable though) to track since we spend out of two credit cards and some from our checking. We pay off our CC each month as it's just used to generate points.

I was hoping for an app that could pull all of our transactions over the last 6 months and auto-categorize (what it could) and I would manually do the rest.

Then I was hoping it could really highlight where we are going wrong.

Am I in the wrong app? Thanks so much everyone for reading this.

EDIT: Wow, what a community! You guys are super helpful and I'm very excited for the future.

Long time user of YNAB (8+ years now) and I still use an old fashion Excel workbook for my budget template and then I just reference it when I am assigning my paycheck money to different categories in YNAB.

I'm curious if others do this too or if anyone has really embraced using YNAB as their budget template by having things like Targets set on rent/mortage, groceries, utilities, etc.

I've stuck to referencing my Excel sheet because it has a lot of info in it that YNAB wouldn't have. Below is an example screenshot of it. (Annual income number is random)

https://preview.redd.it/cpza5gc9hzge1.png?width=1096&format=png&auto=webp&s=1a1dfb8cefcb52e4cbdefa1bead55c7821bd4b4d

I use YNAB for a business. We have 100+ charges per month for individual airline tickets. In our bank account, each charge has a unique identifier on the payee. Example: United Airlines 2896, United Airlines 3005, United Airlines 3019.

I use auto import with YNAB, and all of the charges appear without the identifier. They just show United Airlines.

How can I make YNAB stop renaming the payees? Is it possible to do the retroactively?

Thanks!

I just wanted to share a little breakthrough I had with YNAB that might help some of you juggling multiple accounts in different countries!

I have 3 different accounts and credit cards in 3 countries, each of them are highly active and have their own expenses.

I used to organize my budget by creating category groups for each country. Of course this setup was making it hard to track my spending by activity. Instead of easily seeing how much I spent on “eating out” or “fun activities” overall, I was stuck with fragmented data based on each country. So when I checked my Reflect window, I was only seeing totals per country, not per spending category.

One day I got tired and decided to redo my YNAB and found the filters feature.

I set up filters for each country and assigned the categories that belong to that country. For example, I pay my software subscriptions with the credit card in X country, and my mortgage with Y's checking account. Now, when I activate the filter for country X I can see the software categories, and when I filter by country Y I can see the mortgage category. And so on.

I can now also easily verify that the available amount in my bank account matches exactly with the sum of money I have in the associated categories for that country. This means I'm not accidentally budgeting more than I actually have in each specific account/country.

Totally recommended if you’re dealing with accounts in different countries.

I'm trying to get started using YNAB, but it's been a few days and it hasn't updated my paycheck or any recent account balances that happened over the weekend. Which, maybe that is SOP, but I do not know, and also it keeps telling me it synced recently? I like the app but if the Sync isn't working, it seems hard to justify the price.

My kids are too young for online shopping and they have cash from birthdays and christmas. Sometimes they will see an item they want online, and give me the correct cash from their pocket money, and I order it for them. It then shows up as an item I've bought in my linked account - but I was reimbursed in cash by my kids.

What do I assign that to? How can I record it?

The cash is usually spent on sundries, paying for parking or a coffee, or ends up at the bottom of my bag. It's small amounts- maybe 10 or 15 pounds a month maximum,but often less.

Edit to add - I'm really new to YNAB (like, 48 hrs new), so sorry if this is an obvious question!

This is a bit of odd and I'm not sure how to phrase it. So basically I have a roommate and we both use ynab. For the last several months we've been paying for things for each other and then doing the math and adding or subtracting the total from the rent I pay them. This works well for us overall and we don't want to change it. The issue comes in for ynab and showing messed up budgets for us because let's say groceries isn't showing what I'm really paying for groceries but what we both are...

I created a category to split her parts into. Again using grocery as example if we spend 100 and 40 is mine and 60 is her I split the transaction 40 into grocery and 60 into her category. My issue comes up when she pays for things. I can move money from grocery to her name but it doesn't list it as money spent from groceries just funds moved (which makes sense) so I'm still not getting a real amount for what I'm spending in each category.

I'm trying to adjust my budget to be more like what I'm actually spending and not just a guesstimate but I'm still guessing!

What would be the best way to put these transactions in my budget?

For example, I don't want to create a category just for tax software. The expense is once a year and nearly negligible. In the past I've purposely miscategorized these types of expenses, but I'm wonder if there's a better way.

I get paid exactly every 4 weeks, so in April I’ll be getting paid on the 2nd & the 30th so in essence the pay on the 2nd won’t need allocating to any of my monthly bills. Just curious how I’d go about doing this on YNAB?

I'm brand new to YNAB, but it's already been life-changing for me. Being new, I'm still trying to figure out the best way to handle certain situations, and one is credit union balances.

I have accounts at 3 different credit unions, and each requires a $5 minimum balance to keep the account open. In apps like YNAB, this actually shows as $5 in the account, whereas in the banking app it would show as $0 if I were down to that amount, since that $5 isn't actually spendable and I would overdraw the account if I tried to spend it.

I searched the subreddit and saw a few suggestions on handling this, but I'm wondering if a different approach might work: reconciling these accounts and adding a $5 negative balance adjustment to get the figure showing up correctly.

Can someone advise me as to whether this approach makes sense, or whether I'd be messing something up?

I wonder why negative envelopes containing transactions where I loaned money or expect reimbursement the next month do not carry over? The envelope zeros out automatically. When I get reimbursed the envelope will not accurately reflect a cancellation of the negative amount. What am I missing?

Okay so not sure how to deal with this situation. Basically I’m going on a work trip in March and put it all on my credit card but I won’t be reimbursed until after the trip takes place.

I know this is not ideal for the budget and I don’t really have the funds to cover it (we’re barely covering the month we’re in right now) until after I get the reimbursement.

Do I just delete the transaction and pay it once I get the reimbursement? That’s the only thing I can think of right now 😅 would appreciate some different perspectives!

I was looking for a YNAB fix today over on the YT channel, and saw that Hannah and Ben (the other Ben) did a video ranking their Top 5 Spendful Purchases of 2024. You can check that out here:

https://youtu.be/AyceRGmjNlQ?si=QPmix0w6fKqnHfRO

I thought it would be fun to know this for myself, so I thought I would come up with my own list! Some things I discovered in this process:

• Hannah and Ben are siblings! (whaaaaa? Am I the last to know?)
• I need to use the memo line more, because I apparently bought something really expensive from Macy's and I have no clue what it was and my Macy's account is all, "What purchase?" Maybe I'll tag interesting things with #spendful so it will be easier to review my 2025 items next year.

That said, I ranked my own list from least expensive to most expensive, and just to make a more interesting list, I am only listing material items and not experiences. So here are my top five!

5. Artifact Puzzle: I didn't know that puzzles could be this pricey, or that I would actually spend this much on one, but I plunked down a good bit of money for a Roch Urbaniak wooden jigsaw puzzle. It was very challenging to put together, and this is one I might actually get framed into a shadow box. Maybe that will be #spendful in 2025?

6. Red Sequined Dress: I am soooo not happy with where my body is right now (working my way back from a broken ankle) but I decided to not let that ruin the fun of a special night. So I bought a new dress that fits, and went dancing with friends.

7. Gee's Bend Quilt: Okay, I can't afford the real thing, so the next-best was to purchase one of the reproductions from the Target x Gee's Bend collab during Black History Month. If you're not familiar with the story of Gee's Bend, check out this article from the National Endowment for the Arts: https://www.arts.gov/stories/blog/2015/quilts-gees-bend-slideshow

8. Wild Chartreuse Shoes: They are known as the "Wiggle Shoe" and I decided to get them in a color that exists nowhere else in my wardrobe. One of the rules in my shoe collection is that black shoes are verboten; if I'm going to the trouble of buying expensive shoes, I want them to stand out. These have turned out to be one of my favorite pair.

9. Pair Eyeglasses: my prescription got updated, and this year, I decided that I can rock a pair of cat-eye frames. So my new fav glasses are The Wanda and my holographic toppers are the most fun.

I didn't think so many items would deal with my personal appearance, but there you go. Maybe next year's list will be more varied?

What were your top five spendful purchases?

Any one else having issues with Fidelity Investments credit card transactions not syncing? It seems YNAB always has sync issues, whether it is with Navy Federal, Citi or Fidelity. So frustrating.

I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, so maybe someone can point me in the right direction.
Last month I managed to underspend on several categories. So when the new month began, those funds rolled over into the new month. So far so good.
The problem is, each category is still requiring me to fund the full budgeted amount, and not the budgeted amount - minus - the amount rolled over from the previous month.

Do I have my targets set up wrong?

Hey everyone!

I started using YNAB a few weeks ago and have things set up as needed (to the best of my knowledge). Now that I'm rolling into my first month of transition (Jan -> February), I'm confused about what I see, particularly regarding savings (I'll save other questions for another post).

Initially, I set up savings as tracking accounts but later moved them into the budget, simplifying internal transfers. Cool.

Now, my understanding was that if I had $1,000 in my actual emergency fund, I should create a category for it and assign $1,000 to that category. This way, while the money is "in the budget," it's allocated to that fund's purpose and not available for day-to-day spending in YNAB. I applied this approach to other savings categories like vacations and automobiles (I know some prefer pooling these together).

This setup made sense in January.

However, in February, while my savings categories show the correct "available" amounts, their assigned values are "$0.00," which makes sense to me since I haven't assigned new funds yet to February. Cool.

What confuses me is that my Ready to Assign (RTA) amount for February is less than my collective savings total.

Does this mean I assigned more money in January than I had? Shouldn’t setting aside the money to the savings accounts in January and not spending from them allowed them to be available for the same accounts in February?

Adding to the confusion, I have leftover money in January's RTA, and I'm unsure what to do with it (I know, they should be assigned a job and get it to zero)—since all my budget categories for January already have what they needed (or so I thought).

Is there a regular hiccup folks experience with setting up savings in this way? I realize this might stem from a setup issue or a misunderstanding of YNAB's process, but any help—whether a full answer or just something to investigate—would be greatly appreciated! Cheers.

Hi, I track my cash in a cash account and I have a category cash which always needs to be identical. Now I'm wondering how I should best track the following scenario in YNAB:

• Let's assume I need to pay something, which costs 2,50 EUR and I pay it with a 5 EUR bill. I would then track this as a payment from the cash account towards the category it fits in.
• As I do not carry the lose change around with me, I throw it into a jar when at home. And from time to time I bring this money to the bank.

What's the best approach now, to properly record these transactions in YNAB?

ok i tried starting YNAB two weeks ago and it got weird as my budget is a month ahead. So my question. how do i start today with enough money in my account to cover the entire month of FEB? Do I just do the Nick True getting started video and ignore the extra money for next month?

Short version: Seems like YNAB is auto-assigning money as soon as I enter it, without giving me the opportunity to assign.

Longer version:
Today I reconciled my accounts as usual, then entered two new deposits with the category 'ready to assign,' and reconciled my accounts again.
When I went back into my budget, it seems that the money had already been assigned, and mostly to categories in March. Worth noting that there were still unfilled categories with targets in February. I deleted the deposits, and then found that March was listed as underfunded "you've assigned more money than you have, let's fix that." I entered the deposits again, and the money was again auto-assigned without ever appearing in my "ready to assign" area.

I started a help chat, but wondering if anyone else has experienced this before? I would certainly prefer control over assigning my money.

Hi- I just started ynab yesterday. I've been on this sub for months reading posts to get ready to start using it and have read many posts about how people categorize their spending. I thought I'd be well-prepared to get started. Ha! Yesterday, I went through the setup process that already had prepopulated category groups of Bills, Needs, and Wants (possibly one more that I'm forgetting), and I see I need to change these to align more with our thinking /spending.

But what I'm confused by is this: We have 3 different TV streaming services. We also have 2 different student loans. I would think I could put those all in one category each (TV streaming and student loans, respectively, with the names of the payee under that, e.g. Roku, Max, Netflix and Sallie Mae, Edfinancial), and hold them under a bigger category group called Bills (or whatever I end up deciding to call it). Yet, it seems EACH payment is its own category. Is this just a matter of me being confused by the word "category"? I KNOW I have read posts where people do exactly what I'm talking about, but is that because they're actually changing the category GROUPS to be "TV streaming" (for example)? Thank you for any insights!