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I had did a balance transfer from one cc to another cc along with that came a balance fee so I made a cc fee category. When paying off the fee would I move the money from the cc fee category to the CC itself?

When I tried paying it I had made the account paying the fee to the associating cc this just moved the money from the cc fee category to the cc itself from there would I just pay off the balance? Or how do you guy handle paying off cc fees?

I used to use YNAB years and years ago, and it was great. Really helped me wrap my head around finances. However, life happened and my budgeting skills deteriorated.

Fast forward to today and, after many false starts, I'm all in. I have ADHD and budgeting programs have always been EXTREMELY difficult for me to keep up with. And when I let things slide, it becomes even harder to catch up. Recently, however, I've been seeing an ADHD coach who has really helped me with strategies to stick with routines, and to pick myself back up when I get behind. I'm really ready to commit to budgeting this time around.

However, I've got a few things that I've never figured out with YNAB. Firstly, annual costs. I just downloaded the app and looks like that might actually have been addressed with the (due on 12/31 e.g.) extended due date (remember, it was a LONG time ago I used to use YNAB). Secondly, and most importantly, is how to use the program when I'm almost a month behind. I have some bills that are cash only (e.g. rent), and with everything else I use a credit card. At the beginning of the month I pay off the previous card bill and an left with very little liquid cash. I've never quite figured out how to navigate YNAB in this situation when I have nearly no upfront money to put into categories. Obviously this isn't where I want to be, but I also don't know how what to do, if anything, if this is how I'm currently spending.

If anyone has any tips, resources, etc. please share! As soon as I can figure these two things out, I'm absolutely ready to come back to YNAB. Thanks!!

I just created a new category and when I went to add a Target, there's nothing about monthly target, debt payoff target, etcetera. What on earth. This is so confusing. Can anyone help me?

Long time YNAB user, need to tweak my travel and medical categories.

I previously used the Needed for Spending target to apply a yearly maximum spend to these categories.

It was all working fine until…I had a major medical expense and realized I would not have enough saved until September, since I had set up the category w/ a target date of December 2024. Same thing happened with my travel category.

What I should have done, I think, is have the full amount saved by December 2023, so going into the year, I had the full amount right away.

Right now, I’m thinking I need two categories:

1. Medical expenses 2024 - this is to cover current year out of pocket expenses. Spend out of this one right now.
2. Medical expenses 2025 - this is to build up the category for next year by Dec 2024

Are there any other ways to think about this? Should I be using another target type?

As I see now, when i used refill up to by yearly the money gonna be fill up when the budget finished if there is leftover money there, but in the weekly and monthly how different is refill up to and set aside method ?

I'd like to install the ynab 4 classic app onto my partner's iphone. He's never had it before.

Does anyone know if there is a way to do this. Would really appreciate it. Thank you

Something hit me this week. When I wasn't doing a budget, there was actually a simple budget in the background.

It was made up of one single category called 'money' and all my account balances went into there. I could always open up a new 'debt' account if I needed money, but that wouldn't always reliably work. So somewhere in the background there was something that resembled a budget in it's most basic form.

Ynab to me is simply the acknowledgement that your budget should exist at a greater level of detail than 'money'. Once you have that greater level of detail you can plan much better and have greater peace of mind.

So for me I don't think I could ever say 'I'm not on a budget' because that would mean I had an endless supply of money. Perhaps it's more accurate to say 'I'm refusing to acknowledge that my budget needs more detail'. I don't think I'm about to get hired to ynabs marketing team any time soon, but it was an interesting thought to me.

Hello YNABers,

I have been YNAB for 6 months and love the product and this community. I am moving in the right direction and getting my debt paid off now. Can't wait to get ahead soon.

The problem I need help with is, I have a LOC with a balance of -$38K and when I make additional payments, the balance goes down as expected. But on the budget screen, my activity shows -$4K and I expect it to be +$4K, on the LOC. The available for payment field is also at -$4K and in red. I wouldn't mind leaving it red but when I look at the budget for next month, this -$4K has been taken out from my 'Ready to Assign' balance.

I am not sure if I am misunderstanding how this should work or if I am making a mistake in the entry. All of my entries are manual not auto-loaded from my bank. Appreciate any help with troubleshooting. I have a pretty seamless setup otherwise so this one thing is bothering me. :) TIA

How do you all manage back to school expenses or birthdays? Traditionally I have an "emergency fund" following the Dave Ramsey principle and although based on his recommendation going back to school is not an emergency so I should not be taking money from there to fund back to school expenses.

Another that happens every year is a car registration and inspection, it is usually around 100 so I just "grab" that money from the checking account or from the "emergecy fund".

I did a search in this sub but most "back to school" threads was about students going back to college or so.

disclaimer/cw: this has to do with US health insurance and all that entails

I have a high-deductible plan, which means it covers 0% of my medical costs up to my deductible, then 90% of the remainder up to my out-of-pocket max, which all resets yearly. Some doctors and clinics will bill insurance first, then bill you for whatever isn’t covered, but many will charge you upfront for what they estimate it will be, and then (supposedly) refund you if it turns out they overcharged you.

Well, i have some conditions that basically mean I’ve hit my out-of-pocket max for the last few years and expect to continue to do so for the foreseeable future, so each year i save up the full amount for the next year by December and start January with a fully prefunded category (yes, this did involve some finagling when I first set it up). So this year, I hit May and find I’m now underfunded on my medical deductible category— obviously something somewhere is wrong.

Turned out, I hit my deductible in late January (reminder, this means we’re now in the 90% covered zone instead of the 0% covered zone). However, there were several appointments that charged me 100% upfront but then were covered at 90% by the time insurance processed them a month later, to the tune of around $400 😱. I’m sure you’ll all be shocked to hear that i had not yet been refunded any of that overpayment a few months later.

BUT! Because i had all of the transactions in YNAB and categorized, i was able to identify the precise dates of the appointments, know exactly what i had paid, grab the corresponding insurance documentation, and request and receive refunds of all of it (from two different practices) in less than a week! By far the most straightforward experience with health insurance shenanigans I’ve ever had (once had a single billing / insurance issue that literally took 4+months).

Anyway, if this had happened pre-YNAB I likely would not have even noticed, and if i had it’s even odds that I’d have managed to sort through insurance documentation, calendar events, and credit card statements enough to track down exactly what happened when.

🏆!

So after a lifetime of struggling with finances, I started using YNAB at the start of this year. I have been doing pretty well, consistently digging myself out of debt while also setting money aside for my expenses.

This week, I had a family health emergency that required me to buy last minute plane tickets and travel across the country for a week. There was also a lot of other unanticipated costs (parking, eating out, small care items).

I didn't have a healthy YNAB category built up for this kind of emergency, so I was convinced that when I crunched the numbers, I was going to incur debt this month. Due to the nature of the emergency I didn't look at my app at all, I just did what needed to be done and said I'd figure it out later.

Well I just looked at everything and nope, I won't be taking on debt because of this. Some (not all) of my categories are fully depleted, which sucks, but I can't believe what a relief it is that I don't have to worry about more debt on top of this stressful family situation. It's amazing. And a first for me. In years past, this definitely would have been piled on top of an already sizeable amount of debt.

I'm more motivated than ever to build up my categories and keep paying things off. Feeling grateful for this app and the people who taught me how to use it.

TL;DR. I had an unexpected family emergency this week. I was convinced I was going to incur debt due to having to travel across the country and take care of things last minute, but I just realized I won't.

Essentially, my Credit Card company has an accompanying Digital Cash Wallet that can be funded directly from my Credit Card, and then I can pay from the Digital Cash Wallet and get points back on both the original money I funded the wallet for as well as whenever I spend from this Wallet. (2% points back on every purchase using this methodology as opposed to 1% if I was just paying directly with the Card)

Now despite these benefits, there is a cloud of nerves hanging over my head at any one time because the Digital Cash cannot be turned into Hard Cash. I am thankfully not in any financially precarious position, so the logic would stand that the $100 purchase I make via the Wallet or the Card is at the end of the day going to be a $100 CC statement that I need to pay using cash. My nerves probably come from the fact that the purchase is - for example - $85.49 and I am funding my wallet with $100 for convenience. The additional $15.51 that I have in my Digital Wallet is likely where I get a little voice in the back of my head telling me to really think about how to properly use this system (For the record, I also of course move the additional e.g. $100 RTA I get from funding my Wallet directly into the CC Assigned column, as YNAB stipulates you do for Cash Advances).

I guess my question is, given this consideration, how would you utilize this digital Wallet?
Would you only fund exactly the amount you are spending, and fund it into your Digital Wallet while you are standing at the cash register? Would you put a fixed amount every month and be sure not to go over this amount?

Am I alternatively overthinking this because at the end of the day I am 1) not on the CC float, 2) have a well-funded paycheck recovery fund, and most importantly 3) 100% reconciled across all my accounts, and nothing is Overspent or Underfunded?

I've heard many things... bring it down to an excel level... add transactions that are recurring in ynab... and also that I shouldn't need to forecase. But I sincerely do... I need to know if I'll hit my credit card limit. I have purchases that will come out of my credit card and I'm so bunched up against the limit that it's very bothersome. I'm trying to cut spending... and I'm trying to make sure that I don't go past my credit card limit since it already has a balance I've been trying to recover from. How do you guys do this delicate balancing act of keeping ahead of your credit card payments so that you transfer over the amount you have available to transfer over without risking losing that amount in your checkings account... ugh... a better way to word this is:

• How do you make sure you don't overdraft from your checkings account, while making sure you don't overspend on the credit card, and get charged by the bank for overspending.

I'm stuck between two types of penalities, and it's totally my fault for being silly so any years back and not realizing that I should be paying my credit cards in full every month.... and now I can't even pay it in full every month :(

I noticed my underfunded for June (not a month ahead, and that is going to be a while) is more underfunded than the anticipated income I will have coming in on the 23rd of May.

I will be living off the late May income for end of May and first 3 weeks in June.

my question is . I have gone down through categories and checked the most important everything up to the income amount .. (so I am not over spending ) question is .. currently those "needed most important " categories are checked and showing blue across the line item.. is there anyway to highlight or set those so I know exactly which I am going to put money in when I get it on the 23rd?

I hope this makes sense.

alas!! I think I just figured it out.. I set up a "new view"

thank you

I realized that one of the issues that I am having had to do with my bank having years of data to go by and zeroing out and reconciling the data. Ynab does not have any of this information and that is why I am seeing descripancies.

When I started the set up I wanted to start my budget but also see what happened the month before (April) this caused Ynab to show all my accounts in red and with negative balances which makes sense since it doesnt have any historical data to go by.

Should I use today as my first day or budgeting or is there a way to use some of the historical data (at least a couple of months to compare) in order to figure out where money is going? Or how did you all do it when starting to use Ynab?

Edit: one way that I figured out to have my accounts "perfectly" in sync is by going back to the begining of the transactions and create an "Initial Deposit" transaction with the amount that should have been when everything started which Ynab didnt have any information of. This helps but trying to compare notes and see if that is how others do it or if there is a better method.

Considering consolidating multiple categories into single ones and tracking using payee names on scheduled transactions instead. Asked that general question in another thread but it was stated there that when doing this we should archive/hide the existing per-bill categories and only categorize new transactions going forward, rather than delete and re-assign the transactions to the new categories.

It seemed worth starting another thread to get a bit more info into that specific situation.

So, what happens if I do just delete the categories and reassign transactions? I understand prior month reports will change, but the reality of what was spent won't change, just the report labels regarding what categories they were in. So wouldn't it make more sense when looking at history to view it in the terms I'm thinking of now especially since I'm still only a few months into YNAB and not really settled on what approach works best for me?

Please educate me on why this is wrong. Or right. :)

I know, I know. Gift certificates are like cash, and who wants to deal with the hassle of tracking anyway?

Well, my favorite designer let's you buy $20 GCs for $10 every time you check out. They don't expire, and who wouldn't want that deal?

I've been buying from this designer steadily for several years. My plan was to collect enough GCs to get a "free" item one day, so I just let them stack up (digitally, that is.)

Until... I lost my Outlook mailbox (long story) - and with it went all my gift card codes. Unfortunately, they don't store the codes on the website in your account settings, and I didn't have a way to recover them myself.

That's okay, I know the designer has the list. So I email one of the stores for help, and they graciously listed out all my codes in a reply... then dropped the bombshell. Their POS can only apply a maximum of 4 GCs to a single order. DOH!!! My idea of a shopping spree funded only by GCs is truly crushed.

Okay, no problem... I'll just keep the email handy and use them as I go (no, I haven't learned my lesson yet.)

So the other day, there's a sale on, and I order online and dutifully enter my 4 GCs from the list in my email. They can't tell you whether the codes are valid though and they don't show on your invoice - that only happens once they physically get your item ready to ship and run it through the POS.

Well guess what? My GC codes weren't valid - apparently I redeemed those already. So they call and suggest I send them my full list so they can check them again.

Now I'm getting to the YNAB part!!

Clearly, keeping this email isn't helping me, and in the time since the GC buying frenzy and now, I've been using YNAB. So I've created a GC tracking account, entered an inflow transaction for each of the GCs (using the memo for the redemption code), and now when I redeem the gift card, I can enter the same GC number as an outflow. Voila - I can sort by the memo and know which ones have been redeemed already.

One order down... many more to go... (I told you it was a LOT of gift cards...)

So if anybody needs a reason to track gift cards in YNAB... it's when you have wayyyyyyyy too many to keep track of them on your own.

I have been reading about ynab and how it works one thing that I have learned is that ynab does not care where the money is coming from. Here is my dilema, the way I have "budget" money in the past is by every month looking at what is coming and then transfer the money betwen accounts.

• Checking 1 (auto deposit from work/freelance)
• Checking 2 (auto payments - general spending)

The reason why I have been doing this for years is that it gives me an idea on where the money is going but I want to tighten up my budget and that is why I am looking at ynab (everydollar, pocketguard).

If I know at the begining of the month I have to pay for mortgage I transfer from Checking 1 into Checking 2 to cover those expenses.

10 days later phone bill and water bill may hit so once again I transfer from Checking 1 into Checking 2 to cover those expenses.

And so forth, the problem with this is that in ynab now I have 10s of transactions without categories and they just list as "ONLINE TRANSFER FROM A".

Do I need to get rid of one account and only use 1 account for all or what is the best way to reconcile these transactions for ynab to recognize them not as more money coming in but rather just a way to keep track of where money is going.

I tried out YNAB six months ago and got lazy and didnt convert from a free trial the paid. I had connected my bank accounts, but after my free trial stopped, YNAB stopped importing my data.

Now I am interested in using it again, but when I log in and reconnect my accounts they are missing months of data.

How do I remove all the old stuff and start over?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve sporadically experienced the Outflow/Inflow amounts disappearing when I enter transactions. In other words, type amount in, click “Save” or “Save and Add Another” and the transaction saves but the transaction amount is blank. It also doesn’t get included in the Cleared or Working balances at the top of the Account page.

I disabled the Toolkit and no longer have the issue. I’m wondering if others have experienced this problem and been able to link it to a specific Toolkit feature that can be independently disabled. I’d prefer to do that rather than disabling the Toolkit entirely.

For reference, I’m using Firefox.

Hi Everyone,

I am in a financial meltdown. I owe close to $500k CAD, and that includes a mortgage, car payments, credit card, and a line of credit. I have no savings and have been diagnosed with severe, combined ADHD. Between my wife and myself we make around $200k per year, and have a stable jobs.

In September 2022 I joined YNAB and was quickly overwhelmed by how complicated getting started is. So, nothing happened. I noticed a few weeks ago that my subscription is still going, so I really want to give this a try again.

My main question is for other people with ADHD, how did you manage to get through the set up and first few months? I'm a reasonably intelligent person (I'm a professor, not that that inherently makes me intelligent!), and I have the desire to get my finances under control. But whenever I get started the process makes my head start to reel, and I can't seem to get YNAB up and running.

I have a partially set up version. Should I delete it and start again? My wife isn't very interested in using it. She is much better than I am with spending and finances, so the problem is entirely of my own making. I am also working with a therapist to try to get to the underlying issues that have made budgeting a life-long problem. I'm at my wit's end.

Any thoughts, help, or insights would be greatly appreciated.

I paid off my Amazon Credit Card and then made a $19.99 return.

I assigned the returned transaction to Clothes (the original category for the purchase.)

I also see $19.99 under "Ready to Assign". It shows that the amount came as "Inflow from Debt Account" i.e., my return.

Under my accounts, I see a positive 19.99 for my Credit Card - which I would expect.

I also see under available -$19.99 for the Credit Card.

From When Your YNAB Credit Card Payment Category is Red: A Guide, we read:

Did you make an overpayment? 
If your payment created a positive balance ↗️ on your card, the positive balance is treated like cash and added to Ready to Assign. Assigning those dollars directly to the Credit Card Payment category will bring it out of the red. 

Did you recently enter a return or refund? 
If the return sends your payment category negative, it's because the amount you had set aside in your Credit Card Payment category before the return was less than the amount of the return. Move the money from that return back to the Credit Card Payment category to cover that overspending.

My situation is the second one, but either I don't understand it, or don't necessarily agree with it.

If I move $19.99 from clothes to my Credit Card, it fixes the overspending on the Credit Card but I still have the $19.99 in Ready to Assign - which I suppose I could simply assign back to clothes.

Wouldn't I want to assign the return back to Clothes, and then assign the $19.99 in "Ready to Assign" directly to the Credit Card?

Thanks!

Is there a way to establish YNAB now, but with a future start date?
Getting married this summer and would like to build the budget and have it ready to go on August 1st. What would be ideal would be something like a “go live” option. I’ve YNABed before, so I understand I can start anytime, but I want a clean slate on 08/01 for the combining of two households, but would really like to have the substantial category lists, etc., already built before then. I feel like it’s going to take me some time to build and get it like I want it….and would like to be able to show a future “real” version to my fiance before then. (She has never YNAB’ed before and of course has trouble envisioning until she sees the real thing.) If there is not a way, might it be best to build a practice version, take notes and screenshots, and just do a fresh start to rebuild on 08/01?

Hey all, I'm a YNABber of 4 years and want to get your thoughts on a question.

We are doing some work on our home that we have been saving up for. We have about $5k in our "home" category AND we have about $10k in a Vanguard that is earmarked for that purpose, and is a tracking account in YNAB, so that money isn't on budget. We also have a LOT of additional funds in our bank account that are in other category groups.

After paying for the first round of work, our budget for home that's in our regular bank account is depleted, but it feels EXTREMELY silly to me to pull the money from our Vanguard in order to pay for the next contractor when we have more than enough cash in our bank account to pay for it. The transaction just seems odd.

My instinct is to change the Vanguard account from a tracking account to an on-budget account, record the "inflow" and assign the funds in there to their jobs, and then we can just leave the vanguard alone and use the cash in our account to pay for things. Does this make sense and seem reasonable, or is there some YNAB philosophical reason I haven't thought of to leave things the way they are, withdraw our money from Vanguard, and then pay contractors?

TIA.

Everyone says this is the way YNAB works, but it’s never made sense for my brain.

What I mean is for example I have a HYSA and a checking. I’ve always kept a category called “savings” whose balance always matches my HYSA balance exactly. All the other money in categories I know is money sitting in my checking. But most YNABers say it doesn’t need to be done this way. But I can’t really grasp how that would work. Help me make the paradigm shift!

I'm currently working with a lawyer. I paid an initial retainer of $5,000. I am wanting to set aside a total of $20,000 (including the $5,000 I've already paid), which is what I estimate the eventual total costs will be. Every month I put $500 to $1,000 in the lawyer category, and sometimes more if I come across a bit extra. This month I got and paid a bill from the lawyer of $1,000 because the original retainer has been spent and to reup the amount in my account.

Is the target Set aside $20,000, though I don't think I want to add another $20,000 regardless of my balance? Or Refill up to $20,000, though I don't think I want to Use what is left over in this category and fill it back up to $20,000. Or Have a balance of $20,000, though I don't think I want to reach this amount by a specific time and refrain from spending until I reach it. I want to eventually have saved up a total of $20,000, but also be able to spend from it without needing to keep adding back what I've spent to stay at $20,000.

Maybe it's just Set aside $20,000 without repeating? Thanks for your help!

Currently I have the following:

• 13 groups
• 75 categories

This is because every single bill is broken out into its own category with its own target. This let me see how much I’m paying on a monthly basis for every single thing. When I first started YNAB this was great because it let me have clear control over what was going out.

The problem is now there’s a lot of “noise” with all of this and it feels like it may be too low-level for me. I totally get why it works for many people but I’m not sure it works for me after all.

However I do like the granularity of knowing each bill exactly and I’m also not sure if the alternative would be better.

Now that I’ve started using manual transactions I’m wondering if I can collapse a bunch of these categories and retain the granularity via scheduled transactions?

What are the pro/con of moving from category-per-bill to a category-per-bill-type and using manual / scheduled transactions to provide that granularity?

And if I do make the move to that other approach what do I need to do to actually make it happen? Create new general category, then delete current lower level ones and re assign all transactions to the general one?

Thanks.

I have my categories organized into category groups based on different purposes. Now, I would like to move some money for categories that only need to be paid yearly to a savings account and somehow highlight these categories across my category groups to keep track. At first, I thought I could use either notes or flags, but the former don't show up in the main view, only when I click on the category, and the latter seems to be only available for transactions, not for categories.

One solution I can think of is adding a textual identifier (e.g. '(Savings)') or an emoji to the category names, but that does not seem very 'elegant'. Is there a feature I am missing that could help here or is that really the only option?

My wife and I started using YNAB recently and like it so far. My question though is how do you all use YNAB with traditional banks? What I mean specifically is how do you separate the money you allocate in YNAB categories in real life? Ally bank has “buckets” you can use, which my wife loves because we can match those with what we have allocated (like envelopes basically). But we would rather keep using our local bank. So how do visual people do this with a normal checking account?

If what I’m asking isn’t clear enough let me know.

Thanks!

Edit:

Thanks for the replies! I get it now.

I'm still adjusting my budget to account for real life, and all I can really do at the end of a month is compare the Assigned, Activity, and Available columns to see where it all ended up. Would be nice to have a icon at the end of the month that tells me I should budget more (or less) next month. Just a thought.

Also! I'd love to have a graph of how much I'm spending in a given category over time, to see how my spending habits are changing.