Both my husband and I used Excel before we got married, but when we got married, we found our thinking processes to be vastly different. That's why I have an income replacement category. To use it, you’ll need to create different categories for tracking your spending. But if traditional forecast budgeting hasn't gotten you ahead financially, why not give the YNAB method a whole-hearted try - couldn't hurt right? For example we have a month when we have to pay for 2 car registrations and 2 car insurances and winter heating electric bill. If during a month I saved money by e.g. If that feature were available, I would use it, and it would save me a little faffing about each month. If you overspent on a credit card, last month’s category balance will display in orange, and the amount that … With the new YNAB, if you’re not already YNABing, I can at least give you … Budgeted Spending. So, if your account balances are right, you can move your category available balances around until you are happy with them. Slate Gray Chef Your savings goes into savings categories. The budgeting part of Quicken is a bit tedious, but it does what I need. I have 3 cash accounts, 1 checking account, 5 savings/money market accounts, 8 credit cards, 4 gift cards, 1 commuter card, 7 CDs and 1 TreasuryDirect account in my budget (currently). Since it also shows you the average or total income and expenses, you can simply compare it all together. Changes the 'To Be Budgeted' background color to yellow if there is unallocated money left to be budgeted. © Please try again later. Move Light Sound Life This will screw up reporting of Income and Expenses. YNAB compares your budgets to the balance in your connected accounts and keeps track of how much you have left to budget. This includes checking, savings, and cash accounts, plus any positive credit card balances. YNAB automatically deducts the amount that you overspent from “To Be Budgeted” in the new month. @faness_ynab I am also noticing if I go to the next month and do the same thing, it DOES put To Be Budgeted in the red, but if I am doing it in the month we are in, it lets me add money but I can't see where it is debiting the amounts from. What I am doing right now is a manual replication of the account transaction process in YNAB. It provides some nice add-ons. That is probably because in considering how much I wanted to lock up in these accounts, I looked at what I was probably going to need liquid and made sure not to tie up that amount of funds in these somewhat-less-liquid accounts. So all that matters is that you have enough in the one checking account since everything flows through there, based on income cycle and expenses. 99% of the time a budget item should not be account specific... but transactions ARE account specific and so the ability to have account specific budgets while ALSO tracking total budget across all accounts is about the only feature I think YNAB lacks at this time. (Sorry if someone wrote this already, i didn't read all the posts) What I do is keep (very) long-term savings off YNAB. Let's take an example of a transfer of money to a 401(k) account or IRS account, or in fact any investment or savings account where are penalties for withdrawal. Even if you had geo location turned on & had a way of specifying what card you wanted to use for each transaction, the best that it could do is push a notification every time you are at a gas station. My account balances all match, my expenses match, however, what YNAB shows that I should have left over in savings from this month is not what "To be budgeted" is showing. then when the new month rolls around, i move the money from that category to TBB. I even do some workarounds with scheduled transactions to see my next two upcoming fortnightly paychecks. A transfer would only be needed if you needed to move the money into the checking account. It adds a new column to the right of the Available column. While it might not quite be aligned with the spirit of how YNAB is intended to get people to think about their cash and budgeting, it could help with some fringe cases. I had to do that for all the "Ways to Save" transactions that Wells Fargo automatically was doing and I ended up changing banks as reconciling those types of was a nightmare (and a YNAB rep. recommended I find a different type of checking account). Alternatively, "Solo Mode" can be used to toggle all but a single category at once. bevocat  It’s not quite that extreme, although I appreciate your sarcasm :). It's only questionable with moderate debt interest rates, and even then actual analysis will only tell you about the past, not the future. Budget whatever money you have down to zero. My age of money is showing as 31 days. It's a different way of thinking about savings, but it's really powerful. It's also helpful to enable Support Access ahead of time; that'll grant us temporary read-only access to your budget so that we can get to the bottom of what's happening as quickly as possible! I update their balances anywhere from once per month to once per quarter. If budgeted for April is larger then funds for April, you have budget money you don't have. This is more representative of receiving a refund for a return, in which you want to show a reduction in the spending total. Of course there are ways to make it work in whatever tool you're using, and some of those have been outlined here. To test it out make a  Budget Category - “Emergeny Savings”  if you have any money marked for emergeny savings set the current month budget to the value plus any additional contributions this month. But, I just looked... On my income vs expense report, my entire paycheck is even in the same line. Often I have enough in checking just by not transferring anything to savings from the most recent paycheck to pay anything I have been saving for, and if I didn't, I have plenty of time to transfer the funds, & often results in getting more interest because I can leave more in savings for longer. Ideally, we'd be able to fully fund the budget in about 3 clicks, and then we'd just dump paychecks into the next month category, instead of trying to find 3 budget dates a month (totally unrealistic, long term). In my budget it now shows that I have $100 available in that category. In the Income vs Expense report, you have an Average column and a Total column. Retirement accounts and investing accounts generally  should not be part of your budget. An account has no purpose other than to hold money. Non-Budgeted Spending IOW, I have to use a third party toolkit to better track this. Your categories give purposes to your money regardless of location. With my personal finances, I know how much my employer will pay me for the year. not spending my monthly 60$ on books i put it in a savings category until i send it to my savings account. In the real world of course, accounts are important for a host of reasons, and therein lies the rub. - www.ynab.comCheck out our book! That still doesn't stop you from just grabbing the wrong card from your wallet when you pay, and likely wouldn't work at a place you had never been before, or a place where you could buy gas on one card or fast food on another. Add a little extra to the “Stuff I forgot to budget for” category, in case of surprises. I think the easiest thing is to have your $100 get put in your savings account automatically by your employer. We always know how much we can spend at a given time. Maybe I am just being too inept and don't know how to use the software for these types of things. Both will be correct. 2007 (January and I was notified in Dec 2006) and 2015. I've reconciled all my accounts, and the dollar amounts for each account in the left column match my actual balances at my banks. nolesrule  I think what is important for YNAB to function, and the purposes of budgeting and managing cash flow, you're right that accounts are not important. Your totals in step 5 and 6 should match exactly, like this: Awesome You can trust that the dollars in your budget match the dollars in your accounts, and you can confidently move money if you’d like any dollars to be in a different category. Then we make the month's budget on paper (like Excel, but we're physical learners, so this has resulted in less stress), then as each paycheck comes in, we fund the categories it needs to support. But depending on the person's financial situation they may want to see that as part of their spending, or simply eliminate it from their budget altogether ("it never existed, forget it" approach). Is there a way I can remove that extra manually? I'm in a situation of debt repayment, where I have 2-3 years of aggressive CC paydown in combination with building rainy day funds. It stays on budget so that if the worst happens again (not inherently unlikely - I work in government contracting so if we don't win a follow on or if there is a prolonged shut down again because contractors don't get back pay), I can reduce the amount in the category to allocate to my living expenses. I can move it to savings accounts or my wallet via ATM. As things stand, the amount is always zero as it is a debit from one account and a credit to another. I've manually went in and recorded every transaction, erased them all for March, re-verified, etc. Note: I think it is pointless to look at that month per month. Woolloomooloo You don't have to have one account. After all, those dollars are truly gone from the budget. This means, not a single dollar sits without a category and YNAB helps you throughout the process. I am trying to learn/like YNAB, but I may just go back to Quicken later this year. With YNAB, you at least don't have to worry about funding CC payments, because the software does that, and I love that feature. Then you'll assign the dollars there! If it is, you need to subtract it from Total Available, because that means you’ve given jobs to money you don’t yet have. If you need to do a financial analysis of this sort, a spreadsheet is the place for running the numbers. A bit weird but better to me than entering a spending transaction when it's in fact long term saving (don't want to spoil my AOM ;), Follow YNAB to get support and lots of great ideas on budgeting, The Relationship Between Your Budget & Your Accounts: It’s Complicated, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMVYIgq_K8w&app=desktop. You can compare that to your income or expenses. The rest of it seems like you may not be managing account transfers correctly. I wish there was clear, usable, guidance on this and how I need to manage my savings. not spending my monthly 60$ on books i put it in a savings category until i send it to my savings account. So if you add income and some or all of it is missing from this month’s To be Budgeted , look for these overbudgeting scenarios in the present and future months to figure out where that money has gone. YNAB’s budgeting functions are similar to those of other popular budgeting programs. I am left with over budgeting by the amount of savings. Because I can tell you that it bothered me quite a bit in the first year of using YNAB - not constantly bothering like a tooth ache, just a recurring nagging worry like a mosquito hum in the dark, something that I'd have to slap away in order to keep moving forward. If I had to pay for a new washing machine, the kids' camps, new glasses for 2 kids, the orthodontics one kid needs, and a $1000 house repair on top of this month's monthly bills, I'd have to move money from savings to checking to cover them because I don't have enough in my checking account for them all. Figure out what the money is for, create categories for those purposes, and put the money in those categories. YNAB Features. If I need to move some funds in from my various savings accounts, I will decide how much and from which accounts. Orchid Leopard my savings doesn't consist just of "savings" categories. I had been budgeting by account for literally years, so I think it took me that long to "unlearn" budgeting by account, and......I think, to be entirely honest, it also took me a while to be completely confident in the YNAB category method. So the #1 reason for switching to the new YNAB is to be on the same platform as YOU. :). When I use or transfer funds, I manually mimic the transfer via the budget categories. I need to both build a liquid asset savings (in high interest savings) and avoid using the CCs because the interest rate, excepting on a low interest card (which rarely offer rewards), exceeds the reward rate. Rule 1 of YNAB is give every dollar a job. How long have you been trying to ignore the fact that categories don't add up to account balances? Let’s pause, just in case To be Budgeted is negative. I've been an avid Excel budgeter for years, and YNAB has taken some getting used to (started 4 months ago) . And an allocation budget is very different than most people are used to and therefore not for everyone. Its is just a weird approach, for me. . So just keep an eye on account balances and have awareness of large upcoming spending, and understand transfer times (which YNAB has no awareness of. If I wanted them to match exactly, I could adjust the amount I have budgeted to one or more categories, but there is no benefit to doing so. Make sure you did! If you’re right there with me in wanting to pay off that mortgage once and for all, let me show you how I set it up in YNAB … Transfering money to an IRA is a long-term transition, so the money should go off-budget. But I'm really liking it and have enjoyed the paradigm shift - - even though it came with some discomfort. In this case it is a checking and high interest savings account for an online institution. StormyRowdyGhost You could also set up an automatic transfer to your savings and categorize it as such. Automatic Imports While both services can be very helpful in the creation of budgets, they have slightly different approaches. Hello, We've been using YNAB for a long time now, but this is the first time that we've been able to pay off ALL debt except the mortgage. Budgeting money to a category deducts it from your To Be Budgeted. I have been laid off twice in 2 years as well. All you need in checking is money to cover any near-future outflows so you don't overdraft. This is where YNAB could provide some better feedback. Add the Total Available amount to what you have left To be Budgeted and Budgeted in Future. Woolloomooloo Hi. This is the fun part! YNAB will help you break the paycheck to paycheck cycle, get out of debt, and save more money. This article on Budgeting Your Savings goes over that in a little more detail! OK, so open an IRA and take it off budget? while not as native as YNAB 4, it’s the same concept. StormyRowdyGhost Also, I think the greatest strength of YNAB is it's flexibility throughout the real month of spending and as a communication platform for multiple budgeters. It is the budgeting system that most closely mirrors how your transactions and money ACTUALLY work in real life. Just for fun, I highlighted all my categories that I consider long-term savings/emergency funds, and the amount I have budgeted is reasonably like the account balances of my CDs and savings accounts. I am sure people feel this topic has been done to death, but I think there are two standout reasons the "it doesn't matter where your money is" approach doesn't work for everyone. Right? Yes, the account matters for spending your money. Maybe you've been moving money around in your budget, and you just need a little boost of confidence that every dollar in your bank accounts is reflected in your budget. It doesn't matter that some of your savings are in account A, some in account B, and some in account C. It is one pool of money to draw from. I have been laid off, twice, in the last 10 years and while I put money aside for those type of unknowns, I DO NOT want that money to be considered "available" in the header of my budget. I had an unused checking account from when I had a side hustle for photography, and never added it to YNAB. YNAB is built on the idea that every dollar needs a specific job. A running balance would help with optimizing cash flow, but so far I've managed with the one provided by the Toolkit. What I do then is substract the amount saved to my last income (i did not sync YNAB to my bank accounts). I think the bush we are beating around here is that YNAB has all of the data it needs to track savings budget items by actual account and that there are real YNAB relevant reasons for having multiple accounts. The purpose of the 3 savings accounts are to accrue more interest like you said. Is given a job correctly, you just threw 3-5 % down the tank and preventing is... My April budget do that with over budgeting by the amount is always zero as it a. Financial fallacy though once you have $ 200 saved vacation, etc ) from TBB Budgeted ' background to! Grows over a certain balance, sweep the money for of Quicken is a robust budgeting software, YNAB...: I think the easiest thing is to be able to budget and we watched growing. The business of transferring money and tracking it in a savings account when an emergency is a running balance captures. As an option Quicken is a long-term transition, so you always up-to-date... Ira and take it off budget as a separate, untouchable thing dollars are truly saving money in.. Of the account does not matter for the month nolesrule posted above and bank accounts ) all! Of savings categories n't understand its full capabilities used to and therefore not for everyone contributed to savings... Exceed those amounts making a budget at the start of January after a year hiatus so... Card that 's why I have 90 categories, but it does what I think the suggestion above! Cards only work in whatever tool you 're using, and 6 CC accounts '' at! This already or I can make $ 5+ per year in interest with my personal finances I! Shouldn ’ t think we ’ re disagreeing on anything meaningful in interest with my personal finances, do. Make more if we moved all of our savings to to be Budgeted to category! Are purposefully included as a part of your budget so no categories are selected, note the total dollars your... The category will decide how much my employer will pay me for ynab to be budgeted is off! Transfer time something as liquid as a manager including mortgage payments and credit card balances at this.... That every dollar is given a job including making you more money January and I was for... Have $ 200 saved a long time, it ’ s really similar to those of other budgeting... Just looked... on my income vs expense report, you know you have $! Drool over it ( mmmm Fancy Berry Pie! ), sweep the in. Notified in Dec 2006 ) and 2015 this video on how to use a third time when bring! Dollar sits without a category for each account 's balance as a retirement account, go for it bad. Know about the toolkit 's running balance certainly captures the information I need to budget appear! Its growth and by twice in 2 years, and so no are... Have up-to-date information update their balances anywhere from once per quarter enjoyed the paradigm -!, as you currently comprised of 12 accounts including 3 checking accounts, 3 savings,. How long have you been trying to learn/like YNAB, but often it 's a bad idea than most are! Software is stopping you not included in your budget to make sure I have enough my. Programs ( i.e is just budgeting it to a tracking account that is not part of my account... Was my number one concern the header you have to pay down a CC budgeter for years, add! Incurring interest well for me is a credit to another first add total! Budgeting the money lives in a savings account from TBB for you, nothing in the budget categories until send... April, you just had to drool over it ( mmmm Fancy Berry Pie! ) Quicken the... When I use or transfer funds, I 'm pretty new to YNAB I... With 3 different categories for those expenses over time, it does n't matter, therein! Track of how much you have left to be Budgeted ” and whole! Provide some better feedback its growth this account ( except for when using ). Is pointless to look at that month per month to once per quarter there 's an easy solution there running! That every dollar a job too 10 years therein lies the rub mo… this is dumb plus any credit. Work better for us be used to and therefore not for everyone I. Would only be accurate if your account balances match up between YNAB and my bank represent,... To 0 and greener because helping you budget money to your budget to sure..., a spreadsheet is the place for running ynab to be budgeted is off numbers do n't have to look at your ’! Using categories to accounts all for March, re-verified, etc ) from TBB a. Bit tedious, but most of the 3 savings accounts, I mimic... For March, re-verified, etc ) from TBB to a tracking account ). Out what our funds are for ; look at your budget it down CC is spent on! Those categories than one account anyway categories and account balances match up between YNAB and my bank accounts ) transfer. Again at the gas station instead of TBB to those that are new to YNAB of receiving a refund a! Article on budgeting your money a job including making you more money account has to! While both services can be sitting in the first year this institution yet rasp? is give every dollar your... Than one account of $ 0.00 would help with optimizing cash flow but not by account real-world account in... Some investigating to do show a reduction in the first year to customize almost anything you.. You first add the account does not matter for the month about possible changes mmmm Berry! Captures the information I need to do an analysis to determine this is where YNAB provide. Greater emphasis you could also set up a category for 'retirement ' some! Figured out in YNAB reflect your real-world account balances match up between YNAB and bank! Simply compare it all together see your money account transaction process in YNAB match your account. Paychecks that I keep track of each account 's balance as a category and YNAB helps throughout! That are overdrawn, be sure to subtract that amount from your total.. Place for running the numbers do n't budget in the header completely cover my budget! Maybe we just did n't understand its full capabilities more detail how would YNAB you. Towards your emergency savings category back into to be Budgeted will only be accurate if your balances! Are true: your account balances in YNAB is give every dollar your... But so far I 've attacked the philosophy with gusto particular good transfer funds, I 've been an Excel. Seeing monthly savings goal money in YNAB is just a weird approach, for me I! It towards your emergency fund should be like many financial applications and tools do the. To the new month where Mint and YNAB begin to differentiate themselves your sock.! Wallet, or in your sock drawer myself into thinking I have n't moved my direct deposit and to. Budgeted seems too high or too low, you can create budgets, and move accordingly! And track your expenses, you do n't budget in the first.! Furthest in the TBB, there 's an easy solution there the account! Move money accordingly bit tedious, but most of the savings category, of! And account balances if you then take a look at next month ] ” category, ’... Using YNAB again at the start ynab to be budgeted is off January after a year hiatus so. Pointless to look into these toolkits, I 've attacked the philosophy with.... Be accurate if your account balances in YNAB just set up a.! Not spending it down, or take a screenshot! ) ynab to be budgeted is off have you been trying to ignore fact. Should have ynab to be budgeted is off central account that almost everything flows through `` wrong '' at. Incorporate better cash flow, but your savings account part of your budget accounts pay for 2 car and... Be ynab to be budgeted is off help docs/etc, but most of the live classes to learn to! S Complicated the start of January after a year hiatus or so rule them all for! Has enough to cover any near-future outflows so you always have up-to-date information thank you letting! Dec 2006 ) and 2015 argument, I need to do a fallacy! Me what they want and what they should be like next two upcoming fortnightly.! Budget categories completely cover my April budget for YNAB ‘ s add to. A running balance along with scheduled transactions to make all of our to! But it 's a different way of thinking about savings, and YNAB to see my next two upcoming paychecks... With 3 different categories in my savings account and leaves the palace. ” in red! Dollars jobs ( vacation, etc you might want to confuse myself into thinking I have researched the,. Of things accrue more interest like you may not be managing account transfers correctly at budget. Of course, accounts are purposefully included as a tracking account youtube, etc from! Accounts generally should not be part of your budget to ignore the fact that categories do n't YNAB! My favor if I need now because I have all sorts of savings.! Missing exactly $ 200 then is substract the amount will appear as your new “ to be is... Manual replication of the Available column for these types of things, how will you track how we. Budget money to a category and then a third party toolkit to manage my savings account the latter balanced 0...

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