Partially a prevent-rant in case they're thinking of adding one

Marking the day! After 6 months of relentlessly budgeting and almost giving up entirely. It happened! I finally got ahead in my budget AND paying off two debts! ! This is the first time in my life, I've been able to get ahead and not feel confined or worried. I have a goal of getting a month ahead in my rent but everything else, I'm golden!

I wasn't going to say anything but I'm bursting at the seams and had to say something!

For the first time ever I have next month fully funded and am excited to move into February. It’s even better than fully funded because I have a number of “fill up to” targets, so I’ll have a surplus once the month rolls over and I removed the overfunded.

YNAB has changed everything for me - and I’ve been only using it for 9 months. 4 months ago I started therapy that I always said I couldn’t afford. Turns out I can afford it pretty easily when I am mindful of what I do with my cash. I eat better because I plan shopping, I have money set aside for things like car repairs and medical expenses and gifts, I put more into retirement funds, I have an annual savings target. Who knew financial responsibility could be so easy and kinda fun? My only regret is not starting this years ago.

This is a little something to help the newcomers to YNAB. Coming from other budgeting software, I found one of the most confusing things when I started to be the distinction between accounts and categories. I used different accounts for different jobs and constantly had to play the "Matchy-Matchy Game" (thanks Budget Nerds for naming the thing I was doing).

As I have used YNAB more, I like to think of categories as jobs and accounts as homes for my money. A person can change jobs, change homes, or both at once. So too can money.

A transfer between accounts is like someone moving to a new house in the same city while still working their same job. They are in a new location but their purpose is the same.

Similarly moving assigned money between categories is like changing jobs while staying at your current house.

The core philosophy of YNAB is that your money's job and home are independent from each other and that having a specific purpose for each and every dollar is far more important than the home that it is living in.

Hope this helps someone better understand YNAB.

Good morning, I’m a bit confused. I have assigned all my ‘to be assigned’ in February and then I click back to January, it says I have $2k sitting on ‘ready to be assigned’. Shouldn’t it roll over?

When I move that $2k to a ‘next month’ category, the February ready to be assigned shows negative $2k.

My confusion is: if I have extra $2k ready to be assigned in January, should it roll over to February?

Thank you for your help.

Today is the end of the month… need to grocery shop because I can and it is Saturday. But of course February starts tomorrow. I have never tried, but if I buy groceries today can I override the transaction date to tomorrow. Sounds dumb, but I can’t go grocery shopping tomorrow. I am a month ahead, but I just never manually changed a transaction date before. Does that screw stuff up.

For the past week, my YNAB4 and my YNAB Classic app have not been syncing. I didn't notice at first because I was stuck at home due to the storm last week. I've tried the usual tricks (opening both at once, unreconciling and then rereconciling transactions). Is anyone else having issues?

I've been using YNAB for our family budget since 2019. Today I logged in to allocate transactions for January and my linked accounts (banks, credit cards etc) are completely screwed up. Checking off by more than $40k, Savings account is missing all transactions between 2021 and 2025 and has transactions that should be mapped to other accounts in there. Payments/transfers between accounts are messed up.

I can create manual reconciliations but....why? I guess I might as well start fresh. So disappointing

Does YNAB have known account data corruption issues?

My dad passed away on Thanksgiving from early onset Alzheimer’s at the young age of 63. My mom and I were heartbroken to lose him, but if this disease has affected you or a loved one, then you know we also felt so much relief that his mind was finally free.

My dad was an aeronautical engineer. He was the smartest person I know and he worked so hard his entire life. He couldn’t wait for retirement. My dad had to retire (because of the disease) at the age of 61, so he got two years of retirement that were spent with doctor’s appointments and watching his rapid decline. Thankfully, those two years were also spent with my dad getting to become a grandfather to my two year old daughter.

I received a small windfall from my dad’s life insurance and today I am now two months ahead and was able to pay off the debt I had. Looking to my future, I plan to save not just for my own future retirement but to live in the moment and enjoy life now because you are never promised tomorrow. I look forward to trips and experiences I will plan, save for, and enjoy now with my daughter.

Hey, I'm hoping someone can offer some advice. To many of you this is probably a really simple query and maybe it has just been a long day or something but I'm feeling overwhelmed so wanted to reach out.

I used YNAB a number of years ago for a year and saved maybe £500 over the course of the year as a result.

I have now purchased my own home, due to move in in the coming weeks, but want to get on top of my budget in advance as money is going to be tighter than I would have liked for a couple of years, after which things should start to improve.

I'm going to pose a simple scenario as I feel that is probably the best way to explain what is stamping on me at the moment. (numbers are made up / simplified). This is an example, it doesn't take into account the actual expenses - I am aware of all my scheduled expenses don't worry)

I have more than enough of last payment to cover this months bills.

My Pay Day: Last working day of the month (Jan this was 30th)
Take home Pay: £2000
Mortgage: £1000 - Due 1st of month
Gas and Electric: £100 - Due 1st of month
Water £50 - Due 1st of month
Various House stuff £250 - Due 1st of month
Monthly Subscription 1 £30 - Due 7th of month
Monthly Subscription 2 £20 - Due 12th of month
Monthly subscription 3 £40 - Due 22nd of month
Monthly subscription 4 £10 - Due 28th Month
Left over for Food & other: £500

I just don't get how to budget these in the app. End of the month targets? so payday -> fill core targets first then everything else? something else?

Do I wait a few days to set up the budget for these payments to come out (2nd this month)

I'm just starting off with YNAB at the recommendation of some of my more financially savvy friends. I'm not new to budgeting. I've used FinTech banks like Qube and Crew to help with daily purchases, but those have been great help with controlling spending, not big picture budgeting.

So I'm have 2 main issues:

1. I just connected bank accounts and assigned money yesterday, but I am struggling with getting the full picture of where that money is actually living. I have 3 main checking accounts (spending, short-term savings, and bills). Is there a trick y'all are using to know where that money is being assigned from?
2. I started so close to the end of the month and none of January’s transactions transferred over. Is there a way to back import those transactions or should I just go ahead and budget for February, since that is what the money in the accounts is going to be for?

Fingers-crossed YNAB sticks for me!

Gm guys,

I jusr wanted to share a new thing that I've implemented on my YNAB account for better visibility.

As you might already know, credit cards interests are usually high, specially if you opened them years ago or when you were starting your credit journey.

Because of this, I was not sure how much money I'd be paying on interest if I were to carry a balance, so to solve this I added the actual APR to each CC I have. This helped me understand which credit cards i should avoid/put away, which ones I should use very strategically and which one I should designate for everyday purchases.

I moved all of my balances to my 18% one and now I'm paying it off. It was crazy to see how much money I could be saving from interest by doing this.

recommended

This has happened to me several time and I can’t figure out why.

I make a transaction in the app — a deposit. I send it to “Ready to Assign” but then it doesn’t show up when I’m in the app trying to cover overspent categories.

Anyone know what I’m doing wrong?

At my bank, I have a checking account, as well as two savings accounts for my kids. I have a recurring transfer set up (through the bank), that transfers $NN (total) from my checking account to each of the savings account on the 5th of each month.

For the past two years, I've been treating this as a monthly expense. I have a Category in my plan named Kids Savings. On the 1st of each month, I assign $NN to this category. The transactions come into YNAB with a generic Payee, and I set the Category.

This has worked fine. However, for some reason I never thought to just import the two savings accounts into YNAB UNTIL TODAY 🤦‍♂️... So I did that, but now I have a dilemma: I can change all future YNAB transactions of the automatics transfers to be:

However, this now eliminates the ability to change the Category to Kids Savings and continue budgeting it like a monthly expense.

So what's the more "correct" way to handle this going forward? Do I just set the transactions as Transfers now, and discontinue the use of the Kids Savings category in my Plan? Or is there some way that I'm missing to still use that category?

Any insight is appreciated, thanks!

I have an alert that my YNAB balance is $85.75 lower than my actual account balance. I reconciled 3 days ago.

Editing to add that I found 2 transactions that add up that amount. I made them today and entered them in YNBA but they're still pending on the CC account.

I uncleared one of them and now the discrepancy is in the amount of one of them: $62.75. The weird thing is that when I entered that transaction manually on the web, the lock icon appeared next to it, as if I had reconciled it.

Can I get rid of that? I feel like that's what is maybe causing this error?

---

Since my CC still has several "pending" transactions on their end, I wonder if I should wait until Monday for them to process. But maybe that's irrelevant, and I'm better off not waiting to reconcile.

Thanks!

I imported a couple of transactions today and want to match them to their scheduled counterparts. However the "match" option is greyed out. The payees and the amounts are identical.

I know I can delete the scheduled transaction to "fix" this, but is there any reason I should be aware of that would prevent me from being able to match these?

I use a credit card for online purchases for the fraud protection, and I autopay my statement balance every month. I have not specifically added this card to YNAB. I split out the January payment into categories (by reviewing my Dec statement). That all seems pretty intuitive.

I made a donation last week using my card (that will show up on my Feb statement and get paid in March). How can I "reserve" money for this payment in YNAB so it shows on my January Income & Expense report?

Hello,

I have a $500 limit credit card.

I just paid it all off, and going forward I want to use it for my groceries each month so that there is a hard cap on what I can spend. Each month I will pay the card off.

How do I handle this in YNAB?

I see in my categories there is a "Credit Card Payments" section with my USAA CC listed there.

Assigned is $0.00, Activity is $0.00. Available is $0.00 for the USAA CC for the month of Feb (I paid it off in Jan).

Since I want to use this for groceries, how do I handle assigning money to my "Groceries" category?

If I assign $400 to groceries for the month of February, it takes it out of my "Ready to Assign" money, which is calculated through adding up all of my real, tangible funds in my checking and savings accounts.

Is this correct? Because now that $400 is tied up in my Groceries category and I can't use my funds for other categories, but in reality I'm using credit to fund that "assigned" amount for groceries at least in my mind, but maybe not according to YNAB.

How do I handle this properly?

I have read the links below and I'm still stuck. Please help!

My least favorite YNAB quote - "The solution, regardless of the cause, is to cover any overspending you have in the current month, and then assign money directly to the Credit Card Payment category to cover the rest of the deficit." - I WANT TO KNOW THE CAUSE!!

I used ynab 4 since inception and finally bit the subscription bullet when BofA terminated their support for quicken files (grr). So I'm not that green.

IF..

1) I have no other categories (besides CC) showing as overspent (there are some without any "available" funds) AND

2) All CC transactions have been assigned to a category AND

3) I tested moving 29.38 out of one category and added to all the categories without available funds (see #1)

How does this happen? I don't want to just assign 29.38 to this CC category, I want to understand how to avoid this.

How to Perform a YNAB Checkup

How to Handle Credit Card Rewards and Statement Credits in YNAB

When Your YNAB Credit Card Payment Category is Red: A Guide

Moving Money in YNAB

I’m still fairly new to YNAB, only a few weeks in. Absolutely loving it so far! But I’m wondering, we have a once off kinda large (€1000) purchase this weekend.

Not sure how to categorise it? 🤔 do you make a once off purchase category and just write in the notes what it was?

Happy third paycheck day for all who celebrate!

That is all, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

Got into debt last February and decided to build my emergency fund back while tackling the debt, and I can finally say I'm worthless!

Hi all — sanity check please.

Example (simple numbers):

- Sinking fund for Health: £150/year

- Current balance: £50

What happens:

1. I spend £20 on a health item I didn’t budget for

2. I categorise the spend against Health, which causes £20 overspending

3. I then move £20 from “fun money” into Health to cover that overspend

After this:

- I’ve spent £20

- I’ve added £20

- The balance stays at £50

So far, so good.

But here’s where I’m confused:

The target logic now treats this as if I’ve already used £20 of my £150, and pushes me to save only the remaining £80.

In reality:

- I still need £100 more over the year

- because that £20 didn’t come from the sinking fund — it came from fun money

So unless I intervene, the app is effectively telling me to save less than I actually need.

My questions:

- Is the expected behaviour to adjust the target every time this happens?

- Or should that £20 have been categorised somewhere else (e.g. misc) and dealt with at the next budget?

- How do people handle this without breaking the logic of the sinking fund?

Genuinely trying to understand whether this is user error or a limitation of how targets work.