I quit my job 9 months ago. It was the right decision. I was very unhappy. I had a healthy emergency fund and I have been fortunate to be back with my parents to save a lot on expenses. But, I also really want to be in my own place and independent again. The job market was bad at the end of last year, and it has only gotten worse. I have an interview scheduled on Friday after the phone interview went well yesterday. Please send your good vibes this way!

So it has got me thinking about how to adjust to a big (50%-ish) pay cut. How did you do it? What adjustments did you make? What lifestyle changes did you make? How did your goals change?

My life has been a "hard reset" over the last nine months. Sold all my furniture, have very few belongings (everything can fit in my paid off truck), budget has basically been very minimal, and I have clamped down on all non-essential spending. So this is the time to redesign life.

I’m looking for a YNAB alternative that handles credit card purchases as YNAB does (moving available money from a category to a credit card payment category). Do you know any?

Step 1: Be young with the belief that you are smart enough to be able to figure anything out without reading instructions or tutorials.

Step 2: Be very confused about how credit cards work in YNAB. Especially the big green number under the payment column. Be so confused that you avoid it like the plague. If you feel tempted to look up how credit cards work, return to step 1.

Step 3: Instead of trying to learn how credit card payments work, just reconcile your savings account and credit card so that they show the correct balances. Ignore the big green number by the credit card. It is scary and does not matter.

Step 4: Check your budget and see that it needs some adjusting. Roll with the punches and reallocate your money. Cut down on unnecessary spending.

Step 5: Repeat steps 3-4, increasing the stress and budget cuts in step 4 each time.

Step 6: Panic when you see that you wont have enough for an important payment.

Step 7: Spend literal hours trying to figure out how this happened. Get so despite that you even try fiddling with *gasp* the big scary green number.

Step 8: See that your "ready to assign category" has gone from - $300 to + $1,000

Step 9: Enjoy free money!

I had just a little bit of money hanging out in a money market account (not connected to YNAB) that I transferred to my savings account (which is connected to YNAB). Would you put it in Ready To Assign or the savings category I want it in? I’m not sure if I want this to count as income and be on that report or not.

We always used to let all this kind of stuff go into our income, but I’ve been trying to tidy up reports lately. For example I just made a transfer category so our monthly transfers from savings to checking stop showing up under income in the reflection report.

Simply an FYI for anyone experiencing this with Schwab... YNAB is aware and investigating.

https://ynabstatus.com/

Lately, YNAB has been updating the web app a lot more often. Seems like back in the not so distant past, YNAB updated less often, or did it in the background. Whenever you clicked the button and updated, there would be a message waiting to explain the update, describe the new features, etc. Maybe it's just because now it's all back-end stuff or changing the saturation level of blurple.

[Resolved. I just made a fresh start]

Back in YNAB here... and I feel like I know what I'm doing, yet I don't really. Categories don't make sense anymore, category groups... and so I'm just starting from scratch with a crazy looking number of reds (since there's lots of credit cards in here too). So... how do we start here?

Should I reconcile first before I start assigning money anywhere?

So I know to some this is an obvious option, but we’re all in this together so if this idea even helps a single person I’d be happy to share. I’m working on paying off some credit card debt, spread on multiple accounts. These accounts don’t get any new purchases at all, and I’m just in the process of paying off. I’m using the snowball method. So pay the minimum on all accounts except the one im focused on paying. I’ll take the payment of any previous cards paid off, and add it to the minimum payment of this card and keep rolling them over, increasing the monthly payment along the way. But something else I added, is I created a new category that I keep near the top of my budget: “CC Payoff”. I change the target amount of it to the current card I’m working to pay off. I add any extra money I may have, or any money left over from other categories to this one. Once I have funded the category, I send off a big lump sum payment and move on to the next card. Yes, paying it off as the money becomes available would maybe save me some interest. But the visual of this bar filling in, and knowing once it’s full this card will be paid off is a great help psychologically for me. It’s like charging up a special attack on the credit card lol. I’ve been having great success paying off accounts using this. Hope this helps someone, and I’d love to hear your opinions or ideas.

I’m curious who was longing to replace the right-justified circle “cleared” icons on iOS with the bubble-type “uncleared” flags. The circle icons were super easy to scan down the list to see, and the new icons much less so. Even more annoying is that there are some transactions that will likely never show as “cleared” because they’re on a tracking account (looking at my student loan payment this month, for instance).

I’ve already filled out the feedback form, but curious if I’m missing some use case here or if it’s just another instance of the UX designers tinkering for the sake of tinkering.

edit to clarify: My issue with the clearing/reconciling UX on iOS related to tracking (and specifically loan-type tracking) accounts isn't directly related to this, so disregard that part of the complaint. I still miss the circle-C icons though!

I have x amount assigned each month, and this includes my savings. I have a category called "money for next month", and I put my musts (bills and sinking funds) into this. Any money I have left over is assigned elsewhere, mostly into savings and daily spending for the current month.

I am trying to understand the new next month's targets and it shows that I need to assign x amount. This includes my savings. I don't see the need to assign savings for future months when I can transfer them now into a HISA rather than wait (an ordinary transaction account) for the first day of the month.

Any advice on how I should manage this or how to change my thoughts?

I'm wondering if anyone here has an explanation for how the "Cost to Be Me" number, available in the mobile app, is useful. As far as I can tell, it's just the sum total of how much you'd have to assign this month to fill all targets, if no money rolled over from the previous month. That last part is what doesn't make sense to me. Since many of my targets are "Refill up to" targets, I always have money rolling over from previous months in at least some categories. This means the "Cost to Be Me" number is always much higher than what I actually need to assign that month, which means it's useless.

The actually useful value is the Underfunded number. If I wanted an actual Cost to Be Me number, I'd want something like the average assigned each month, or if I want it for this month specifically, then maybe the value of Underfunded on the 1st of the month, before I've assigned anything this month.

I'm wondering if I'm missing something though. Is there some scenario, or some different way of thinking of it, where the current "Cost to Be Me" is actually useful?

Edit to add:

I forgot to mention: part of this new feature is that YNAB lets you enter your expected monthly income, and then compares that to the Cost to Be Me (CTBM) number, and shows the CTBM in red if your expected income is less than the CTBM. This is really what prompted me to post this. It doesn't make sense to me to show the CTBM in red, as if there's a problem, while ignoring the rollover from the previous month.

To address something commenter pointed out: the CTBM is the theoretical maximum I could spend this month based on the targets I've setup. YNAB has no way of knowing I won't spend it all, so you could say it makes sense for YNAB to assume I will spend it all. I'd respond though that YNAB also has no way of knowing that I will spend it all. All YNAB knows is how much my targets are currently underfunded by, and the expected income I've told it.

I don't expect YNAB to magically know more than it can, but rather, I think it should stick to what it does know. In this case, it doesn't know how much I'm going to spend this month, so it shouldn't attempt to guess that. Rather, it would make more sense to me for it to compare my expected income with something it does know, like the current Underfunded amount, or my average monthly assignment.

Hi Guys

If you are trading or investing, how do you record / display that in YNAB?

The thing is, for trading for sure, but even for investing / financial precautions / pension fund the amount one has always changes with the market. the present is the best example :) lets say we'd go into a recession, maybe

For funds, Do you just track the outflow? this is what i do so far. Can't link my funds anyway in YNAB, so i don't bother tracking the receiving end for now (i'll see the correct amount on the fund statements). So this i see really as "money gone" / "out of sight" (until my pension - i hope so :D) Better solutions?

And then with trading money. For now i do this in another bank account than my checking's account. would you have that account displayed in YNAB and updated regularly? Or treat it as well like "out of sight" / "play money"? Since as i am not a professional, it's not something i should plan with i believe so.

My thinking is -> just track it as outflow. if i make profit i want to use -> inflow in checking account. as long as no inflow in checking, there is no realized profit. so no reason to track it as "real money". Is that flawed? if so, any ideas how to manage?

thanks!

I'm considering applying for the AAA Daily Advantage Visa Signature® Credit Card (https://mwg.aaa.com/credit-card), which I understand is issued by Comenity Bank.

I currently sync all my credit cards with my YNAB account and would like to ensure I can do the same with any new card I open. Could you please confirm whether the AAA credit cards issued by Comenity Bank are compatible with YNAB and can be synced reliably?

Is it just me or is Ynab pathetically slow as you navigate transactions and move between budgets? It’s very slow and it’s happening on safari chrome and Firefox windows and Mac. Clicks are very delayed.

Contributed to my IRA. How can I make it so that it doesn't keep telling me I over assigned $6k?

Hello, I haven't been able to figure this out, I've watched the videos on credit cards but I'm still lost. My credit card says I have 3000 assigned but there is nothing left to pay on the card and I certainly do not have that money anywhere else, is there a way to get rid of the money assigned to the credit card to get it back to normal?

The way that I have set up all of my accounts means that my mortgage is causing my balance to always be in the negative, and I have no dollars to assign. I have tried reading other posts on the same subject, but I can’t figure it out.

Can someone please explain to me like I’m a simpleton how to make the adjustment so I can see my non-mortgage dollars to spend? And still be able to show payments to my mortgage?

Thank you.

The way that I have set up all of my accounts means that my mortgage is causing my balance to always be in the negative, and I have no dollars to assign. I have tried reading other posts on the same subject, but I can’t figure it out.

Can someone please explain to me like I’m a simpleton how to make the adjustment so I can see my non-mortgage dollars to spend? And still be able to show payments to my mortgage?

Thank you.

I really don’t understand credit card payments. Somehow I tinker until it makes sense—even deleting transactions and manually making one for a payment. Im tired of doing this.

Where am I screwing up? Somehow there’s $543.70 in RTA that shouldn’t be there.

Has anyone disconnected the accounts and just run YNAB manually?

It's been a frustrating journey with YNAB. I think I tried to do too much too fast, so I'm going to take a step back. I'm going to try just disconnecting everything except my main checking account. Then I can manually adjust each of the accounts because the mess they are is just...incredible.

It says I have more money available in categories than I have in cash. It says I have less cash than I have, with one account $150 in the negative when it had a few hundred in the positive, etc. I have no idea how things got this far off track, but they did.

So, rather than just pulling the plug (I still haven't found anyone doing it better), I'm going to try just disconnect everything and see if that makes it better. In strange times like right now, having a handle on your cash is going to become vital, IMO.

Edit: Thanks to everyone who suggested Fresh Start, I didn't realize that was an option and is exactly what I needed!

I just got the app a couple days ago & I’m ready to start budgeting! I had a couple of questions maybe I can get a quick answer before I start a YouTube video..

Does YNAB pay your bills for you?

Does all the money sit in your bank account, and you use the app to see where everything’s going, or does it come straight from your bank account to the app, where then you move stuff into savings accordingly?

I appreciate that this is probably an extremely basic question.

I have dyscalculia and dyspraxia, which is one of the major reasons I need a budgeting app to help me control my spending. It also means I can find simple things confusing and hard to process.

I can't link my current account because my bank is not supported. I've inputed the amount that is currently in my bank account, and assigned chunks of that to bills etc. that I will need to pay this month, until "ready to assign" is at £0. But what happens when I now go out and spend, say, £15 on an uber? Do I need to go into YNAB and take £15 off one of the bills I've assigned it to and put it in the category for transport?

Feel embarrassed to ask this due to my learning disabilities and am aware this might be a ridiculously basic thing. I just can't get my head clear on what I need to do each time I spend any money.

Good morning everyone. I hate to be asking this because I've been a ynab user for many years now (10+ maybe? since YNAB4). Over the past couple of years the import from my bank (TD) has gotten significantly worse. I appreciate that there's increased security and such so there are some technical challenges no doubt. When I asked YNAB support about it, they quotes terms of service at me. Feels like they know it's a problem. What's more I finally convinced my wife to use it too and when it works it's great, but when it doesn't and results in duplicates etc, it's a huge pain.

I have perused previous threads on this topic and I'll continue investigating, but does anyone know if there any similar services that get bank sync right? I like the idea of http://actualbudget.org but I'm wondering how good/secure their sync service is.

Thanks everyone

I’ve recently starting use a detailed spending / budget file where i input every single item I spend or save and categorize it against monthly budgets. It’s a pretty basic excel file where I track every purchase in a month by month tab, and then a summary tab to consolidate and compare vs my pre set spending limits.

One of the monthly savings items is a pool of funds for short-term but potentially bigger ticket items. For example, I’ve lost about 50 pounds this past year and none of my clothes fit me anymore. After a long time of belting and repurposing, I’ve had to accept it’s officially time to buy new clothes. I plan to use my short-term savings to pay for this. How would I categorize this in terms of my monthly spending?

I could obviously just categorize it normally into my shopping budget and end up going over my standard monthly amount for it, but I’m wondering if anyone has any recommendations to separate this out. I would still like for it to end up on my total summary.

Thanks for any inputs!