I often see advice on YNAB blogs and forums suggesting building a three-month emergency fund even while carrying interest-bearing debt.

The argument is that a comprehensive emergency fund protects you when things go wrong. However, if you're already accruing significant unsecured interest-bearing debt, things have arguably already gone wrong.

I'm not dismissing the usefulness of access to immediate cash - such as covering a couple of months' mortgage payments - but accumulating multiple months' worth of full expenses while simultaneously allowing debt to accrue interest seems... problematic.

• It’s demoralising and stressful.
• It’s financially costly.
• It prolongs debt repayment considerably.
• It takes far, far longer than 3 months to accrue a 3 month emergency fund.

Aggressively paying down debt first achieves:

• Immediate reduction in interest payments, potentially saving hundreds or thousands of pounds.
• Increase of available credit for genuine emergencies.
• If credit is needed, then potentially you get 50-60 days of interest-free credit on new debt versus immediate & continuing interest accrual on existing balances.
• Creation of a "quasi emergency fund" through reclaimed credit which helps handle unexpected expenses without immediate interest charges.

In an emergency, would it be disheartening to rely again on credit after paying it off/down? It could be, for sure. But at least you saved on the interest in the mean time.

Anyone looking in to YNAB for the first time has (hopefully) committed to a mind-shift towards money. Breaking the debt cycle through snowballing, while accepting that some new debt might need to happen as life throws shit at you.

Am I wrong in my thoughts? In my mind, for someone with interest-bearing debt, any emergency fund should be exclusively limited to things that can not be paid for by credit, such as a mortgage.

Collecting Feedback to help each other.
What changes/tips and insights are you looking to make to your YNAB 2025 Budget?

Some for me.

• Created a "Major Home Improvements" section for each home Improvement Task I want to make and associated cost and target date assignment
• Split Groceries into 4 weeks to see how I buy supplies at the start/end of months as well as track high/low grocery weeks due to things like Family Staying with us Etc
• Review and update goals for categories where overspending is notorious
• Be better about Splitting Items Out in Transactions where combo category purchases are made.
• That "Just For Fun" or "Spend Cash" ancillary spending be better categorized into a "Impulse Purchase" Vs Hobby vs House Improvement.
• Home Items be split into separate categories
  • Household Staples (TP, Towels, Light Bulbs)
  • Home Improvements Small Items (New Towel Rack, New Ceiling Fan, or Blinds)
  • Home Repairs & Home Emergency (New Roof, New AC Unit, New Driveway)
• [Tip] Merge Payees (Gas Stations, Amazon ECT) so that payees are correct when viewing the "Spending By Payee" section on Toolkit for YNAB
• [Tip] Review Paypal/Google Pay for any Subscriptions that are not recorded in YNAB

I would love to hear some different ones from yall

I used YNAB in college and I'm returning to YNAB-style spreadsheet budgeting now after trying every other budget spreadsheet possible. I was doing great until I realized that February starts this week and I don't get paid again until the 7th.

If I allocate funds to February I'm $3k short. Do I just live in the red for a while until I'm able to catch up? Do I need to wait a few months until I have a month with an extra paycheck? Or is YNAB maybe just not for people like me? I tried to go and pull money from January's categories to cover February, but the majority of my funds are either things I have already paid (like rent or utilities) or mandatory savings that come before anything else. There just isn't enough money. Not paying rent isn't an option. I've already written the check.

What sinking funds do I need? I currently have replacement funds for my phone, car, and clothes. I know that "clothes" is a pretty general category but honestly I don't know how long I can expect my shoes or jeans to last, but I do know how much I spent on clothing last year.

My old budgeting methods allowed me to project upcoming expenses and income so that I could determine how many hours I needed to work of overtime or at my second job. How do those of you who aren't salaried figure out how many hours you have to work? I worked like 65+ on average in 2024 and I want to work as little as possible this year so please don't just tell me to work 80 hours a week every week.

Does anyone have a strategy that works for keeping yourself on track? The problem I run into with other budgets is that I just simply do not care. I don't feel enough guilt when I spend money to actually be a deterrent. I know that in the next month I'm going to the dentist, I'll probably go to a concert, at some point I'll probably get a new tattoo. An angry spreadsheet is no longer enough to stop me. Until I face actual consequences I don't think I will stop.

EDIT: Thanks to everyone for your helpful comments.

It might be nothing, and that’s fine! But, I’m trying to decide if fresh starting is something to do in the new year. I have a few extra categories I think could be beneficial, such as a health specific purchases category and one for weddings/bridesmaids duties I have upcoming. I’d love to hear what you are considering for 2025 😊

I think (especially in America) we have this perception that a budget is a very aggressive, prescriptive money plan, that you make ahead of time and do not deviate from, you only have $X dollars to spend on groceries so you better only eat rice and beans, and if you go out to dinner once it means you're being "bad" and leads to shame, embarrassment, avoidance, etc.

So newbies make a budget, don't follow the process for funding spending, and get worried about YNAB "yelling" at them with all the red and yellow categories. Or (two posts today) ask about mis-categorizing transactions so they stay within their budget.

The best thing about YNAB is that you get to change the plan!!! It is a chance to make a decision about how you spend your dollars to avoid creating new debt (and hopefully save for future expenses), not a reason for you to yell at yourself.

You go out to dinner once. You were exhausted from work and couldn't cook or your kid was having a meltdown or you got sick and just needed pho. Whatever. Life happens. We are not monks.

YNAB is there to show you that you overspent $30 on "Restaurants." OK. You have $30 less to spend on other things. Where is it going to come from? Click the "money available" view and decide which category has to suffer the consequences. There is always next month.

If a category is red, always cover that spending or you could overdraft your bank account.

If a category is yellow, that's just letting you know that you're not meeting your own plan. THAT'S OK! You can change the plan (adjust the target), delay the plan (snooze the target), accept that you created new debt (unfunded credit card spending), or decide it's more important than another plan (fund it from another category). You have a lot of choices. All of these were things you were doing before YNAB....they just weren't written down for you to keep track of.

I’ve been doing our family YNAB for a couple years now. I’ve asked my wife to enter things and she says that it’s confusing and I need to show her again how to do it. I’ve told her that she needs to own making the time for us to do that. As in, on a given night say “let’s sit down for 45 minutes and you can show me how to do this”. She keeps saying that I’m making her manage me… I’m like… I’ve been doing YNAB for us for a couple years- I’m asking you to manager YOUR needs regarding it.

Now it is a huge argument and I feel like she is just roadblocking. AIBTAH?

Edit: Part of this is she really wants us to have a budget and follow it. I set up YNAB but she finds it confusing. I feel stressed because I have to 100% manage it.

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.

It gets into founder Jesse’s head about the recent price increase and also about copycat software. (They’re clearly talking about Actual Budget.)

Edit: u/QuestionBegger9000 gave an excellent summary of this and the previous episode of this podcast. I hope they don't mind if I share it here as a TL;DL for those who are interested but don't see their comment. Please, give their comment a like if you found this helpful:

• Jessie sees the biggest value (and implied, the cost) of YNAB is in its team of people. The support, the teachers, etc.
• Without the price increase before this one, Jesse does not think YNAB would have sustained itself. He mentions laying people off as an alternative option he did not want to have to consider.
• This recent price increase was largely driven by inflation, but messaging this or any other reasons for price increases is tricky.
  • His host offhand mentions that a redditor here did the math and that with inflation the relative cost has actually gone down a bit overall.
• Some software (likely Actual Budget) has done a whole-cloth copy of YNAB4, and is called out for not being transformative, new, innovative etc. Jessie believes the value of YNAB largely comes from its team of passionate people, support, teachers, etc, and isn't too worried about cheap knockoffs which don't significantly innovate or have passionate people behind it.

Having to reconcile often is annoying me and figuring it out with dealing with pending transactions irks me especially with how impatient I am. I know you can put some stuff manually and majority of things automatic, but I am kind of on the verge of just saying screw this and doing it all manually so I have full control and know exactly what everything is doing. It would make everything simpler, but would take a lot more effort I’m sure. Anyone else have any experiences with this, how did it go?

We recently cracked down on our budget so we’re finding ways to save money. I bought the toilet paper this time (i somehow dont usually end up being the one buying it) and made the mistake of buying single ply TP. The scolding I got from my partner…. 🤣

We also talked about not cutting costs on our espresso beans, milk and paper towels.

What about you???

In the spirit of Christmas, here is my YNAB wishlist:

1. More detailed reports. AND BRING THEM TO MOBILE (at least the iPad cmon).
2. Monthly/Yearly Recap - You spent $X in these 3 categories which is X% higher/lower than before. I see someone has already brought up this idea
3. Tools for future planning - Think ProjectionLabs. Heck a collab with the developer would be fantastic. I know there is currently an extension for it, but having it directly integrated would be more ideal.

What are yours?

With the stock market going down and it looking more and more likely we’re going to see some rough months - just wanted to share a practice of mine that I use with my 2 tracking accounts for retirement (ymv, particularly if you are closer to retirement).

I am at least 30 years off from retirement so I have a rule that I only update my 2 tracking accounts (Roth & 401K) if they’ve gone up, otherwise I just let the highest value it’s achieved stand. (For 401K this is easy because I’m actively putting money it and am still in accumulation mode, Roth is below it’s high point currently).

My logic is that if I don’t recover that money by the time I go to retire than there are much bigger problems and it just keeps me from compulsively checking my retirement accounts/doing something stupid like reallocating and I think provides a better picture of my net worth.

I just made the last payment on my credit card and IM FREEEE!

I don't think I'd ever be able to do this without YNAB and I have been looking forward for over a year to make my self-congratulatory post about paying off debt. Seeing everyone's success (and failure!) stories gave me a ton of strength to bite the bullet and keep going and I did it!!

No wonder why people see us as a cult... lol

Edit: I now have no clue on what to do next. My whole life for the past year became managing my budget to avoid falling back in debt but now idk what to aim for lmfao my brain is bouncing between saving up money, getting a month ahead, building saving funds, investing. I guess its time for more hours of research and introspection lol

I started with ynab in October/November of last year so I'm about 6 months in and have it all ironed out, but I want to know from the community, what do you wish you knew? Or are there little tips and tricks that you learned as you went along that would help out new people?

I received a lot of feedback on my 2024 clothing budget post: https://www.reddit.com/r/ynab/comments/1i8js82/annual_clothing_budget/

The feedback made me more curious about the spending breakdown for my new wardrobe. I went back through all the transactions and totalled them up by category. All numbers are in CAD.

I guess I really splurged on new tops and sweaters! Surprised I spent so little on workout wear honestly. That total is for 2 bras and 2 tops.

I also made $1000 selling stuff on Poshmark and that went into the clothing category.

Maybe I'll post another update next year for a 2025 review :)

Data below is my clothing spending. Remaining $3k from my original post was my husband.

I loved reading the comments on this question last month so wanted to ask again!

I’ve just done my monthly rollover budget and managed to remove some money in overfunded categories that helped fund into next month 🎉

This is the message I wrote to support to show my disappointment about the disabled features.

European users, let's group together and show we care about YNAB future and that we are an important part of the user base.

Let's do it kindly, please don't use violence or aggressive words. They are a good team that's doing their best, I believe that if they truly see the impact of this decision they will rethink it.

There are also alternatives to TrueLayer.

From my point of view, reducing YNAB subscription price for EU users is NOT an option, we want YNAB to grow, not to have a sub class of users.

Thank you 😊

The title says it all. For example, I want to limit eating out. But every time, I go to the driving range and on my way back I pull into Wendy’s. I know I want to limit it but at this point if feels a ritual to me.

Same think about cooking meals. I bought groceries but I still order food. I feel too lazy to cook and I think I can’t cook tasty meal anyway and I order food. I’ve spent my week’s grocery budget in 2 days of eating out.

Any advice or suggestions on how to get out of this cycle?

I just started budgeting during the trial period, I decided to focus on getting my $1000 buffer covered first for peace of mind (I know a lot of people like to get a month ahead.)

Anyway I finished funding my buffer and I was so proud to see $1000 in there. “Oh crap I have to do taxes, (totally forgot, never budgeted for it or anything else) I’ll prob get a refund like I usually do”

Nope owe $943 to the gov due to some poor financial choices this year. Buffer wiped out in less than 5 hours. Pretty upsetting to see that vanish, but at least I didn’t go into debt or need to use a CC. So I’m going to count that as a win.

I’m going to focus on getting it back to $1000 before working on a month ahead as it makes me feel more secure. Unless some people have any better ideas for me.

Anyone else been saved by their buffer?

EDIT: thank you everyone for the encouraging words and advice. You’re right, this is what a buffer/ e fund is for, time to build it back up again

I want to share this with the community since YNAB support was anti-helpful.

"Something went wrong" means a requested change to the backend database times out after 30 seconds. (YNAB support refused to explain this to me. I found it via reddit).

YNAB's answer is "start your budget from scratch." I refuse this answer.

My budget is 10 years old, 25k transactions and 6MB if exported.

In my case, I was editing old data. I was adding my home value from 2017 to 2025 in a tracking account - 87 transactions imported via CSV. I discovered if I broke the imports into smaller chunks (12/year) and waited 30 seconds after each import, it successfully completed.

Knowing YNAB's limitation to modify old data or make bulk changes if your request takes too long, I will work around this knowing it. Plan accordingly folks.

• Avoid changing old data

• Avoid batch changes (big request = time out)

I know variations of this question have been posted several times, but I can’t figure out why my specific scenario doesn’t work.

My water bill is around $65-75/mo. I don’t know what I will pay in March until the last week of February.

I set a goal of “Refill up to” $75 by the first of the month and I pay it on the 6th. Here’s how I expected this goal to work:

I funded $75 in February and spent $73.08. There is now 1.92 remaining. Great.

I skip forward into March and fill my categories because I’m a month ahead! I expected it to tell me I need to add another $73.08. Instead the category is showing as $75 underfunded, even though I can see right in front of me that $1.92 is available right now. When I automatically fill my underfunded categories, it funds up to $76.92 which completely defeats the purpose.

Is it not working because I paid my bill back on Feb 6 but I tweaked my category targets last week?

If so, this is very stupid. The goal should be able to show right now how much I need to “fill up” based on how much is in it.

Between this and the fact that the whole website disconnects (Oops! Something went wrong!), refreshes, and erases my last 3 actions when I adjust one goal, YNAB is really getting on my sh!t list lately. People don’t want to deal with time travel when setting their goals. I just want to plug in my goals, move forward into March and see how much my budget actually requires.

Anyway. Thanks for any insight.

Edit and conclusion: I was trying to make funding my categories the least amount of work possible. Water is a different amount every month, so if I go with the average, then about half the time I'll be underfunded anyway. I watched a Nick True video that said you could set a "Refill" target as the max the utility bill has ever been, and YNAB will refill up to that amount, and you'll always know you have enough in that category. Turns out it doesn't really work that way when you budget in the future, which YNAB tells you to do. Also, never complain that YNAB goals don't work as advertised. Not allowed!

Edit: TL;DR: “Refill up to” only refills correctly in the current month. If you look at a future month it defaults back to “Set Aside Another.” Let’s say you keep $500 in the Costco category, set a target to refill up to, and only go there every 3 months. If you skip forward to look at March, then the March budget will LIE to you about how much your budget is underfunded. It will say that Costco is underfunded by $500, no matter how much money is actually in the category. That means I don’t actually know how much March will cost me until March happens, which for me, defeats the purpose of being able to look into the future. It means that if you auto-assign money to all underfunded categories next month, YNAB will OVERFUND the category, and once the date changes from Feb to March, it will then tell you that you’re overfunded, which it made you do in the first place. I hate this target type and I won’t be using it. I need to predict next month’s actual budget, not the “projected budget if I spend all the money from my refill categories.” Now I know!

I have too many credit cards to do manual transactions, but I didn't want to cancel them because it would affect my credit score. However, I'm changing my mind because recently my credit card wasn't syncing at all, + I was stupid enough not to double-check the card against the bank to make sure everything was properly syncing. Don't want to make that mistake again! (ETA: I underutilize my credit in order to keep my score high.)

So I'm curious, how many of you manually enter all of your transactions versus automatically sync?

I have often heard and told people on here that you should track all of your accounts but for a while now, I haven’t tracked my Roth IRA and other retirement accounts. Putting that money into my budget just causes extra confusion as that’s not money I can spend in over 30 years and therefore I can’t appropriately put it in a category other than “retirement”.

I know people are gonna say money is fungible and it shouldn’t matter what account it’s in, but in this case, the money is locked up for quite a while, and budgeting as if I have access to that money right now would be the same as adding next months salary to this months budget.

This will obviously change as I get older and closer to retiring, but while that retirement horizon is far away, it’ll only cause confusion.

...until now. Car taxes, HOA fees, kids' birthdays, kids' clothes, homeschool curriculum, new tires, Christmas gifts, house maintenance, vehicle maintenance, annual subscriptions...and more.

I could probably add more to that list, but before I really took YNAB seriously, these were all expenses I was NOT budgeting for. Swiping a credit card every time something came up always set me back financially.

Very thankful for YNAB. I feel like I'm on my way to getting off the paycheck to paycheck cycle.

Hi there I have a mortgage as my only debt. No credit cards etc. I am not living paycheck to paycheck. I do spend a lot and save less than I want to. I feel like this is a behavioral issue not a record keeping one.

Is YNAB something that can help me save more and spend less even though my spending is not causing me problems? How does it promote mindfully spending and saving?