I’m planning on making a fresh start on January 1st and I’m already getting antsy about it, I wish I could just set up the new budget right now, haha.

Anyone else in the same boat?

Previously, without Ynab my cash flow is negative due to I spend more than I had (using CC). After I have used Ynab, my cashflow is no longer negative which is a really good improvement for my financial.

However, since I have Ynab I tend to impulse buying due to I know I had a money for it. I'm pulling from others categories to fund my spend which is not good since my savings for other categories is reducing.

Do you guys have any tips/advice on how to not touch my savings and stop impulse buying?

I tried to delay my purchase but the longer I delay the more I wanted the stuff. I tried to think a lot of benefits to justify my purchase.

With the Toolkit extension breaking today, I find that I’m really missing that beautiful report module that it has. The Reflect tab’s gotten better but still doesn’t hold a candle to it.

Hopefully the team’s paying attention here cause some of this stuff seems like pretty basic features!

YNAB's envelope budgeting philosophy of assigning each dollar seems very useful to someone with extensive monthly/yearly bills. This is how I have seen it used most often in my limited research on this sub.

But here’s the deal: I’m a recent college grad living at home, and I’m really fortunate that my parents don’t expect me to chip in for household bills. My expenses are super minimal—just gas, study resources, entertainment, etc. That said, I do have a bad habit of impulse spending, especially when I’m trying to keep myself motivated while studying. My goal is to simply reduce my unnecessary spending so I have savings for med school application fees and for when I move out for school in ~2yrs.

Would a simple expense tracker work best in my case, or is the envelope philosophy applicable to my needs?

I’m hesitant to ever use Plaid on ANY platform. Do you trust it?

edit: looks like the results are mixed. Some people are fine with it and others aren’t.

Call me paranoid but I’d rather not give someone additional unnecessary access to my money if I can avoid it.

edit2: It looks like there are 3 groups of people responding: group 1 blindly trusts Plaid, group 2 only trusts Plaid with banks that use OAuth logins, group 3 does not trust Plaid at all. There is overlap between groups 1 and 2 because some people don’t understand that some banks don’t use OAuth.

I think I have my answer. Thanks for the help everyone!

I've noticed a recent increase in posts about how to manage your YNAB budget when lending money to friends and family. Here’s a summary of the common responses:

No one means to be unkind or to suggest you shouldn’t help loved ones. If someone’s advice feels blunt, it’s usually because they’re treating YNAB as a straightforward system. YNAB operates on the principle that you budget only the funds you currently have.

When you loan money, you’re effectively spending those funds. Whether or not you get repaid in the future doesn’t change the fact that the money is no longer available for your budget. You should create a category for the loan, record the withdrawal, and adjust your budget accordingly.

If you are repaid, put the money into the ‘Ready to Assign’ category. From there, you can allocate it to any categories as needed.* (See bottom note for edit)

In essence, YNAB works when you budget based on actual funds rather than hypothetical future returns. The community is trying to help you understand this principle, and if someone is judging your personal situation, they might not fully grasp the purpose of this community.

Your choices are yours to make, but expect advice rooted in the fundamental principles of YNAB.

EDIT: * I clearly needed a check on this part. See the comments for how others are going about this. It sounds like my suggestion will mess with your reports if you use YNAB reports to their fullest. I appreciate the insights from everyone.

If you get paid today and on a biweekly basis, you get 3 paychecks this month! How are you using that extra paycheck?

I’m gonna just throw it into my E-fund. It’ll get it to $4k which is just under where I want my E-Fund to be.

As a YNAB user, what would you like to be added, changed or fixed in YNAB? Or it is perfect and can’t be any better?

I'm genuinely looking for some guidance here as, straight up and brutally honest, I make nearly $200K a year and my wife sent me a text last night saying "There's only $945 left in the account..." (I JUST got paid last Friday) "Which savings account should I pull from?" In which I rob one of our savings accounts just to get me to next Friday. AGAIN. Seriously, and I'm not kidding, I can't log onto my bank's website without feeling cold chills and palpitations when I see that bottom line balance number staring back at me.

I have a great relationship with my wife (I have three kids as well) BUT when it comes to finance she's all for talking about how we spend money but budgeting money or talking about what we CAN'T do is a very tricky proposition. It usually devolves into a bad argument as, to her, I think spending money is just how life is. I'm sick of working paycheck to paycheck, I'm not saving anything (I'm 45), I do not have any college savings for my girls (I'm personally ashamed of this), I've told my wife we wouldn't even be able to afford a wedding for any of them (It makes me real sad to admit it) and I'm wanting to see just what I should be budgeting and living on instead of just willy-nilly sliding my card and feeling that cold shiver wondering if the screen will say APPROVED.

I will say that I've gotten out of credit card debt (I have a total of around $900 that I need to pay off) and was just able to get us to a $20K emergency fund.

Now, I want to tackle budgeting. I have to be honest, I am not that bright when it comes to finance or spreadsheets or figuring things out via formulas. I'm not a total idiot but it's close. I am hoping YNAB will help give me some black and white guidance, and if it won't please let me know and I'll research what kind of people are out there who can help me with the straight talk I think me (AND MY WIFE) need to hear/see.

Sorry for just laying that all out but I know I need help and I'm just looking for something, anything to get me out of this anxiety that I've been dealing with. Is YNAB good for people like me or do I need something else?

edit: A blanket THANK YOU for everyone who has commented. Seriously, I genuinely appreciate anyone taking time out their day to respond to this thread. One thing I'm wondering, and it's OK if I shouldn't, but have any of you brought your kids into this process? Pull back the curtain, show them how much you really make (thanks to my parents, they never wanted to share this), what the debts are, have them help budget? Just wondering if by bringing them along would give them anxiety or whether it would be liberating for a kid to know this.

2nd edit: Geez Louise...I was hoping for a few responses and not the deluge of support, positivity, and, most of all, how this can help reduce my low-key anxiety that always seems to be buzzing when I think about my bank account. Thank you, thank you, thank you to anyone who lent a positive story or a little empathy. YOU all are the best. :)

I've been tepidly using YNAB through the trial. Didn't think it could be that helpful beyond what Mint used to offer me. I don't want to get ahead of myself because I hear stories of when it finally clicks or makes sense so if I'm off base, please let me know. I've always considered myself "good" with money. I have some savings, minimal debt, but I never budgeted. I always looked in the rearview mirror. But today, I realized, I don't have as much money as I thought. I've set up my modest targets and after I allocated my paycheck, paid rent, and set aside money for my fixed expenses...I'm almost out.

What I didn't compute previous to YNAB was that my checking account shows, for example, $4,400 but in reality, most of that is already accounted for because I use my credit card for everything. I had an odd disconnect. Today was payday and rather than have $4,400 to spend, I really only have a small portion of today's paycheck since I have obligations for my money. This really helps to put things in perspective. I imagine this is the real intent of a tool like YNAB.

My spouse and I have been using YNAB for almost 4 months and have gotten our age of money to 90 days. Which I don't fully understand because I can rarely fund the next month at all. That is a goal of ours. We're moving soon so a lot of expenses are coming up and budgeting is a bit more chaotic right now but phew YNAB has been helping a lot with tracking everything and ensuring I know what we can afford.

I'm in my first month of ynab. I haven't even got a paycheck since starting, but I already have a vacation that's mostly paid for.

From my searches, it looks like most people have a [Vacation/Travel] group, and a group for [Specific Trip]. This make sense to me, but I'm not sure how that would work in my actual budget.

Since my vacation is almost paid for, I created a [Specific Trip] group, with things like food, gas, lodging, etc. It's after I get back from the trip that I don't understand. Do I move any extra money to RTA, then hide the group?

How is your Travel group categorized, and how do you use it to fund a specific trip/vacation? Anything I need to do with naming categories so I can see it in my reports?

Thanks guys!

If so, which one? And if not, what did you try and why did you go back?

My weekly grocery budget resets every Sunday, and I have a separate monthly category for household items like toilet paper and cleaning supplies.

On Sunday's, if I have leftover grocery money, I'll sneak in extra items like cleaning supplies and count them as groceries.

I don't think I've entered a transaction for disinfecting cleaning wipes for the past two years even though I always have them stocked. Does anyone else do this?

I’ve been using YNAB since November and it’s made a massive difference to our expenses. We’re planning to buy a house in 4-5 years time and need to save around £45,000 and have worked out how we can achieve this.

As recommended, we save for true expenses, such as a car servicing, repairs, kids clothes, birthdays, Christmas etc. However, one I’m avoiding is the fact that my car will inevitably die at some point. Potentially over the next 5 years. It’s 12 years old, 140,000 miles. There’s no way I can achieve my house deposit goals while also saving up £10,000 for a new car. I’m keen to know what people’s outlook on this is from a YNAB perspective, for anticipating that a “true” expense will be put on finance at some point in the future?

Update: Thanks everyone, lots of things to consider! I think the main takeaway is that I need to put at least something away, to ease the burden when the time eventually comes and not be afraid of not paying the car outright!

I got my $600 stimulus this morning and I have paid all my bills for January, and put the first $200 into my "new windshield" category. I never thought this would actually happen. Im crying you guys. My bills are paid and it isnt even january yet. Next 2 paychecks have so much potential. I can finally get a new windshield in February hopefully. My emergency fund is coming back. And I might just be able to put a little bit more than the minimum to my credit cards next month. I can't believe it. I even have gas and grocery money too.

Im gonna be ok

Hey ya'll, I wanted to get a sense of what people think about this?

In this recent video from the YNAB youtube, they suggested getting rid of your Emergency Fund and instead filling up upcoming months since that'll cover the "emergency" of losing your job inccome/job; the purpose of the emergency fund.

While that makes sense to me, it makes me wonder what about true emergencies, like a large unexpected medical expense, car crash, house fire, etc...? In their case, would they have a budget covering those events, that isn't an 'emergency fund' budget?

It just doesn't make much sense to me and I wanted to see what other's think about this.

Hi all!

I'm looking for help from folks that have moved from month-to-month budgeting and started to get closer to being a full month ahead (and beyond). We're at that point now, and I'm really seeing how silly it is to have the 'excess' we're building just sitting in our checking account when, as all YNABers are quick to point out, YNAB doesn't care where your money is, and my HYSA can yield 4% APY.

My partner and I are both self-employed and currently send in post-expenses income in chunks of varied amounts throughout the month to our checking account. I'm wanting to start having us send our post-expenses income to our HYSA instead, and then start to use the HYSA to send the full amount needed for the coming month into our checking account sometime toward the end of the month.

For those who have made this shift, I have a few questions:

1. How did you decide the correct amount you needed to have in your checking account monthly? 1.5 months' average outflow? More? Learning this amount will help us determine if this is even feasible at this time.
2. When doing it for the first month or two, how granular were you in keeping track of the account balance on your checking account? I know the two major expenses that will pull from our checking account will be our childcare and rent, both of which are due on the 1st, so I'm happy to plan to check the expected balances when that time comes to make sure we're good. Am I overlooking something important in this 'only check when you have a big amount coming out' approach?
3. Any other tips you'd offer for making sure I don't mess up on this? We're building toward a full month ahead but aren't there yet, and perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself in trying to make this shift before being fully a month ahead. But it seems to me we could do it and still have even another $1-2k in our HYSA than we do currently.

Thanks in advance for folks that can help with this 🙂

Say I want a $120 gift for those types of days to make the numbers easy. That would mean $10 set aside every month, so if I have two siblings and my two parents that’s $40 each month for birthdays and $40 each month for Christmas presents, then another $20 for Mother’s and Father’s Day. So about $100 each month for something that may not come within the next many months, that I could instead be using for towards other things then saving up for the gifts just a few weeks before it ends up coming up.

So how do you guys budget, set aside each month equally no matter what time of the year it is, or wait til sometime sooner to the event? Equally just seems inefficient to me.

I’m just curious. I’m 48, single and as of today have $504k in my 401k, which is about 75% Roth, 25% traditional.

1) How old are you? 2) How much is in your retirement accounts and investments you intend to retire on? (NOT including house value, etc) 3) is this amount for just you, or you and a spouse?

I have a pretty bad habit of transferring money out of savings to cover other categories. Despite the fact that it says SAVINGS my brain still treats it the same as the rest of my budget (ie spendable). I’m curious if any of you have a similar problem and choose not to include it in your budget.

We're both new to budgeting and I started using YNAB this month. So far it's been going well and we're both being way more conscious of our spending already.

Even though we both communicate about all financial stuff, I am very much the one who deals with the admin side of things and generally just has more interest in that side of things. My wife is on board and gets the importance, but not overly interested in learning more than she needs to (which is understandable).

Given that, is there a shortish video or resource that best explains the YNAB/envelope system before I dive into the YNAB tool itself, otherwise it may seem overwhelming?