I’ve used YNAB for 5+ years. It’s kept me roughly in check, but I’ve always struggled with discretionary spending, especially restaurants, fast food, and takeout.

It wasn’t until I set up YNAB for my girlfriend (who is now CC debt free!) that I saw the suggestions YNAB makes during initial setup and realized I’d been setting my targets up all wrong.

I had targets for the obvious stuff: savings, essentials like rent, and debt payments like my car loan. But I also looked at my historical discretionary spending and set targets for those categories too, usually a bit below what I was actually spending, hoping I’d cut back.

That never worked. I treated the target as free money I was allowed to spend, so I always spent all of it.

So I removed every discretionary target and raised my savings targets instead. The mindset shift has been huge. Now I fund the important categories first, and whatever’s left just stays in Ready to Assign. I can still spend it on eating out, but nothing is assigned there. No target, no money sitting in a category “telling” me to spend it.

Seeing one number for what’s left overall also makes it easy to gauge what I can afford until next month. It works incredibly well, and I can’t believe it took me this long to use YNAB this way.

Anyone else budget like this?

For the life of me I can't understand why your credit card is tied in to your overall overspending. Is it possible to just set a $200 target every month and then assign $200 then pay it off actually and have it record this and then show it as green paid. Why does my other category overspending and overall my cash overspending get grouped into it and accoutned for and thus shows my credit card category as now overspent even though it was green before. I have large car repairs I used my credit card for and it seems there is no good way to track this in YNAB very accurately due to it wanting your credit card paid off every month. For people who have a running balance on their credit cards how do you stop it from showing as overspent all the time?

The past couple of months have brought expensive surprises. We’ve been using YNAB for almost 20 months now, and had budgeted for most of the issues.

First up, escrow shortage for taxes: $1,300 and change. Able to cover that from our savings.

Next up, surge suppressor breaker switches (these should be outlawed, they’re an expensive pain in the wallet): $445 to replace 3 that are barely 5 years old. Money saved in the Home maintenance category covered this.

Next up, the domino effect from the crappy surge suppressor breaker switch popping off constantly for a couple weeks, burned out the motherboard on our propane furnace: $855. Money saved in the Home maintenance category covered this.

Husband needed two crowns: $3,162. This was split into two payments, half for each visit. We were able to cover this with half from Flex Spending and half from Medical Expenses category.

Yearly wellness visit for 3 dogs, now up to $600 (it has doubled since last year, thanks private equity 😡).

Before YNAB, just one of these would have put us into a tailspin. Now it’s not a huge deal. We grumble about having to spend the money, but we’re no longer freaking out about it.

YNABwinning

Hey all! New user to the app after reading tons of positives. Having some initial frustrations I hope to get advice on.

The big one is that my CC with my primary FI is linked, I can see the balance changes, but the transactions themselves don’t post so I can’t assign them. When something pulls from the same FI checking or savings accounts there are no issues and my HELOC and mortgage update fine. I’ve got a support ticket in but so far they’ve been no help. Anyone ever had this issue? It’s a regional CU but they do use Plaid and the card is Visa. All other CC post transactions fine (I use multiple for different points categories.)

There's a lot of times where we pay for something and get paid back for it. For example - getting the bill at a restaurant, and then others venmo us back for their share. Or in a bigger example, we pay $3000 for an airbnb for a week and friends/family pay us back for their portion.

In the budget view, this is easy to manage as the reimbursements come in. I assign the expense to the category like Travel, and cover it (because I have to be ready to pay the cc bill no matter when I get paid back). And then when the reimbursement comes in, I assign it accordingly.

I like looking at reports though, and it really skews the numbers to see we "spent" like $10,000 on travel in a year, and then you look closer at what we got paid back for and it's really more like $6000. Is there any way to split the transaction or mark that it's not actually money spent in that category? How do others handle this?

I just manually entered a transaction (then set it to monthly repeat). Then, once I went to the specific account (a credit card), I could not find it. I have reconciled transactions hidden. It was showing up on the spending tab though, that’s how I figured out it was auto-matched with a week-old transaction with a different payee, that was already matched and reconciled long ago. Not only it got matched, but because the Lawson transaction was already reconciled, it immediately got treated as reconciled and would have screwed me next time I’m actually trying to reconcile.
What gives?
I do NOT have auto-import here in Japan so it’s not related to that.

Curious to hear if anyone else finds some helpful ways to use comments in transactions. For example , in our dining out category entries we may post a short entry saying what we got and if we enjoyed it. I find myself using comments more and more... if I buy something with a warranty , I may put a comment about what it was in YNAB. I can search on key words and it will find the transaction , and I'll know the dates etc. Anyhow , just curious to get some hints on how others may be using comments.

Hello everyone!

I’ve been using YNAB for a while, but I still feel like I’m not making the most of it because the setup can be quite complex and the learning curve is steep.

I’d love to hear how you track your savings across different accounts.

I want to keep track of how much I’m saving, but when I transfer money from my checking account to a savings account and categorize it as savings, it shows up as a negative in my spending totals. This is a bit demotivating because it makes it look like I’ve spent more money than I actually have, when in reality, some of that money has simply been moved into savings.

How do you handle this in YNAB? Is there a way to track savings separately without affecting your spending totals, while still being able to see how much you’ve saved overall?

I’d really appreciate any tips or suggestions. Thanks!

I’m going to explain as much as I can.

I pay off my card every month.

I make a purchase with the card for 9.53 on 10/4 in the category of clothing. The category was unfunded, nothing set aside.

The category shows yellow, because I used the cc. I make it whole by covering it from cash in ready to assign.

Get a refund on 10-20 for a return.

What do I do with the refund? If I put it in the clothing category it makes it green like I have an extra 9.53.

Sent on Tuesday. No response thus far :)

--

Jesse and Todd,

Hope you are both well. I wanted to shoot you a quick note as I am a ten year customer of YNAB, and plan to not renew my subscription at the end of this month.

I’ve been a huge evangelist of YNAB, getting a half dozen of my friends to sign up for it, but the changes over the past 18 months have made YNAB increasingly frustrating to use, to the point where I’m planning to give it up.

Here are some of the key changes that are leading me to this conclusion:

1. Degrading the import + approval experience - in the past, transactions updated reliably 3x daily and allowed me to approve suggested auto-match. Since YNAB utilizes the ledger to power everything else (unlike Monarch, for example) the switch to auto matching should require nearly 100% accurate imports against manually entered transactions.

YNAB does not have this, and as a result, frequently transactions are mismatched. Since YNAB auto-approves these now, I can’t trust the data that shows up as cleared, and have to do a manual daily reconciliation of cleared transactions.

Finally, Chase transactions are only updating once a day. While I’m certain this has to do with recent Plaid agreements signed, the support defensiveness (see below) and lack of adding a “refresh now” button or something similar shows the lack of customer-focus that has crept into YNAB’s product decision making.

2. Poor support interactions - YNAB has always stood out to me for a highly engaged support team that takes issues personally and strives to improve customer’s product (and financial) maturity.

Starting around ~2 years ago, I have had issues that aren’t taken seriously (app not sticking with plan filter, ghost pending transactions after deleting a category, slow imports with Chase). The support team takes a “the customer is wrong" defensive posture, versus trying to understand the problem and drive towards resolution.

3. Lack of evolution of key product features - Several items that are core to zero-based envelope budgeting, like wish farm, goal types, multi-year spend comparison, etc. haven’t seen updates in 5+ years.

These items, which could separate YNAB from the pack, are largely ignored in favor of pretty low-substance changes, focused on mobile app IA (like the new home page, all-in-one transaction feed — that still doesn’t support hiding reconciled transactions, etc.).

Finally, if all of the above didn’t happen, it would be perfectly fine for YNAB to be pushing books and merch in-app, but all of these combined with the above feels like a company that has lost its way. I know this is a significant criticism, but hope you all understand the decades of data in your app and sharing with friends + colleagues that precedes this.

Thanks,

invertiren

I've just received an email about my yearly subscription. And I wanted to know since when Ynab is that price.

Do you have an idea ?

Hey everyone!

Recently switched from paying my credit card balance in full weekly to paying the statement balance monthly. So I deposit my paycheck into checking, use the envelope system to track purchases and allocate them to my credit card payment category, then wait for the autopay to hit.

But I realized that I have a decent chunk of change just sitting in my checking waiting for that payment, when it could be on my HYSA earning interest.

What’s the best way to start paying my cc from my HYSA using YNAB? I can’t use my HYSA for everything because of the monthly withdrawal limit. Should I put everything except my regular bills (ie everything that goes on my credit card) into my HYSA monthly instead of into my checking? Or is there some backend witchcraft using the transfer feature (which I’ve never used) to move the credit card payment category into my HYSA without making it seem underfunded?

My partner and I also have a shared account at the local credit union for household expenses, so there is a fair amount of zelle’ing back and forth to cover those. That’s the main reason I’ve resisted using my HYSA as my main account. But I don’t want my credit card payment just sitting around in my checking when it could be earning money!

I know I’m missing something fundamental here. I hope I explained this well enough that you can help me figure it out!

I have a request into YNAB Support, but I'm wondering if anyone here has run into this before and knows a way to resolve it. I discovered the issue Friday night and I know support won't get back to me until at least tomorrow, but I'm wanting to get my YNAB situated for the week while I have time.

FWIW I'm full manual entry. I got paid Friday. The transaction is in my checking account, but has not shown up as "Ready to Assign." If I click "Ready to Assign" for the "Ready to Assign Breakdown" the amount as "Inflow" includes the paycheck in question. So I thought maybe I assigned the money already and forgot somehow, but, no, when I go to "Recent Moves" there are no money moves after the paycheck hit the account.

I'm at a loss for how to trouble shoot any further, hence, my request to YNAB Support. Anyone have this happen before?

Lets assume. I get an Amazon gift card through work. I add it to my Amazon account.

Then let's pretend I spend all of it on like my fun money. But when the item is purchased, it is not represented in ynab because it did not hit my Amazon credit card.

What do you do?

edit: I got two good methods. Since we are not living paycheck to paycheck, considering​ it untracked fun money is what i will do.

Full disclosure up front, per the mod team's request: I'm the developer of and founder of Spendify. Not affiliated with YNAB, just a tool I built for YNAB users.

Even with a perfectly synced bank, Direct Import isn't instant, there's a lag between when you spend and when it shows up in YNAB, and that gap is exactly when people lose track of their real balance. Cash and new merchants fall into the same gap, since nothing imports them at all.

Spendify handles that: photograph the receipt the moment you pay, it reads the date, amount and merchant, you review it (OCR isn't perfect), and you send it to YNAB as a transaction, no category overwritten, you keep categorizing the way you already do. Some people can also use it on purpose for accounts they'd rather not link at all, a shared card, a business card, or just wanting to review every entry instead of a silent sync.

If you run a shared budget on YNAB Together, there's a second use case: each person can log their own receipts to the shared budget from their own account, without linking a personal bank account to it. Useful if you'd rather not have a partner see your whole transaction history just to log a shared grocery run.

Free for 10 receipts a month, no card required. €4.99/month if you need more.

Links: https://spendifyapp.com/ynab-receipt-scanner/ and https://spendifyapp.com/ynab-together-expenses/

Happy to answer questions - and I'll keep replies here to a minimum so I don't clutter the thread, per the mod team's ask.

Open to any honest, constructive feedback, good or bad, I'd rather hear it here than not at all.

Thank you.

Hi. I have a situation around a new car purchase where I'm wondering if I have to resort to three different categories, or if anyone has any good ideas how they would solve this.

My car cost 440 000.

I paid 100 000 in cash, where I used my "New car" savings category as the expense category as well.

I am taking out a 340 000 loan, but starting at 0% interest for three years (it might go slightly up, but most likely max 1%), and then higher interest after that. I can cash in the loan whenever.

My plan is to pay the minimum each month for those three years, and at the same time save up enough in a high-interest savings account to cash out the entire loan at the three year-mark.

Right now I have 80 000 to start out with in said account, and I want to add to it monthly.

The way I'm thinking about it now is:

• Car loan payment category, obviously
• New car category, where I placed the downpayment – I hate single-use categories, but the transaction needs to go somewhere
• A savings category, where I start out with 80 000 and the target is 340 000 minus an estimate of what I'll have paid down on the loan in the next three years

But that seems like a lot? The money is obviously going towards the car loan, just not… now.

Anyone else seeing this, or is it just me?

1. LINKING - It sticks at "synchronising" for 2-3 minutes, then: "Credentials expired. The answer or answers were not provided in time."

I tried repeatedly, did force stop and cleared the cache, then updated (I never auto update) to v. 26.40.0, and tried a couple more times. Also changed my bank password, just in case, and tried again. So a fair bit of time wasted before I gave up and went to the web app.

1. WEB APP - at https://app.ynab.com/users/sign_in, I can't get anywhere except Account Settings. The "Plan" link at the top left (https://app.ynab.com/) leads to the "advert" page (as I think of them) with just a link to Play Store. I logged out and back in which made no difference. I tried switching between mobile and desktop site which made no difference.

I seem to remember finding out a while ago that the web app was removed; I never usually think about it as I always use the app on my phone. But then why not have a notice saying so, why let us log in at all?

I'm fully manual (no imports) and I wanted to clean up my Payee list today. I have tons of transactions for payees that have only been used once and likely will never be used again. One example--a gift shop where I bought something last Christmas.

Whenever I eat at a restaurant while traveling, or one that I'm unhappy with, and know I won't go back to, I enter it as just "Restaurant" to try to reduce the clutter.

Other than that, any thoughts on ways to clean up the payee list?

I don't mess with payees. I don't make rules for them. I don't tinker with them AT ALL. I read them once, and use them to pick an appropriate category.

If I don't know what they are, I ask my family "Hey what was this?"

But this feature just confuses everyone, as it change transactions we know into complete fiction.

Today's example:

BLVD *SAINTS AND SCI <location redacted>

I know what this is - it's a place my family gets haircuts. The location makes sense.

YNAB however decided to change it to this:

Saints and Scholars

I don't know what "Saints and Scholars" is. We've never done business with anyone by this name. However because it was NOT the expected name (a change YNAB is performing, that I cannot turn off) I needed to check in with family to see what it was, and drill in to see the actual payee.

And also, not to let it slide by - the reparse to "Scholars" doesn't even make sense, as the Payee is "Sci" (in reality, short for Scissors) so why would that be "Scholars"?

I can appreciate why some might find value in this, but it should be something we can globally disable. For me, it's just a net waste of time as I need to chase down things that I otherwise would not have to.

Read here about my first year: https://www.reddit.com/r/ynab/s/WY90tIddde

I’ve made big life changes since last year! In March I moved in with my partner to a new rental in his city. He is a full-time parent to a teenager. The three of us are doing well. We both started new jobs in April. The base pay for me is the same as previous job, but I work a few hours more.

Some personal milestones:

- I’ve finished 3 months of emergency fund, and I am halfway through the second batch to have 6 months in total.

- I increased my monthly investments from €100 to €750 a month.

- I currently have €71k student loan debt. In my first YNAB year, my networth increased from -69k to -57k. I was already really proud of that. This 2nd year I’ve accelerated and I am at -36k net worth. At this rate I will be worth 0 somewhere in 2028!

- We also started saving every month for our wedding :)

Combining households:

My partner is into YNAB as well, so that made it a lot smoother to talk joint finances. Our philosophies aren’t too far apart.

We settled on income-ratio + he’s responsible for at least 67% of rent and utilities, because we moved to VHCOL based on his needs.

We have an excel as our Source Of Truth with our distribution key. Every month we run the numbers of our paychecks and discuss special purchases we want to make next month. We’re probably oddly precise and make transactions down to the penny, but we’ve also had a lot of fluctuations in income and expenses to get used to.

Our joint account has a joint YNAB plan. We keep track of household expenses together. We kept individual accounts for our paychecks and personal plan.

I know a lot of people think one account, one plan, everything combined is superior. But as a non-married blended family, I think some separation remains prudent. I’m happy to say though that coming to our current agreement wasn’t hard, and I believe we’re very transparent with each other. I’m not sure even when we get married why it would be better or necessary to merge finances completely.

Overall - other than some UI changes this year that I think are stupid - I’m very happy that I made the shift to YNAB. I’ve developed my own habits with the app, and it’s become an automatic part of routine. It’s kinda boring even - sinking funds set up, wish farms, categories for everything with targets. There is an unusual absence of financial dread in my life lol.

Especially the perspective I now have on the influence of student loans on net worth and quality of life. I reckon I have between the top 9%-5% in student loan debt in my country. It’s considered really high and has a lot of stigma and prejudice attached. Typically that I would have done fuck all and Yolo’d my student life away - while it’s been the opposite, I worked hard but was constantly pushed back due to illness, family issues, pandemic shutdowns. It feels good to see that despite the doom and gloom about student loans, I’m able to roll with the punches. We’re on track!

This is a question of how best to set these accounts up in YNAB. Can I model the total balance, and should I do this as an unlinked cash acct or Tracking acct?

I want the cash to exist in the budget already so I can assign from it for potential AC or home repairs or car in future.

- I hold VBIL and USFR in a brokerage acct as part of my emergency fund, and I want to include this total acct value in YNAB.

- I use a category called "emergency fund" which essentially sums some different account balances already. Those linked savings accounts work fine in YNAB already.

- I regularly set aside some portion of income towards bolstering this emergency fund, and will buy VBIL monthly.

- I want to simplify record keeping (maybe once a month after divs pay out/reinvest)

- I plan to reinvest all VBIL/USFR dividends, not that it should matter for YNAB.

- I am okay with infrequent manual entry/updates I do this already for an unlinked CMA)

- I do not track any investments in YNAB, and do not use YNAB for any sort of wealth tracking.

Anyone else do this, and what is your "YNAB solution"?

I started using YNAB six years ago (personally), and it had amazing. It clicked really easily in my brain. My net worth has gone from -$55,000 to $314,000 (excluding market growth on my house).

I opened a business recently, and partially financed it with a credit line attached to my bank account. This is not a separate line of credit. It is essentially a very large overdraft (interest at prime + .5%).

I am going to connect my business account to YNAB, but am just not sure how to deal with the account, because it will say my available cash is -$50,000. I have a plan to pay it off over the next 12-18 months, but what do I do in the meantime?

This has been happening now for a very long time. I'm considering not using my Amazon store card anymore because I have to enter everything manually, Amazon doesn't even have an export.

Is anyone else dealing with this? I can't find anything that says they're working on the issue. This would be with Synchrony Bank for the Amazon Store Card.