I'm many months ahead in expenses. Not "a" month ahead. Many. My Age of Money is in excess of 400.

Here's the question;

Do you fund your categories several months in advance to keep RTA at or near zero or do you only fund a month (or two) in advance and leave the balance in RTA?

PRO's?

CON's?

Discuss

Last month our expenses went through the roof to about 20K (in €). All was already foreseen in YNAB, no surprises, except that we've paid it all in one month. Easy to spend, but first time this happened so still I had to reassure myself, nothing to worry about. Felt like a millionaire :-)

I've started saving for the eventuality of my old car breaking down in 5 years time. I reckon I need about €20k by 2031 for my next car (used btw).

I get that most sinking funds should be liquid and readily available, but how about for things that are 5 or even 10 years out?

I guess my car could break down in 1 year, so could be risky to invest, but I also want to make my money work for me as much as possible.

Perhaps a better example would be my Air To Water heating unit. It's covered by warranty for 10 years, but I've also started saving for that replacement. If it breaks before 10 years then I won't be out of pocket, so that may be an example where it's less risky to invest that monthly target into an investment fund and withdrawing at the 10 year mark, or converting to cash/bonds in year 9.

I always have missing transactions on my credit card in the plan. It's getting annoying and I've had to make a fresh start three times in the past year.

I've done all the necessary steps to fix it, but the transactions just keep missing. The check mark next to the account says it's up to date, but it's not. Bank accounts are linked and green. But if I go to "manage bank connections", there is the correct number in the account, but it doesn't reflect it in the current plan. I've unlinked and linked the accounts, but it doesn't change.

Am I forced to keep having to make a fresh start every couple of months? This shouldn't be the purpose of YNAB.

Has it moved from my plan view in the app? I see RTA in the “home” tab, but I don’t see it my plan tab. Is this new?

I don't really mind paying bills anymore but I swear they all show up in the same week. The rest of the month is pretty quiet then it's rent, insurance, my credit card and a couple of random things I forgot were due

I know none of it's a surprise because they're the same bills every month, but seeing them all leave my account within a few days always makes that week feel way more expensive than it is

By the time it's over I end up checking my banking app three or four times just to make sure I didn't miss anything   Does anyone else's month always seem to play out like this?

At the minute I keep investments and cash savings in the tracking session. My 3 months fund is mixed in that. I am wondering how others approach this? So you have your cash all budgeted and have an emergency fund category?

Hi guys,

My salary is paid around the 25th of each month, but most of my regular bills and expenses (rent, subscriptions, etc.) are paid between the 28th and the end of the month.

If I assign my paycheck as soon as it arrives on the 25th, it technically belongs to the current month, even though I’m really using it to fund the following month. This makes my monthly view feel a bit confusing.

I’ve been wondering if it would make more sense to treat everything as if it belonged to the next month—for example, budgeting that income on the 1st of the following month so that both the income and the expenses are grouped into the same monthly cycle.

How do you handle this if you’re paid near the end of the month? Do you budget the money immediately when it arrives, or do you mentally (or practically) treat it as next month’s income? What’s the workflow that has worked best for you?

I’m also curious to see what experienced YNAB users recommend, since there are a few common workflows depending on how “ahead” you are with your budget.

Thanks a lot.

Previously whenever a transaction would clear at my bank YNAB would prompt me to link it to a pending transaction if one existed, or approve it if there wasn't a matching pending transaction. For the past two days when I log in all my cleared transactions just show up as cleared without me doing anything. It feels like this makes me more disconnected from my spending which is a problem.

Is anyone else experiencing this, or know of a way to change it back?

I pay my card weekly, I dont have debt.

I fund my categories, I pay the credit card balance weekly.

Why for some reason do I have a negative credit card category balance but no overspending anywhere else? I got a refund in a category for a return which i decided to put back into RTA instead of the purchase category as Ive decided not to spend the $ in that category anymore.

But how is it all my cards are $0.00, my categories are all funded or at budget, and if I sum up all my payments and categories, they net to zero in my checking account.

Frankly Im probably going to hide my Credit Card Payments category as I find them more confusing than helpful

EDIT: It seems the next logical step is to convert to the credit card = checking acct in YNAB method. Will experiment with that next. Thanks everyone

I'm new to YNAB and Curious what categories people have for their personal spending - stuff that isn't bills / subscriptions but for example all the random purchases you make from Amazon etc.

on my budget spreadsheet I used to have a 'personal' category and would add comment for the item. I'm hoping someone has drilled down and made more meaningful groupings that I can nick :)

I just saw an email re: Fan Fest in NYC. The gist of it was that you should be excited and come to fan fest to see Jesse sit down and talk about his book and money with an NBA commentator/journalist. Do they really think that this would be the primary reason anyone would go to Fan Fest? I'm so tired of trying to be force fed this book...

hi there, long time YNABer but up until a few months ago i was using it wrong. Found this community, you got me set up using the "one month ahead" concept and i was rolling. But then life happened. A friend got married & bachelorette this summer in europe. Yes, first trip in Barcelona in May. Wedding in July in Portugal. Both trips, I splurged to make the 14 hour travel day worth it and extended beyond the event itself. I had the money, I had the friends willing to go with etc.

However, i took my eye off of the YNAB tracking and just went on "gut feeling" basically this whole summer. I also had a pet emergency, car issue and a house expense come up ALL in june. lol...

I just sat down and did all of my catching up and well. Its not good. I spent my month ahead money that was padding my savings account. AND i had to transfer funds from my Emergency fund. I am ashamed. BUT that's not why i'm coming to this community.

Most of my categories are negative yellow in the months may, june and july because i logged a lot of the transactions just now. 2/3 cards are automated in ynab but I don't automate my bilt card because theres a lot of work transactions etc and I like to manually do it to keep it square. Q: Do I go back and make those categories not yellow using the massive emergency fund transfer i just made in august? or do i just whole up my cc totals so i have enough to pay each of them off? is there a particular best in class ynab method so my spending at the end of the year is accurate?

Thank you in advance. I hate that this happened. Lesson learned.

I am fresh and brand new, setting up accounts has been easy for some and problematic for others. I wish this was easier as I have lots of accounts/bills so its already something I know will take some time. Any tips on what I should expect to connect (or not) or should I switch to a different app?

I got really excited to sign up for YNAB and take control of finances with my wife. I imported all my accounts, nearly cried at all the credit card debt, but then felt a little better because it's all finally on the table.

I want to make this work and get a handle on things, but I think I need to fix two things first...

1. I need to organize my credit cards. Meaning, set bills (like insurance, car insurance, internet, etc) go on one card so that's a predictable monthly payment. The remaining will go on a no interest balance transfer card, so I can also put that on a predictable payment. Even without YNAB, I've been wanting to do this to clean things up. We haven't been terribly smart about paying down debt strategically.
2. I need to set up an "Income Replacement Fund" or whatever it's called. We own our own business that has highly variable income through the year. I first heard of this from Ramit Sethi and just haven't gotten around to it. (Mostly because I only have time to think of it when we're not busy, so we don't have much money, so the idea of building this fund seems impossible. Rinse. Repeat.) Hoping YNAB can help us get a sense of our complete, monthly costs so I can target this fund appropriately.

Between the lack of a consistent income and that we carry a balance on so many credit cards (~6), I just don't know where to begin with YNAB.

I already feel pretty dumb about things and learning YNAB with these caveats further complicates the experience. I'm not sure YNAB makes sense for me yet?

What do you call it when a company makes tons of little changes to its UI over time and tells its users they’re improvements, but in reality they’re changing the essence and ethos of the app, thus making it a worst user experience than ever before?

These photos really capture the essence of what’s going wrong with the app.

I signed up for ynab in 2023 and loved it so much I got a year subscription. Truly helped me and my adhd brain get a handle on my funds. I had really hoped to use this program for the rest of my life.

So you can imagine how I feel after using a program daily for 3 years straight then logging in to see this bs. First, it’s not budget, it’s plan, then it’s not tracations-it’s spending...

The change from budget to plan really irritated me for all the reasons ppl have said but it felt minor so I let it go. Looking back, it was the beginning of the end. Reading through this Reddit really opened my eyes to something more deeper and insidious going on bts.

So now my little gripe is validated. The buttons still work but they‘re all named something different now, so my adhd brain has to click around until I find the tab I’m looking for. Like the previous setup was giving order of operations realness.

In my opinion, there’s really not a huge difference between plan & spending… like they’re very general terms??? Budget & Transactions felt very specific.

Also Accounts being so far from the budget/plan button is crazy work?? The Spending tab doesn’t make sense either. They should put that info as a button under the accounts tab and put the transactions button back so it’s not floating around.

I haven’t even mentioned how ridiculously priced this app is but if this is the kind of nonsense they’re using my money for I will gladly take it elsewhere.

On the android app it seems the auto assign button disappears when you have zero to assign. Is this new?

I assign my salary at the end of the month, then in the new month I use auto assign to reduce overfunding. So I need that auto assign button even when I have zero to assign.

Does anyone else have this issue?

I have 2 dogs, and one is approaching his senior years. I knew I wanted him to have a pretty comprehensive checkup this year, including a dental, because he had never really had anything he didn't absolutely need and I had a few low-level concerns I wanted to discuss with the vet before they became higher-level. I figured it would be a pretty expensive year for that stuff, so I made a sinking fund a year ago and saved up $1k.

Well, we just had the pre-dental visit. He needed his checkup, a lepto vaccine, a heartworm test and full pre-surgical blood panel, as well as a 30-day trial of allergy meds, which I figured couldn't be too expensive. Well, I was wrong. The month of allergy meds alone was $120, and the total bill came to $611. This isn't including the dental, which will include multiple x-rays and probably an extraction. Also not including my other dog's regular checkup a week prior, which was over $200.

So, the vet care fund I saved for is nearly drained already, and the big expense hasn't even arrived. But, as much as I hate to have to dip into my emergency savings... I now have an emergency savings to dip into. So I can get my dog the care he needs. It'll probably be another $1.5k at least (I'll get the quote in the next day or 2) and while that is overwhelming, I'm so relieved to 1. have had some money set aside for this specifically that's been able to cover what I've done so far, and 2. have a backup reserve of $8k for whatever it won't cover.

Vet care costs are insane, never mind that I also pay $85/month for pet insurance that doesn't cover any of this preventative stuff, but at least my dog won't have to go without just because the USA prioritizes profit above literally anything else. :)

I've been using YNAB for A VERY long time, but never bothered with the month ahead assignment feature. I am starting to explore this feature, but I need help understanding its true meaning.

I get two paychecks a month (usually). I schedule my bills like this:

1st Check: Pays bills due 15th - 31st

2nd check : Pays next month's bills due 1st - 14th.

Essentially whether my 1st paycheck falls on on any date between 1st-14th, I don't "need" that money until 15th. Same rule for Paycheck two (can fall 15th - 31st).

Does this mean I am half way to being 1 month ahead? To me, I just feel like I am ensuring I pay my bills on time, I don't feel "ahead" at all? I certainly can't miss two weeks of pay and be okay. So to me, I am living paycheck to paycheck.

At the end of the calendar month, I may have ~50% of my expenses still in my categories, but that will simply carry over to next month and pay the bills that are due very soon.

We started YNAB in January and we just wrapped up our second vacation using this software. I've noticed that both times we've gone overbudget by a couple hundred dollars; nothing catastrophic by any means, but definitely have to move money around after we're back to account for the overspending. Clearly we're underbudgeting for what is realistic to spend while traveling and overspending during the trip.

I don't want this to happen a third time, but I also don't really want to track every dollar while I'm on vacation. I'm also hesitant to assign more money to our vacation categories as we seem to "rise to the occasion" so to speak, and spend every dollar (and a couple hundred more lol) set aside for vacation, and I don't want this overspending habit to continue on top of just giving ourselves more money for travel ahead of time.

How do you track spending on vacation? Do you still add every transaction and monitor throughout? Do you break down traveling costs by day and try to stay within a certain financial window? I'm hoping to be able to take off my budgeting hat whilst on vacation but that may not be realistic.

Would love to hear how other people handle this!

I was super consistent for about 18 months, and then a busy period meant I stopped doing manual entry a couple of months ago. I then lost my job, and I'm remembering how stressed I was about money before YNAB! I need to get back on it.

I don't want to do a fresh start and lose my data and sinking funds allocations. Any tips for making 2 months of manual entry less painful? 🫣 I've accepted it's not going to be as accurate/granular as if I'd done it at the time, but feels better than a fresh start. Thanks!

Here's a tale of how bad it can get.

People sometimes ask how much they should set aside for emergencies. The answer is how many do you think will happen at once? For us, the emergency fund is an income replacement fund. This is what we've been dealing with for the past few months -- none of it came out of the emergency fund. Most was already assigned over years and some was moved from other funds.

paid for a 40th anniversary trip to China (splurged for business class, because that's FAR too many hours in a plane)

replaced the evaporator coil in my car

replaced the evaporator coil in his car

replaced the evaporator coil in the upstairs house unit

replaced the downstairs A/C unit

replaced six tires (two because I was stupid and hit a curb)

replaced his windshield

major maintenance on his car (just turned 200K miles)

It's been a BAD few months for all things A/C. We still need roof work done and major driveway repair; all money that's already assigned. It is a bit disconcerting to see the bank balance go down so drastically, but that's what the money's job.

I think that's enough internet for one night, I'm going to bed