I'm not a fan of YNAB's charts in general, but I think this is one of the worst, because it's completely at odds with the YNAB method.
We paid off our mortgage in April--and Jan and Feb are very low income months for us because of fully funding mega backdoor Roth into 401K etc.
I've seen a trend of posts recently about "where I can see how the amount of cash that left my accounts this month compares to my income this month?" and I just wanted to post to talk about how irrelevant monthly income is to monthly spending when you use YNAB to plan your spending.
One of the fundamental principles of YNAB is that while spending is lumpy, the true cost of your lifestyle can be smoothed out by breaking down those lumpy expenses and considering them part of the monthly cost of your lifestyle. I think a lot of YNAB users are refugees from the style of budgeting where you budget based on your fixed expenses (rent, fixed bills, debt repayment, gym membership), add in an aspirational fixed amount for unfixed expenses (groceries), and then either try and "save" a percentage ("savings") then have the leftovers as discretionary spending (dining out, entertainment, clothing, literally everything else) or vice versa.
This never works because of vet bills, dental bills, new tyres, car service, property tax, not-really-optional wedding attendance, gifts, Christmas, new roof/water heater/moving costs.
A budget based on "50% needs 30% wants 20% savings" doesn't know how to deal with a $25K roof replacement. And what even is "savings" in this equation--is it a trip to Mexico next year? a new car in five years? investment for retirement? income loss replacement emergency fund? Because it can't be all those things simultaneously and yet a general pool of "savings" is often mentally allocated to do everything everywhere all at once.
But spending $25K for a roof replacement that you've had sitting in your Roof Replacement category for the past three years is actually a budget decision that should be encouraged and rewarded by the tool. I think this is what they were trying to accomplish with the truly useless Age of Money stat.
If used properly, YNAB can show you a pretty good estimate of the true cost of your lifestyle but this non-optional chart actually breaks their method.