r/ynab

I’ve never used bank syncing because I’ve never lived in a country that supported it. It’s always been manual transactions for me all the way.
I’m currently building a multicurrency alternative to YNAB, and I’ve been debating whether I should add bank syncing or not. The reasons I’m hesitant are:

• Bank syncing services are expensive and region dependent. So i would have to use several of them if I want to support the US and EU, for example. And the more services there are, the more expensive the app would be. I think this is one of the main reasons YNAB has increased its subscription price lately.
• It feels like a good chunk of the issues people are having with YNAB are related to bank syncing, like transactions coming in late or getting miscategorized. So i’m worried that adding it will also add a lot of chaos.
• Like I said, it’s never been useful for me because of where I live, so it’s always felt a little unfair that I still had to pay for a feature i couldn’t use.

So i’m trying to figure out, how important of a feature is it to most people really? Is it a dealbreaker to not have it? Or would you rather have it even if it means paying more?

Feels like everyone starting YNAB has a bunch of money squirreled away already. All the intro vids are showing people who have $10k in the bank already put aside so it’s super simple to live on last months check. I’m happy for yah I really am.

Is there any vids or explanations on people who don’t have generational wealth and are just starting off?

Hello! I’ve been using YNAB since the start of the year, and I absolutely love it.

However, I’ve been struggling a bit with my mindset. Since I am able to rearrange my money better, and see categorically what I have spent, I feel like I’ve had more permission to spend my money (especially since I have a HYSA that is tracked separately, so I feel more comfortable knowing I have a big set aside).

Has anyone else felt this way, and if so, do you have any tips on how I can continue to fix my mindset? Thank you in advance!

I’ve been using YNAB for a while and I’m trying to figure out if this is a common experience or just how I’ve set things up.

Before YNAB, my approach was pretty simple:
~1 month of expenses in checking for cash flow
6-month emergency fund sitting in HYSA
Everything else more or less “unstructured”

Since moving to YNAB, my cash position has slowly expanded without me really planning it that way.

Right now I have:

1 month ahead category
6-month emergency fund (still intact)
Enough set aside to fully cover my credit card balance at any time
Multiple sinking funds for expected expenses over the next year

When I add everything up, I’m technically now holding roughly 11–12 months of necessary expenses in cash.

On paper, it all has a purpose and is fully assigned in YNAB. But psychologically it feels like I’m holding a lot more liquidity than I used to, even though nothing is “idle” in the budget.

I’m curious if others experience this shift with YNAB:

Did your cash reserves grow over time?
Do you eventually dial it back, or does it naturally stabilize?
Do you think this is just better planning, or is there a risk of over-accumulating cash without realizing it?

I finally found the courage to jump into the Reddit community after much deliberation. With that said, I’m curious if anyone else experiences this with YNAB: it’s fantastic at highlighting financial issues, but sometimes leaves me wondering about the solutions. I’ve been a YNAB user for a bit now, and the clarity it offers is genuinely appreciated. However, I often find myself looking at an overspent dining budget, and while I understand it’s an issue, I’m not always sure of the next step. The data presentation is flawless, yet I still feel like I’m fumbling for the right course of action. Am I alone in feeling like there’s a gap in translating this information into practical steps? When you identify a problematic spending area, what’s your strategy? Is it an immediate cut-off, or do you have a more nuanced approach?

I think his central idea of "spend money on the things that truly matter to you personally, Your Rich Life, and cut ruthlessly on the things that don't contribute to that life" is very compatible with the YNAB idea of Spendfullness. I think it's unfortunate that Sethi is anti budget. Extremely detailed and mindful budgeting seems essential to executing the spending/cutting ruthlessly process. How do we bring Ramit over to the YNAB cult?

I know the answer is leave it. But as a healthy income earner with lots of categories well funded boy I sit with a lot of cash in a hysa. Cant help but think man i should put in market but obviously a downturn seriously erodes the balances. Anyone ever run into this? I assume the right answer is categories are relatively short term so keep cash in hysa and invest surplus

Hello all 👋,

YNAB user for 6 months now and I finally started understanding where my salary is going 🙏🏻.

I am afraid though I am doing something wrong and need your advice.

When I get paid, I save a fixed amount on a saving account and add the transaction as Emergency Fund.

I don't preassign the rest on my plan's categories but I do only when I create a new transaction.

If on payday I have unspent money, I move them to savings account and start again from zero, with a fresh salary.

That way I can understand if in the end of the month I managed to not exceed my salary and also do some savings.

I need your help here:

With giving purpose on every single dollar, how will I understand on payday if I did not overspend and how much money I did save.

Thanks!

Long-time YNAB user here. A few years back, my bank and CC companies rolled out MFA and sync never fully recovered. Repeated resets, backend switches, nothing stuck. After a year (or two) of wrestling with manual downloads, I finally rage-quit.

Coming back with a cleaner setup: no credit cards in YNAB. I'll budget a dedicated bucket for each card and pay them off monthly. If I need transaction details, every card has an app for that.

Based in Canada, so fingers crossed sync has improved. I can handle downloading my bank statement occasionally — it was juggling several that broke me.

Good to see some familiar faces (and troublemakers) still around. Glad to be back!

So I have a transaction from Apple for $37.95. I have a category called "Apple One" with a target of $37.95, so naturally YNAB will categorize this transaction correctly, right? Wrong. It defaults this transaction to a category with a target of $11/mo without Apple in the name at all. This causes it show up as overspent until I go in and change it to the correct category.

Maybe I'm expecting too much and I do grant that it at least chose a category that has had the same payee in the past, but it just seems like it should take the transaction amount AND the category's target into account when choosing a category.

Hello.

I'm afraid this is kind of a silly question, but bear with me. I live with one roommate and we split the rent equally. Rent costs $1485 and is due on the first of the month. My roommate sends me his half ($742.50) on the last day of each month; I am the one who logs in to the resident portal and pays the rent in full.

My question is: for my "Rent" category, should I make the monthly target to set aside by the end of the month $1485 (full amount) or $742.50 (just my half)?

Have been using YNAB for a few months now, but I think I still don’t get one of the basic concepts.

If I have a category called Home maintenance, and I have budgeted it for: $100 with “set aside each month”. But, say, you don’t use it for 3 months. Then, is $300 available to spend if I have a maintenance during month 4.

How you handle cases where there could be a sudden jump in spending once in a while..

i use ynab for quite some time now - about 6 months of actually using it as intented (kind of) - but i notice that a lot of my over spending categories are unexpected payments for 2-3 months of payments in a single month then i wont have to pay for it the next 2 -3 months until it go back to montly payments. should i cover it from EF? (btw i am 21 yr so my ef is about 1/4 of my paycheck).

i natuarly gravitet towards paying it from next months assignment (that way i am assigning the money of august in july based on my consistent montly paycheck).

Hi all, I’m looking for clarification on how credit card payments work in YNAB. I currently have several spending categories like “eating out” and “groceries” and I will use my credit card to pay for those items. I fund this categories at the beginning of each month. From the official guide, it says that whatever amount is spent in those categories will automatically get applied to the credit card payment but this hasn’t been the case for me. I end up funding the categories then also having to fund my credit card payment. So I’m funding each purchase twice. Have I set up my credit cards incorrectly in YNAB. Thanks in advance.

The regional bank we’ve been with forever- and the account we’ve had in YNAB for 10 years now- is being acquired by one of the big banks. I’m trying to wrap my head around what this will mean for our budget and the decade of historical data we have. Our account number, bank log in, etc will all change.

Is there a way to seamlessly transition this in YNAB? Will it be like a brand new account? Will we lose all the past info when the old account is gone? I’ve only ever added extra savings and credit/loan accounts so I have no clue how it will work. Any help or insight is appreciated, I want to be prepared! Thanks!

do you have one month ahead in your availble money or in high interest savings (like stock)