YNAB You Need A Budget

[TBox]

I just bought a home. If I add the mortgage/home improvment loans to YNAB, it says I overspent that month by more than I care to quote. This is not the case, I took on that debt voluntarily and intend to pay it off over 30 years. How do I exclude that starting balance from the monthly budgeting total?

This has to be a common question, but I'm drawing a blank on how to search for it in the forums. I've tried, "New home," "bought home," "new debt," "voluntary debt," "new mortgage," even "consumption smoothing." This is my sacrifice to karma to help me find the answer in the two minutes after I hit "Post."

[virago317]

Don't categorize the starting balance of the mortgage and it won't affect your budget. When you make a mortgage payment, you would categorize the payment transaction as a transfer from the bank account register to the mortgage account register, categorized as mortgage payment (or whatever your budget category is) in the bank account register you're using to pay it and left uncategorized in the mortgage account register. You will have to manually adjust mortgage interest accrued, etc. by adding uncategorized transactions in the mortgage account register each month.

Another option is not to have a mortgage account register at all, but just categorize your mortgage payments as debits in your bank account register and include them in your budget that way. It's much simpler than trying to deal with off-budget accounts in Pro.

[TBox]

Thank you very much! And, because I feel compelled to explain myself, I confess I lied a little. It's a duplex, and it needed a lot of repair. I'm owner-occupying, and I can only afford it because of the rent coming from the other side. When I applied for a home improvement loan, I found out they cannot include rental income as real income for two years, so my bank-seen debt to income ratio looks like that for a banana republic. So I had to put the repairs on a consumer credit card, which also gets some emergency debt put on it too, so I gotta track each transaction separately depending on whether it's voluntary or emergency. I only have the one and no one is going to give me another for at least two years.