YNAB Personal Budget Software & Finance Forums

[MSmith7344]

And I ran into a problem immediately. (Just so you know where I'm coming from software wise, I've previously used Quicken Online, but it only linked with my bank sporadically and didn't do everything I wanted.) To start, I entered ALL of my accounts (minus student loans and investments): checking, several savings accounts, and the credit cards on the register page. Now in the budget section, it's telling me I have boatloads of money to use this month because it's counting my EF, my Christmas savings fund, my car repair savings fund, etc. I only want to budget from checking.

I tried looking at the tutorial on using savings accounts, but got lost immediately, because the tutorial shows that you have a choice between 4 different types of accounts when you input one into the register (savings, checking, and two others). My program groups savings and checking together.

How can I make it only take into account the money in checking? I routinely move money between accounts, so I want them all visible. Can I make a budget category and shove the amount of money I want it to ignore in there or something?

[J.Mann]

And I ran into a problem immediately. (Just so you know where I'm coming from software wise, I've previously used Quicken Online, but it only linked with my bank sporadically and didn't do everything I wanted.) To start, I entered ALL of my accounts (minus student loans and investments): checking, several savings accounts, and the credit cards on the register page. Now in the budget section, it's telling me I have boatloads of money to use this month because it's counting my EF, my Christmas savings fund, my car repair savings fund, etc. I only want to budget from checking.

I tried looking at the tutorial on using savings accounts, but got lost immediately, because the tutorial shows that you have a choice between 4 different types of accounts when you input one into the register (savings, checking, and two others). My program groups savings and checking together.

How can I make it only take into account the money in checking? I routinely move money between accounts, so I want them all visible. Can I make a budget category and shove the amount of money I want it to ignore in there or something?

I would make budget categories and shove the money into those categories... the money will stay in the categories until it is spent... and all you have to do is budget money towards each category every month... and then make the actual transfer between physical bank accounts.

[abacus2]

Just create categories for all your long term plan money. For example, say you enter all the accounts and you see $10,000 available at the top of your budget page, but you only want to budget $4,000 for regular monthly expenses. Budget $4,000 to your emergency fund category (available at the top drops to $6,000); Budget $1,000 to your car repair fund category (available at the top drops to $5,000); Budget $1,000 to your Christmas savings category (available at the top drops to $4,000); Now budget the $4,000 to this month's needs. The $6,000 you budgeted into long term categories will stay there until you spend it.

[bothyhead]

Oops! I miss-clicked ... post to follow

[bothyhead]

And I ran into a problem immediately. (Just so you know where I'm coming from software wise, I've previously used Quicken Online, but it only linked with my bank sporadically and didn't do everything I wanted.) To start, I entered ALL of my accounts (minus student loans and investments): checking, several savings accounts, and the credit cards on the register page. Now in the budget section, it's telling me I have boatloads of money to use this month because it's counting my EF, my Christmas savings fund, my car repair savings fund, etc. I only want to budget from checking.

I tried looking at the tutorial on using savings accounts, but got lost immediately, because the tutorial shows that you have a choice between 4 different types of accounts when you input one into the register (savings, checking, and two others). My program groups savings and checking together.

How can I make it only take into account the money in checking? I routinely move money between accounts, so I want them all visible. Can I make a budget category and shove the amount of money I want it to ignore in there or something?

... I entered ALL of my accounts (minus student loans and investments): checking, several savings accounts, and the credit cards on the register page. Now in the budget section, it's telling me I have boatloads of money to use this month because it's counting my EF, my Christmas savings fund, my car repair savings fund, etc. I only want to budget from checking. ...

The short answer is that you can't.

It looks like you have come from a place where you have already being budgeting; you have set up various actual bank
savings accounts: one for your car repairs, one for Christmas pressies, etc. You then use the physical constraints of
the actual amount of cash in these accounts to determine how much you can spend on fixing your car, or whatever. Using
YNAB, you can approach this differently: you can amalgamate all those different 'physical' savings accounts into one and
use the balances of your YNAB categories to determine how much you can spend on car repairs. Ok, since you're not bound
by the physical constraints in how much you can spend in each category, you have to take a little bit more care to ensure
that you don't overspend and, anyway, if you do overspend then rule 4 will kick in.

I myself had a savings account which contained the exact balance of my savings category. All of my other non-savings
categories were stored in my current (checking) account. I had been operating this way for years, until suddenly I realised
that I had something like 10K in my current account, which was earning no interest, so was benifiting no-one only the bank
themselves! I found it hard to break the mental link I had made between my YNAB savings category and my bank savings
account, but break it I eventually did, and I've never looked back. I looked back over the past few years budgeting, and found
that on average I never spent more than 2K per month. With this information, I decided to keep roughly 2K in my current
account at the start of every month, and to move the remainder over to my savings account. That first month, I moved
8K straight out of my current account to my savings account, where it was going to earn a whopping 2% interest but still,
it was going to be my interest, not the bank's. Every so often, one of my rainy day expenses needs to be met (the car
insurance, for example.) In those months, I'll transfer the extra 500 I need back from savings (giving myself a couple of days
for the transfer to occur between my two different banks).

So, back to your original problem. You have entered all your bank account balances into YNAB as probably a supplemental
income, and you're sitting there with a big fat amount for November's available amount. You'll need to create a budget category
for 'Car Repairs', another for 'Christmas Presents', etc, and then budget an appropriate amount into these categories. You'll
probably to decide to use the figures that you have already set aside for these amounts in your physical bank accounts, but
the point is, it really doesn't matter; you may decide to budget more or less. Once you decide that your spending is going to
be governed by your YNAB category balances, it's irrelevant to where the where the money is physically stored.

Hopefully I haven't confused you. I was where you are, until the big penny dropped. Now managing my bank accounts is so
much easier, and I'm earning a little bit more interest as well

Best of luck with your budgeting!
B