respect!

🤣🥰🤩🧘‍♀️

Sure, but why? You don’t need to remember anything, and that’s not “a job for those dollars”…

Patty it's my buffer for I know I can't remember ever little thing. It's my category for me to say oh yeah the kids need a year book. Lol

I have one named "cushion", because i like the peace of mind it gives. As I get better with my budgeting, I'll decrease the cushion amount.

This is an astute description. 🔥

This is my take too.

Agreed! It’s been what has moved me to YNAB and dropped some other, more restrictive budgeting methods.

Yesss, ironically it FORCES you to have FREEDOM

🙃 -Hannah 🌻

I know, right? And I'm allergic, but they look so good!

This 💯

I think we ALL should have that category! Between Julip, her Roomba, The Wish Farm(s)...she's giving us ideas for categories we didn't know we needed #It'sHannah'sFault #BlameHannah!

I literally went out to Costco and bought the BIG container of peanut M&Ms after this. #BlameHannah

😂 GLAD to hear that!! So much to say, such little time! 🌻 Hannah

This is what I use the little colors/emojis help lol

I do the same, except on category groups, and order them from most flexible to least flexible: ♻️ Fun Money ♻️ Living Expenses (groceries, transportation, hygiene, wellness, etc.) ⚠️ Unexpected Expenses (stuff I forgot to budget for) ⚠️ Savings Goals ⚠️ Non-monthly expenses ⚠️ Emergency ⛔️ Debt ⛔️ Immediate Obligations (rent, bills, etc.) ⛔️ Taxes 📈 Financial Independence (pay yourself first 😁)

Great idea! I never thought of that!!

Me too! Super helpful to see at a glance which categories I can touch or not.

Oh, you're so welcome for the timestamps!! I find em so handy too!! And no worries, I always use a dummy budget for demonstrations :) Otherwise people would question whether Julep is the head of the house or me. 🙃 -Hannah 🌻

@@YNABofficial Hannah everybody knows Julep is in charge! LOL.

Same! It works well for me too. After watching this, I realized it's more or less an adaptation of the Fixed and Flexi approach. Like Hannah mentioned in the video, I like being able to collapse the NEEDS category groups to resist moving from those categories when I need to move money around. I have one more breakdown I do: - NEEDS: Monthly - NEEDS: True Expenses - WANTS: Monthly - WANTS: True Expenses Having one more level that introduces frequency keeps my brain organized.

What book was that ?

Woo hoo Emma! Keep that momentum up, you'll feel so great when you cross that full month ahead milestone! Sounds like you're making great progress! :)

Wait till one trip to the emergency room or a totalled vehicle wipes out in an instant what took years to accumulate

@@chrism8180 Welcome to Earth Chris, where unexpected things are an absolute certainty. We are all thankful for YNAB helping us prepare for such things.

Me, too! Watching tons of budget videos gave me more inspiration and some anxiety too. ^_^ But it gives me more clarity on how I want to set up mine that works best for me. This YNAB video resonated with me so much. Good luck on your financial goals!

@@chrism8180 at least she won’t be in debt for it

Hey Warren! You can actually share your idea with YNAB developers! Drop your brainstorms here :) youneedabudget.typeform.com/to/Pt6cek -Hannah 🌻

Genius! I hope they can make that happen

Oh, there are SO many ways to organize the budget!! Glad we gave you a new idea to try! Let us know how it goes for you!! 🌻 Hannah

Same!!

how do you do that?

@@MightandMagic88 on the phone app, select a category…select details (the small “i”)…then you will see a small gray “push pin” push 📌 at the top right…click it once and it’s pinned to the top.

WOO HOO! Hope this helps. But man, getting groceries under control is probably the eternal struggle for most of us. It's especially hard if you're single or kidless because it's hard to know how much to buy without wasting a ton of food! I feel ya, gurl. -Hannah 🌻

I had tried this last year for about a month. It didn't work for me because I would do my grocery shopping the weekend after payday and have no money in the budget for the following week. So I budget my groceries bi-weekly.😁

Cutest snout in the world 🐶 More Julep, comin' right up! -Hannah 🌻

Hey Darcy! Bi-weekly targets is a feature we've been working on a long time! Shockingly it's more complicated than you might think. But rest assured, we're working on it! 🌻 Hannah

Ha! I missed this! That's amazing!! 😂🤣 Special things do add a little ✨sparkle✨to life. It works! -Hannah 🌻

Oh, yay! I still do it that same way! We love it. Helps us really visualize how much we have. -Hannah 🌻

@@YNABofficial I wish there was a way to do this but at the same day each week and without a 10-day week at the end of the month...

Well, the beauty is that you can change it whenever you want! When I try new things in my budget, I screenshot my current budget before I make any changes so that if I don't like it, I know exactly how to get back. I also LOVE tinkering with my budget, so I don't mind spending a bunch of time beautifying and reorganizing it 😊 -Hannah 🌻

YAY! I love this!! Thank you so much for your kind words, and we have literally ALL been where you are right now. In fact, this time of year is where my budgeting has tended to get a little sloppy in the past-so many one-off expenses that come with the holidays, but this year I'm sticking to my YNAB guns! 🌻 Hannah

Oh friend, absolutely make your budget layout your own! Mine has shifted SO much over the years. I personally use the Fixed vs Flexi method, but also a little bit of the topical method. My new budget that I just started with the husband has 10 category groups: Bills (Fixed), Flexi, Just for Fun, Groceries, Julep (dog), True Expenses, Subscriptions, Wish Farm, Credit Card Payments, and Debt Payments! We made it work for us :) -Hannah 🌻

So I'm hearing we need more Julep?? Okay, note taken :) 🌻 Hannah

The warlock in me greatly approves of these category names

Me too, Adam. Me too 🐶 -Hannah 🌻

Oooooh! Now there's an idea! Feel free to submit that to our customer feature request form: youneedabudget.typeform.com/to/Pt6cek?typeform-source=docs.youneedabudget.com 🌻 Hannah

Aww, so kind!! Thank you so much! Now I'm craving peanut M&Ms. 🌻 Hannah

I agree - I wish I could use all of these methods. But instead of tags I think it would be cool if we could save category group layouts and easily switch between them. So for example all the categories are the same you just have a layout that shows them by time and another layout that shows by topic.

I think you can do this by using hashtags on the Memo field. Hannah even mentioned this in a video recently

Yep I would love a due date column and amount column on the face of the budgwt

@@gaullaura that's the same thing haha. If it remembers multiple "categories" for a single transaction, which it needs to to show these different "layouts", then the transactions have tags! You can still call them categories if you want, but the difference is that "tag" means you have multiple rather than a single required one per transaction. So your "layouts" could simply sort by a different set of tags.

@@MiguelDuarte42 perhaps that could be a useful gimmick for certain ways you might want to filter your data, but you wouldn't be *budgeting* around it the way you currently budget into categories.

YAY, oh I'm so glad! My husband and I definitely make our budget our own. Emojis evvvvverywhere. 😂 🌻Hannah

Fixed vs Flexi is my method!! Would HIGHLY recommend! It's nice to get all of your fixed expenses taken care of and then get it out of the way. I don't tend to look at trends or reports as much, so I don't mind having "topics" split up among fixed and flexi. Give it a shot, and the beauty is: if you don't end up liking it, you can always go back! -Hannah 🌻

Oh, I LOVE that!! YNAB truly meets any pay cycle, financial situation, or approach to organization right where you're at. Way to find a unique system that works for YOU instead of following someone else's system! Sounds like you have a really solid financial routine worked out. We love that! 🌻 Hannah

Yes!! Wow! You could even make a "electric overflow" category and make the budgeting goal the amount you needed this year - $323. You know it'll probably be somewhere around there next year - maybe a little less, maybe a little more. A little more mindless (but secure) of a process, and crosses that one extra "to-do" off your list! -Hannah 🌻

@@YNABofficial great idea Hannah. Think I’ll make it for $400 and if it is less than that next year I’ll have some extra to put in my savings category.

Nice! Makes it easier to know where you can borrow money from and where it should stay put. I like it! 🌻 Hannah

You can "hide" categories that you don't need anymore so they don't show up. The advantage is that those expenses are still categorized correctly as "moving expenses" and also if you do end up moving again you can UNhide the category to use it again.

I have a "Rare/One-Time" Category Group that I typically keep hidden wherein I collect these dead categories. If you need to see them again, unhide them, do your business, then re-hide. Simple and clean.

You hit the nail on the head with the possible solutions. Try to keep categories general as a rule, so that you don't end up with lots of one-off categories. Try to think of things holistically. To take an example from the video, I would never put "passport renewal" as its own category, that's completely absurd. It falls under travel expenses. Moving is tricky, I haven't figured out a broader category it could fall into so it is its own category in my budget. Hiding it may help you declutter your budget.

@@ivandiaz5791 housing?

I'm in the exact same position. I've gotten good at the initial stages after 3 months, but need help to level up. Time to go schedule a 1:1 with YNAB!

😂 Oh my worrrrrrd!! That's amazing! Hey, whatever keeps you organized and feeling in control! 😂 🌻Hannah

Great question! I add $50 to each of the first weeks, and $75 to the last week (because depending on the month it may have 10 days! I organize it like this: CATEGORY GROUP: 🍇 Groceries CATEGORIES: 🍓 (1st-7th) - $50 🥕 (8th-14th) - $50 🍌 (15th-21st) - $50 🥑 (22nd-31st) - $75 So whenever I need to enter a groceries transaction, I just type an opening parenthesis into the "Category" field and then select whichever week the purchase date falls in. BUT, you can also have ONE groceries category (like most people do) and assign it a $50-a-week weekly spending goal, so it will prompt you to put more money in in the months with 5 "weeks." I hope that helps! -Hannah 🌻

I actually get a lot of satisfaction out of having a separate category for each bill and subscription! It just feels like more green checkmarks saying "Hey, you did it!" So who knows, you might get a little rush from it like me 🤪 -Hannah 🌻

Hmmm... that's a good question. I guess it depends on what kind of data you're looking for and what you'll actually be changing about your budget. If the categories themselves are all staying the same but you're just rearranging them into difference category groups, I would think you could probably keep the same budget? Because you can go into each individual category to get it's reporting/trending data-the only thing that will be thrown off is your *category groups* reports. But, if your categories themselves will be changing into whole new categories, and if you heavily rely on reporting, I might do a fresh start to preserve your old data but then start a new clean report with your newly organized data. That way you still get to keep the "old" but have total confidence that the "new" will be reporting and organized the way you want. Does that make any sense?! I second guessed myself like 4 times when I was writing up this response. 😂 🌻 Hannah

Lol. Sweeter times, back then. 🥲 🌻 Hannah

Agreed, agreed 🐶 -Hannah 🌻

That would be handy! Unfortunately right now you can't collapse categories groups in the mobile app, but that is feedback I'll make sure gets back to the team! -Hannah 🌻

Currently, no! With every new budget, you are set up with the default categories, but you can tweak and edits all categories as needed. Delete any categories or category groups, add more, change the titles-make it what you want it! -Hannah 🌻

Good luck on your budgeting journey!

Woo hoo! Come back here with any questions, and I'd be happy to answer them! Let me know if there's any topics I haven't covered that you would like to learn more about!! Congrats on giving YNAB a shot! We're rootin' for ya :) -Hannah 🌻

Hey Yvonne!! That sounds like a situation our support team could handle for you! You can reach out to them at www.ynab.com/help 👌🏻 Click the question mark in the bottom right-hand corner to start a live chat with them! 🌻 Hannah

Bryan, these stickers were a gift from a co-workers wife! They're not for sale, but keep an eye on future swag sales! You never know what we might make next 😎 -Hannah 🌻

lolololollllll... wow, I am so flattered. I receive this compliment with gladness. 🥰🐶 🌻 Hannah

Nice! Lemme know how it goes! I've never used that method before! 🌻 Hannah

Ohhhh. That's pretty dope. Quick way to reconcile, there. Smart! -Hannah🌻

Hey Grace! A few options here: You can create four separate categories (one for each week) and set a monthly spending target on each of them (for the first days of each week-the 1st, 8th, 15th, and 22nd) for the amount you wish to spend in one week. I fill up each category each month to meet that target, and any money left over in those categories at the end of the month will carry over into the next month. If you *don't* want that money to carry over into the next month, just click or tap the "Available" amount in that category and move that money to another category you'd rather have it like (like Miscellaneous or Fun Money). If there's anyoverspending (say, in Week 1) I cover that with money with the Week 2 category, and then try to stick to that smaller Week 2 category total the next week when I'm spending. The other way you can do it is create ONE category titled "Groceries" and set the spending target to "weekly" instead of "monthly". Tell the target type how much money you want in a WEEK for groceries, and it'll prompt you to put that money aside according to your target. If you overspend on groceries in week one, that overspending will come from week two. Make sure to check your budget before shopping to see how much money you have left to spend on groceries that week! Same rules apply at the end of the month-any extra money will carry into next month, and if you *don't* want that extra money in that future month, just click or tap the "Available" amount and move it to another category instead. No need to delete categories or targets from month to month! I hope this helps! If you're still a bit unsure or I didn't answer your question, always feel free to reach out to our support team! They love helping people understand the best ways to navigate their budgets!! 🌻 Hannah

Hi Hajnalka! You might find this video helpful, as it kinda covers everything "YNAB setup and theory from head to toe: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/eayIfK2U3tyRgJc.html Also, you can understand the YNAB Method that underlies the whole app by watching this video, which may help you as you're navigating your mindset about the budget: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iJqGlb103aqopo0.html Let me know what other questions you have, and I can try to point you to videos or help docs that will answer your questions! Since this video you watched is about a year and a half old, some of the layout or small features of YNAB may have changed, but much of it is the same! 🌻 Hannah

Hi Hannah, Thank you for your generous offer. Since I watched your videos the whole day, and it feels like we'd be neighbors, I ask you everyinthg, you will know, which videos to solve my problems. Situation: 1. I am a freelancer, paid a different amount every month by a different amount of clients. These payments come to a professional account (from which I do the downpayment for the "company car"). The rest of the money I move to my 2. personal checking account, which I use as a regular person: to do groceries, farmacy, to pay for the summer camp, Netflix, Audible and other 53 things. What I don't need here, I move to a 3. savings account (linked to my checking account). Here I save for taxes, for emergency, I practically keep the money here, until I definitely need it (I put here every cent I don't need, this is my budgeting right now) 4. I have one credit card, also linked to my checking account. 5. I also have various insurance funds, which I pay yearly, so the money is more every year, but I can't really take out money from them. Now: After I set up a template successfully, I imported 3 months of bank statements from my checking account by file and cathegorized all the expenses. This was the first shock: although I have a date for the expenses, all of them funded the current month, or so it seemed. (I paid 3 times Netflix between October and December, but I have not seen my Netflix expense funded for the 3 months, it was a mess really.) My questions: 1. How can I assign a payment to a specific month by assigning a cathegory to a payment I made in the past (file import)? Does it have any sense at all to import at the end of the month all my expenses and cathegorizing them, or is it better to grab the phone every time I pay something (which seems for me a big problem, I am very often away with my kid, I don't really want to grab my phone every time I pay). 2. Which is the best way to teach YNAB that the money outgoing from my professional account is the same incoming money to my checking account (and some of the outgoing money on my checking account appears as a credit card downpayment or on my saving account? 3. After I assigned the money in the app, where should I put it (the money I mean)? Should I leave it on the checking account? Should I move it to the savings account? Should I look at my bank statement at all to not get confused about how much money I have? Should I only leave as much money on my checking account, as much I need in a month? Right now, as you see, I am quite confused and feel like entering the Matrix. I will sleep on it, hopefully you will understand my questions and can send me some videos to get better in budgeting.

Thanks for all the details!! So first up... 1. You said you recently started your brand new budget by importing the last three months of expenses. However, those days have already happened and you spent that money long ago! We don't need to record PAST transactions when starting a brand new budget since that money is already long gone. We only need to record transactions that happen today and onward. This is why you're having trouble assigning your dollars to your past expenses-YNAB only wants you to deal with the money you have *now* and the expenses you have *now* and onward. So, if I were you, I would delete all the transactions you imported for October, November, and December (or you can simply go to the YNAB dropdown menu and click "Fresh Start" to begin a clean budget while stil maintaining your same category groups, category names, targets, etc). Log into your bank accounts and look for the *cleared balance* for January 2nd (which is today, or whatever day you decide to do this). Update your bank account totals in YNAB to match the cleared balance you have in your actual bank accounts TODAY (i.e. if your checking account has $4,500 in it, change your checking account total in YNAB to be $4,500 as well). Using this money you have in the bank TODAY, assign those dollars (in the "Ready to Assign" category at the top of your budget) out to all your different categories, or as many as you can. If you have fully funded all of your categories for January and still have money left over, you can click ahead into February and start assigning any money you see in the "Ready to Assign" category for February to your February categories. This is funding the budget. NOW as you go about and spend money or pay bills, record or import all transactions once they happen, assigning them to their specific categories. What we're doing is deciding at the beginning of the month *how* we want to spend our money (i.e. setting aside $2,200 for the monthly mortgage payment, $850 for groceries this month, $300 for fun spending money, etc) and then recording in YNAB each time we spend, making sure to "subtract" the money from the appropriate category. So, to answer your question, you do *not* want to wait to import all your transactions till the end of the month. Doing this would be just be "expense tracking"-aka, looking back after you've spent your money and seeing how you've spent it. This doesn't help us know when we've reached our budget limits, allows us to easily overspend, and doesn't give us a sense of where we stand with our money. The best way to budget is to quickly record each transaction as it happens. I do this when I get back to my car after purchasing groceries at the grocery store, or once I sign the receipt at the restaurant. I also "pre-schedule" all my bills and recurring expenses (like mortgage payments, internet bills, subscription payments, etc) so that they are automatically added into the budget each month instead of me having to add it manually. You can also "link" your bank account, which sounds VERY handy in your situation because whenever a transaction is cleared at the bank, it sends it over to your YNAB account FOR you so all you have to do is categorize it into the right category. Much less work, very accurate, and takes less time than manually inputting. Let's say I have $500 in my groceries category. If I go to the grocery store and spend $100 on groceries, when I record that spending to my budget, my groceries category will drop from $500 to $400, telling me I have $400 left to spend on groceries for the rest of this month. If you didn't record that spending until the END of the month, you wouldn't actually know how much you have left to spend on groceries... your budget would tell you all month long that you have $500 to spend on groceries, because you never would have told it that you already spent $100 of that $500. If you don't want to record transactions EVERY time you pay for something (I understand kids are a handful), try to sit down every few days and update the budget so that all your spending is recorded and all of your budget categories reflect their true total. This is a long explanation, but I hope it helps make a little more sense of how YNAB works and operates to help us have total control over and understanding of our money! 🌻Hannah

2. Anytime you physically move money from one account to another at the bank (like moving money from your professional account to your checking account), we also want to record that money movement in YNAB for *both* accounts. Let's say you want to move $5,000 from your professional account and into your checking account. Go to your professional account in YNAB and create an *outflow* transaction for $5,000, making the payee "To/From: Checking" (or whatever your checking account name is. This "to/from" option should be one of the very top options in the payee drop down box when you click the "payee" box). This is telling YNAB that you're sending $5,000 OUT of your professional account and INTO your checking account. Now, YNAB is smart and knows what is happening here, so it'll automatically generate a $5,000 *inflow* transaction in your checking account with the payee being "To/From: Professional" (or whatever your professional account is called). Once this is completed, there should be $5,000 less in your professional account and $5,000 more in your checking account. If you want to ensure that $5,000 goes to specific expenses in your budget, go ahead and assign that $5,000 to your desired budget categories right away. This is also the same way credit cards work in YNAB. When you pay your credit card, you'll want to record an *inflow* transaction for the payment amount to your credit card account (to represent "paying" your negative credit card balance back up to $0), and YNAB will automatically generate an *outflow* transaction from whatever account you paid the credit card from (usually checking, unless you choose to pay your credit card with another account, like savings). Also, make sure when you add your credit cards to YNAB that you add them specifically as a "Credit Card" account, as this will generate a "Credit Card Payment" category for you that makes it SUPER easy to use your credit card, follow the budget, and never overspend money you don't have, since it takes money from the category you spent from (i.e. groceries) and moves it into your credit card payment category so the money is ready and waiting to pay off your credit card bill. No more debt or spending money we don't have! Woo hoo!! 🌻Hannah

3. YNAB is a zero-based budgeting app, meaning we want to take EVERY dollar we have and give it a job. When you add all your bank accounts to YNAB (checking, savings, professional, etc), you want to assign those dollars to the various tasks you want them to do for you. If you like for your checking account dollars to fund your living, your eating, your fun, and the like, add any new paychecks or inflows of money into the checking account and assign them to THOSE categories (rent/mortgage, utilities, groceries, fun money, your gym membership, etc). If you like for your savings account dollars to fund your emergency funds, car repairs, vacations, downpayment on a future home, add any inflows of money into the savings account and assign them to these savings categories. My husband and I use our savings dollars to fund our home emergency category, auto repair category, vacations, a new car we're saving for, our annual insurance payments, etc. The funny thing about YNAB is once you create all the various categories you need for all the different spending you do in your life, your bank accounts themselves actually become semi-irrelevant. It doesn't matter how much you have in your checking account vs your savings account, because I can look at my budget and see all the money I've assigned to my categories for both SPENDING and SAVING. Let me link a helpful video that explains this concept a little better! Why We Budget Our Savings: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/g7uXd7SYysiqn6s.html 🌻 Hannah

Hey Ren! That option is currently not available in YNAB, but... just between you and me... the ability to do that is coming soon 😉 In the meantime, you can use "weekly" spending targets! Just pick the day of the week it's usually do, set a spending target to monthly, and fill it up two weeks (or two bars) worth at a time! With spending targets, YNAB does set back your progress when you spend the money. So you could budget $50 for your water bill for the first two weeks of the month (by setting a $25-a-week target), pay that bill off, then a few days later budget $50 dollars for your second bill of the month (or $25 a week), and pay it off when that second due date rolls around. As long as you're budgeting for those weekly targets, YNAB doesn't care when you spend the money. I hope this helps! 🌻Hannah

you might have figured it out - YNAB automatically saves. there are some great tutorials on site that walk you through step by step how to start an initial budget

No you don't need seperate accounts, the categories are virtual envelopes to visualise what you want to do with your money. Your actual money can be all in one account. So if you move money in your budget around, you are just changing your plan for the money - not actually moving it from one account to another. I keep two accounts - one for long term savings and expenses that come up only once or twice a year, and one for all the rest of the expenses which come weekly or monthly. Check out YNAB getting started for a really clear explanation.

You can't start a budget with *no* categories; it will always populate the budget template. However, you *can* delete categories quickly by deleting an entire category group! When you delete a category group, all the categories within that group will also get deleted-it's a great way to get rid 8 or 10 categories at a time! -Hannah 🌻