I wanted to start using a budgeting program to better organize my spending/ goals, and basically narrowed it down to 3 --YNAB, Actual and Quicken Simplifi.

I setup a self-hosted instance of Actual and was able to import my spending from my account by exporting from my bank and importing into the app, however this seemed like it might get tedious over time, so I decided to try YNAB.

So far this has been pretty straight forward. I'm still waiting for things to sync up with my linked accounts, but I like it so far. I would try Simplifi but there's no trial period there; though the graphs and UI make it seem appealing.

Anyone here have any experience with Simplifi/ YNAB, and why might you chose one over the other?

Would love to switch to a credit union, but I travel a lot and most are regional. DCU seems decent but does it work with ynab? I don't want to manually enter everything.

I can't help but feel like I'm doing the exact same busy work in YNAB all the time. Matching up my scheduled transactions to imported ones, like for water/electric/paycheck (things that vary). I wish YNAB would just see it's the same Payee (those match) and within a few days and auto-match them. I'll even set min/max ranges or something. It's just such busy work and it could be automated.

cc: @ynab #ynab

I mean, I guess they're being cheeky, but way to hit someone while they're down.

My bike picked up a nail in a tyre yesterday. This is why I have "funny noises and punctures" as a budget category.

!

The post title is my question - Are there any FOSS YNAB Alternatives?

Basically the title: are you going to do a Fresh Start for the new year? Why or why not?

I'm trying to figure out if I want to or not, so figured I'd find out other people's reasonings before I decided.

I'm curious how this community budgets for Christmas gifts? If you lump sum it, how do you make sure you spend the right amount on everyone?

Timely topic with the holidays coming up!

I've watched the Nick True video that came highly recommended in a bunch of Reddit results (e.g. here), but I still don't understand what's going on.

1. Have all funds assigned, so that "Ready To Assign" is at zero.
2. Approve a(n automatically imported) transfer from my checking account to my credit card account (see screenshot). Note that it is registered as an inter-account Payment and not as a regular expense.
3. Budget view shows an equivalent amount of money "Ready To Assign".

End of an era. I'm sure many people here started their personal finance tracking with Mint. I certainly did, and I was using it all the way up until switching to YNAB early this year.

The CEO of a competitor, Monarch Money, posted a great article about the shutdown (different from the OP link). The article ends in a plug for Monarch, but he makes a great point about subscription-based services. I'll copy-paste a snippet here.

> [...] > After 25 years in the technology industry, I’ve seen firsthand how a company eventually becomes its business model. Google is no longer a search company, but an advertising company. Facebook is no longer a social network, but an advertising company. Similarly, Mint and Credit Karma are no longer personal finance companies, but advertising companies.

> If you’re an existing Mint user and wondering how you should best manage your finances going forward, I would strongly encourage you to consider a subscription-based personal finance app instead of a free one.

> A subscription-based app: > - Aligns company interests with your interests. It’s hard to overstate the importance of this. When you are paying for the service, you are the customer. You call the shots, and the company builds what you want and need. If it doesn’t, you cancel your subscription. This aligns incentives and ultimately leads to a much better user experience. The opposite is true in a free service, where ultimately the advertiser is the customer as they are the ones paying the bills. > [...]

(As well as a few other bullets that follow). Worth the read too.

YNAB now comes in blurple, presents a more cohesive look across platforms and has a bunch of accessibility improvements. They made a video on the changes as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxGgcpx76I4

What does /c/ynab think?

I personally got used to it pretty quickly - after all it's mostly only visual changes. Although on mobile, I find the blurple looks a bit harsher than the old YNAB colours.

Hi everyone! I am planning a short vacation in the upcoming months and for that, I wanted to add a category group and a few categories (travel, food, accommodation, etc). But then I started thinking about what to do with these categories once the trip is over and I don't need them anymore.

Since I haven't done this myself yet, I was wondering how people deal with these types of temporary categories? Rename? Or put it all in a more generic "travel" or "next big expense" category?

I'd rather not simply hide them forever, as this could feel a bit messy over time :)

This shortcut lets you:

• Add transactions (works with Siri)
• Import bank files (csv/qif)
• Automatically create a transaction if you pay with your phone on iOS 17‘s (transaction automation)
• Add transactions automatically to Splitwise

Download Shortcut

Each of these is optional ofc.

Setup

• Download Pythonista and open it once (sadly not free)
• Generate an access token for your account here: YNAB dev settings, copy it and paste it during the setup
• Run the shortcut and follow the instructions

I’m happy to help if you run into any issues :)

The YNAB App on iOS has a new shortcut that lets you enter a transaction with custom values.

Hi all, Another newbie question here. I manage our family's cellphone plan, which is $199.90/month for 5 lines (two in our household, 3 from other family members). The other family members reimburse me using Venmo each month.

So, I set up a category with the target amount of $199.90, due on the date that our cell phone bill is due, as per YNAB's recommendations. At the beginning of the month, I assigned $199.90 to that category. Then, when our family members' venmo payments came in, I categorized those as inflows to the cell phone account. Now, waiting for the bill, I see:

• $199.90 in "assigned"
• +$120 in "activity"
• $319.90 in "available"

!

!

All of this makes sense to me. But, it seems like now I should be able to re-assign $120 to another category. If I try that, though, it suddenly shows the category as underfunded, despite the fact that I still have $199.90 available.

!

!

Am I misunderstanding how assigned / activity / available work? Why, after $120 of inflow, is YNAB still requiring me to keep $199.90 assigned?

Hi all - new to YNAB - our family just got things set up. I think that we have a good grasp of the basic mechanics (we both work in jobs that interact with budgets, and just haven't applied this to our own finances rigorously before!)

But I'm wondering how you integrate YNAB into your life - what does your workflow look like? In other words: what do you do each day? With each paycheck? At the beginning of the month? How often do you sit down and review the big picture and set new goals, etc?

It would be great to hear about your rhythm and cadence for making this part of your routine, for those of us who are figuring it out for the first time!

This has been a little side project for me and I thought some of you fellow YNABers might appreciate it: SplitBill for iOS.

It’s a really simple app that lets you snap a picture of a receipt and then split the transactions into different cards. Could be categories (if you want to split the transaction into different categories in YNAB) or people.

I hope someone here finds it useful :)

I'm hoping some budgeting expert out there can tell me the best way to record some relatively unusual events in YNAB. I don't know how to simplify this without risking misunderstanding, so here's the situation. Let me break it down:

BEFORE THE LEASE:

I had made purchases on behalf of a friend over several years, and just gave her her own budget category to look back at what she owed me and what she repaid. I could use Reports to add the transactions up and see a total.

Then, I took on responsibility for a substantial car loan on her behalf by signing for it, under the agreement that she'd be making the payments. I say substantial because it also contained the negative value of a car she still owed money on. It was underwater from the start by design. I used the nifty Loans feature to keep track of what I owed the lienholder, although I had no expectation of having to make any payments myself; this loan was for my friend to repay.

When it became clear to me that my friend wasn't going to be making any payments on this loan, I felt pressure to get out from under it. I traded in assets, both the car the loan was for, and my own car, which I owned outright (and loved), to approach a zero-value starting point to lease a car for myself. It was the only solution I could come up with.

AFTER THE LEASE:

The operation was a success, and I am now making payments on a leased car for myself. Now my carless friend owes me—not the bank—the difference between the value of the loan and the value of the car it was for. That's on top of her existing debt, which is preserved in the budget category I made for her.

I don't know how to document this situation in YNAB, though. What do I do with the loan section? Is a lease a loan for budgeting purposes? Do I create an asset tracking account or keep using my friend's budget category to keep track of this now-massive debt? Any thoughtful suggestions on handling this would be super helpful.

I just noticed the other day that focused views is supported now on mobile too. Is anybody using it or have any views they really like?

This is what you need to get it working:

• Pythonista 3 (sadly not cheap, but totally worth in imo)
• YNAB File Import Shortcut
• A personal access token for your YNAB account: help page

Apologies for posting about file based import again, but after recently discovering how useful it actually is, I was greatly dissatisfied with the status quo. So I added file based import to my existing Shortcut, which also still lets you add transactions via Siri, Widgets (or any other way you can trigger Shortcuts).

There's a few variations of the Shortcut:

• The previous version that doesn't require you to buy Pyhtonista, but it had some issues for me, especially when using with Siri.
• A version that let's you add transactions to YNAB and Splitwise at the same time. Here's how that looks like: video
• A more modular version which requires you to have two shortcuts, but also let's you add transactions YNAB File import/Add Transactions (V2)

There is now a Chrome extension in development (1.1 released) that lets you sync your account balances from YNAB to PL to save you the trouble.

What's ProjectionLab you ask? It's a natural planning successor to YNAB. Once you have your current house in order it's time to start planning for the future and PL is awesome at it.

I have no affiliation other than a very happy user. The dev of PL is very responsive on Discord as is the extension dev.

TLDR: Try it, it’s super helpful especially for reconciliation. You can also do it on iOS (can’t say anything about Android):

• File export: if your bank doesn’t support QFX, OFX, QIF, or CSV (YNAB info page), you can export a QIF file from e.g. Banking4 for iOS (add your bank account, then under menu → tools → data export). If you only have a CSV, you can use this tool to prepare it.
• File import: Save the file to files and then drag&drop it to the website. For me, it worked best with the free Zoomable App.
• Everything else can be done in the YNAB App

That sounds like a lot, but it’s actually pretty simple. Definitely faster than doing it manually.

————

I’ve been using YNAB since 2014, but never used the file based import since it always struck me as too cumbersome. Maybe I was also just misunderstanding the feature, thinking since I’m writing down all transactions I don’t need to import them.

But it’s actually extremely helpful for reconciling. I used to go through every single transaction in my bank account to then find it in my YNAB transactions, which was really tedious if there was even just a small mistake somewhere (I was only doing it once a month). And I never had a full month without any mistakes.

Another reason that kept me from using it, was the feature only being available on desktop, but I’ve since found a way to do it on my phone (iOS). YNAB should really make it possible to import these files directly in the app, but for now I have the workaround as mentioned above.

I only recently started using file based import (and it’s actually really nice), but I keep running into this issue where imported transactions aren’t matched to reconciled transactions and they end up being just duplicates. How do I get around this?

When I want to manually match it, only transactions that aren’t cleared are shown.

Do I just delete them every time? Should I remove the reconciled transaction so the imported transaction is memorized and doesn’t pop up the next time? Should I try to remember the exact import date and only use the transactions after that date?

Specifically with regards to checks you've written that are cashed months later, do you keep it in YNAB with the date it was written.. or move it to the day it was cashed?

If you haven't heard of it before, it's a YNAB challenge that has 3 simple rules. For 30 days you:

1. Track your spending
2. Only buy essentials
3. No dining out

I haven't been able to successfully follow this for 30 days, but I've made a lot of progress towards my financial goals in trying! I'm glad I did actual progress too, because I sure felt silly turning down friend dates at the bar and having them offer to pay.

What about you? Have you been able to crush your desires and go a month without going out or buying any fancy coffees?

Though this could be useful for somepeople since I myself hadn't seen it even though I started YNAB no so long ago

I'm sure they're aware of what's been happening on the Reddit side of things, and I'd love to be able to interact with the team on a more friendly forum.

Sorry for the delay! I meant to post yesterday.

Today’s Question: How often do you reconcile your transactions? Bonus question: Do you primarily rely on sync or do you manually input your transactions?

Hello everyone, I'm so happy to see this community grow. I'd like to always make sure there is some thread where community input can be gathered so that we can allow our little corner of Lemmy to flourish.

What would you guys like to see in the subreddit community What are your hopes and expectations for a YNAB community?

Some ideas I'd be personally interested in exploring:

• General personal finance overall (with relation to YNAB)
• Money diary posts (I always loved the money diary community on reddit and wished there was a YNAB version of it)
• Weekly community questions
• Onboarding guide
• Reaching out to the YNAB team to setup an AMA (moonshot idea)

It would also be nice to setup some community 'goals' or 'mission' just so that we can show our community's direct intent.

Some Ideas for Community Missions/Goals:

• Advocation for healthy relationship to personal finance
• Increase and promote community knowledge of the YNAB tool
• Camaraderie in helping our fellow budgers roll with the punches

I'm looking forward to hearing everyone's feedback!

EDIT: Changed subreddit to community

I am debt-free thanks to YNAB and now when I buy something big, I really feel it. Before I buy something I always go to YNAB and see what it feels like to empty a category or move money away. If it doesn't feel good, I'll usually sleep on it a few nights until I feel comfortable making the purchase. A lot of times I've just outright skipped the purchase!

Round 2: How long have you been using YNAB for?

Bonus questions: was it your first budgeting app?

Do you also use a spreadsheet?

I’ve been finding it so incredibly annoying to sync my transactions when life gets busy. Especially reoccurring transactions with variable balances. How do you guys manage? Do you use the export/import tool ever?

I figure I’ll do something like this every so often.

What has been a category you created that really became useful to you or provided unexpected value?

[Meta] Share Your Categories! Fortnightly thread for this week!

Monthly Categories Thread!

Please use this thread every other week to discuss and receive critique on your YNAB categories! You can reply as a top-level comment with a screenshot or a bulleted list of your categories. If you choose a bulleted list, you can use nesting as follows (where  ↵  is Enter, and  ░  is a space):

• Parent 1↵ ░░░░* Child 1.1↵ ░░░░* Child 1.2↵
• Parent 2↵ ░░░░* Child 2.1↵ ░░░░* Child 2.2↵

UPDATE: Per the meta community discussion someone recommended this thread be monthly instead of every two weeks. I’ve edited the title and will pin this post.

I’ve been using YNAB for a while and already miss the reddit community. I’m hoping to at least build a small community here of people answering questions, sharing categories, and communicating news. I’ll do my best and keep this community running!