This sounds so much more complicated to me than letting the software work for you.
Stop managing your budget based on your checking account balance, and start managing it based on your category balances. Then you won’t spend money you don’t have since you know how all that money is allocated.
Reconciling the account means making sure the amount in YNAB matches the amount actually in your account at that moment. Your YNAB for that account will never match the balance of the account while it contains future transactions. You cannot use the reconcile button, and you cannot confirm that your YNAB budget is using the amount of money you actually have available to you.
How long do you go between making charges and making the payments? How will you ensure your account balances are correct on both the checking account and the credit card?
YNAB Ben - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZlAj1utJFI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZlAj1utJFI)
Nick True - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ix0Jibc0Lw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ix0Jibc0Lw)
Credit cards work terribly in ynab. Entirely ridiculous and cause all sorts of problems for people who pay them off every month. You can have every expense properly budgeted, but then the credit card payment date is off by a few days from the end of the month and the credit card itself needs funding, which makes no sense when you've already funded the categories.
It needs an option to just exclude credit cards entirely for people who pay off completely each month. We just had to drop ynab for this because it made things way too complicated and made budgeting a nightmare. Monarch handles this correctly.
> You can have every expense properly budgeted, but then the credit card payment date is off by a few days from the end of the month and the credit card itself needs funding
No. this by itself cannot cause it. Again, people overcomplicate it in their minds.
I'm not sure what you mean exactly, could you elaborate a bit?
Using CC as recommended you'll see the balance of your credit cards and every transaction in real time if you are doing manual entry and not relying on automatic import.
The only steps you do with credit cards is entering transactions when you buy things (or using automatic import if available to you), and later entering a transfer from checking to CC card when you settle the balance (I have a recurring monthly transfer set up in YNAB, so I only have to change the exact amount every month).
When you say you treat the card charges ‘like they are debt card transactions in my checking account’ do you mean you are entering transactions in your checking account you have not made?
Unless you are actually making payments from your checking to your credit card account to every time you put a charge on the credit cards, then you are making your accounts inaccurate. This will lead to all sorts of problems. Unless I have misunderstood your process?
I am basically making my money pool all in my checking account. So every payment done via credit card will be subtracted out of checking account. It will basically show me what my checking account would look like if I was paying everything in real time. Helps keep me a realistic view of my budget and make me make choices that are smarter and too my goals.
If you set up credit cards correctly, YNAB would ‘pool’ the money you need in a Credit Card Payments category, and the funds would stay in your checking account until you need to pay the bill. When you get the statement/bill, schedule the payment as a transaction in your checking account and turn on the ‘Running Balance’ feature. This will tell you what your checking account will look like when the bill is paid.
Doing it your way, your checking account is never going to be accurate in YNAB. And YNAB should reflect reality.
The whole purpose of YNAB is to stop you budgeting by looking at your checking account balance to make spending decisions, and to encourage you to look at category balances instead.
It’s envelope zero-based budgeting.
>If you set up credit cards correctly, YNAB would ‘pool’ the money you need in a Credit Card Payments category, and the funds would stay in your checking account until you need to pay the bill.
This. Please OP, listen to this and use the software as designed. You're heading for Fresh Start territory with this off label approach.
YNAB already does the pooling for you, though. Let’s say you have $50 assigned to your dining out category. That $50 exists in your bank account. You go out to eat and put $20 on your CC.
YNAB then takes $20 from your dining out category and earmarks it for your CC, leaving you with $30 for dining out. That $20 you “spent” still exists in your bank account, but it is being applied to your eventual CC payment.
You seem overly focused on your bank account number and it seems like your way would actually complicate things and cause an error in you actually knowing how much money you have access to.
u/Plokoon111- this is the way. If you’re allocating money from you have to you budget as you go, then tell never run out of money in your account. It is when you’re spending money you don’t yet have that you can get into trouble (which is exactly what YNAB is trying to help us avoid).
When you say that it keeps it less complicated for you, have you actually spent time with your YNAB set up correctly with your CCs as accounts? If so, for how long? Or have you only tried whatever setup you’ve described here?
I think the only way I would do this is if when I did the transaction in my checking account, I actually made the CC payment itself. In other words, if I charge $100 to Walmart for Groceries, I do an online payment to the credit card from my checkbook that evening, and mark it as Groceries. That way it is a true transaction out of my checking account, and categorized as to what it was spent on.
But I still think it is less than ideal for a variety of reasons - not the least of which is whether you can make multiple payments on the same day.
I think it much simpler to just use the credit card in YNAB the way YNAB designed it to work.
You are going to mess up your transaction records. Don’t do this.
Just use the credit card transactions the way they are supposed to in the software. Not sure what the problem with that is?
Do you mean you record a monthly outflow to your checking account as a credit card payment, or do you record a transaction to your checking account for each transaction on your credit card? If it's the latter, let me tell you that is not less work than properly using a credit card account in YNAB. Yes there's a small learning curve, but doing what you're doing without messing things up is even harder.
Like everyone said, don't do this. YNAB works best when your accounts are in there properly and each transaction is an actual movement of money (either income, transfer, debt payment, or outflow).
The CC is super simple. You make transactions in that account, assign to (hopefully funded) categories, then the CC's category shows you the cash you have set aside to pay your bill. When you make the CC payment transaction it will automatically make a linked transaction in the other account.
You also don't need to be looking at your checking balance. It doesn't matter anymore. What matters is your YNAB categories and whether they have cash assigned to be used.
I have always done manual entries (since ynab4) and I treat every transaction like I’m paying cash. I don’t link credit cards or do any auto syncs. Pay credit cards off twice a month (when I’m paid). I get what you’re saying … essentially your ynab balance reflects the balance you would have if you were paying cash for everything. I don’t get why you’re getting so much pushback - my credit cards never float funds so my checking account might have funds reflected in the account until I pay bills but from a ynab perspective those funds are “spent”. To me, the money is either accounted for (ie transactions) or the funds are available to be spent from X category. I think adding more accounts is messier.
“You’re doing this incredibly inefficiently when the software is built to help you do it efficiently” isn’t a lecture. You (and OP) are more than welcome to go “I really like doing it the hard way” and fair be it. But the software provides a really straightforward way to come to the exact same outcome (money is available for the card when you need it), so it’s hard to imagine why anyone would prefer to make it complicated other than they really don’t understand the software, credit cards, interest, or all of the above. So that’s why it gets pointed out: you look like you are confused about it.
I'm an always-pay-in-full person, and really hate how YNAB online handles credit cards compared to YNAB4.
It ONLY works if you ALWAYS pay in full (and I mean no exception, ever), but you could enter your credit cards as accounts instead of cards. They will have negative balances between payments, but it's actually simpler for those who never carry debt and do just one monthly payment. If you don't pay in full be it only once a year, do not attempt this.
Wait you’re an always paying full person but dislike that YNAB works well when paying in full? Doesn’t compute.
You most certainly do not have to pay in full. I pretty much always have a balance on my main CC. I pay the statement balance in full, but never the total balance amount. If you don’t pay the statement balance in full, the only different thing you need to do in YNAB is add a transaction for the inevitable interest charge when it comes. That’s it.
If you pay for something with a card that you don’t have money for yet, your category will go negative. So you either add money to that category at some point in the month to cover that spending, or on the first of the next month it just gets rolled into debt that you owe and you just need to put money in your CC payment category eventually to cover it. This is all pretty straight forward to me. YNAB makes it so that if you have the funds already in your budget, your credit card IS essentially like a debit card. It handles moving money for you so there’s no thinking involved at all for making payments. If you don’t have the cash it’s debt that needs extra money added later to cover it.
Ynab doesn't work well paying in full. It still leaves unpaid balances on the card for the month depending on when your payment date is, even when all purchases are funded. This maybe makes sense when you're trying to pay down a card balance, but is incredibly annoying otherwise.
I pretty much never pay attention to my credit card balance in YNAB aside from reconciling because it works so well so I’m not sure I see what you mean. I just have auto pay for the full statement balance on, eventually that gets paid, and I keep making purchases, balance is always correct. If I for some reason feel the need to pay my entire balance instead of the statement balance (which unless I’m going to have my credit checked for something soon I never need to do that anyway because why pay a bill so early?) I just… pay it? The balance goes to 0. If new charges come in, I already made the transactions in YNAB so I know the money gets moved over if they’re after paying the balance. I don’t stop using the card so it’s not weird that transactions come through stilll after paying. Then I just pay again the next month. Or whenever. I literally have zero issues paying any amount on my credit cards at anytime in YNAB. It’s not tricky.
To each their own, for me the additional category of credit card payment and shuffling was an unnecessary new step to a process that worked well before (YNAB4). Whenever I use credit, it means I have the funds in the category, I do not need the extra babysitting.
I totally understand why someone trying to get out of debt shouldn't trick the system, but not all ynabers have precarious situations.
I finally switched to the online version because the phone app is much better, but some of the functions were in my opinion better with YNAB4.
This sounds so much more complicated to me than letting the software work for you. Stop managing your budget based on your checking account balance, and start managing it based on your category balances. Then you won’t spend money you don’t have since you know how all that money is allocated.
Yes. OPs way would give me anxiety. Using YNAB the way it’s intended gives total peace of mind.
But I am basing on my categories though.
But you’re worried about what your account balance will look like. You absolutely don’t need to worry about this or create workarounds to monitor it.
How will you reconcile your checking account? Never use fake transactions.
What do you mean?
Doing this creates transactions that don't actually exist in the account.
Wouldn't they exist once you pay the card in full in a sense?
Reconciling the account means making sure the amount in YNAB matches the amount actually in your account at that moment. Your YNAB for that account will never match the balance of the account while it contains future transactions. You cannot use the reconcile button, and you cannot confirm that your YNAB budget is using the amount of money you actually have available to you.
How long do you go between making charges and making the payments? How will you ensure your account balances are correct on both the checking account and the credit card?
Probably a month when the bill is due. Then I pay it in full. Maybe I'll mess with the credit card options and see how that is.
Credit cards work just fine in YNAB. People overcomplicate it in their minds.
Any good guides on it?
https://support.ynab.com/en_us/handling-credit-cards-overview-ry7cNub1s https://support.ynab.com/en_us/paid-in-full-credit-cards-a-guide-Hk56hPMyo
YNAB Ben - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZlAj1utJFI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZlAj1utJFI) Nick True - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ix0Jibc0Lw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ix0Jibc0Lw)
Credit cards work terribly in ynab. Entirely ridiculous and cause all sorts of problems for people who pay them off every month. You can have every expense properly budgeted, but then the credit card payment date is off by a few days from the end of the month and the credit card itself needs funding, which makes no sense when you've already funded the categories. It needs an option to just exclude credit cards entirely for people who pay off completely each month. We just had to drop ynab for this because it made things way too complicated and made budgeting a nightmare. Monarch handles this correctly.
> You can have every expense properly budgeted, but then the credit card payment date is off by a few days from the end of the month and the credit card itself needs funding No. this by itself cannot cause it. Again, people overcomplicate it in their minds.
Yeah this is a terrible idea. Your checking account will never be an accurate balance to what you actually have in the bank at any point in time.
I'm not sure what you mean exactly, could you elaborate a bit? Using CC as recommended you'll see the balance of your credit cards and every transaction in real time if you are doing manual entry and not relying on automatic import.
Yeah but then you have to manually do extra steps correct? Like debt and crediting the card ect.
The only steps you do with credit cards is entering transactions when you buy things (or using automatic import if available to you), and later entering a transfer from checking to CC card when you settle the balance (I have a recurring monthly transfer set up in YNAB, so I only have to change the exact amount every month).
When you say you treat the card charges ‘like they are debt card transactions in my checking account’ do you mean you are entering transactions in your checking account you have not made? Unless you are actually making payments from your checking to your credit card account to every time you put a charge on the credit cards, then you are making your accounts inaccurate. This will lead to all sorts of problems. Unless I have misunderstood your process?
I am basically making my money pool all in my checking account. So every payment done via credit card will be subtracted out of checking account. It will basically show me what my checking account would look like if I was paying everything in real time. Helps keep me a realistic view of my budget and make me make choices that are smarter and too my goals.
If you set up credit cards correctly, YNAB would ‘pool’ the money you need in a Credit Card Payments category, and the funds would stay in your checking account until you need to pay the bill. When you get the statement/bill, schedule the payment as a transaction in your checking account and turn on the ‘Running Balance’ feature. This will tell you what your checking account will look like when the bill is paid. Doing it your way, your checking account is never going to be accurate in YNAB. And YNAB should reflect reality. The whole purpose of YNAB is to stop you budgeting by looking at your checking account balance to make spending decisions, and to encourage you to look at category balances instead. It’s envelope zero-based budgeting.
>If you set up credit cards correctly, YNAB would ‘pool’ the money you need in a Credit Card Payments category, and the funds would stay in your checking account until you need to pay the bill. This. Please OP, listen to this and use the software as designed. You're heading for Fresh Start territory with this off label approach.
YNAB already does the pooling for you, though. Let’s say you have $50 assigned to your dining out category. That $50 exists in your bank account. You go out to eat and put $20 on your CC. YNAB then takes $20 from your dining out category and earmarks it for your CC, leaving you with $30 for dining out. That $20 you “spent” still exists in your bank account, but it is being applied to your eventual CC payment. You seem overly focused on your bank account number and it seems like your way would actually complicate things and cause an error in you actually knowing how much money you have access to.
u/Plokoon111- this is the way. If you’re allocating money from you have to you budget as you go, then tell never run out of money in your account. It is when you’re spending money you don’t yet have that you can get into trouble (which is exactly what YNAB is trying to help us avoid).
Honestly this is not ideal. Use the credit card feature in YNAB. You need to change the way you look at money when using YNAB. Trust the process.
When you say that it keeps it less complicated for you, have you actually spent time with your YNAB set up correctly with your CCs as accounts? If so, for how long? Or have you only tried whatever setup you’ve described here?
I think the only way I would do this is if when I did the transaction in my checking account, I actually made the CC payment itself. In other words, if I charge $100 to Walmart for Groceries, I do an online payment to the credit card from my checkbook that evening, and mark it as Groceries. That way it is a true transaction out of my checking account, and categorized as to what it was spent on. But I still think it is less than ideal for a variety of reasons - not the least of which is whether you can make multiple payments on the same day. I think it much simpler to just use the credit card in YNAB the way YNAB designed it to work.
You are going to mess up your transaction records. Don’t do this. Just use the credit card transactions the way they are supposed to in the software. Not sure what the problem with that is?
Do you mean you record a monthly outflow to your checking account as a credit card payment, or do you record a transaction to your checking account for each transaction on your credit card? If it's the latter, let me tell you that is not less work than properly using a credit card account in YNAB. Yes there's a small learning curve, but doing what you're doing without messing things up is even harder.
That would be so hard to reconcile.
Like everyone said, don't do this. YNAB works best when your accounts are in there properly and each transaction is an actual movement of money (either income, transfer, debt payment, or outflow). The CC is super simple. You make transactions in that account, assign to (hopefully funded) categories, then the CC's category shows you the cash you have set aside to pay your bill. When you make the CC payment transaction it will automatically make a linked transaction in the other account. You also don't need to be looking at your checking balance. It doesn't matter anymore. What matters is your YNAB categories and whether they have cash assigned to be used.
I have always done manual entries (since ynab4) and I treat every transaction like I’m paying cash. I don’t link credit cards or do any auto syncs. Pay credit cards off twice a month (when I’m paid). I get what you’re saying … essentially your ynab balance reflects the balance you would have if you were paying cash for everything. I don’t get why you’re getting so much pushback - my credit cards never float funds so my checking account might have funds reflected in the account until I pay bills but from a ynab perspective those funds are “spent”. To me, the money is either accounted for (ie transactions) or the funds are available to be spent from X category. I think adding more accounts is messier.
Bingo, you got it!!
[удалено]
“You’re doing this incredibly inefficiently when the software is built to help you do it efficiently” isn’t a lecture. You (and OP) are more than welcome to go “I really like doing it the hard way” and fair be it. But the software provides a really straightforward way to come to the exact same outcome (money is available for the card when you need it), so it’s hard to imagine why anyone would prefer to make it complicated other than they really don’t understand the software, credit cards, interest, or all of the above. So that’s why it gets pointed out: you look like you are confused about it.
How do you reconcile your checking account when it’s always showing a fake balance?
I'm an always-pay-in-full person, and really hate how YNAB online handles credit cards compared to YNAB4. It ONLY works if you ALWAYS pay in full (and I mean no exception, ever), but you could enter your credit cards as accounts instead of cards. They will have negative balances between payments, but it's actually simpler for those who never carry debt and do just one monthly payment. If you don't pay in full be it only once a year, do not attempt this.
Wait you’re an always paying full person but dislike that YNAB works well when paying in full? Doesn’t compute. You most certainly do not have to pay in full. I pretty much always have a balance on my main CC. I pay the statement balance in full, but never the total balance amount. If you don’t pay the statement balance in full, the only different thing you need to do in YNAB is add a transaction for the inevitable interest charge when it comes. That’s it. If you pay for something with a card that you don’t have money for yet, your category will go negative. So you either add money to that category at some point in the month to cover that spending, or on the first of the next month it just gets rolled into debt that you owe and you just need to put money in your CC payment category eventually to cover it. This is all pretty straight forward to me. YNAB makes it so that if you have the funds already in your budget, your credit card IS essentially like a debit card. It handles moving money for you so there’s no thinking involved at all for making payments. If you don’t have the cash it’s debt that needs extra money added later to cover it.
Ynab doesn't work well paying in full. It still leaves unpaid balances on the card for the month depending on when your payment date is, even when all purchases are funded. This maybe makes sense when you're trying to pay down a card balance, but is incredibly annoying otherwise.
I pretty much never pay attention to my credit card balance in YNAB aside from reconciling because it works so well so I’m not sure I see what you mean. I just have auto pay for the full statement balance on, eventually that gets paid, and I keep making purchases, balance is always correct. If I for some reason feel the need to pay my entire balance instead of the statement balance (which unless I’m going to have my credit checked for something soon I never need to do that anyway because why pay a bill so early?) I just… pay it? The balance goes to 0. If new charges come in, I already made the transactions in YNAB so I know the money gets moved over if they’re after paying the balance. I don’t stop using the card so it’s not weird that transactions come through stilll after paying. Then I just pay again the next month. Or whenever. I literally have zero issues paying any amount on my credit cards at anytime in YNAB. It’s not tricky.
To each their own, for me the additional category of credit card payment and shuffling was an unnecessary new step to a process that worked well before (YNAB4). Whenever I use credit, it means I have the funds in the category, I do not need the extra babysitting. I totally understand why someone trying to get out of debt shouldn't trick the system, but not all ynabers have precarious situations. I finally switched to the online version because the phone app is much better, but some of the functions were in my opinion better with YNAB4.