The YNAB Blog
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Looking for an elusive transaction?
Sometimes things come up in YNAB that cause me to scratch my head in puzzlement. That happened today and I came up with an easy way to figure it out, so I thought I’d share it with you. When I logged into YNAB this morning there was $54.38 in Ready to Assign in my business…
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Quick tip: The symbols in your account list
There are a few symbols in your account list in the sidebar that can be helpful to pay attention to. Here’s a little primer: I like to check my budget each morning and I always scan for the white dots and other symbols. It’s a quick way to keep my budget up to date without…
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Entering a credit card payment in YNAB
The way YNAB handles credit cards is part of its magic. But for people just getting started actually entering the payment can be a little confusing. I made a little video to show how to do it. The easiest way is to use Record Payment in the credit card account. It will automatically populate the…
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Is YNAB worth it?
It won’t surprise you to know that my answer to that question is a resounding “Yes!”. YNAB costs under $100 a year when paid annually. There’s a bit of effort required in getting past the learning curve (I can help you with that), and you have to spend some time on a regular basis with…
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Easily overlooked categories
When you’re setting up your budget for the first time, it’s a great practice to brainstorm all the categories you can think of and add them to your budget. The fact is, no matter how complete you try to be, you’ll inevitably have expenses come up that you didn’t think of. I took a look…
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WAM Dos and Don’ts
Rule Three: Roll with the Punches, encourages us to move money around among categories as necessary. Over in the wonderful YNAB Fans Facebook Group, participants refer to moving money from one category to another as WAMing (short for Whac-A-Mole). Covering overspending (either proactively or reactively) is an essential part of YNAB. But there are ways…
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Beginning-of-the-month challenges
Even when you’re paying close attention to your budget, the beginning of the month can cause problems if you’re using Direct Import to automatically import your transactions into YNAB. There is often a delay of a day or two between when you spend money and when it shows up in YNAB. The result is that…
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Cover overspending as it happens
It’s the end of the month and it’s a good time to focus on whether you have any overspending in your budget before it turns over to a new month. Let’s face it. Overspending happens. The magic thing about YNAB is that you can overspend without breaking the budget by employing Rule Three: Roll with…
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Reconcile often
If you’re old enough, you might remember having a paper checkbook register, in which you jotted down every check you wrote and kept a running balance. Once a month, when your bank statement came in the mail, you would reconcile your checkbook, which meant making sure that your running balance matched your bank balance, taking…
Are there YNAB and budgeting topics you’d like me to write about?