Category: Tips
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Handling annual subscriptions in YNAB
One of the miracles of YNAB is Rule Two: Embrace Your True Expenses. Annual subscriptions are great examples of true expenses. When you’re following Rule Two, you put away one-twelfth of the annual expense every month. When the bill comes due, the money is waiting. In my life, these bills are often autopaid and easily…
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Time to check your targets?
I’ve had a tumultuous summer, with downsizing from a house to an apartment and a major surgical procedure in my family. But YNAB has kept me on the straight and narrow financially. For the most part, I kept up with daily transaction categorizing, covering overspending and reconciling. (Daily is so much easier than letting it…
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Quick Tip: Move a transaction to another account
Have you ever manually entered a transaction into the wrong account? I typically use Direct Import but occasionally I enter a transaction manually. One reason I prefer Direct Import is to avoid entry errors, which I seem to inevitably make. One of those entry errors is entering a transaction into the wrong account. For example,…
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Are you still paying for your kids’ cell phones?
So many of my budget clients have large cell phone bills. When we take a look at the bill, we see that their children’s cell phones are bundled into their bill. More often than not, the practice started when their kids were still dependents. Yet the parents keep on paying. I always push back on…
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Tips for finding discrepancies
If you’ve tried to reconcile your accounts in YNAB and given up because you couldn’t find the problem, you might had had YNAB do a reconciliation balance adjustment. That’s fine. But if the discrepancy is large (say, $100 or more) I think it’s worth looking a little harder before doing an automatic adjustment. Last week…
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Do your taxes sooner rather than later
In the United States, most federal and state income taxes are due on April 15. A lot of people put off doing their taxes. According to the 2024 Tax Procrastinators report, 29 percent of Americans procrastinate on their taxes. (I would have guessed that figure was higher!) I’ll never forget the time I had to…
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Quick Tip: Check your February transactions!
Today is March 1, which is a fun day for me because I get to do some budgeting! I was reminded today of the importance of making sure I process all my February transactions before assigning money in March. This morning, I categorized all my pending transactions and clicked Enter Now so that they would…
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Revealing the running balance
When I work with clients, they typically share their screens with me. We’re often working on reconciling their accounts and I’ve learned that many of my clients aren’t aware of the Show Running Balances setting that’s hidden under the View dropdown next to the search box in any account screen. Here’s a photo of what…
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Are you budgeting for YNAB?
If it’s your first year of YNAB, you might not have added a category for your YNAB subscription (particularly if you’re in your trial period!). It’s more economical to pay for an annual subscription, which is $99 (which amounts to $8.25 a month), than it is to pay monthly at $14.99 a month. And if…
