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 the Punches. But you need to stay on top of it.
Ideally, if you have expenditures that aren’t covered in your budget categories, you’ll move assigned money around to take care of it right away. I know that once I started doing that, I felt so much more peace of mind about my budget. I work with my budgets every day and I try to cover any overspending in the same session it’s identified. It’s gotten to the point where I can’t let a red bubble languish! And I don’t like yellow ones either, unless they represent underfunded, rather than overspent, categories. (As an aside, I use the Toolkit for YNAB and have activated the option that turns underfunded categories blue, rather than yellow. Blue bubbles don’t bother me.)
You can trust your budget when your YNAB account balances match your bank/credit card balances and when overfunding is covered. That’s why I encourage you to reconcile often and cover overspending immediately.
Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash
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