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 at my household’s budget and created a Focused View of categories that you might not have thought of but that have served me well. Certainly, just because I do something in my budget doesn’t mean you should do the same thing. But I’m hoping this might provide some food for thought for categories that you may not have thought of for your own budget.
Adding categories like these and assigning targets for them can help you get a true picture of how much money you need every month. And it can help you avoid having to implement Rule Three as often and WAM money in your budget. As you use YNAB, more categories will emerge. Your budget is always a work in progress!
P.S. I just added up the number of categories in my budget and it came to an even 100 categories, split among 10 category groups. That might sound like a lot, but it’s a good number for me.
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