It would be really nice to have a segment where you show someone’s actual budgeting on a daily/weekly/ just by documenting a more organic way, give us motivation, real life, scenarios, and examples of what budgeting looks like in real time.
I would trust this guy to teach me how to defuse a bomb 😄🤓 I really needed this super clear tutorial! 👏🏾👏🏾 I wish explanations for all my pursuits were this concise, geez.. i'd def be more confident and take more responsibility if they were. Thanks, Ben 👌🏾
I've been on and off YNAB for about 4yrs now and I've been relying on the info and videos from other YNAB users. THIS has explained YNAB in a way that it makes total sense to me now. THANK YOU FOR THIS UPDATED VIDEO!!! I'm back on YNAB!
I watched the credit card payment envelope portion over and over and I am in awe of how this allows you to use a CC but not lose your budget goals. I am so glad I signed up for this app!
I just started using ynab and it took a little bit to figure out how I wanted to setup my budget. I would highly recommend adding an option to copy a budget that has already been created so a user can rearrange the copy budget without having to start from scratch again. That would give a user the ability to run two budgets a time to see what works best for them. I created 3 and it was very time consuming having to start over each time.
They do have that option - you may have realized it by now- it's call "Fresh Start". It copies all your categories into a new budget, including your accounts with $ amounts available; it places all if your available funds into "Ready to Assign". At that point, you are ready to play around with it. It saves the previous budget as "Archived", but you can still use it if you decide that's the budget that works for you. The budgets you create that you choose not to use, you can archive.
Very well scripted presentation, and very smoothly delivered. Congratulations on doing such an excellent job conveying the "what," "how," and most importantly "why." I have been a long (albeit sporadic) user of MINT, and was looking for a new tool to take control of my finances - you have a convert!
ben casually using math equations in the assigned categories like he didn't just SHOW ME SOMETHING BRAND NEW. are you telling me i can just SUBTRACT $40 from my assigned amount to move elsewhere without first doing the math in my head and re-typing in the new number?!?! My mind is blown. this video was so clear, thank you! I wasn't sure what the yellow meant and now I understand!
to me, ynab is essential. im a broke college student in nyc and i consider myself a smart lady, but when it comes to budgeting on a spreadsheet, all motivation disappears! thx ynab!!!
This was AMAZING!! Thank you so much!! I started using YNAB last month and I totally missed the Target option. 🤦🏽♀️ My budget already looks SO much better!
Great tutorial for new user! Back in November when I started using Ynab it would have been a good starting point particularly for a foreigner. I desperately wish to see french content and hope that the software will be translated in french cause even if I love this software and completely subscribed to the method, I can’t recommend it to people around me because a lot of them only speak french and are discouraged to learn a new method in another tongue… But I will patiently wait. In the meantime, I’m going to appreciate all the new features and great content you are sharing. Thanks
Glad I watched this for the credit cards. I pay certain things monthly on my cc for points or cash back and then pay off each month. I was having a hard time how to match and organize the payments.
Yay, I'm glad this was helpful! 🙂 If you have any more questions about credit cards, we have another video like this one coming out soon that will focus specifically on credit cards in YNAB. - Ben M
This video helped me get started because I was so confused- Thank you so much! A helpful tip for me was I slowed the playback speed to .75 so I can follow easier
Holy cow this is everything I've ever wanted from my spreadsheet. I literally am the person who does a forecast budget and has to figure out the difference between the budget and the actual bank balance - it truly is such a mental strain, and my wife and I aren't able to work together on our finances. I'm starting the free trial soon. I love this. Thank you YNAB.
YAAAAY! How is it going so far?! Make sure to hop back here and ask any questions you want, or reach out to our customer support team-they love answering any and all budgeting questions! We also have plenty of videos here on RU-vid that may be able to answer some of the questions you might run into along the way. Hope you and YNAB vibe well together! It is truly SO much easier than the spreadsheet days and it brings me unexplainable peace of mind. 🌻 Hannah
@@YNABofficial Hey Hannah! I will admit, I have already reset the budget 3-4 times in this first week, but I think I'm content with my categories and goals for now. I absolutely love being able to know what's up with the finances in the present moment instead of working off projections and estimations! My wife is already starting to get more involved now that the app is on her phone - we plan on going out for dinner tomorrow with our newly-made Eating Out budget to sit and talk about our goals and dreams going forward. We're already so close to being a month ahead since I broke down our savings, so that's a big goal for me right now. Also, I've been loving Budget Nerds - I've had it in the background all week at work and I feel like I've found my people! Thanks YNAB for being such a great community. Hopefully I can come back with a great story sometime in the following months/years.
YAY!! Oh my word, we LOVE that! What good news, what great progress, and what a fun new adventure to embark on with your wife! We hope you eat that meal out totally guilt-free and become the best of virtual friends with Ben and Ernie! We will gladly be your people :) 🌻 Hannah
Excellent video and explanations! I've been using YNAB for a few weeks and have watched many of the videos. I think for someone who is beginning or have been doing it for a little while will get a lot from this. I'm going to come back to this video later and make to review the basics. Thank you!
Woo hoo! Thanks so much for the feedback! We love to hear that this video was helpful to a new user. Best of luck on your budgeting journey! Always feel free to come back here with questions! -Hannah 🌻
You have been extremely, helpful. I will be more aware of what I hit next time it does not show up in both columns. This makes the new update a little easier for sure. Thank you again for taking your time to explain this. Have a wonderful day.
So many excellent quality of life updates/ user experience enhancements to the tool since I was last using it. I had to stop because I was having a hard time reconciling credit card payments, so excited to see you guys fixed that. I'm also loving the new "targets" feature. Just wanted to add that the only way to see it in the table is to use the "progress bars on" option which is the toggle for taller row heights. (Took me a while to find it). As a UX professional, I really appreciate these new features and glad to be back on the app and keeping my spending visible and effective towards my goals. Thanks for the great video!
YAY! Thank you for the updated video! I've been using ynab going on 3yrs and it was time for a fresh start (new home, new city, new job), and this video caught me up on so many features I had kinda ignored, and so many little tid bits that couldve made my life a lot easier if I had known earlier!!
Y'all should link this video in the YNAB 4 transition guide - it would have saved me a lot of time understanding the fundamental changes in approach. I was really struggling with the changes after over a decade with the old YNAB, but I'm finally loving it!
This video should’ve came out when YNAB was first created. Much better explanation than before. Also, it helps to know that this is the video you should start with. You should go over a scenario where someone has zero dollars in their savings/checking.
This is a really great intro video! One I feel confident sending to friends as I try to get them to start YNAB. :) Thanks!! Particularly a fan of the change from budgeting to assigning, and of the edit function on mobile.
Ben this is a GREAT introductory video - I really can't say how much I enjoyed it - you provided a concise, end to end review. One question I had, is what considerations do you have when you are older and have more complicated budgets - say you have 10 different subscriptions, 6 types of insurance, etc... I'd like to avoid cluttering my budget with categories for every transaction. What's the best way to address this - one of my concerns is that the due date function might mean a lot less when you have 6 different insurance due dates - which would make it harder to prioritize inbound cash flows. Thanks!
Hey, good question. There's really only two ways to handle it - First, you can have a category for each insurance bill or subscription payment. The downside of that is you have a lot more categories to deal with, but everything will be a lot clearer. Maybe put them in a group and collapse the group to make it more manageable. Second, you can have one category for all insurance payments and one category for all subscription payments. The upside is you have fewer categories and a simpler budget. The downside is you lose some clarity and you might have to do some of your own math to make sure you assign enough in each category. I like to set a monthly savings builder for the sum of all the bills divided by 12. Then, make sure you front load that category with some money to account for bills that are coming soon.
This is Ben! He joined the YNAB team at the start of the year, and will have lots of awesome content coming out down the road! Keep an eye out 👀 -Hannah 🌻
Hello! First time user here! This video is super helpful - thank you! I do have a suggestion: change the background music to something more soothing (or just go without it). It's just low enough that all I can hear is the repeat of the scale which I found anxiety producing 😬 and I am certain that's not the vibe you're going for! At first I was like, "where's that stressy music coming from?" Only to realize it was embedded in the video. Lol! Anyway, I LOVE your product and I am thrilled to give it a go!!
The credit card teaching, had to watch it twice. You said gas envelope but on the Visa transaction is said transportation. I was not sure how it took that from gas until I realized the envelope is transportation which you put your gas money into.
Haha! This analogy knows no bounds. 😂 We are actually working on bending those lasers (is that a thing you can do? Maybe something involving mirrors? I dunno.) so we can import UK and EU banks. Right now, there's a loitering lot of lawyers standing around blocking the lasers, but we're working on it! ~BenB www.youneedabudget.com/up-next/
I really hope you can let more countries link their banks, maybe collab with Apple Wallet or something because it’s much simpler linked updating every step of the way. 🙏🏻
Hey Basma! You and us both!! It's quite a wild process working with international banks and among different currencies and economies, but know that your hopes and dreams are the same as ours! We are really proud to have made linking accounts available in parts of Europe and the UK this year, and we're learning lots through the process! In the meantime, YNAB can be used unlinked from anywhere in the world, in any currency or format. -Hannah 🌻
You got it, Tracy! If you ever hit any snags and need more guidance, you can pop in to one of our live Q&A sessions with our teachers here at YNAB who can answer ANY question, or write into our support team! They take extra special care of YNABers and'll make sure you get you back up on your feet in no time. Here's where you can sign up for a live Q&A session: www.youneedabudget.com/free-workshops/ -Hannah 🌻
I just watched your fist getting started video and then this one. Great info! I've been on Mint for a while now, but I really don't use it for budgeting because their budgeting function is just way too confusing. So I just use it to track my inflow and outflow and see where the money is going. But YNAB looks much easier to manage! But my one question I can't seem to find an answer to is how can my wife and I share this? One of the downfalls of Mint is that we would have to use the same login credentials. From what I read so far, I see that YNAB is basically the same? But I also found something about multi user authentication using Google accounts, but I can't find out how that works. Where can I find more info before pulling the trigger to subscribe? Thanks again for the great video!
They've got a free trial that I'm starting to use as I type this. When I was using it, the app asked if I was budgeting for myself or for two users; that could be a good place to start (and I didn't have to put in my card info so you wont get autocharged at the end of the free trial)
YNAB just launched a new feature - YNAB Together - to do exactly what you're talking about - allow you and your wife to share the budget, using only one subscription. In case you were still wanting that :)
Nice, Only feature I would like to see added is to be able to have separate budgets for people with a lot of different accounts, It help have a clearer separation between personal and common money in a household for example or perso and pro' etc
Hey there! You can make as many separate budgets as you want in YNAB! On the web app, just go to the menu in the upper left corner (click your budget name/email to drop it down), click "New Budget", and start a whole new budget with entirely new accounts! On the mobile app, tap the three dots in the upper left corner, click "Open Budget," and tap "New" in the upper right corner to begin a new budget! In the past I've had one wedding for my personal finances, one for my freelance videography side hustle, and one for our wedding planning. When we were only a few months away from being married, I even started our joint budget early so we could start to figure out all the categories/priorities we needed to cover BEFORE married life started. And if you'd like the have separate budgets among family members or partners (i.e. one for your shared expenses, one for *your* personal expenses, one for *their* personal expenses, and one for the joint business you run together), check out YNAB Together! It's a free hub of the app that allows you to invite multiple family members onto your subscription and share/create various budgets with them. Let me know if you have any more questions or need more pointers to learn more! 🌻 Hannah
Ha! I did the same thing before I started working for YNAB! I was paying for two subscriptions (one for my personal, one for my business), and when I was onboarding they were like "... Hannah." 🌻 Hannah
Still trying to figure out how to Start budget & checking a point with same numbers…. 🤔 I have created the budget side okay. Problem arises when I import checking account. In variably the number YNAB imports has items that need to be reconciled to get correct checking account balance. Problem is to reconcile, I have to assign category & when I get checking account balances, I now wave catagories that show overspent. How do I reconcile & still have $0 charged against a catsgory? Thank you. -lm
Love this idea! How would YNAB handle automatic round-up savings? For example, every transaction I make, my bank rounds up to the nearest dollar amount and puts the difference into a savings account. This amount varies by transaction and cannot be planned for.
Hey Michael! My husband has automatic rounding set up on his bank accounts as well! When he makes a purchase, the store charges him for the purchase amount, and then his bank automatically transfers over the "rounded-up cents" to his savings account as a separate transaction. We use YNAB's "direct import" feature (where we link our bank accounts up to the budget and the bank sends over transactions once they've been cleared by the bank), and YNAB caught on real quick. For those "rounded up" outflow transactions in your checking account, simply change the payee to "Transfer To/From: Savings"-this is telling your budget that you want to move this money from your checking account to your savings account. You'll also want to "catch" that transaction in your savings account by having an inflow transaction for the same cents amount, again making sure the payee is "To/From: Checking". If you're using direct import like we do, YNAB will remember the "protocol" and it'll handle it for you from now on-all you have to do is approve it! Hope that made sense-that's a detailed little process to type up and still have come out coherently 😂 Lemme know if you've figured it out! 🌻Hannah
There's one thing I can't get: Let's say I have 5.000 in my Bank Account, I budget the way YNAB handle this and also the way you taught to us: I'll always have money to cover my budget (I mean, I know I spend usually 1.600 so all good). What if I need to know where the money for my usual payments goes? (This is what you're referring to as "money you don't still have"). I think I really want to concentrate on the Month, because this is the way I was used to organising my money: 2.600 income, then divide it between spending and savings... I don't know if you get the picture
Hi Tracy! 👋 YNAB is set up to work with all different income formats. Since we only budget dollars we actually have, everybody has to deal with whatever is sitting in their bank account right now. So whether your paycheck arrives every week, two weeks, or with your next commission, you simply add it to YNAB and ask, "What does this money need to do before I get paid again?" Setting up weekly targets is a great way to make sure that money is going where you need it when you need it. The only reason YNAB shows things on a month-by-month view is because most regular bills happen on a monthly cycle. But it works effectively with whatever pay cycle you happen to be on. - Ben M
Am I right in thinking that your unassigned expenses at the start of the month should be around the amount you expect to be paid next month? I know we only budget for the dollars we literally already have but to make sure the targets still hold up after the first month, the total unassigned monthly targets should = my monthly paycheck? Right? :)
I'm neurodivergent. I'm already overwhelmed by the thought of creating all those categories from scratch, typing them ... one by one ... into the app. Is there a prebuilt set of budget categories I can use as a templae?
Yes, YNAB will want to know where all those previous transactions are supposed to be categorized, so it can create quite a mess. You can avoid all that by clicking "HIDE" instead. That will remove the category from your budget without having to re-categorize all those transactions. - Ben M
I can’t find the way to set up different currency accounts. Does YNAB not have that feature and if so, do you plan to introduce it in the future? Otherwise the app is brilliant!
For some reason i can't wrap my head around this system. So you're basically just seeing a visual on how the money should optimally be spent or transferred.. then in real life you make the purchases or transfers. As you make a purchase or transfer you update the list(category) and make sure you stay in the decided range for the specific time period you choose.. Does this sound close?
Yes! Imagine each category is just an envelope you're tucking some dollars into. If you hope to only spend $600 on groceries each month, tuck $600 in your groceries category (or envelope). Whenever you spend on groceries, record that spending in YNAB and it will subtract whatever you spent on groceries from your groceries category. Now you have your new running total for groceries for the rest of the month! If you ever find a category has too little money in it, or you spent more than you planned for in a certain category, just move money from some other category in your spending plan that needs it less and into that category to accommodate the overspending. YNAB is all about reprioritizing as life chugs along! 🌻 Hannah
What about credit card interest accrued between the time you purchase and the time you pay it. When you gave a high int rate card, you can be acccruing a lot per day and it's compounding daily
Hi Dezi! Our go-to solution for interest is to create a separate category for it, and then assign money to that category using your best guess. When that interest charge comes in, you log that as a CC transaction, and it will go right into your CC payment category to be covered in your next payment. If you wind up shooting under, then you just pull from somewhere else in your budget that isn't as important as covering the interest. I hope that helps! - Ben M 🎨
We don't have a specific target type at the moment. If you have a bill that comes due every couple weeks, I would recommend either (A) making two categories, one for each bill, or (B) put all the money you need for both into one category. With option (A), if the due dates change (i.e. the first and third Wednesday of every month), then I would set the target due date on the early side. The first option is a little more thorough and clear, but the second requires less set-up. Hope that helps! 🙂 - Ben M
Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but when I link my credit card and set the recommended payment to payoff, it doesn't allow me to enter a due date, which means I still have to add another line in the budget to capture that. Am I doing something incorrectly?
Hey! Sorry I missed this question earlier (twice, it looks like) .🤦♂️ For monthly due dates, here are a couple things you can do: - Edit the CC account name to include the due date (i.e. Mastercard - 15th). When you do that, the due date will be included in your category as a reminder. - Set a recurring scheduled transaction for your credit card's due date. The amount won't be accurate (this is one of the struggles with doing monthly due dates for CC payments in YNAB), but when that transaction comes through, you can edit the amount to match your actual payment. And if you're thinking, "Huh... it should be easier than that, shouldn't it?" You're right! Our devs are hard at work revamping our CC features to be smarter and more intuitive. - Ben M 🎨
Yes! YNAB released a new update today! If your mobile app did not automatically update, you can find the update in the App Store or the Play Store! -Hannah 🌻
This is so confusing. I pay most of my items through my credit card and when I transfer from my cheqinf to my credit card it doesn’t understand???? This is way too difficult to use and quite frankly there’s no useful in-app tutorial
