I love Ernie's workflow of creating the holding spot for savings so that those dollars don't get touched, then once things are funded, go back and assign those savings dollars to your goals. Brilliant!
Thank you so much Ernie!! I started with YNAB 3 and gave up. But I believe it is the answer for me - so restarted a week ago with new YNAB. This video was EXTREMELY helpful was I could see the mistakes I was already making!
Can someone please, for the love of YNAB, do an updates loans video. Like how to use them, set them up, track payments, etc. I'm to pay down Credit Cards and Students and each time I've tried it get so confusing i just end up doing a fresh start.
Noted! In the meantime, even though it's an older video and the loan planner has changed, this video will help you set up your student loans ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-KHVZfvzQgww.htmlsi=xR9jZHlarMVvjcAn ~Ernie
Great video. This is a very good walkthrough video that shows the simplicity and usability of the product. This definitely shortened the learning curve for me. Thank you!
It seems that folks get my meaning, but I'll give an example where it is tempting. $10 sits in checking to pay the annual insurance bill. You move the $10 to an interest bearing fund to gain a few pennies and serve as a short term investment. Two jobs?
YNAB doesn't care where the money is held. It does not move real money. We still have send $ to the mortgage company, the phone company, etc. Two sides of one coin. The budget is one side. It's a plan/suggestion on where money goes. (Think of it as digital envelopes.) The flip side of the coin, has the account information. The accounts hold your money. Here you identify which account you'll pull money from to pay the mortgage, phone bill, etc. It's confusing in the beginning. Hang in there!
Ernie has a great natural cadence, he sounds super weird slowed down. His natural cadence is awesome and if people think it's too fast they can always pause and rewind
Love the clarity of Ernie's videos. I like some of the functionality of the new targets functionality, but it's hard if you set aside e.g. $100 a month to pay the quarterly electric bill, and it is $297. That spare $3 can't be moved the next month without it telling you to add $103. Makes it hard to roll with the punches.
It sounds like that spare $3 is being moved before it's actually next month. E.G. You pay the bill in June and then flip forward to July and move the money. In that case, you would get the behavior you outlined above. The trick is to wait until it's actually next month (in this example July) and then move the money. YNAB doesn't recalculate how much to put into the category next month until it actually is the next month. Hope that makes sense! ~Ernie
@@YNABofficial Thank you so much!! I love your videos and Budget Nerds!! Especially the recent one with Erin - I think I've watched it 3 times already :)
This has been extremely helpful. I’ve signed up for a trial today, linked my main checking account, and the doubts I had are now cleared. Too bad my other accounts aren’t linkable.
Question about saving vs targeting. At about marker 50:00 he talks about categorizing money in savings. Instead of making targets for things in the budget like “Christmas gifts” or “new tires”, couldn’t you put the money in savings and categorize it there? I am new and still don’t trust myself to not use the money in my main checking account. Would rather have it in savings
You could do that in YNAB, but you lose some clarity around your money. YNAB works best when you focus on the job of your dollars (the category they're in) instead of the location of those dollars (the account they're in). And it definitely takes some time to get used to this mindset shift so be gentle with yourself! A good habit to start building is to check your category balances before spending. That will reassure you that you're only spending the money you want to spend. Hope that helps! ~Ernie
Excellent video! Question for you though-I keep having trouble with moving money from checking to savings. From my paycheck I assign the money to e.g. an emergency fund, and when the transaction syncs it's categorized there, but now I ALSO have the inflow transaction in my savings. It's almost like there's a duplicate of that amount. How do I resolve this?
Set up the transaction as a transfer. That will just move the money from one account to another without impacting your categories. To do this, click the Payee field of the transaction and at the top of your payee list choose the correct account you're moving the money to/from. support.ynab.com/en_us/transfer-transactions-a-guide-HJOsZz4Jj ~Ernie
If I have a business on the side, how do I keep my business income and expenses separate from my personal income and expenses? Do you need a separate YNAB account for the business, or is there a way to separate them within the same account?
No, you don't need a separate YNAB subscription for your business! I would put your business accounts in a separate budget (with one subscription you can have as many budgets as you want). More resources here www.ynab.com/small-business/ ~Ernie
It will let me snooze some targets but not all. For example, I snoozed my student loan pmt because it's in forbearance, but won't let me snooze my rent. There are other random ones I can't snooze either. I'm using a PC. Can you help?
Hi Hayden! I would recommend reaching out to our support team. If you'd like, they can take a look at your specific plan in YNAB and help you figure out what's going on. - Ben M 🤓
How do you handle Zelle payments. Say example my gas budget is $300. But I make a road trip were I paid 150. But my true portion was $50 and my friends are sending me $100. Would I just categorize that credit to gas then?
YNAB only imports info for tracking it doesn't make any actual transfers between your accounts for you. You have to go into your banking apps for that but you then record those moves in YNAB. Think of this as a virtual envelop system. Say you have 1000 in the bank. You pull all that cash out, take it home and you grab 5 envelopes at home. Envelope 1 might be for bills. You get 300 of your cash pile ans you then stuff it into or (set money aside) in that envelope. You then name your other envelopes for other things and distribute your money into them. This is what YNAB is except you're doing it virtually.
How do I hide my savings from the "ready to assign" green section at the top? I do not have $10,000 to assign. It's in my savings account. I don't want to touch it. How can I hide this? I can even see in this video, you have your $2000 savings in the "ready to assign" banner. How can we ignore savings?
Hi! This is a super common question, and the answer is probably going to sound weird: you don't hide it. Your savings dollars need jobs, just like the dollars in your checking account. So you add your savings account to YNAB, those dollars show up in Ready to Assign, you make categories for the things you are saving for, and then you assign your savings dollars to those categories. It could be one big category called "Emergency Fund"; it could be broken down into auto maintenance, down payment, etc. But either way, you want those savings dollars in your plan. We find that gives you greater clarity when you're trying to make spending decisions. And if you're worried about spending it, remember: every transaction that comes through YNAB needs to be assigned to a category. So unless you categorize something to a savings category, that money stays untouched. Hope that helps! 🙂 - Ben M 🤓
You only add your paychecks when you receive them and you will categorize them as Ready to Assign. That's key to making sure you're only working with the money you have right now. support.ynab.com/how-to-add-income-and-other-inflows-H1ZNjfZJi ~Ernie
The news target are good!!! but it missing AUTO ASSIGN FOR EVERY OTHER WEEK PAYCHECK . in order to fulfill ynab rules some months it needs split to different months Please ynab designer
So you mention that you are looking at each category to see where you can pull money from to roll with the punches and you took it from Transportation. In that scenario, what do you do when you go through all of the categories and you say no to everything. Now how do you roll with the punches? I think that is the most common scenario that a lot of us are trying to understand and the cycle to get out of.
The overspending has to be covered from somewhere. So if there isn't a good choice to pull from then I have to move onto the next best options. If this is causing a lot of second-guessing and regret, try rolling with the punches before you actually spend the money. We call this Finding the Money First. And if you can't find the money from other categories, then you don't buy the thing. That's a great way to break that cycle! ~Ernie
Where should you put the savings into for the 6 month & 3 month expenses? I currently have a 6 month emergency saving funded in high yield savings account
The money you fund any category with can be put in any account you want. In your case, figure out how much you need in checking to cash flow a month and the rest you can move to the HYSA. ~Ernie
