I just don't see how YNAB will work for me. I don't need to plan my spending--I need to track it. I put almost everything on a cc for the points and rewards, and I have it set up that I automatically pay the full amount every month. I want to import the transactions so I can see what I am spending on groceries, gas and fuel etc., and make adjustments if I need to.
I'll be honest, this video was YEARSSSS overdue from YNAB but it finally cleared up 95% of the confusion I had with credit cards on YNAB for years. Thank you!!
I would recommend reaching out to a member of our Support team! They're wizards at helping people figure out their linked accounts (and super nice too!). 🙂 - Ben M
@@YNABofficial I think I learned what you need to do. If you use the phone app this is the one linked feature it seemingly can't handle. It'll add an automatic new transaction incorrectly and try to get you to categorize it but there is no credit card payments category and it also will completely mess up the idea of how much money you have to spend because it's treating it like you decided to buy something new that wasn't on your budget for the cost of your credit card balance. I think this happens because the bank account is linked, and it can tell money is removed, but the way the credit card is linked it only knows each new purchase or refund type transaction and doesn't fully process the payment transactions? Idk. You'd think it could figure out you're not paying someone else, you're paying yourself, so the money isn't gone, it's just moved. But alas... What you need the transaction to be marked as to fix this entire problem is it's a "transfer" of money from one account to the other. It's easier to do on a computer. But I'm not sure yet if it's even possible to do on a phone. They won't make you categorize the transaction if you do that because it's not removing any money from your budget, just moving which account it's in. It already was removed when you spent it on your credit card. Consider your credit card to be a bank account with a negative balance. Even if you pay off your credit card monthly and are never in debt, you are essentially, every month, bringing that negative balance bank account back to zero by removing money from another bank account and putting it where there was a negative balance. That's what it needs with the Transfer feature in order to not duplicate how much money you're spending on everything and mess up everything.
Ideally, you would manually log the purchases made on the credit card, assign the spending to the appropriate category/categories in your budget, and then use the account linking to help reconcile your charges.
Hey, if you'd like to reach out to our support team we can help you in your specific situation. support.youneedabudget.com/en_us/how-to-get-help-SygqcvtC5
This is very confusing... Let's say I assign $400 for the month for groceries, and spend all that money from my credit card. When I go to cover the balance, the $400 I set aside is already intended to cover off the credit card payment. Why do I need to add in an additional $400 from somewhere else in my budget to cover this cost? I'm extremely confused by how this works.
I think it's more to have a visual of where you intend the $400 to go rather than having all your random credit card expenses in one place. You build your budget first, and pay with the credit card, so YNAB will show that instead of the money leaving your account, it gets moved to another area that eventually needs to be paid off. Hope that makes sense!
You don't assign another $400, ynab automatically moves the assignment from your groceries to your credit card with each grocery transaction, the available for payment number is telling you how much money you need to transfer from your other accounts to cover all the transactions.
the part i've always been confused by, and still am - is how to account for expenses that are paid via credit cards each month. most of my expenses are paid via credit card. if i assign $600 to entertainment, $500 to groceries, etc., all to be paid via credit card -- how do these expenses get assigned since the bills aren't usually paid until the following month? wouldn't these expenses be recorded twice? first in the month that they are incurred as "entertainment" and "groceries", and then the following month under their respective credit card bills? i feel this is something extremely common that YNAB fails to cover adequately
Hi! I also pay all my expenses via credit card. When I pay for groceries with my credit card, I'm not... actually paying for them. 😅 I'm letting Visa do it for me. So YNAB records that as a transaction in my Visa account - it's more of a reminder that I OWE Visa $X - and then moves the money from my groceries category to my credit card payment category. Then, when I actually DO pay for everything via a credit card payment, I pay out of that CC payment category. That shows up as one big lump sum in my credit card account, which (should!) balance out all the money I owe to Visa. So your day-to-day spending is tracked in your bank account, and YNAB handles those transactions in your budget by simply moving that money to your payment category. Then, I just make one big payment to cancel all those out, which comes out of my credit card payment category. I hope that helps! 🙂 - Ben M 🤓
@@YNABofficial So we must manually move the money from the budgeted accounts to the credit card where the charge was made? I ask because I am coming from MINT, in that app it would look at the transaction on the credit card and assign it to one of your budgeted categories automatically.
YNAB gave me some math errors in my last budget and the error carried forward for awhile till I recently hit "Fresh Start" again. Re-watching this video is helping learn how to troubleshoot that problem if it comes up again. Also watch a couple of videos from Nick True at Mapped Out Money, he's very helpful too!
Helpful but difficult. It's difficult to follow and see where you're moving your mouse quickly and it's not highlighted. I'm glad I can hit the "go back 10 second" option but after a while it gets tiring.
I have special offers on CC so i only pay £5.00 and have no interest for 18 months. So I'm actually being money savvy, and using the Credit Card limit as an interest free loan. Which I'll have the money to pay off in 18 months time. YNAB cannot manage this feature. Maybe Americans don't get this promotional offers.
If you've overspent, you need to cover the overspending from some other category that's less important to you! Food is food, so if I OVER bought on my groceries, it makes sense that I'd lower my dining out allowance so I eat up all that new food in my fridge! 🌻 Hannah
Hi Britney! Are you entering your payment as a normal transaction, similar to how you would enter a purchase? That might be causing your problem. If you're using the web app, you can go to that CC account and click the Record Payment button to make a payment. If you're using your phone, you can hold down the CC payment category and it will pull up a CC payment transaction. Let me know if that helps! - Ben M 🎨
When you enter a transaction, you can choose to categorize it as a payment/transfer. Then YNAB will just ask which card you want to transfer to. As long as both cards are you have both accounts in YNAB, it should be as simple as that. 🙂 - Ben M 🤓
They don't address it because the most effective way to use YNAB is to log the purchases as they're made and use importing to help reconcile those transactions. YNAB is meant to be consulted before spending, not after so you stick to your plan.
I agree with Alina, I have everything automated. If I wanted to do manual, I would have stuck with my spreadsheet. The beauty in the program is that you are getting transactions automatically imported in. What do I do with the cleared credit card payment? How do I categorize it? None of the videos address it.
I'm trying to upload transactions myself and ALL I WANT TO KNOW is a credit card charge an OUTFLOW or an INFLOW and he never tells you or even shows the freaking screen... argh... I want to load past transactions so I can see spending reports.
Easy, just move it from Credit Card Payment back to Ready To Assign (or another category). Ta-da! You made a credit card purchase, but since you're not planning to pay for it, the cash is now available for something else.
I pay off my credit card each month. Can I delete the credit card section entirely? My CC is linked to my YNAB account. It throws off my 'ready to assign' section every time I make a payment right near the end of the month. I have been doing this for three months and can't figure it out. Please advise!
I called in to them around the time that I left the comment. They were super helpful and got my YNAB account corrected while I was on the phone with them. I think I may have emailed their support team and then we set up a call, I can't remember the exact details, but once on the phone with them, they explained it to me and found the issue. The problem was that several months prior, the I first added my credit card to the YNAB account, it was synced to show positive money in the account. @@kristi7425
I have lived YEARS by 'floating' my spending two weeks ahead of my paycheck on my credit card. Now that I have all this set up I owe my entire paycheck to my credit card. Thus I will have zero dollars left to assign to all categories on payday. How do I break this cycle?
This is also really confusing from when you first start the app. I owe money on my credit card which I import but I also have those payments added to the categories, so it's like I'm getting double charged.
This is the issue I have been unable to overcome. I would prefer if YNAB changed the system to a double entry model, as that would be easier to work with.
Frankly this has me even more confused. I use my credit cards for mostly every purchase (with the exception of my monthly bills that I do a bank account debit for). Are you saying that for every single purchase I make, I have to pull money out of that budget and assign it to my credit card? What's the point of me assigning $400 to a grocery budget if i just have to pull funds out and assign it to my credit card category when I make that purchase? If I plan to spend $1500 every month for every bill, I have to then assign every cent of that to my credit card bill? So by the end of the month instead of having $1500 assigned to all my spending categories, it'll just be a lump sum of 1500 assigned to my cc?
No if you are paying for things with your CC, YNAB allocates that money to your CC and you pay that amount when you hit "Record Payment" on the top of your CC register. Review from 3:17 to 8:37 to see how spending and then making a payment work. Cheers!
I am using the Snowball Method to pay off my credit card debt, which means that I will only be able to pay off the minimum for the rest of my cards. How do I work with this on YNAB? I am confused because minimum payments include both interest payment and payment on debt. How do I account for the payment on debt that is included in a minimum payment?
I don't understand why you have to constantly rearrange money to have a balanced budget if you're $2-5 over in 2-3 categories. If you have surplus money in other categories, a few dollars overdue isn't going to make a difference until you get paid. Rearranging money is hard to keep track of rather than just leaving it in the red.
Hi Katie! You make a fair point. In the case of tiny discrepancies, you can usually get away with fudging it a bit. The main reason we recommend this is because it trains your brain to start seeing (and, more importantly, CHOOSING) the trade-offs you're making when you "overspend." It's one thing to say "I spent $5 extra on coffee" but it's another thing to say "$5 of my gaming money is now going toward coffee." That moment where you choose the category to pull from is an opportunity to reflect on your priorities and make sure your money is truly aligned with them. It's certainly not required to get value out of YNAB - after all, if you're covering it with your next paycheck, then you're basically saying, "$5 that could have gone to anything else is going to cover this instead." And that's fine! But I've personally found those tiny adjustments to be great practice for making better spending decisions. 🙂 - Ben M 🎨
Hi Joseph! This option only pops up when you're first setting up your credit card. All it does is set your target for whatever your current balance is. (If your CC balance was $0 when you put it into YNAB, you wouldn't have seen it at all.) But there's nothing stopping you from doing this yourself! If the amount assigned to your CC payment category doesn't currently match your balance, then you can move the remaining amount from another category so that your next payment will cover the entire balance. Once you've done that, your card should function as a pay-in-full card! Every time you make a payment on that CC and enter it into YNAB, it will move that money over, ensuring that your payment always covers your balance. I hope that helps! 🙂 - Ben M 🎨
Hi Nikita! We are currently working on revamping credit cards in YNAB to make them as intuitive as we possibly can, and I know we are considering incorporating features like that, considering how much benefit people have gotten from the Loan Planner. But it is VERY tricky stuff, so I can't really speak to what the exact end product will be or what the exact timeline will be. But if you stick around, I think you'll find the next version of this video will be a lot shorter and full of some exciting new features! 😉 - Ben M 🎨
When I entered my Visa account into YNAB, I marked it as a credit card account. So when YNAB sees me spending money with that account, it knows I need to pay that money back and moves it accordingly. Now, all that means is I've set the money ASIDE for a payment. In order to actually pay Visa, I need to log into my credit card and make that payment. YNAB can't do that for me. What YNAB does is ensure that I have that money set aside, ready to go, when I do make that payment. I hope that helps! 🙂 - Ben M 🎨
Just added my CC's back into my budget because of this video! I could never figure this out, but wanted visibility of my cards. Great stuff (both the feature and video)!
Im trying the 34 day NYAB Trial...im currently trying to figure out how to set up my CC as a payment account for my auto payments for my cellphones, as well as a debit card for groceries, etc. i pay it off every month. i'm hoping this video will help! :(
I’ve entered a credit card transaction and it keeps telling me to assign the amount I spent on the credit card. Why do it not automatically add it to the credit card. It did it for one transaction and not for the others. What’s up with that!
This is a really good tutorial. I still don't really understand the "available" column for credit cards, but I appreciate you mentioning that it's hard to understand. I'll have to play with it and go back and watch this a few more times.
Hey Denise! Yikes, I'm sorry! Luckily every section of the video is timestamped, so you can easily skip back to the start of a section by finding it either in the description box or in the progress bar of the video. You can also click the little "cog" symbol in the corner of the video and choose a slower playback speed if the graphics are the thing that are too fast. Thanks for the feedback!! 🌻 Hannah
This is still unclear. I have to manually enter my credit card payments via record payment? What should I do with the transaction that YNAB auto detects from my bank account? It's saying it needs to be categorized with a budget, but its a credit card payment...
Credit card payments shouldn't need to be categorized because (in their simplest form) they are a transfer from your checking account to your credit card account. This is how it should be logged as well. The "Payee" column should say something like "Payment: Chase Visa." YNAB views it as shuffling money from one account to another.
Hi Harley! My guess is that you're using an Android phone? Thanks to your comment, I just learned that Android doesn't have this feature yet (but we've got Android developers working on it!). You'll find the process for making a payment on mobile here: docs.youneedabudget.com/article/1183-credit-card-payments-mobile I hope that helps! - Ben M
Thank you so much. It's like you read my mind from across the country and knew exactly what I needed to finally understand this part of YNAB. Now I feel prepared enough to use credits cards again and up my credit score.
I'm really confused by something basic: when I mark a payment to my credit card from my checking account in YNAB, I'm not *actually* moving that money between my *actual* accounts, or am I?? I feel like this should be obvious but it's not. I just started using YNAB and the demos are great, but I really need them to include the whole work flow (including moving money in my *actual* accounts?) since I assume I have to go into my bank accounts to do what I'm representing in YNAB!
Hi! Your first instinct is right. What you do in your YNAB budget has no impact on your actual accounts. Your budget is your plan, where you decide what your dollars are going to do and track what they have done. Your accounts are where that money actually lives and where it goes in and out. I typically record my CC payment in YNAB AFTER I've actually made the payment in my actual accounts, just so I don't get confused. Hope that helps! 🙂 - Ben M 🎨
I never carry a balance on my card. I would love YNAB to be able to support adding the statement date + payment due date to the card settings to remove the manual element of having to manage the upcoming payment transaction each month. Presently, I have to manually add the credit card payment amount as an upcoming transaction, and then adjust the balance and any early repayments/refunds. Given the statement date and payment date is consistent month to month, it's a little annoying to have to manually adjust constantly. My bank is not linked and I cannot see any fix for this currently.
This is what has been bugging me as a new user, trying to figure out how to incorporate making last statement full balance payments and setting targets.
Oh, I guess he doesn't deal with that in this video then. Rats. That's what I'm trying to figure out. If you find a video that does explain it, post it here, if you would. Thanks.
@@mnorth1351 I'm still a user of the tool, still find it really annoying, and still no fix. I've raised it a few times through their customer team but my guess is that they are prioritising connecting banks over finding fixes for those which are unlinked? My other issue is how interest is calculated on loans - you cannot adjust the frequency at which interest is calculated (monthly or daily) so I have to manually adjust all those transactions too.
@@cococomments I'm guessing they don't give the option because their philosophy is that paying only the statement balance, not the full balance, results in you being a little bit in debt every month? So they might not want to encourage using the statement balance. It is annoying though, as I just checked through all my credit cards, and none of them has the option to auto-pay the full current balance, only the statement balance. I might just switch to paying the full current balance (manually, so that sucks) most months, because I'm heard that can increase your credit score long-term: since the Credit card companies report your balance on the statement date, if you pay the full balance before that, they report that you have no (or low) credit utilization, keeping you below the 30% (or even the 7%) threshold.
@@mnorth1351 It's an odd thing as many people will pay their statement balance as that's enough to avoid the interest charge. It's the advice given by most financial advisors too! Interesting re: credit score. I am in Australia (not sure where you are) but will look into this to see if it applies here.
This really helped me when I started my budget fresh after something like 11 months of using YNAB! I didn't really understand the credit card payment category and kept it hidden until now, it makes way more sense now. ty for the good vid! YNAB slaps.
Of course, Lisa! All you need to do is login at www.youneedabudget.com and you can access your budget from any computer or web browser! No app you need to download. -Hannah 🌻
The app is helping me get out of debt and manage my monthly bills in a way i was not able to do no matter the methods i tried out, from Excel sheets to accounting Brooks. Thank you YNAB!!
Great question Qwigly! There's a few reasons: building your credit, and also reaping those credit card rewards! If you can use a credit card responsibly and always pay it off in full, you can get free money from your credit card company, free travel, discounts at certain stores you may frequent. It's totally up to you if you want to use credit cards! YNAB makes it so that you're never caught off guard and always have enough set aside to make that payment. -Hannah 🌻
Every time I do a credit card payment, I get three transactions. One from my bank, one from my card, and one from YNAB trying to match one of these payments. I'm really confused on how to deal with this
Hi Joseph! If you think something is off with your budget, write into our customer support team and they should be able to help you! Whenever we record credit card payments in our budgets, two things should happen: there should be an OUTFLOW transaction in our checking account (since we are PAYING the credit card company this amount to pay off our credit card balance), and there should be an INFLOW transaction in our credit card account (because the money we paid the credit card company is coming in to satisfy our negative balance). YNAB has the ability to recognize matching transaction within ten days of each other, as a way to prevent duplicate transactions being added to the budget. I'm not sure your third transaction is that you seem to be getting. Definitely write into our customer support team and they'll help you get it ironed out! You can start a ticket with them or click the question mark in the bottom right corner to start live chatting with them! support.youneedabudget.com/contact/contact-us-B1OG9RFfj 🌻 Hannah
i have my credit card account linked, but only my debit card transactions are showing up...is there a way to fix this? i dont have time to manually input all my credit card purchases for several reasons
Hmmm... first, I'd make sure you're in the right account. If you're on web, go to the left side of your budget and click on your credit card account. *Now* if you go to the "import" button it should import your transactions for *just* your credit card instead of your debit card. If you go up to the important button and there's a "(!)" next to it, that means your credit card connection is having trouble linking. If that's the case, you can follow the troubleshooting steps recommended by YNAB in the pop-up box, or you could reach out to customer support to help you explore the issue further! Hope this helps! 🌻 Hannah
@@YNABofficial its the right account...i hit bank import and it says there are no transactions to import...but there are numerous transactions that have cleared on my credit card...none are showing up. Ive tried deleting and adding it again as linked 4 times.
Definitely reach out to customer support! They'll help figure out what's going on-if it's a problem with the bank, a problem with the linking, any of that. Sorry you've had trouble! Sometimes my bank just gets in a funk for a few weeks and I'm doing everything manually for a while. I've definitely found that, while it can feel like more work to manually enter transactions, I am WAY more in tune with my money and overspend categories waaaaay less. But, still worth having your situation looked into! You can chat with our support team at ynab.com/help! 🌻 Hannah
I'm a little confused on how I can make extra payments. For example..... I recently had extra money come in from a tax refund. I would like to put that on the credit card in addition to my $500 I pay a month. Currently YNAB sees this as overspending and puts it agains future spending on the card instead of seeing it as extra payment. I would like to input it in as extra payment is there a way to do that?
Hey, David. Before you send extra money to the card, be sure to assign more money to the credit card payment category first. Then, you won't have overspending. ~BenB
I used YNAB in the original form and pay the one off purchase, when it went to monthly payments I did not upgrade. This week we have jumped back on and love the new features.
I find confusing that the "Budget" number under ":All Accounts" seems to me to be a "Net Worth" number rather than budget. The true budget number is the ready to assign.
The budget is the entire thing. The ready to assign number is what is left to be categorized after everything has been assigned. Calling that number your budget would be odd
Hi. I'm a teacher and I'm trying to make instruction videos like yours for my students who use computers and mobile devices. How do you screencast your mobile device while also recording yourself using the app? It seems so synchronized. Thanks for a great tutorial!
Great question. iOS has a screen recorder built in. So all you have to do is hit record and you get a video file that you can then add to your video when editing in post. Here's more info on that feature: support.apple.com/en-us/HT207935
I linked my cc account. I just started and there was 2 payments that I had already sent but didn’t clear my cc when I made my budget. Now my balances on my cc and ynab don’t match. Will this work it’s self out once I get a new invoice?
Great tutorial, thanks! One thing: What if you overspend, but don’t have the money to move from another category? We had an emergency and charged $650. Do I just wait for it to clear and reconcile? Can’t get the overspent notification to go away. 😢
I've been wondering the same thing. Thinking about it, if we can't move money from somewhere else because... well, we can't... then there's nothing we can do about it. We owe more money on the credit card and the category is overspent. This is a true reflection of the situation. The credit card company paid for the , we overspent on a category (no more money in that category's envelope to move to the credit card envelope) and so we owe the credit card company more money now. //Edit Found this video from one of their workshops: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-oe8ngOl5oT8.html
OK so I added me credit cards and linked them but I didnt put down how I want to pay them, I didnt create a target. I am trying to do that now. When I try to create a target it doesnt tell me how long it will take to pay them off. How can I see that again, or can you only do that when adding a card?
Hi LJ! Yes, those initial calculators that show how much you'll pay per month if you want to pay off by [month/year] only show up when you first set up a credit card account. However, if you play around with trying different payoff dates/amounts in your credit card payment's target, you can see how much you'll need to pay each month after you hit "save." Then you can edit and adjust that date/amount to see the difference. Hope that helps! 🙂 - Ben M
This is the most confusing way to manage cards I could imagine. You sync the account, it's balance is added, then this software buckets any transaction you do on the card against that balance so your balance is never correct. YNAB just isn't good for people who use credit cards often and carry a balance. Your numbers will never add up. Look at 5:21 in the video, who would EVER do that. What is the point of having budgeting software if you have to open your phone and "add a new transaction" every time you buy something. You can see in the video that he just fails to mention WHERE the debit is coming from. He just adds "i spent $100 at groceries, take it out of my visa account". What??? No. You take it out of your checking lol.
Maybe im just slow, but who the hell is Dillons, is that the grocery store?? If so such a confusing choice for an example 😭 Or is you, or another person, thats paying/sending??
Ha! Whoopsies!! Yes, "Dillons" is the branch of Kroger we have around the Kansas City area. Think of it as a Safeway or Wegman's or Winn Dixie or H-E-B or Aldi! We'll try to pick a better example in the future! 🌻 Hannah
Hi, I don't know how to register a payment to my credit card in my mobile. When I hold on top of the CC line it does not give me the "make payment" option, it rather displays the assign option.
I don't explain right when I play in full account when you target ex groceries you don't borrow with other category becuase you put money job groceries not the other category he explain
Thanks for this video. I'd been using the feature all wrong. I don't have anything particularly complicated to deal with but I'd been assigning wrongly
6:18 This may be an obvious question but does YNAB allow you to make the credit card payment (actually transferring the $$ from your bank to your credit card) or is it just about recording/posting the payment you made outside of the app? The way it's described here doesn't make it very clear.
YNAB is just the place where you record how your money was spent or received! So you can't pay your credit card directly through YNAB, but rather *after* you pay off your credit card through your banking app, you'll want to come back to YNAB and record that payment so you know where your money has gone. I hope that makes sense! 🌻 Hannah
Why not just adding a checking account and let it run into a negative balance? It has the same effect, without the weird "CC payment" category (why a 2nd category of something you've already spent anyway?). Eventually when the CC bill arrives, you just add a new transaction from your bank account to the CC account.
Hey there! With our credit card system, anytime you record a transaction to the credit card account, it will move the money you spent out of whatever category you used your credit card to spend from (i.e. your groceries category, your mortgage category, or your "just for fun" category) and move it into your credit card payment category. That way, when the time comes to pay your credit card bill, you'll have every dollar you need sitting in your credit card payment category! If you were to link a regular checking account category as a credit card category and let it go into the red as you spend on that card, anytime you recorded a purchase to that account, those dollars would "leave your budget" even though you STILL HAVE those dollars in the bank (up until you pay your credit card, at least). When it would finally come time to pay the credit card bill, you wouldn't actually know where in the budget to categorize that payment to or where that money would be coming from, because the money would already be recorded as "gone," despite the fact that you still physically have that money at the bank. Handling credit card payments would get real messy real fast! Did that make any sense? It's hard to explain without a visual! 🌻 Hannah
This video doesn't cover the case when credit card is used when you don't have enough money for a purchase, neigher in your bank account or planned in budget. For my mindset that seems the very main reason of using credit card in the first place.
To all these people saying, "just don't do it", people living below the poverty line exist. They still need to buy groceries, pay rent, etc. and they might not make enough for everything.
@@harleybriggs3496 that's a fair point but making a habit of going into debt to buy food and groceries is self destructive in the long term bc you're only advancing yourself into poverty and that's not a long term solution.
@You Need A Budget (YNAB) I'm trying to understand how adding interest worked. When you entered it here, it reduced your total balance. In reality, that is the fee for carrying such a balance. Would you need to enter 2 transactions? One for the interest payment and one for the interest accrued to balance it out?
The interest charge is reflected in your total balance the same as any other charge to your card so making a payment towards the interest would reduce your total balance.
We pay off our credit cards every month or at some point right after the month. We found it much easier to just add our credit cards as a checking account. No need for YNAB to figure out where I want to pay what, it's just another account. Different things work for different people :)
I can’t find a way to do that other than manually adding the account and then manually adding all transactions. Is there another way by allowing the account to link to YNAB?
I use my credit card basically as my checking account to earn miles/rewards. I still am using a budget, obviously, so I don't overspend. I previously had been making the payee my credit card company and adding the category so I can keep track from my checking account. Fairly simple and straight forward. But I wanted to see when transactions roll in automatically, so I linked my card. I recently linked my credit cards to see if it was easier to keep track of transactions, but now when I pay that card it acts like a transfer and I can't choose a category, which is beyond frustrating. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of budgeting? it is easier to see where my money is spent when single transactions are used for groceries, dining out, cell phone, etc.... but this way I pull money from an account leaving it zero and seems like double work. Allowing credit cards to not act like a transfer function would be very helpful. Or am I missing something
are both your credit card and the account you're using to pay your card within your budget? if so, paying your credit card bill is really a transfer (between checking and credit card). if the account you're using to pay your card is OUTSIDE your budget (e.g. you pay with a checking account that's not in your budget) THEN it's a transaction (i.e. money entering or leaving your budget) i think you're missing a nuance BUT credit cards are complicated in YNAB (it's taken me a year to fully understand, tbh)
I may be reading this wrong so I may be missing your point and giving you a wrong answer. So you are paying the card off with you checking account which @mewantsmash is right technically it would classify as a transfer. Which is probably why you can't change it, but the credit cards transactions still have a category when used, right? Because if you wanted to see the categories your card is being spent on you can go to reports, under spending there is an all accounts drop down, click it and only select your Credit Card Account. It should display only what you used your credit card for. How much you spent on gas and shit like that over the months. You can then select it to show that current months transactions only. Giving you a good idea of what the card was used on, on your current budget. Yeah the budget tab would still just move money from your categories to the credit card payment category for it to hit zero, and its not as clear a visual, but you can still at least see what it's being used on. OR again I may not be reading the situation right. Just trying to help the credit card system is kinda werid tbh
I do exactly the same way! All bills are paid through the CC, then it gets paid off through the checking. I feel this defeats the purpose of YNAB budget. So frustrating
Question - does it matter if you're moving money around in the Assigned Column versus the Available Column? If your budget is balanced (more or less!) and everything is currently good to go, either funded or on track, does it make a difference which of the two columns you move money from?
If you want to shift money around from category to category, you can do all the tweaking you need in the Assigned Column to reallocate those dollars! The Available Column tells you how much is currently in that category (think of it kind of like an envelope). So if I move $10 from the assigned column of my "eating out" categories to the assigned column of my "household goods" category, the assigned column will also increase $10 in my "household goods" category and decrease by $10 in my "eating out" category, because I'm taking $10 *out* of my eating out "envelope" and re-assigning it to my household goods "envelope." Does that make sense? I hope so! In summary: always move money around via the "Assigned" column, and the "Available" column will reflect those changes to match! -Hannah 🌻
Hey CJ! I've got a tip for ya that might help you absorb the video at a better pace. If you're using a computer to watch RU-vid, if you click the cog/wheel icon at the bottom right of the video, then click "Playback Speed," you can select a slower speed, such as 0.75 (wouldn't recommend going slower than that as the audio gets a little dirge-y 😂). If you're using your phone to watch RU-vid, find the three dots in the upper righthand corner of the video, and you'll find the "Playback Speed" setting there. I hope this helps in the meantime, but we'll make sure to pass that note back for future videos! -Hannah 🌻
We currently don't have anything to distinguish between different users of a card. You could use flags to mark who has made what transactions, but yes, you'll have to reconcile their usage on the card. - Ben M
If those users are paying their charges (effectively reimbursing you), then you could just log those payments as inflows to the credit card. This keeps those dollars out of your 'To Be Assigned' funds and reflects the true balance of the credit card. This would be done the same as the cashback example in this video.
