I have my HYSA with Ally and they use "Buckets" that let you move the money into different categories (or, you know, buckets I guess 🤷♀) I have mine broken down into my emergency fund, Baby Joe, Baby Jett, 52 Week Savings - left over from last year - and then just the general savings. I do like the idea of having it broken down even further like you do for the kittens. Shopping for Christmas throughout the year is amazing!! I will say, the hardest part is remembering that you already bough X person something and then buying them something else (at least I find myself doing this 😅) otherwise I highly recommend it, you can grab the things when they're on sale or when you're at a flea market or special event and see something you think someone would love.
Love to see how every budget is so personal! I personally move money based on checking account balance. Once checking account gets above $4,000, I transfer excess to HYSA. All my savings categories and sinking funds live on budget. I like to see how much I have saved all in one place. HYSA is on budget as well. Great video!
A slightly older video, but I like how you have set up your HYSA. I just opened one, and I'm trying to build it up. I like the idea of keeping the true expenses in there so they earn interest while they are sitting around for their turn to get spent. I've been struggling on how to manage the money in savings in my budget. And I never thought of creating a second budget for that though. Makes sense actually.
Having things split out into multiple budgets has been the biggest unlock for my brain--I can compartmentalize each 'section' of our finances and focus on them as needed!
My husband and I use a HYSA and a MM (money market) like checking accounts and keep everything on budget. Because we put all of our charges on credit cards and pay those off every month, we find we can keep below the transaction limits of the HYSA and benefit from the additional savings on all of our money. We also have a checking account we keep a small amount of money in, in case we need to write a check to someone. You’ll definitely have less cash transactions after your wedding so maybe something to consider!! Awesome to see your progress and systems!
This was so interesting to see your method! The off-budget account matchy-matchy method is the one I used when I first signed up for YNAB because I could not FATHOM having my long-term savings constantly on budget among my other categories I use on a day-to-day basis. But it only took like a week of trying to keep everything matching and trying to disperse the interest to the correct savings categories for me to cave in and blow up my budget and put my savings ON budget. I've never looked back! I also use a bank that offers both checking AND high yield savings so I can immediately transfer between the two. So anything in my high yield savings is available for immediate needs, just like checking. I basically keep all of my money in the high yield savings and just a tiny buffer in my checking. I think you'd be surprised and impressed with yourself to not want to touch any off-limit sinking funds if you had them on budget and only roll with the punches from other categories. Maybe one month you could try it for a category or two and see how it makes you feel! But the most important thing is to do what works best for you and makes you happiest! Love the videos!!
My HYSA is on budget along with a HY checking at the same place. I keep the bare minimum in my regular accounts. As @cointrolfreak mentioned the HY funds are available quickly enough. For me, there is little to no risk of tapping into emergency or sinking funds, but I respect your approach. You have to know yourself and make the budget work for you. I love that you have a separate ynab budget for the savings. Like having your cake and eating too. 😂
It HAS been a long, long time since my HYSA was on budget-I have just gotten so in the flow of having everything in separate buckets. It may be something we discuss in the future for sure! Thank you for watching!!
I actually loved seeing a HYSA as a separate budget and that’s the first thing that made me really interested to try YNAB (I’ve been using a custom spreadsheet for over 5 years at this point lol)
@@MikaDoesStuff23 I have found that it works best for my brain when I break down the different 'sections' of my budget. So fun money, HYSA, daily spending, student loans, are all different budgets entirely for me to keep things neat and clean!
I put my high-yield savings account on budget. I then add a line that says high-yield savings account and put all the money in that one category. This way it doesn’t look like I am spending money when I am simply transferring it to the high-yield savings account. I still have a separate budget in which I can sort that money out, but having it live on budget, in its own category, makes sense for me. Seems like your plan works incredibly well for you!
We will probably start exploring other ideas as we get more comfortable, it’s wild to think about how recently we joined finances and got everything in one place!
Thank you, this was super helpful! I have been struggling with seeing my HYSA funds just sitting in my day to day budget. I would prefer it sits separately where I don't see it daily, but I can transfer into it. Watching your videos has taught me a lot, I wait for them to be released, thinking what will I learn this week 🤔🥰
It's a game changer for me too. I've used spreadsheets for years, but YNAB is so much easier to track each category, monitor spending and focus on savings. You're doing great at paying down the student loans. 👏👏
I’d also thought 6 months for emergency savings was excessive, but I realized it really lets you get your feet under you for a month or two before needing to buckle down. With a 3 month savings I feel like you have to hustle pretty immediately and don’t have room to breathe (at least from my experience 😅)
Same here! This was helpful, especially your advice to just open one. I can get very caught up in trying to maximize, which is part of why I haven’t opened one yet.
This is really cool to see! I should really think about moving my savings off the main budget, it's a little bit nervewracking always having to make sure I am not letting those funds get assigned somewhere else by mistake. Great video as always!
Heck yeah, thank you!! I keep mine off budget for now just to keep things crisp and clear, but a lot of others keep them on budget under its own category group just called “high yield savings” or whatever you’d prefer! Then you can just make sure that category amount aligns with the total in your HYSA. That will be what I do if I ever decide to keep everything in one place!
This is so helpful, I’ve been searching for a video about this! I am curious to know how you enter the expenses into the HYSA budget (manually?) and I believe you mentioned but then on your normal budget do you classify them as spending money?
I do enter the transactions manually, and yes they are categorized as 'spending' technically, but I do that for so few categories that I can keep it straight in my head when looking at reports!
I keep my HYSAs on budget. I have one for my category group for my emergency fund, which matches that account. I have one category for out of the country travel that matches that account. Those are the things that are set aside for specific things so they have to match. The other one I have is a sinking fund account, which doesn't match perfectly on budget. It's mostly for if my checking seems to high from a 5 pay month or additional income. I also transfer money back if I have a big ticket item like car insurance premium or concert ticket, bu it's mostly based off of vibes.
Informative! Thank you. Right now I have my HYSAs on my budget, but I like how you do it better with just tracking them. Do you know how I can edit to move those accounts that are in my budget category into a tracking category?
Weddings are absolutely expensive. I was so naive thinking a 5k was okay. Ended up spending 15k 🤷🏽♀️ Also add like 12 dollars extra to passport for money order fee and envelopes.
I do a lot of moving around, but less now that I have built a buffer in my checking account. This basically means that maybe every other month I am “far off” between the actual HYSA balance and what I have for my categories in the ynab budget that are “in” the HYSA sinking fund account if that makes sense. This means I have a good amount of money always in the HYSA and always earning interest, and I transfer less and less over - yes maybe I’m not maximizing every last cent but it’s enough optimization for me 😅
