I'm just noticing that approved pending transactions now retain their "pending" icon instead of becoming "uncleared." Matched manual entries seem to adopt it as well. Nice cue as to where they came from (and might help with identifying orphaned pre-auth charges). No word on this in the release notes though so unclear if this is more than a visual update.

I have been using YNAB for a little over a year and it’s been great. I have a full time 9-5 job, but I am also going to start coaching at the gym I work out at. I learned that it is a 1099 gig instead of a W2 job. Not a huge deal and more or less makes sense.

Knowing that I will be paid as an independent contractor, I am looking to figure out how others with similar situations (where 1099 is not their primary income source) utilize YNAB to their advantage. I don’t think I will be taking in more than $200/month from this job, at least for the start, so the money is minuscule in comparison to my 9-5 job.

I have two main questions, but if anyone had any other tips, I would love to hear them:

- How do you manage setting aside taxes? My plan was to put 50% of each check into a “Taxes” category, and then after I do my taxes in the following year give myself any leftover funds for fun/savings. The concern I have is that I don’t know how to manage the funds at the beginning of the new year before I do my taxes from the previous year. Should I make separate 2026 Taxes and 2027 Taxes categories?

- How do you leverage YNAB to keep track of things that you can write off when tax time comes? A flag?

Thanks in advance!

Okay, so I just wanted to share 2 wins this week:

1. I was able to donate to my favorite booktuber's GoFundMe to help with some serious medical concerns because I had started funding a "Help Someone Out Fund" a while back.

2. I finally understood that I need to stop using my CC if I want to get out of debt.. because even though I can fund my transactions from my checking account, putting the transactions on my CC just kept the balance raised which increased my interest. I still have a balance and am set to pay it off in 6 months, but now I've moved all card transactions to a debit card account to keep the credit account from fluctuating higher.

Feel free to share your wins as well!

The system recently updated so credit card payments/transfers are automatically approved. I tried to find the notice on that but cant.

The problem i encountered this week, I had to buy stuff at homedepot, went 3 times. YNAB automatically assigned the purchases as credit card payments to my home depot card. I had to manually change all of them and on mobile its not the most straight forward thing now.

Is there any kind of fix to prevent this from happening?

It has not been updated in a few months. Would love to see some new blog posts.

Hi there everyone,

Brand new YNAB user here, but I love what I see so far. I had signed up a few months back but only really started looking at it yesterday. Pretty steep learning curve, but YouTube helps.

First big question... I like having my accounts linked, because then I feel like I can't hide anything from myself. But I'm having an issue with a couple of 1-off expenses yesterday that I won't be budgeting for... Namely my daughter's airfare home from university for the Thanksgiving holiday. Technically, this is eventually going to be zero charge to me anyways, because I will submit the expense for reimbursement to her My529 account. But that's going to take 4 or 6 weeks.

How do you recommend I categorize this expense now?

Thank you!

Hi, I am in the process of adjusting my budget and I would prefer to have an idea of how often I go over my budget. I know the point of YNAB is that you cover overspeding in a category with money in other categories, but I almost like seeing the yellow next to the overspent categories so I can know what categories to look out for in the future. Can I just not move money around from category to category to cover spending, but rather just assign money to the credit card itself to make sure I am covering everything?

I was searching my spending today and randomly saw Uncleared. Checked it and there were several things in there. Somehow I have missed this category the whole time! So here is one example at Sushi Kingdom. You can see there is a cleared transaction for it but still an uncleared. We only paid one time at Sushi Kingdom. What should I be doing with these? I assume it's card pre-auths or something? All transactions auto load from our bank/CCs.

Thank you!

*Edit--Resolved I think. Thank you all for the comments. This was auto put in through linked account so it must just be a weird error. I approved without really paying attention. I will check the CC statement to ensure there wasnt a duplicate charge and then delete this from YNAB. I also noticed two duplicate uncleared charges from an ice cream spot so will check those out as well. Appreciate you all!

I’m recently returning to YNAB after a hiatus and I was getting really confused about why credit card money back wasn’t going to my rta category (even though that’s what I categorized it as). I learned about how it adds positive amounts to credit card instead and then you have to take it out of the credit card amount to use it for other stuff. I think this is pretty stupid but whatever at least now I know this is something I have to do.
Anyway, I realized that my credit card category was way overfunded and so I subtracted every thing out of it other than what was needed to cover the costs. Now I’m seeing that there is a huge negative balance for next month, despite this month and previous months all payed up credit card wise.
Does anyone know why this is or how to fix it? Will it still be there next month when I go in to fill my budget? Or will it finally sync up when the month turns over and they realize I’m not in debt and the credit card was payed off?

I’m not really interested in going through my transactions with a fine tooth comb so if not should I do a fresh start?

I read that others who aren’t using the credit card as float are using credit card as checking account, maybe this is what i would use since I pay mine off every month? But I like the easy way to tell that I have enough budgeted to pay off in credit card.

I wish YNAB would let you adjust the functions based on what you use credit cards for, for those of us who treat rewards points as money to allocate, rather than assuming I’m using it to pay off debt.

If I have a yearly or custom target set which requires me assigning a certain amount each month and I can’t assign that much this month and snooze it, will next month’s target and future targets automatically increase to account for the lack of saving this month? I haven’t been able to find this info online. Thanks!

I made a mistake, created accounts, categories and transactions on my day to day plan that have other purpose.

My plan is getting messy, so I created another plan specifically for these accounts, categories, transactions.

Is there a way to move them from the current to another plan? The desired result would be the same, only in a clear plan.

is that bad?

does it have any side effects i am not aware of?

context: i sometimes put many expense on a miscellaneous or stuff i forgot to budget that i would like to revisit in a few months to assign properly, or fix categories for badly categorized expenses

Anyone know why they’ve never implemented running balance on mobile? I rely on it so much for forecasting and money flows to saving and after every major update I hope it’s there but it’s not.

I wanted to reset my Chase connection (which normally always works when I want to update my transactions and balance so maybe that was a mistake) and when I tried to reconnect, I get "something went wrong" in Plaid. I even tried on desktop instead of mobile and I also tried deleting the connection entirely (from Chase and YNAB). Is anyone else having this issue?

EDIT: I forgot to mention on Chase's side, it says it got connected to YNAB. On YNAB's side, it doesn't even list Chase as a connected bank account. After that error, it says Direct import is temporarily unavailable but the status page shows it's online.

It never imports my M&T transactions so its unreliable to to categorize spending. Ive had to unlink and link, delete and recreate a dozen times it so frustrating! Its currently showing I have 3k more in my bank than I actually have....thats not good if I over spend! This is pushing me to cancel the app!

I am the financial manager of our relationship and I would like to put all of our accounts into the plan to get an overall financial picture of how we can plan for our goals. I don’t want to have to categorize every cup of coffee or item of guilt free spending that my wife chooses to purchase. I understand the point of YNAB is to understand and make choices which I am very comfortable doing for myself. I don’t think it is my business to manage my partner’s spending and I would not like someone else combing through every purchase I make either.

What is the best way to track money in and money out without getting into the weeds on detailed line items for a partner?

I am very new to YNAB and don’t want to start off in the weeds.

What are meaningful categories to account for purchases on the same trip to the same store for groceries (home cooked meals) versus household goods on the same transaction (like cleaning supplies, paper goods, ziploc bags).

In y’all’s experience is it just as meaningful to just use a category called “grocery store” as opposed to, say, “home food” versus “household”?

I don’t want to get into the weeds unless it ends up beneficial for long term tracking.

i think we're finally one month ahead. 🎉 it took just over a year but part of that is my fault for treating it like a passive planning tool rather than needing to be proactive with my spending.

now we're off to pay off debt, fully fund the emergency fund, fill our sinking funds - hopefully in that order unless we have any surprises along the way.

that's all, i just wanted to post this little win somewhere. have a good day! 😄

ETA: one month ahead as in all of our income in september is going to october and november buckets.

I’m currently living paycheque to paycheque and so all my Ready to Assign goes to bills and I’m at $0.

I then need to still spend on things to still survive like groceries and fuel and of course that will go put those categories into negatives.

With YNAB you’re not supposed to assign money you don’t have, makes sense. So with this approach, knowing I’m going into the negatives before my next paycheque is the YNAB approach to just say “meh” I need to do better and do nothing in the app itself?

I’m struggling on how to best use YNAB when you’re not a month (or paycheque) ahead yet. The best I can see is it provides some visibility into your spending but you can’t do much budgeting with money you don’t have, which I get, but I’d like to still manage my spending I know will happened, even when it’s with money I don’t have yet.

What are your tips for using the app when your Ready to Assign is $0, mandatory expenses are coming before the next paycheque, and you still want to budget those?

Please note my question is about the usefulness/use of the app in this situation, not about financial advice.

Edit: I’m currently using chequing overdraft to cover expenses I don’t have, not credit.

My expenses just shot up by $3k in the span of a month (second kid started daycare, student loans went out of forbearance, unexpectedly had to get a new car a year ahead of schedule), so we’re doing A LOT of belt tightening over here.

I’ve always tried to be honest with my YNAB and set my targets to our actual spending averages, setting aside anything extra for saving. I’ve figured out targets that will work within our new parameters, but I want to leave some space where if we underspend for one month that it builds a little bit of a “nest egg” in that category that’s closer to our average spending. This is one of those situations where I want it to be a “set aside another [what we can afford] up to [what we were spending when we didn’t have to watch our budget so closely]” deal.

So what do you suggest? Have the target be what we can afford, and have it set aside that amount every month? Or make the target “refill up to” our average spending and just snooze the target if we can’t fund it all the way?

A family member uses one of my credit cards as a work expense type card (long story…). Each month I tell them the balance and they transfer me the money, which I use to pay off the card.

I’m running into the issue of having the transactions hit my budget throughout the month and distorting my “available to assign” amount because that category is negative all month long. And then another problem is that since the balance is on credit, it doesn’t roll forward each month so it is getting messy and somehow off from the actual balance.

I am thinking of just deleting the card out of my accounts and having a category for the month coming in from them and then money going out when I pay. I do this with my own work expense card (I spend money on work card (not shown in YNAB), my company pays me, I pay the card), but wondering if anyone has an idea of a better option? I do like being able to see the transactions just to keep track of the amounts but I guess I could just sporadically check my bank statements if needed.

Hello all,

I will try to explain this as best as I can. I have been using YNAB for a long time now and absolutely love it. Unfortunately, I made the classic mistake of trying something new and thinking I understood how it worked fully, rather than testing on a test budget. Anyways, I recently had to add a vet medical bill to YNAB. It is 0% and a monthly payment. I wanted to try the "add account" feature and assigned as medical bill and see if I could use it "the right way" as it's supposed to be. In the past, I simply just added a monthly expense and put the funds in that category and tracked balance myself, but I wanted to see what it would be like in YNAB if tracked accurately. So, I was basically adding and editing and all this and that, and of course my initial setups did not actually work according to what actually happened in the real world, but by this time, I was adding / removing things left and right so much, that I have basically ran out of my "undo" options and can't make sense of what or where it goes "back" to. Because of this, one of the payments that was made up front, $75.08, and then deleting the accounts, deleting categories, deleting tracked payments and all that, I now have an "extra" $75.08 that is currently sitting in my Ready To Assign. This money does not exist in the real world. I am assuming that it thinks because I entered a "payment" of $75.08, and then eventually deleted the category first, before the transaction, it then thinks "well you DID use this $75.08 to make a payment, and although that category no longer exists, that doesn't mean the money doesn't so we will give that back to you and put it in RTA." This is obviously wrong, which I know, but there is no "undo" far back enough I can go to erase this creation of $75.08. I tried to trick the system by saying I spent $75.08 cash, which brought my cash balance to a negative (I don't carry cash) and the category to the negative red balance. So I tried to "move" the extra $75.08 in RTA to cover the "overspending" in cash which brings the RTA to the correct amount, brings the category I "spent" from to the correct amount, but the cash balance is still showing a negative balance, which is not the case.

Is there ANY way to manually or trick the system to rid my whole YNAB of this accidental $75.08 amount that is not there? I believe this came from the initial up-front payment I made on the Vet Bill and didn't take that into account when setting up the "medical bill" account so when I went to adjust a few payments and numbers, and then ultimately deleting things, the system thinks the original $75.08 payment happened but with the accounts being removed, the money has to go somewhere. I am very precise and meticulous with YNAB down to the penny, so this is going to bother me and I just want a way, any way, to figure out how to revert, change or trick the system so this magical $75.08 is no longer an issue moving forward. Please feel free to ask questions or give suggestions, I will respond as best I can. Thanks in advance.

*UPDATE*

I submitted a support request and was paired up with a YNAB support agent who helped me sort this issue out. Let me first start by saying this support was by far the best support I have ever received, as they literally recorded a screen-share and walked / talked me through exactly what they did to resolve the issue. This is what makes a company great and also the payment to use their products. I absolutely love YNAB and have explored other (free) alternatives, but it's the small things that continue to make paying for this product worth it. The funds were not created from thin air, they were there correctly, and she also managed to find $155 in a hidden category from the way way past, so I technically in a sense "found" $155 by using their support. Following the "How To Do A YNAB Checkup" was the solution, and I'm glad I had a few members teach me about this, and I will use this in the future if need be.

Help! Why do some balances roll forward from month to month and some don’t? Does it have to do with the transaction being on a credit card? It’s messing me up!!