Cuddlebottom posted:

There are two ways to deal with this:

1. If your savings account is money you're not going to touch any time soon, like retirement savings, move that account off-budget. That way, a transfer to that account is "spent" money and the transfer can be categorized.
   
2. If that account is money you might spend, like an emergency account, just budget money towards it and let the budgeted balance accrue. Don't worry about it not showing up as an expense, because you've already accounted for it by budgeting it. As long as you don't go over the rest of your budget, of course
   

LogisticEarth posted:

This. Just let the money build up in the category, and don't log it as an outflow. If you ever need to withdraw money from it, you can enter a negative amount for the month, and it will add that money from the balance to your available cash. If you already have a chunk of change in the money market account, the first month's "input" into the account should be the balance of it. So Month 1 might have $10,000 or whatever as inflow, but Month 2 (and each going forward) will have $200, or whatever you put into it. Just remember to also log the transfer so your account balances stay accurate.

LogisticEarth posted:

This. Just let the money build up in the category, and don't log it as an outflow. If you ever need to withdraw money from it, you can enter a negative amount for the month, and it will add that money from the balance to your available cash. If you already have a chunk of change in the money market account, the first month's "input" into the account should be the balance of it. So Month 1 might have $10,000 or whatever as inflow, but Month 2 (and each going forward) will have $200, or whatever you put into it. Just remember to also log the transfer so your account balances stay accurate.

Veskit posted:

Is that your emergency savings on top of having all your bills covered for the foreseeable future? This is just nitpicky because that's a good amount of savings, but I would try and go 6 months out with that emergency savings and assign that money to future dollars. It can give you a more accurate view of what your money is going to be doing. This is "step 4" of the YNAB method.

quote:

IF you actually have gone 6 months out with the money, AND have that much in emergency money I'm guessing goons will have other ways for you to use that money besides have it sit there.

LogisticEarth posted:

What I do is charge whatever goes on the card to the Restaurants category. Then, I make a separate transaction for the cash, however instead of logging it as income, I log it as an inflow in Restaurants rather than an outflow. This has the benefit of not only keeping your actual spending in the category accurate, but also keeping your cash balance and card balances accurate too.

100 HOGS AGREE posted:

HonorableTB posted:

Is it normal to be overbudgeted when you don't have your second check yet? I feel like I'm falling into a trap of only budgeting what I have, right that second, to the point where I don't want to allocate budgets to things I know I'll be able to fulfill in two weeks.

Edit: The savings categories are exactly what I'm hesitant about

Shadowhand00 posted:

Are anyone else's files for YNAB getting huge on dropbox?

Handsome Ralph posted:

I've got a budget newb question. Say I budget 40 dollars a month to some form of discretionary spending, if I don't end up using all 40 dollars for that "job", what do I do with the surplus? Send it over to another "job" (savings or something)?

drat IT posted:

I agree that it's worth having a separate cash account to track what is in your wallet. I enter all cash transactions rounded up to a whole dollar amount and don't bother tracking loose change. Simple and easy to reconcile.

Dango Bango posted:

I'm trying to figure out the best way to handle my tax return and work bonus, which I got within the last two weeks. I used my return to do the old rule 4, but there's still "leftover" money. Do you guys tend to budget ahead so you're two months instead of one? Or just dump it all into emergency/rainy day funds?

After typing this out, I'm realizing it shouldn't matter. I basically just want to make sure it's not there to burn a hole in my pocket.

SaltLick posted:

I'm still using YNAB 4 but is there a way to send the rest of available monies to the next month? I know that it does it automatically but I'd like that "Available to Budget" to read zero.

IllegallySober posted:

I am also still on YNAB4. No reason to fix what isn't broken.

Defenestration posted:

Buh? My Amazon card just kicks out $$ credits toward my balance on Amazon.

Then I just buy stuff with the credit and it never hits my statement or ynab. Love that easy to use free money.

FateFree posted:

Is anyone able to move money around via the YNAB mobile app? It looks like I can enter the transaction from one category to another, but nothing ever happens afterwards.