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Elizabeth Starr Harden, LLC

personal money coach

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Getting Off the Float – YNAB Tutorial

So you've discovered that you're riding a credit card float. Sure, it's a bummer but it's not all bad news. In fact, to point out the obvious: the only thing that has changed is your level of awareness. Before: I pay my credit card(s) in full every month and never incur interest charges or fees. What could possibly go wrong? Now: Ack! I'm borrowing against my next paycheck to pay for current expenses. Awareness, my friends, is half the battle. The next step is to get off the credit card float. The following tutorial details exactly how to set up your accounts and the steps to follow each month until you get off the float. This tutorial is for users of the new You Need A Budget (YNAB) web-based subscription software (sometimes referred to as nYNAB). I'll be following up with a tutorial for YNAB4 users soon. The idea is the same but the setup is different. Let me know if you have questions. If this tutorial is helpful, a kind word in the comments would not go amiss. Float Loan … [Read more...]

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FAQ: YNAB Transfers and categorizing savings

I received an email this weekend asking a very common question about handling transfers in YNAB. The question is so common, I decided to post my response publicly. Perhaps others will find it helpful. Q: What is the reason to not categorize transfers? We want to transfer money to savings accounts and track balances through YNAB...what are we missing? A: It all comes down two things: 1) money is fungible; and 2) it's the Category balances, not the Account balances, that determine the purpose or intention of each pile of money. Fungible means that the electronic representation of $1 in an online savings account spends the same as and/or has equal value to a $1 paper check and the 4 quarters in the cup holder in your car. A dollar is a dollar is a dollar. Your account balances merely tell you how many dollars you have and where they are physically located. Your categories are how you allocate and differentiate your intention for each dollar you have. Your intention for a … [Read more...]

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Decoding YNAB’s Account Type options

How about a little decoding fun? One of the first tasks you'll tackle when setting up your YNAB budget is setting up your Accounts. The first couple of Accounts everyone enters are usually very basic and relatively self-explanatory: checking, savings, credit cards, cash. We're all familiar with these types of accounts and matching our physical accounts with YNAB's account types is fairly straightforward. But what happens when we have an account that isn't so straightforward? What if we want to think outside the box a little or bend best practices to better fit our own personal circumstances? For those of you who, like me, are unapologetic boundary-pushers, I'm here to help you decode the logic/programming behind YNAB's dropdown box. First step: let's deconstruct exactly what is happening in these last three fields. Account Type is a dropdown list of 11 account type options. Shhh, don't tell YNAB that I told you but these are really just placeholders. They are a beautiful … [Read more...]

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YNAB: Can I Change the Month Start Date to Match My Pay Schedule or My Bill Schedule?

One of the most frequently raised issues among new YNABsters is the monthly layout of the YNAB Budget screen. Perhaps you're paid once a month on the 15th and you want your "month" to run from the 15th of one month to the 14th of the next. Or it could be you're paid every two weeks and you want the "month" time blocks to be "two week" blocks instead. Or maybe you're struggling because you have big payments due early in the month so you pay them in the previous month and it's confusing to budget this month's income to pay next month's expenses and you just wish you could adjust the dates on the budget months for goodness sake! The range of situations and resulting requests seems infinite. The answer to every single permutation of this can I change the start date question is a simple, No. But before you throw your hands up in the air and abandon YNAB for not being flexible and bending to your needs, read through my tips below. Hopefully you'll start to understand why the monthly … [Read more...]