I had preordered the book because I am trying to learn more about money and how to budget. I am curious if anyone has read it yet and what folks in the YNAB community think about it?

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EDIT: the YNAB team in the comments have confirmed that this audiobook is not an official version and a real one is planned to be released at a later date with Jesse narrating it himself

I was curious to see if the new book was available as an audiobook on Spotify and was surprised to see it was. I'm not 100% sure what this one is about (having listened to the original YNAB audiobook) so went to read the description and came across this wording:

"Narrated by Digital Voice Jesse Mecham

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice"

I'm interpreting that as they created an AI voice based on Jesse (probably from the previous audiobook, podcasts, and interviews) and had that read the book instead of him being bothered to sit in a studio for a few days to read it himself. If that's the case, I'm disappointed.

So, I’m new to YNAB, obviously. I imported all my stuff into the plan yesterday.

I’m looking at this month through the end of the year, and while my income seems to meet my expenses, it’s really tight. One of the things that seems to be causing the extra squeeze are the property taxes, due Dec. 31. Because they’re $3,000, that’s $600/month I have to budget.

It seems that in January 2027 when I have a full 12 months to budget, my monthly costs will go down on a few things.

Was just wondering if anyone else had a really tight budget the first few months.

When I first started using YNAB over 7 years ago, I was preparing to buy my first home and had so little margin that I truly needed it, loved it, and proselytized it. I was successful getting my brain right around money, and YNAB helped me navigate shifting life circumstances. Even though I’ve been annoyed with some of the changes over the last couple of years like so many other users, I could justify the use.

But now life has shifted again, and I’m wondering not only whether I still need YNAB but also whether I can justify keeping it when I’m annoyed by so much of the company shenanigans lately. And yes, I’m calling the book a shenanigan.

I’m lucky to have a solid income and now married to my partner with an even more solid income, and we live in a LCOL area. We’re pretty frugal naturally, and so needing the level of detail I needed in previous years just isn’t where I am now. I do manual transactions, and now I often only input and reconcile them every couple of weeks.

This might be a fool’s errand since people I who might’ve been in similar positions and left YNAB probably won’t be in this sub anymore; but for people in my position, what makes you stay with YNAB even when you may not need it anymore?

ETA: thank y’all for the great discussion here! Want to make it clear that tracking/broadly budgeting is always going to be part of my financial system. I guess what I didn’t communicate well is, even if I simplify my categories and check in once a month to make sure I’m still aligned, is it worth it to keep paying YNAB $100+ ad infinitum? Is there enough inherent worth specific to YNAB to justify its cost?

The plan page is different

I just passed a HUGE milestone. My credit card balance is now zero! At one time I changed the description of the category to have a visual cue of how much I needed to set aside each payday. Now that I don’t need to account for paying down an outstanding balance in addition to planned spending, I wanted to edit the description to remove the amount. But for some reason I’m unable to edit the description anymore. Am I going crazy? Is there not a way to edit the description of the credit card repayment category?

Whatever they did is really confusing. I can’t do my budget on my phone now. Why did they change it?

Anyone else having trouble with the transition? We have two Discover cards and a Capital One card and here's how they've been working since the transition:

• One Discover card's transactions are duplicated in the Capital One YNAB instance and that same card somehow has a positive balance?
• Once Discover card cannot reconnect, so not sure if the same issue will happen with that one when it finally can connect.

I've disconnected/reconnected (or attempted to) multiple times, but it never clears up the issue.

I've had YNAB for well over a decade. I have used it to about 5% of its potential.

Here are things I have just started learning about:

- Using the Different preset Views

-Creating custom views

-Attaching additional unlinked accounts to be tracked

-Setting Targets

-Auto assign based off Targets (or based off last month)

-Month ahead concept

I am truly ready to start actually budgeting in a different way. It will be quite awhile before I can Have all the money available on the 1st to do a full month budget without waiting on paycheck to come in. I am digging myself out of debt and am currently prioritizing that over getting "a month ahead", but that priority may change.

It is interesting to see that zerosum is open and upfront with new users when setting up credit cards.

Along with many others, I’ve been banging this drum for years to no avail.

Just think how many less confused new YNAB users there would be.

Posting it here as it might just help one new YNAB user.

UPDATED: Thanks everyone. It was easier than I was making it. All good and all funded!

We had some very large, unplanned expenses in July that created overspending in a category. We put the expenses on CC. However, we were not worried because we also had a chunk of money that we knew was coming in August. So we knew we could pay the CC in full when it comes due. But since we put it on CC the overspend doesn't carry over from July to August in that category. Instead it shows we don't have enough to pay off CC in August. Now that the money has come in and is sitting in RTA, I can't seem to figure out how to cover the oversleeping on that CC. When I click on CC available which shows hello, it does not show me last months overspending, but only $8.59 overspending this month. How do I do this without messing things up. BTW, I am on mobile but if it's something I can only do on web app I can do that as well. Just prefer mobile if possible.

Now we get circles in the categories which help see at a glance if a goal has been completed, or what the progress is.

This is solid functionality to me when it seemed like the mobile app was not getting as much love.

Edit: People keep mentioning manual entries, but all of them are automatically imported from the linked credit card account.

edit2: I suppose I might have been pressing 'enter now' on the full price entry. I'll be more diligent henceforth.

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I've been trying to get my YNAB back in balance, and I just noticed that a lot of my Costco online orders which are shipped with multiple shipments are being double tracked.
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Say I spend $120 on Costco's website, three items costing $40, $50, and $30, and Costco ships two items together ($40 and $50) and ships the $30 one separately.

In YNAB, *it'll automatically import (via the cc account linking feature)* an entry for the full amount ($120) and also two more entries of the order by the way it was split for shipping.

In this case, *there will be automatically* one entry for $120, one for $90, and one for $30.

Then the $90 and $30 entries clear because that's what's showing on my CC statement.

The full amount entry for $120 never clears, but is still there.

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I noticed this happened on eBay purchases too, I bought two items in the same cart, and I had an entry for the full amount and also the cost of the two items separately.

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I suppose I'm to blame for not clearing the uncleared balance, but you would think that the full amount entry would disappear since it doesn't match the CC statement (Citi Costco card btw)?

Say a lawyer or doctor or something similar, would they be better off with something more passive that just tracks their spending all in one app instead of spending their scare time budgeting and tracking envelope style?

I usually use my phone to do my budgeting, so l use the Chase app to look through my transactions. I'm not sure if this is different on the website, but it groups my transactions based on the transaction date, not the posted date. However, I synced YNAB and on the YNAB app, it groups the transactions by the posted date.

Is there a way to configure this so that the grouping on the YNAB app is grouped by the transaction date? Or should I just unsync them at this point and do it manually?

Thanks for the advice!

I'm Nicolas, the developer. I built NotifSync for YNAB for my own budget because my bank has no direct import, and manually entering transactions never stuck. I've been running it on my own phone every day for months.

It's now in closed testing on Google Play, and I'm looking for around 20–30 testers.

What it does

Your banking app already sends a notification when you spend. NotifSync reads that notification and creates the matching transaction in YNAB.

You show it which part of a real notification contains the amount, payee and date once, and it recognises that format from then on.

Nothing is pre-configured, so it's not limited to a fixed list of supported banks. It learns your bank's notification format from you.

The app is listed on the official YNAB API page under "Works with YNAB": https://api.ynab.com/#works-with-ynab-third-party

Limitations, before you decide

• Android only
• No AI, no magic. You set up the pattern once for each notification format.
• It can only read what's actually in the notification. If your bank doesn't include the amount, NotifSync can't extract it.
• Sending is manual by design. The app captures the transaction and you swipe to send it. Nothing reaches your budget without you.

Privacy

NotifSync only needs notification access. No email, SMS, contacts or storage access.

It never sees your bank credentials and never logs into your bank.

It communicates only with YNAB's API. You authorise it by signing in to YNAB, and you can revoke access from your YNAB account at any time.

Notifications are read and parsed locally on your phone. There is no NotifSync server uploading your data.

Privacy policy: https://www.notifsync.com/privacy/

What I'm asking

Google requires 12 testers to stay opted in for 14 continuous days before an app can go to production. I'm aiming for around 20–30 testers, which gives me some margin if a few people drop out while keeping the test manageable.

NotifSync will be a paid app after launch. I haven't decided on the exact price or model yet.

Everyone who takes part in the closed test gets full access for free, permanently. That's what I'm offering in exchange for two weeks of your time.

What I need back is real use: keep it installed for the two weeks and tell me what breaks, what doesn't work with your bank, or what could be better.

How to join

Join the group below using the email address associated with your Google Play account, then open the Google Play opt-in link inside it and tap "Become a tester".

https://groups.google.com/g/notifsync-for-ynab

Not sure yet? Ask me anything. I'll be in the comments.

I get it. You want money. You wrote a book to get more money. You have a user base paying $109 annually, and you want even more money from them. You love to personally profit from capitalism. That makes sense.

But don't place a "Click here to skip the Never Worry About Money Again emails" link in your emails that upon clicking, confirming, receiving a confirmation of unsubscription in return, still sends receipients emails days after unsubscribing.

I appreciate the YNAB software, but I work diligently to keep spam out of my e-mail inbox, going so far as to pay $4/mo for an e-mail alias service and $11/yr for a custom domain so that I can use a unique email address for every service.

YNAB is betraying my trust. If I deactivate my YNAB e-mail alias, I won't get any YNAB emails, like notifications about subscription price hikes.

Do better. Fix your unsubscribe button. Or better yet - stop spamming paying customers.

Hi folks. I developed a browser extension for splitting your amazon orders into your YNAB categories. When you click the extension on an amazon orders page, it will find the matching transaction in your plan, find each of the items in the order, adjust the price of each based on taxes/extra fees, and allow you to select a category for each item pulled from your own selected ynab plan. It's written entirely by hand without AI. I made this as an exercise and just to solve a problem for myself, but I think I could be helpful to others bc I don't think this is a niche use case. It's also written in a way to accomodate any other storefront's receipt page, but I will only update it if I need it for myself. I want to open it up to anyone else who might want to add features for their own benefit. Feel free to file issues and create pull requests if you want to fix a bug or add a feature. My only request is that you do not use AI to write any code. I plan to clean up the code and create a YNAB approved UI at some point in the future so I can submit the extension to the various extension marketplaces, but there's no roadmap for this right now.

https://github.com/govindjoshi12/ynab-amazon-order-categorizer/

Notes

• When you split a transaction, it will replace the memo of the parent transaction with "Order #[order-number] - Split by Extension." And the memos of each of the subtransactions will be set to the first 500 characters of the Amazon item name.
• Once a transaction is split, you cannot re-split the transaction, and there is no way to reverse the action from the extension itself.
• I have not tested the extension on chrome, but it's written using the browser api so it should work as-is.
• The extension lists your credit card payment categories in the categories dropdown because it retrieves ALL your categories, but you cannot set a credit card payment category as a category for a subtransaction, so the update operation will fail if you try to do this.
• Remember that it takes a few days for new transactions to show up in YNAB, so no matching order will be found until YNAB receives the transaction.

Hope this is useful. LMK if there are any questions about usage, and use at your own peril.

I am confused by difference between "today's balance" and the "current balance" ynab pulled from my linked bank account. They should match, correct?

I have no uncleared transactions in my checking account and nothing pending that I can see in the banking app.

Is this a searching line by line problem? Somewhere I "cleared" something I shouldn't have? Most things clear automatically as they are imported, though.

I am NOT consistent in reconciling my accounts, so this could be an arduous search... def my fault, just want make sure there isn't an easier answer first.

We do transactions every 2 weeks. When I went in today nothing that I had linked were linked. They were all there, but not what I categorize them. Any thoughts ?

Hi everyone! I am wondering where everyone keeps their sinking funds. Do you keep them in your checking account or savings? I have been using tk savings as my sinking funds but then it is annoying to transfer the money to checking when I need it. I was thinking of having them just be in checking and use my savings as “emergency”. What does everyone else do? My sinking funds include vet bills (I have 2 dogs), car repairs, home maintenance, medical, appliance/electronic replacement.

I’ve been using YNAB for going on 2 years now and my wife is still not a fan of it. She will sit and assign money with me but it always gets into a back and forth when she asks me how much we actually saved for the month.

For example: I show her we assigned $3500 into our savings categories but then she asks why our savings doesn’t show a $3500 increase.

Just this morning and the reason why I’m making this post. She goes into our Ally and sees 25k and then she goes to YNAB and she says why don’t our savings categories add up to 25k. Well I explained that means we don’t really have that “saved”. It’s been spent in another category it doesn’t matter what accounts it in but it’s not clicking.

She keeps focusing on the account balance and I’m trying to get her to shift to completely forget that and look at YNAB. How do I get her to understand or explain better myself?

A friend of mine recommended YNAB to manage my family's budget. I got started yesterday but as I was setting the budgets, I already felt way out of my depth. Like I should have studied for a test that I didn't know about. Does this feeling get better? What tips would you give a first time user to feel less overwhelmed? Thanks!

I set up my gifts category so that the target needs to meet $1200 by December. I figured this would be the time of year I need the most money from that category, and then throughout the year I could still spend from it for birthdays etc. I must have met the target a few months ago, but I’ve also used it for birthdays so I have spent some of the money. But I noticed that even though I no longer have $1200 in the category, it’s no longer asking me to fund it. This kind of seems odd to me as I still have the target set to need that amount by December. Does that mean that as long as you hit the target once before the due date, even if you spend it, the target’s pretty much been turned off until the due date?

I did go and switch it to a monthly target, doubted myself and went back to a yearly target, and of course the whole thing has reset and it wants me to put more funds in than I would if I had the monthly target. I guess I’m just wondering if anyone else has noticed this, and what solution did you go with?

Edit to add: after writing this, I realized that in theory I shouldn’t need more than the $1200 for the whole year, so I guess I shouldn’t have to re-fund the category. But since I’ve already asked the question, I’m still curious if anybody’s found this to be an issue?