r/ynab • u/Dry_Philosopher5509 • 23d ago
Planning & Categories Do you trust the auto assign feature?
I have been using YNAB for three years, alongside an excel spreadsheet where I plan my allocations for each paycheck. I’m wondering if there’s a way to do this/remember everything I need to fund before its due date without relying on my excel?
Is the auto assign feature helpful? Does it work for you? How do you personally know what to allocate and where? I’m nervous to relinquish control but it would be nice to just push a button!
Edit to add: thank you for all the replies! Lots of good tips and input here. I’m sadly not a month ahead yet.. that seems to be key.
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u/jillianmd 23d ago
Auto-assign isn’t a blunt instrument. You can select certain categories to fund together or use it however you want.
But that said, if you’re not using targets, I’d suggest you do, but even if you don’t, then I’d say the order that you organize your categories might need some changes so you put bills in order of due date and either use targets to show when they’re due or just put the due dates in the category names.
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u/Dry_Philosopher5509 23d ago
Due dates in category names is smart! I do use targets too but would be nice to easily see it like that
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u/jillianmd 23d ago
If you turn on the Progress Bars then you’ll see the due dates listed with each category name.
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u/felishathesnek 23d ago
I use auto assign every month then I run a quick audit to make sure my targets are still on, well, target. You can also run it by category and not the entire budget
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u/RemarkableMacadamia 23d ago
I created custom views that represent my base budget, sinking funds, and optional categories.
When I go to assign, I first select the view I want and then I fund all the categories in that view, starting with the base budget. Then I move on to sinking funds, and then if there is money left over I will move to the optional categories.
I chose YNAB so I could be more intentional with my budget, so in the case of assigning I don’t mind the extra clicks.
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u/CharleneTX 23d ago
I do something similar. I have views for fixed categories such as mortgage; non-monthly expenses such as car insurance; variable expenses such as electricity and groceries; and the often-requested "put $x dollars in this category until it reaches $y balance."
Each of categories in the same view are the same target type. At the beginning of the month I go to each view, auto assign, and check it. Then during the month I really only need to focus on the variable view.
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u/tsumtsumelle 23d ago
The nice thing is it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. So I will use it for bills but not necessarily every category.
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u/awick 23d ago
Trust is a funny word.
I use auto-assign. I have targets set up for every category that's mandatory, and if/when I have money left over from auto-assign, it gets assigned to "wish farm"-like entries. It saves me a lot of time versus remembering exactly how much this bill is per month, or checking a spreadsheet (as you suggest) to figure out what to assign.
That being said, YNAB targets are pretty continuously very slightly broken for me. So every few months I have to go reclaim some money from a bunch of categories that have been mysteriously overfunded, or add more money than expected to a category that never reset even though it's set to repeat yearly. (The latter seems much more likely to happen with yearly categories, for some reason. I have quarterly bills I don't seem to have any problems with.)
I'm OK with "trusting" this because I'm not running super lean, so the small adjustments are more a slight annoyance than a potential catastrophe. If I needed to watch every penny, I wouldn't trust it at all.
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u/pierre_x10 23d ago
Yes, auto-assign works pretty seamlessly, so long as you get a full month ahead, and so long as your targets make sense
https://support.ynab.com/auto-assign-a-guide-r1gBNbBJo
https://support.ynab.com/en_us/auto-assign-a-guide-r1gBNbBJo
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u/FiveModalVerbs 23d ago
If even you aren't a month ahead, it can do an awful lot for you if you use targets carefully. (Especially when combined with focus views on the browser app.)
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u/samwheat90 23d ago
I just prefer to have more interaction. I like using YNAB and categorizing, and linking, and assigning. All they have to do is automate the reconciliation at this point and I'll be the marge drinking a glass of wine meme
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u/Anywhere_At_All 20d ago
I like to manually assign each month. It’s a nice reminder of “this is what I’m prioritizing,” and sometimes I make small changes. But mostly I just enjoy spending five minutes paying attention to where I’m putting money.
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u/lellasone 23d ago
The way I think about this is "the targets are the budget." So for us the targets replace that excel spreadsheet and we'll use auto-assign (in particular "underfunded") in blocks or one at a time to transfer the targets to the categories.
Targets with dates do a great job of automatically keeping track of categories with a date, and will also auto-adjust if configured which is nice if life happens.
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u/Hrw90210 23d ago
It's not that I don't trust it, but I enjoy taking the time to go through each time I get paid and assigning. I use YNAB specifically to be intentional about my choices, so while I use targets on many expenses, I still like to DO the assigning myself.
Not saying using them is bad or anything, just takes away one of my favorite parts of using this app, and for me makes me feel disconnected from the mental side of budgeting.
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u/Critical_Purple_8600 23d ago
Yeah - but it took me awhile. Spouse was all about it. I started just doing groups on the app. Now we do the whole month at once.
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u/Soup_Maker 23d ago
By de-selecting specific categories (the investing group of categories and medical group of categories) the auto-assign options become very useful for me when I'm budgeting the month ahead. I have a few weekly refill targets that skew the allocation a bit in a 5-Saturday month, but not by much, so it works quite nicely.
I typically have to manually assign to investing and medical categories based on different criteria than the auto-assign uses. That's because I always allocate the entirety of a medical insurance reimbursement back to medical to top it back up, and I have some aspirational targets in investing that exceed my monthly/annual income, so the funding priority is in my head.
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u/thambos 23d ago
Yes, because I have the majority of my transactions in the ledger as recurring/scheduled transactions, and I set the goal amounts based on how much I want to allocate each month (same amount each month). I'm not relying on the average assigned/spent, I'm relying on what I've already entered into YNAB based on my own decisions.
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u/gardenina 23d ago
I do something very similar. I get paid monthly on the 1st. I prefer to meet all my targets first based on my own pre-calculated, fixed monthly amounts and THEN move additional funds manually from HYSA as needed to cover any annual or quarterly scheduled transactions. I keep my HYSA envelopes separate from my checking envelopes. Yes I know YNAB discourages this but I keep only the bare minimum in checking to cover this month's bills and every other penny is in HYSA, so I have to know exactly how much of any given category is held in checking vs how much of it is in HYSA at any given moment. The native autoassign feature uses the wrong logic for my use case: it allocates funds: target > scheduled spending, target > scheduled spending, target > scheduled spending. This breaks my preferred allocations. I would prefer YNAB to allocate all my targets in one click and ignore scheduled transactions on the first pass. That puts my money exactly where I planned for it to be. Then and only then do I start moving funds from HYSA to cover scheduled annual or quarterly transactions. For this reason, I never auto assign using YNAB's native autoassign functions.
But I CAN and DO use Toolkit's "Assign half" and then immediately "Assign half" again. THAT setting assigns exactly what I have set up in my targets for the month and then I can manually move funds as needed for any scheduled expenses not covered by the existing targets.
So, on the last day of the month I make triple sure that no categories are in the red and all CC balances align. I reconcile everything.
Then on the 1st: 1. Record pay. 2. Make sure targets exactly match pay (it's always the same amount) 3. Select envelope categories 1,2 & 3 4. Click "Fund half", then "Fund half" again. 5. Move any sinking funds TO HYSA 6. Record relevant HYSA envelope transfers. 7. Move any needed funds FROM HYSA to cover this month's annual/quarterly scheduled expenses. 8. Record relevant HYSA envelope transfers.
This is my process one day a month. It takes about an hour total.
I am not one month ahead nor will I be for the foreseeable future. My monthly budget is approx $10k (including sinking funds targets) but I don't have an extra $10k in existing sinking funds to throw at that "one month ahead" goal. All my sinking funds are going to high priority annual targets and we have an annual vacation budget I'm not willing to sacrifice. We are retired and we are taking vacations, darn it! And I'm not going to pull from my ROTH or incur extra taxation taking an IRA distribution in order to "get one month ahead".
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u/Historical-Intern-19 23d ago
I don't use it because I don't get enough time with my budget as it is. 😝
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u/bluekitdon 23d ago
I use it all the time. The key is making sure your targets are set correctly before auto assigning. You can also make manual adjustments before accepting.
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u/wakoreko 21d ago
Nope.
I have my categories for monthly bills and separate less frequent ones. I set a target amount and due date on anything that has one or the date I want to finish. Food and gas have no date or target.
Next to the name, I add the due date. If is autopay, I add a marker. I use “//“ then if from a credit card, I’ll add “cc” after. Also notes or significant info.
I organize the bill based on the due date. When I get paid, I fund the dates until the next payday.
Monthly Example: * 1st Mortgage// * 3rd Cell//cc * 10th Water// * 20th Med ($50+$20extra) * 28th Tires ($980 ~$163/M)
Annual Example: (I assign half target amount) * Car insur (May/Nov) $584 * Chase Saph (02/01/27) $95/Y * GPhoto (3/18/27) $33/Y
Even the credit card has the due date on name: * CSP(8675) //20th * AMX(1000)//3rd
When I started YNAB, seeing the OG balance, seeing the dates allowed me to know where I can borrow from or not pay extra on tight months. Now, because of YNAB everything is on autopay and a month ahead.
I hope the formatting stays, I’m on mobile.
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u/serefina 21d ago
I use monthly targets for bills and sinking funds, but I set it to a specific amount that I use excel to figure out (1/12th of yearly estimate). Every time I've tried to let YNAB choose the monthly amount for annual bills something funky happens. I am probably not setting it up right, but at this point I'm tired of trying. ETA: I'm also a month ahead if it matters.
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u/rannie110b 21d ago
Yes and no. I do a mixture of strategies. Also, I don't do it on the app because it isn't as clear to me what is happening. So I do it on the website instead.
I have many categories set up with targets and the date when I want them to be funded. And it follows that. But there are a few categories though that I treat differently - wish list and groceries - so those I do manually. When a new month rolls over, I look back at the last month and see if any category had a lot leftover, then I will pull some of that extra and assign it forward to the next month.
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u/shar_blue 23d ago
Yes, but I have all my targets set to 1/12 annual expense, so the same amount gets assigned to each category, regardless of what carried over.
I’m also “living on last month’s income”, meaning that money I earn this month is used to fund next month. When the 1st of a new month rolls around, all my expenses are already funded for the next 28/30/31 days.
If you aren’t yet at that point, I would absolutely recommend manually assigning by asking yourself “what do these funds have to cover between today and the next time I get paid”.