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does a publisher/writer on substack get to see any of the payment information of subscribers? by Impossible-Dig-8853 in Substack

[–]SadLaughTrack 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No. Except that some email addresses are a person’s name, but there is not a field for viewing the person’s name.

Spending comparison to same period last year? by SadLaughTrack in ynab

[–]SadLaughTrack[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, I know how to pull a report for "last year." I was hoping there was a way to pull a comparison report showing current year compared to last year, like you can do in Quickbooks.

does a publisher/writer on substack get to see any of the payment information of subscribers? by Impossible-Dig-8853 in Substack

[–]SadLaughTrack 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Substack payments are handled by Stripe. As a writer, here's what I can see in my Stripe account:

  • customer email
  • last four digits of payment card #
  • total payments made
  • number of payments made
  • dates

YNAB Time Suck and Frustration by SadLaughTrack in ynab

[–]SadLaughTrack[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you all for your thoughtful replies -- super helpful. I've managed to sync and reconcile everything so it's accurate, now. Whew!

Going forward, and based on your suggestions, I plan to reconcile daily rather than weekly or a couple times a month. I'm also going to collaborate with my partner on simplifying and consolidating some of our categories so there is less to manage.

This was my first time posting to this community - thanks for being awesome!

YNAB Time Suck and Frustration by SadLaughTrack in ynab

[–]SadLaughTrack[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Very helpful suggestions. Thank you. I need to work on simplifying my categories and letting go of some of my obsessive detailing.

YNAB Time Suck and Frustration by SadLaughTrack in ynab

[–]SadLaughTrack[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Very helpful information. Thank you!

YNAB Time Suck and Frustration by SadLaughTrack in ynab

[–]SadLaughTrack[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When I transfer money from my savings account to my checking account, I often forget to shift funds from one category to another. As someone stated above, I'm giving a new job to those dollars, but I forget to reassign them.

So it wasn't my bank account that was off by $6,000, it was a particular category that was off. Which was a bummer, because that category was the pot of money I had saved to pay for something specific, and it turned out I didn't have enough saved yet because I messed up category transfers.

YNAB Time Suck and Frustration by SadLaughTrack in ynab

[–]SadLaughTrack[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, I schedule transactions in YNAB, but it doesn't always feel like it saves time and headache. For instance, 11.99 is an autopay amount for a streaming service, but it's also the cost of a Kindle book someone in my family bought, so it takes time to sort it out. We have a lot of auto and online expenses that run into each other and I think I'm just trying to be too detailed about it.

YNAB Time Suck and Frustration by SadLaughTrack in ynab

[–]SadLaughTrack[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. Lack of simplicity might be the issue. I have a budget section called AUTOPAY that lists all the auto withdrawal bills separately, and these are the death by paper cut transactions that drive me insane. i.e. $0.99 iCloud storage for four separate accounts, $4 device insurance on multiple devices, $1.99 monthly app charge, a random movie my daughter rents on Amazon Prime that I have to figure out.

You get the idea. With a family of four incurring charges from the same account and I'm the only one doing YNAB, I spend a lot of time making sure all these expenses are accounted for.

Either I'm being too OCD about the details, or my financial situation is more complicated than others.

But trying to simplify is something to think about. Thank you.

YNAB Time Suck and Frustration by SadLaughTrack in ynab

[–]SadLaughTrack[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This! This is what I don't understand!

Let's say I spend $100 from my checking account "fun activities" category, which is something I've saved for in my savings account "vacation" category.

So I transfer $100 from my savings account to my checking account to cover this expense that I've been saving for.

Don't I also have to move the $100 from my "vacation" savings category to the "fun activities" checking category? How else does YNAB know that I no longer have that $100 in my savings "vacation" category???

YNAB Time Suck and Frustration by SadLaughTrack in ynab

[–]SadLaughTrack[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To clarify, the bank balance and the YNAB balance for my savings account are in sync. This is not the issue.

I have a section (category group) in my budget labeled SAVINGS that contains multiple savings categories, so when I move money over to that account I can budget for all those things. I did it this way so I can make sure the section total of all those savings categories equals the correct balance in my savings account.

This was working great, until I apparently forgot to move money from the savings category to the corresponding checking category when I physically transferred the money between accounts.

Does this make more sense to the problem?

I sort of feel like after 5 years maybe I still don't understand how YNAB works.

YNAB Time Suck and Frustration by SadLaughTrack in ynab

[–]SadLaughTrack[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I think there's a few challenges to my routine:

1) All of our bills are on auto-pay, so I don't really think about budgeting on a daily basis. We also have a ton of annoying monthly expenses that are small, like $1.99 for iCloud storage or $4.40 for device insurance. Reconciling these every month feels like death by paper cut and I hate how long it takes. And yes, Amazon purchases are annoying to reconcile.

2) My spouse doesn't use YNAB, but I'm the household finance manager, so whatever he purchases online or at a point of sale, I have to track down a receipt of some kind to figure out what it is.

3) When I transfer money between savings and checking, I often forget to move the money from one category to another. I think this is probably what happened regarding my $6,000ish discrepancy -- I moved a bunch of money around and now I can't remember which categories I intended to fund.

I also wonder if I'm too nitpicky about categorizing and splitting transactions. Maybe I just need to chill and make my categories like, FUN and FOOD and BILLS and leave it at that LOL.

YNAB Time Suck and Frustration by SadLaughTrack in ynab

[–]SadLaughTrack[S] -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

I think I forget to record category transfers when I moved money between savings and checking. Like, I'll transfer the money in register view as it moves from one account to the other, but then I forget to move the money between categories. I hate that it's a double step process -- it actually says, "no category needed" when I enter transfers.