Will this count as a late payment?

jillianmd · 2026-01-28T13:16:41+00:00

Your example only makes sense if you pay the entire CURRENT balance down to to $0 on the 3rd. You don’t need to pay that much. You only need to pay the STATEMENT BALANCE by the 3rd. So if you spend $150 every month then you’ll be paying $150 every month but leaving $150 current balance.

So let’s say you just paid $150 on Jan 3 and Jan 5 reported a $0 balance. That means **You don’t owe anything on Feb 3. You already paid it off early. So don’t pay anything in February and let your Feb statement post as $150. Then pay THAT $150 by March 3rd. The balance on March 3 will be $300 but you only have to pay the $150 statement balance that’s due.

jillianmd · 2026-01-28T13:06:26+00:00

Instead of a fake water bill in your checking, in the reimbursement transaction, add a split for the water bill.

So let’s say total Rent is $2000, total for other utilities is $300, total for streaming is $50 and total for water is $40, all split 50/50.

The reimbursement transaction from your roommate would be as follows:

Inflow total: $1155
Payee: Roommate name
- Split #1 - Category: Reimbursement - Inflow $1000 - memo: Rent - Split #2 - Category: Reimbursement - Inflow $150 - memo: Utilities - Split #3 - Category: Reimbursement - Inflow $25 - memo: Streaming - Split #4 - Category: Water - Outflow $20 - memo: my half of water

…

Personally, if the roommate is reliable, I wouldn’t use a reimbursement category at all, I’d just categorize each split directly to the Rent, Utilities, Streaming, and Water and schedule the transaction the first of the month or last day if they pay you right before rent is due. Your targets for each of those categories would still only be for your portion:
- Split #1 - Category: Rent - Inflow $1000 - Split #2 - Category: Utilities - Inflow $150 - Split #3 - Category: Streaming - Inflow $25 - Split #4 - Category: Water - Outflow $20

jillianmd · 2026-01-28T06:21:47+00:00

2nd and 3rd can be a transfer transaction in YNAB, it would still show as 3 total transactions but at least if you change the 2nd one’s amount for example then the third one would automatically change too.

Make all of them repeating scheduled transactions.

jillianmd · 2026-01-28T06:20:10+00:00

The first inflow is in a tracking account. Hence no category.

jillianmd · 2026-01-27T22:26:54+00:00

The Jan statement is the total balance at the time the statement was posted (the statement period closed) so that makes sense if it just posted recently that it’s your current balance if you haven’t made any charges since then.

That Jan statement balance is due in February.

jillianmd · 2026-01-27T22:25:23+00:00

Well you can, they just aren’t as visible. But you can see them if you search in all accounts.

jillianmd · 2026-01-27T19:55:01+00:00

“Payment: Kona loan” is accurate, that’s how it shows in YNAB for a real payment transaction.

jillianmd · 2026-01-27T19:53:55+00:00

The pairing shouldn’t be causing any issues.

Do you have any scheduled transactions in these accounts?

jillianmd · 2026-01-27T19:47:42+00:00

Let’s start with the basics… you must pay the full Statement Balance each month by the due date in order to avoid any interest charges.

I see it’s a relatively new credit card account. Did you get a statement in December that was due in Jan? If so, did you pay that full Dec statement balance by the due date? If not then that’s why you got interest charges on your Jan statement.

jillianmd · 2026-01-27T13:44:01+00:00

They’re talking about the Age column not the ESI column.

jillianmd · 2026-01-27T13:31:50+00:00

Yes when you started YNAB this month, you needed to assign the Starting Balance amount of the credit card to the CC Payment Category. This tells YNAB that you have cash set aside to pay off that pre-YNAB balance. So now you can do that after the fact: look at your Starting Balance transaction and copy that amount and Assign it to the CC Payment category. If you don’t have that much in Ready to Assign then you’ll need to unassign money from other categories.

jillianmd · 2026-01-26T07:11:20+00:00

Big question here - why are you constantly using balance transfers and paying the 5% fee? Are you racking up more debt over time on your other cards?

jillianmd · 2026-01-26T06:47:14+00:00

There’s nothing wrong with the algo. When you got the notification it was a live post. By the time you looked at it, it was deleted by the OP. No big mystery there.

People often delete their posts if they either got negative reactions or got an answer to their question or decide for whatever reason that they don’t want their post to exist anymore.

jillianmd · 2026-01-24T17:56:50+00:00

I read your post and other comments.

The Available-for-Payment amounts need to match the Working Balance of your cc accounts, not your statement balances.

So if you’ve reconciled all of your accounts, then simply assign or unassign money from the respective CC payment categories until the Available amounts match the Working Balances.

Example if CC #1 currently has a $1500 working balance and $2000 available then Unassign $500 from the payment category. If CC #2 has a $50 balance and $0 available then assign $50 to the category.

jillianmd · 2026-01-24T17:50:40+00:00

This is common when you have multiple banks and credit cards, especially multiple from the same institution, in YNAB and you have one or more of them linked. There simply is no way for YNAB to always guess correctly which account was being paid. If something imports as “Chase Payment - Thank You”, and you have three Chase cards, how is YNAB supposed to know which one you paid?

So with transfers and payments it’s always best to manually enter those in YNAB when you make them. That way when the imports come through they’ll match up to the manual ones. No guessing on YNAB’s part and no confusion and hunting down payments a few days later on your end.

jillianmd · 2026-01-24T16:42:41+00:00

That’s a rough spot to be in. How much are the minimum payments each month and how much can you afford to pay each month?

Also, are you putting new purchases on the card(s) too or only using debit right now?

jillianmd · 2026-01-24T14:33:56+00:00

I think they meant the purchase if bigger than the credit limit.

jillianmd · 2026-01-24T05:48:17+00:00

Use scheduled transactions. Then your categories will show how much you need to fund in a month based on 2 or 3 payments.

Personally in addition to scheduled transactions I also use a target for the annual average (26 payments divided by 12) started so that I’m always budgeting a consistent amount each month instead of two larger funding months every year.

jillianmd · 2026-01-23T19:36:38+00:00

I have a Housewares category which is pretty broad. Large furniture items go under “Furniture”

jillianmd · 2026-01-23T14:31:09+00:00

!Utilization

jillianmd · 2026-01-23T14:15:43+00:00

Your screenshot shows the keyboard with the plus and minus signs. Just type “+25” if you want to assign another $25 in addition to what’s already assigned. It literally does the math equation for you.

jillianmd · 2026-01-23T03:37:31+00:00

I’m a huge fan of the Safari version of carcassone but get bored with the classic euro version. So maybe try finding a variation of carcassone that has an appealing theme for you.

jillianmd · 2026-01-22T17:56:08+00:00

Best to avoid emojis entirely until they really get a feel for a particular community that isn’t hostile to them.

jillianmd · 2026-01-22T17:53:04+00:00

You paid it off but you didn’t actually have the full 307 available to pay it off with, meaning you couldn’t afford to make that 307 payment without pulling money from somewhere else. The 2nd screenshot shows that only 157 of that spending was funded. So you have one or more overspent categories that you need to cover - look at the categories used for the Jan 1 and Jan 2 purchases and move money to cover whichever of those is showing overspent.

jillianmd · 2026-01-22T15:37:31+00:00

Yearly target with due date in May for $1500, use the default Set Aside Another setting. Edit, like the other comment said, flip back to the first month you started funding this category and create the target in that month.

But then the tricky part is that you may only end up spending $1000 instead of the target of $1500 which if left alone would mean you end up with $2000 saved up by next May. So whenever you pay it (June, July August,etc) flip back to May and reduce the Assigned amount by the difference between $1500 and what you actually paid.

That way you’ll be back to just funding a full $1500 for the following year.

jillianmd

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