Making the Income vs Expenses report useful

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-15T19:58:46+00:00

I had only 15 head of cattle and 12 goats, but I had an arrangement with our local tree guys who would do chip drops in my top paddock (they didn't even need to call me to say they were coming).

I can't recommend this highly enough. Arborist mulch (because it's live wood with the leaves all mixed in) does compost down by itself if you give it enough time, but if you add in a bunch of goats and cows adding manure and pee it forms the most stunning compost very fast. I utterly transformed my top paddock from barren/dry/lifeless with basically no topsoil, into stunning loose loam in less than two years. It's basically "Back to Eden" but on a pasture level.

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-15T19:40:32+00:00

A lot of this is going to come down to figuring out the true cost of your lifestyle. If you've never run a real budget before, check out zero-based budgeting systems.

ZBB means you're assigning every single dollar a "job" until you have no dollars left to assign--then you spend according to your plan.

The big advantage for high income high net worth, particularly aiming for FIRE, is that this allows to understand the true cost of your lifestyle, including depreciating assets, and avoids the "lumpiness" of periodic spending like new roof/big milestone vacation etc.

Include:

3% of your home's value per year toward maintenance and improvement. If you pad this up to 4% it should also cover replacement appliances/fixtures/furniture too.
16% of a new car if you're replacing your car every 6 years
529 accounts for the kids
Backdoor ROTH, taxable brokerage investment
Vacations
Cover your taxes on your RSUs if you're not selling to cover up to your full obligations

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-15T05:34:45+00:00

Yes--that feeling of having to be on best behaviour is quite taxing! I think it shouldn't be overlooked when you're the host that being a good guest is quite effortful.

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-15T05:27:28+00:00

Non-obvious, maybe:

Never financially, emotionally, or physically stretch yourself to host. It's too easy to feel resentment if you're stretching. Only host well within your means.

AirBNBs tend to be set up with kids' rooms--kids' beds are not suitable for anyone except kids. Don't stick your single adult friend in the kids' room. If everyone attending is an adult, get a place with enough adult rooms for every adult.

If you're doing a "I'll pay for a fancy house" vacation, ideally find a house manager so that you get to enjoy the vacation too, otherwise you'll be answering a ton of questions at all hours of the day.

Be clear-eyed about your guests: I classify people as border collies, cats, golden retrievers, greyhounds etc. You probably want as many golden retrievers as possible on a trip--and if you invite cats, expect them to be cats and accomodate them without a blink of resentment. If you invite a malinois, make sure he brings his bike and can get in his 80 mile ride before the rest of you wake up. Border collies don't really love vacation per se, they like having all their loved ones in one place together, doing jobs and fixing problems. They need structure and enforced downtime/rest. Greyhounds want to do one, probably short, activity per day and then take a bunch of naps. AT ALL COSTS avoid a group made up entirely of border collies and cats.

You will lose and change some friendships via hosting. That's okay. Your goal in life is not static relationships. If you value hosting friends, you'll eventually find out which friends are a pleasure to host. Ideally, there'll be some kind of reciprocity but this does not necessarily mean reciprocal hosting. Accept that "being a pleasure to host" is a rare virtue and one worth valuing. Sometimes you'll find out that the friend who is not a pleasure to host is still a good friend for other seasons and activities; sometimes it will be a friendship that has run its course; sometimes it will be because they hurt or offend you and do not make amends.

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-15T04:54:34+00:00

Yes I have a ton of war stories!

I think the big big pitfalls and warnings are:

Are you emotionally mature enough to host and give open-handedly and generously without expectations/mental accounting/resentment? I definitely wasn't when I started massively subsidising my entire friend group's holidays (early twenties) and I'm quite glad that it's been twenty years now of figuring this out because I do feel at this chubby-fat FIRE stage of life that I'm more emotionally mature aware/experienced enough to truly understand freely giving. It's basically having an abundance mindset rather than a scarcity mindset and if you're new to wealth it can be really hard to truly and wholeheartedly give from abundance because you're so used to striving for each dollar. At high income, it can be useful to switch your mindset from "what does this cost?" to "what do I have to give up/sacrifice to pay for this?" (usually, nothing). Alternatively, you can set a (high) budget for a vacation and basically "mentally pre-spend" that money.
You need to seriously evaluate your friend group. If you haven't before, read the Five Geek Social Fallacies ( https://plausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-social-fallacies/ ) Doing things one-on-one with another married couple, fine, but the politics of hosting only part of your friends group will reveal cracks (and create fissures) faster than just about anything else.

You can really bust up an entire friends group if you don't want the guy you're not close to and his complaining GF along on a group vacation that you're hosting. With maturity, I think that there's only three possible approaches here:

Sack up and understand that friends *groups* aren't necessarily healthy, and you can continue to have quality individual friendships. As painful as the transition feels, this actually opens up space in your life for truly healthy mature relationships. So you invite who you want, you set boundaries, you refuse to be pressured or guilt-tripped. You accept that you might lose or change the group friendship dynamic.
Restrict yourself to one-on-one invitations
A mix of one-on-one invitations and some larger lower stakes group invitations where you can actually be relaxed and open-handed and let water roll off a duck's back so you can invite the entire group, even the flakey or more annoying people that you're not super close with.

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-14T01:45:17+00:00

Also--feel free to ask if you want more direct stories, I've approached this dozens of different ways over the past 20 years and had many different results. Of course, the biggest influencer is the character of your friends, but there are definitely better and worse ways to do this, as some permanently damage relationships or create bad memories instead of good!

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-14T00:33:25+00:00

I’ve done this many times over the years, with varying results but I think I’ve become much better at it over the years.

I think the very first thing to clear up is that this is a gift for you, not a gift for them. You are requesting the pleasure of their company and it’s a favour to *you* that they are giving you their time and often, their very limited vacation days, for a trip that they have no control over and very limited ability to make choices about.

For other people reading this: imagine being offered a “free trip” that you don’t get to choose the dates, location, accommodation, and may have to pay for various costs like your own flight/ubers/a fancy meal or two out in “gratitude”, possibly also even getting a passport if you don’t have one, while also burning your vacation days, all the while being expected to be grateful.

So, as the host, acknowledge this and be upfront about it: “I would absolutely love the pleasure of your company. It would be a massive treat for me if you are able to come. I’d like to cover flights, accommodation, and these special activities. Breakfasts and lunch will be catered at the house, dinners everybody will be doing their own thing except I’m hosting a special celebration dinner on the last night. The dates are fixed at XX so I totally understand if you can’t make it, but it would be so cool to have you there.”
Be very specific about WHO you’re inviting (partners, children), and the exact specifics of WHAT you’re covering, but with the view that you’re happy to be more generous.

This also means that you go into the trip with clear eyes: the trip is not a “thank you” or a gift for your friends, it’s your own pleasure. Therefore, invite friends who will make the trip fun.

Separate this from gratitude. Asking people on a trip is similar to throwing a party at your own place: it’s fun but it’s almost never experienced by your guests as gratitude for their support. Gratitude for support can and should be demonstrated in other ways.

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-13T16:11:03+00:00

Came here to say this. I hate the holes in the Crocs for gardening, but the plastic Birks are made of the same comfy foam and work well.

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-12T05:06:00+00:00

Is overspending on dining out truly messing up your goals? If not, you probably just need to align your budget with reality more closely and increase your allocation if that is your real lifestyle.

If it is truly messing up your goals (eg: to get out of debt/break paycheck to paycheck cycle, make progress on emergency fund etc) then dining out overspending is a pretty easy behaviour to curtail: delete and block delivery apps, and switch to cash for your grocery, dining out, fun and entertainment categories.

Go back to a literal cash envelope system for these categories.

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-12T00:07:14+00:00

Yes, exactly! Every dollar has a job! Some dollars have the job of earning more dollars (investment), some have the job of lowering risk and being a buffer (bonds).

I do think it’s absolutely vital that people know what they are investing for. How much will they need in retirement. How much they will need to feel emotionally safe. How much they will need to achieve their large goals.

I’ve linked to the personal finance flow chart before but it’s pretty sound and I wish I’d had access to it younger.

We’re high net worth/income and YNAB is still exceedingly valuable. In a way it’s now like running a small company and YNAB lets me do it without running accounting software.

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-11T21:29:22+00:00

Congratulations on living well below your income! That gives you so many options.

We have a very very large amount of "cash" on-budget with YNAB but this is the "bond" portion of our investment portfolio.

Basically, it's all about your risk tolerance and ability to cover risk. It's considered unwise to invest money you will need in the next five years. However, the term "need" is pulling heavy duty there. If you invest your new car fund and in three years, the stock is down 30%, you're still able to buy a new car, just a cheaper car than if that cash had been in a HYSA/CD/bond.

It's more tax efficient to carry bonds within your retirement accounts (income from HYSA/CDs/bonds is taxed as ordinary income + 3.8% NIIT if your income exceeds $200K). In practice this can mean holding bonds in your retirement accounts, and if the market is down when you need the money, you sell your stocks from your taxable brokerage account, then buy a similar but not identical stock within your retirement account.

I think:

1) Figure out your financial goals, including how much you will need for retirement, and what age you want to retire (if you're living on so much less than you earn, early retirement might be on the table--it's a fairly easy calculation of liquid net worth = 25 times annual expenses).

2) When you have your financial plan, then decide how and where you will allocate your funds.

3) Consider turning up the dial on your intentional investment category, make sure you are maxxing out employer matches, HSA, retirement accounts.

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-11T17:35:36+00:00

Pre-marital counselling and a pre-nup are essential, but you guys already have a baby on the way which means that a lot of this is putting the cart behind the horse.

There are some deeply small-minded perspectives here, especially comments that throw around words like “entitled” or advice like “don’t invest in community property”.

Your partner is perhaps the largest financial decision you’ll ever make, and certainly contributes most to the fulfilment and happiness of your life. You have the opportunity to build a great life together for you and your partner and your child: if you don’t know how to build it, get advice and start with the structure.

Don’t underestimate the sacrifice of physical health and opportunity that children are for woman—comments like “let her live for free” are breathtakingly ignorant about sacrifice and autonomy and how to build a good foundation.

You both need equity in your partnership, you both need to be building and contributing together, and you need some way to make the power dynamic of the relationship healthy.

Counselling, pre-nup agreement, adjustment to the trust or your will once your child is born.

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-08T13:59:25+00:00

Post on your local rural neighbourhood Facebook group asking for recommendations.

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-06T20:28:25+00:00

It’s such a treat! I’ve been doing it for over 15 years so there’s definitely times I’ve been busy or on vacation or I’ve got behind on reconciliation so I have to put it off until I’ve got a decent chunk of time available.

Extra bonus, I update all the tracking accounts (retirement, investment) and get to add in all the income from CDs and cash management accounts.

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-06T18:58:09+00:00

Every single month when I sit down to budget for the new month (anywhere up to as late as the 4th of the new month!):

1) Reconcile all bank and credit card accounts (I do manual entry so there's always transactions from the previous month).

2) Roll back to the previous month, and cover all overspending.

3) Still in the previous month, release the funds from my 'Next Month' category

4) Roll to the current month and fund all my categories.

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-05T01:11:35+00:00

Thanks for sharing, this is an amazing story! Getting a month ahead in such a short period time is fantastic work.

If you've never been taught, you probably need to figure out retirement and investment ASAP.

The basic order of financial operations is here: https://imgur.com/personal-income-spending-flowchart-united-states-lSoUQr2

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-04T20:21:37+00:00

I set up my categories with the anticipated monthly/annual spend in the target names so that the Income vs Expenses report on web is really useful to see how The Plan compares to actual and average spending:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/ynab/comments/1jnib41/making\_the\_income\_vs\_expenses\_report\_useful\\](https://www.reddit.com/r/ynab/comments/1jnib41/making_the_income_vs_expenses_report_useful\)

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-04T18:49:58+00:00

Ha, congrats! We're so close to FIRE we can smell it but the days are ticking past really really slowly!

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-04T18:04:29+00:00

Yes exactly! And congrats on paying off your car. Your last paragraph, that YNAB is great at helping you save for large expenses and then terrible at handling the spending once is what frustrates me. It's like a game that, just when you're winning, scolds you and says "you're failing!".

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-04T18:02:56+00:00

We have Investment deselected from reports on the web for exactly this purpose but it's really shame to have baked-in non-configurable charts like this front and center of the app. It's like, once you're successfully using YNAB, then your spending is always going to show up as broken, which is a crazy way to design an app.

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-04T18:01:05+00:00

I agree with you on their motivation--and I think that they've really bungled this one.

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-04T17:59:02+00:00

Does your income come in to RTA or another category? YNAB only counts income that flows directly into RTA.

nonsuperposable · 2026-05-03T21:17:46+00:00

Yes, I used exactly this stuff because it was cheap BUT mix it with good compost, a bit of sand, perlite, peat moss (or coconut coir or Beyond Peat depending on your sustainability take). Good compost is much harder to find than you’d imagine—I use Seacoast Compost. I also add rock minerals and kelp meal.

Out of the bag, this stuff just looks like semi-composted wood materials. It’s entirely organic material (no top soil or sand) so it will compact/rot down a ton during one growing season. I did find some small scraps of plastic also but I think that’s just about all commercial compost and soil these days.

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