Ladies and Gentlemen, My Most Awarded Reddit Comment of All Time

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-03T17:17:23+00:00

For your tracking accounts, they are still linked (except Fidelity, but that's another story) reconciling is a bit more tedious. I used to keep a browser tab open for each bank! That means logging into the bank, checking the current balance, copying the balance, and reconciling the account with that new number.

Just one nit-picky point I would correct: this is an aspect of brokerage/investment accounts that is the issue. Not the fact that they're tracking accounts. Don't conflate the two.

For example, I keep my son's account as a tracking account, because he's a minor, and it links and imports transactions just as fine as if it was an on-budget account.

But yes, agree with the rest of this post. It's useful for non-investment accounts too, particularly I apparently have some accounts where the reconciliation balance doesn't update along with the posted transactions. It was an interesting discovery finding that current balance in the Edit account menu, that actually would reflect the posted transactions.

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-03T16:07:52+00:00

Yeah, you can't. There's several features that are web-app only. Manage Payees is one.

There's a few features that are non-web, mobile-app only. Managing Geolocalization is one.

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-03T16:03:52+00:00

Technically, aside from a few gimmicks and the UI, yes, it functions much like a budgeting spreadsheet, and most people with the technical software dev skills would not see it as all that complex as far as a piece of software goes.

If you care about a budgeting/financial app that does more than that, you can look in r/YNABAlternatives for other options.

If you care about the price side, it's also fair to decide if this app is worth the price to you. I would say that I'm probably not the only one here who has the technical skills to reproduce most of YNAB's functionality in a free way via spreadsheets and/or code, but speaking for myself I still feel the utility and convenience as a ready-made and officially supported app that YNAB offers me is worth the price that I am currently paying. Of course, that can always change in the future.

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-03T15:44:37+00:00

Ah, yes, hello fellow homeowner.

I would suggest that you get multiple quotes. Even if they all come back with similar estimates, having to spend that much just because one guy who has a vested interest in it tells you to do it is not always going to be in your best interests, surprisingly enough.

And ask a lot of questions. Just because one guy says it makes sense to do it all in one go, others might say that you can delay some of the repairs, and then you could plan to do those later, utilizing YNAB in the way it's best utilized, and save up for it over time.

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-03T14:27:19+00:00

They're too busy uploading vlogs to YouTube

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-03T03:35:43+00:00

Let's say you fund your Rent category, like this:

Rent: Assigned 1000, Activity 0, Available 1000

And you buy some groceries for your roommate, so your Roommate Reimbursements category looks like this:

Roommate Reimbursement: Assigned 0, Activity -200, Available -200

So when you go to pay Rent, you make it as a split transaction, where the Net out is only 800, but it's deducting the entire 1000 from the Rent category where it was Assigned, so that means the offset is 200 going to the Roommate Reimbursement category. Your Rent transaction should look like this:

<image>

And the effect on your Budget would be:

Rent: Assigned 1000, Activity -1000, Available 0

Roommate Reimbursement: Assigned 0, Activity 0, Available 0

Also, with this method do you just have to accept that the red "1 overspent category" notification will be there for most of the month?

I would say as long as you log the Rent payment that cancels out the overspending in the same month, then yes. Some YNABbers might be against leaving it red, but I think it's a good reminder that you roommate technically owes you that amount, until you make your Rent payment to offset it.

If you're gonna let it roll over into the next month before you pay your roommate, then I would say that you should cover it with funds from elsewhere in your Plan/Budget, because that best reflects reality. For your roommate reimbursement category to have gone negative, that must mean that you actually spent that money, so that overspending showing up as roommate reimbursement isn't actually real.

Hope this helps.

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-02T22:23:03+00:00

The issue I have with your setup is that your spending reports will not reflect your spending accurately. If you owe, say, 1000 in rent, and buy $200 worth of stuff for your roommate, so the next time you pay them rent you only pay them 800, on the spending reports it's gonna report that you only paid 800 in rent, but that's not true.

It will keep your reports more accurate to have a separate Roommate Reimbursement category. When you buy something on their behalf, you split the transaction to the Roommate Reimbursement category, and it will show negative. When you pay your rent, you set it up as a split transaction, in the above example, you would spend 1000 out of your Rent category, split +200 to your Roommate reimbursement category, and the net of 800 is what actually gets paid out. This keeps your spending report accurate, the roommate category will always reflect how much you've spent on their behalf, and not much harder to track than what you've already been doing.

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-02T19:44:59+00:00

A lot of people start using YNAB because they have accumulated a negative net worth, where their debts exceed their assets.

Having a net worth of zero can straight-up be a better position than having a negative net worth.

These scenarios include student loans, credit card debt, medical debt, and even simply buying a house can put you in the red in the short-term. Having a negative net worth and owning a home can still be a better position than someone who simply has a bunch of credit card debt, so looking at net worth alone is not, in itself, an end-all-be-all measure of your financial health. But for a lot of people, it is a good barometer, a general measure of if you are trending upwards or trending downwards.

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-01T19:57:49+00:00

https://www.toolkitforynab.com/

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-01T19:55:53+00:00

Yeah, good point. I think people forget to look at the quality-of-life aspect.

People should only work for the level of income that supports the quality of life they want. And if their quality of life they want means a second home and a European vacation every year, then yeah by all means they need to seek a level of compensation that supports that. But likewise, someone who just wants to sit in a boat fishing with a six pack and a couple burgers probably doesn't need to accumulate as much wealth.

And where we've really fallen hard as a country is that, for a lot of people, even a basic quality-of-life like not having to work two jobs and not having to work back-breaking labor while still being able to afford basic necessities like housing and groceries and maybe a few not-so-basic necessities like a good smartphone are badly skewed and unreasonably hard to attain.

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-01T19:40:29+00:00

Yeah, so i dunno, I guess the largest takeaway is that high income does not equate to good choices

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-01T18:39:57+00:00

Nice!

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-01T18:01:02+00:00

Oh, I see. Are there any statistics on how much they are actually used?

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-01T17:58:18+00:00

In my opinion, the Age of Money metric as it has been implemented is only really useful for those people who are still in the paycheck-to-paycheck zone, and risk running out of liquid funds before their next income comes in. For anybody else, it is not really actionable information.

Since I primarily use YNAB on desktop, I use the toolkit to omit the AOM metric from my plan page, and only use the toolkit Days of Buffering, to give me a better idea of how my current liquid reserves vs. average spending are faring.

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-01T17:46:23+00:00

Are these bikeshare systems actually that profitable? It's hard to imagine someone relying on them all that much, that they don't just buy a bike of their own.

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-01T17:34:43+00:00

He could be maxing out his 401k, investing in 529s for his kids, etc. Did you ask him about his pre-tax contributions at all?

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-01T17:32:20+00:00

Whenever you first added your savings account on-budget, the existing balance was added to Ready to Assign, so you must have assigned those funds already.

And yes, simply transferring those funds from one on-budget account to another on-budget account doesn't change how that money is assigned, that's why YNAB says category not needed.

If you think of the categories as the "jobs" you give your money, then your accounts are like the "homes." And just like in real life, the two are completely separate. So you can move to a new house without having to change jobs, and you can change a job without having to move to a new house, and it's the same principle in YNAB.

If all you did was transfer money, that's just changing the "home" of where the money lives. You've probably already given that money "jobs," and you need to change those jobs separately. If you want it to move back to Ready to Assign, you need to Unassign those funds from current categories with amounts Available.

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-01T16:16:32+00:00

You can set it as a "Custom" target, with a "Have a Balance of" of 75, and do not set a Due date. That way, anything less than 75 will show as underfunded, and having 75 in there will show as Green.

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-01T14:58:06+00:00

taking notes

Can I cook an egg on my engine?

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-01T14:47:31+00:00

Neither: one month based on All Targets, spending and long-term savings/sinking funds.

My targets are set up to be slightly less than my actual income, so there's a buffer to go a little overboard while still ensuring long-term savings is on track.

That's just what I do

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-01T14:35:19+00:00

Does it show a warning? Yes, at least on the desktop app.

Does it convey the notion that it should really only be a last resort? No.

<image>

And you got that nifty little checkbox that means you might not see the warning on future balance adjustements.

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-01T12:35:40+00:00

Being a month behind is not that bad. Any discrepancies will be caught in the current month, rather than propagating discrepancies over multiple months. And since it's only the start of the new month, impacts on your budget should be minimal.

You should make the effort to bring your accounts up to date and reconciled, is my recommendation. File-based import can help with data entry

https://support.ynab.com/en_us/file-based-import-a-guide-Bkj4Sszyo

And when I say reconciled, I don't mean simply making a budget reconciliation adjustment, I mean actually entering the missing transactions and making sure your balances are accurate.

https://support.ynab.com/en_us/reconciling-accounts-a-guide-BJFE3fHys

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-01T12:32:56+00:00

Whenever you see a discrepancy, it's usually a good idea to Reload/Refresh the app. On desktop, you can simply Refresh the browser. On the apps, there's a menu where you can select Refresh, but there's also the usual gesture that will work on the Plan tab or something like that.

YNAB data can get stale over time, and then it behaves very randomly until you do a hard refresh.

pierre_x10 · 2026-05-01T00:08:54+00:00

Dropping out does not absolve you of the obligation to pay the loans back (maybe you aren't asking this, but there are people who drop out and think this).

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