Can you trust your budget?

Trusting that your spending plan is accurate is the key to creating peace of mind with your finances. Luckily, YNAB makes it easy. All you need to do is a YNAB check up (which used to be known as a budget audit). I suggest doing it on the first day of each month.

Here’s how:

1. Make sure all your accounts are reconciled.
2. Cover any overspending and make sure Ready to Assign is grey.
3. Advance to the farthest month YNAB will let you (which is the month after you have any transactions).
4. Click on All in the Focused Views area so no categories are filtered out.
5. Check your cash balance, shown to the right of the word CASH in the left sidebar.
6. With no categories selected, check the Available in [Month] number in the right sidebar, toward the bottom of the screen. This is the sum of all the Available amounts in your spending plan.

If the two numbers match, you can trust your spending plan. Hooray! 🎉 If they don’t, look to see if you have any credit cards with a positive balance and add those amounts to your cash total. If they still don’t match, check out this YNAB support document for more detail. You may need to contact YNAB support. (Links are in the support document.)

When you reconcile frequently (I do it every time I’m in YNAB) and do a YNAB check up regularly, you can enjoy peace of mind with your spending plan. It’s definitely worth the effort.