Category: Best Practices
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Time to check your targets?
I’ve had a tumultuous summer, with downsizing from a house to an apartment and a major surgical procedure in my family. But YNAB has kept me on the straight and narrow financially. For the most part, I kept up with daily transaction categorizing, covering overspending and reconciling. (Daily is so much easier than letting it…
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My favorite day of the month
Tomorrow is June 1st. Ever since I got a month ahead in YNAB, the first day of the month has become my favorite. Here’s why. Once I’ve entirely funded a month, I choose to assign additional funds that come in to a category called Future Months. The alternative would be to flip ahead to a…
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Quick Tip: Move a transaction to another account
Have you ever manually entered a transaction into the wrong account? I typically use Direct Import but occasionally I enter a transaction manually. One reason I prefer Direct Import is to avoid entry errors, which I seem to inevitably make. One of those entry errors is entering a transaction into the wrong account. For example,…
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Things to do at the end and beginning of a month
Note: This is a lightly edited version of a post I created last year that offers a good reminder of the importance of paying attention to YNAB at the turn of the month. The turn of the month is a special time in YNAB. When the calendar month rolls over, things happen. Luckily, they’re predictable,…
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Why it’s important to reconcile (and how to do it)
Once you’re in the YNAB groove, you stop looking at your bank balance and instead consult your budget when you’re deciding whether to spend money on something. Because you’re putting away money for True Expenses, your bank balance swells. But all that money is accounted for. (It’s what’s known as being YNAB Broke.) So you…
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Do your taxes sooner rather than later
In the United States, most federal and state income taxes are due on April 15. A lot of people put off doing their taxes. According to the 2024 Tax Procrastinators report, 29 percent of Americans procrastinate on their taxes. (I would have guessed that figure was higher!) I’ll never forget the time I had to…
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Quick Tip: Check your February transactions!
Today is March 1, which is a fun day for me because I get to do some budgeting! I was reminded today of the importance of making sure I process all my February transactions before assigning money in March. This morning, I categorized all my pending transactions and clicked Enter Now so that they would…
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Have you checked your credit report lately?
Nowadays, it seems very easy to get ahold of your credit score (your FICO score). I know that I can easily access mine through several of my credit cards. Back in the day, you had to pay to get your score, so this is great. But there’s more to the credit report than your credit…
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Entering transfers in YNAB
It can be a little confusing when you transfer money from one account to another in YNAB. The difficulty comes in when you’ve imported a transaction that has the Payee already entered and it asks for a category. But the thing to remember about transfers is that they don’t require a category. When you click…
