YNAB for High-Income Earners | Lee's Category Structure

As the principal budget nerds at YNAB, Ben and Ernie have seen their fair share of elegant money plans, but the one featured in today's episode might take the cake for the most refined of all time! Long time YNAB'er and bona fide budget nerd Lee Bond joins the podcast to discuss his history of using YNAB, his category structures, his unique use of "transfers," and his various adventures trying to push the boundaries and break YNAB.

Lee has thought through every category and transaction with precision and an eye for cleanliness and efficiency. If you call yourself a hardcore budget nerd, or aspire to be one, then you will enjoy this episode with Lee!

Share your YNAB wins with Ben and Ernie!

Timestamps:
00:00:00 Lee's Background
00:07:14 Lee's YNAB Structure: Goals, Wants, Needs, Transfer
00:09:30 What Brought Lee to YNAB
00:15:35 Sharing YNAB with a Partner
00:32:06 Tracking Investments
00:36:49 Active vs Passive Spending
01:00:18 Essential Costs
01:19:15 Transfers & Holds

__________

Sign up for YNAB’s weekly email newsletter with the week’s best budgeting wisdom and inspiration!

__________

Come say, "Hi!" on social:

And read our BLOG here:

[ThePennyDropsYNAB]

I believe DINKWAD is the term you’re looking for 😂 Double Income No Kids With A Dog

[PatMaddox]

This was really great, thank you. I’m 8 years into YNAB, and I manually entered and reconciled every transaction for the first 7 years. This past year it’s become clear to me that I no longer need to work that fine-grained, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it. I had even been thinking of writing to YNAB support asking for guidance on how to use YNAB when money isn’t stressful anymore (completely different from the day I first signed up!)

I don’t need to think about how much I spend on toothpaste or toilet paper, or even groceries for that matter. All my bills are on auto-pay. So now it’s more about long-term goals, and looking at how my financial behavior supports or undermines those goals. This episode gave me some good ideas on how to revise my budget to that end (and was a lot of fun to watch!)

[steph_a_noodle]

How I know I'm a true budget nerd: I ✨love✨ listening to people describe how they set up their budget! So interesting to hear what works for them and why. Thanks for sharing, Lee!

[traviswcarney]

Regarding the question around the 2:30 mark: DINKWAD - double income, no kids, with a dog. That one cracked me up when I read it.

[cmoss]

I describe YNAB as an “Elegant, Electronic, Envelope System”

[Gpchv]

20 min in and absolutely love the episode - what a great thing when we get this type of special eps of YNAB stories! Also, categories content is *quality* content 😂🎉

[ladylove]

57:00 I've only ever had to split transactions in 2, but, lately, I've been doing this so I don't have to do the math: At the store, scan all the things in one category (for ex, Halloween) then take a pic of the screen with the current total. Then I check out the rest of my things (for ex, groceries).

Later, when splitting in YNAB, I pull up my pic on my phone and put that amount for the first category. The other category is the remaining amount! And, voilá, zero math splitting!

[rebekahyoungers]

The way Lee’s ceiling lines up perfectly with Ben’s ceiling is as elegant as his budget!

[davidrutter]

This has to be my favourite Budget Nerds episode ever! Love seeing how passionate Lee is about YNAB! Given me lots of ideas and I'm already adjusting some of my budget! Thank you!

[saralep]

fun episode! Loved looking into Lee's budget.
I also wanted to report my YNAB win. My pay was 4 days late due to a glitch with the payroll system. I almost feel guilty saying that it didn't affect me at all, because I know not everyone is as fortunate as me to have found YNAB. It didn't affect me at all because I no longer live paycheck to paycheck. Thank you YNAB!!

[Jone]

I would love to see a vid blog on the 'zip it up and re-disburse next month' principle Lee is taking about

[haveaday]

i feel SO SEEN by the constant refreshing of the ynab

[crissydv]

This was such an incredible episode!! He’s so charismatic omg. Also my wife and I treat our finances exactly the same! Loved this.

[joesmith]

I totally get what he means about furniture- I have two categories that cover things like that. 1. Household items (consumables) 2. Household items (durable goods)

[gabriellebradley]

Loved hearing another perspective on the categories! Also, Lee convinced me to move my emojis to the front, some still have more than 1 emoji (because 2 kids ya know), BUT they are in the front and I like it 😂 I also love the positivity in the budget, I made a few tweaks to some names to remove that negativity or bad feeling that was associated with some categories.

[JessicaChungMN]

The enthusiasm in this conversation is inspiring me to look at my own budget!

[ThePennyDropsYNAB]

The savings target as the “barometer” of where you want to be - LOVE that!!! Never thought of it that way

[angeljuarez]

This was awesome!! Loved this video. Lee’s categories are chefs kiss with the simplicity & name alignment ❤😊 I’ve recently simplified but I’m always back & forth too. Do I want detail, do I not? Every time I add more categories for more details, it doesn’t last long. PS, it wouldn’t matter if the video was 3 hours long, I would watch EVERY minute 😂 The longer the better 😆 Love it ❤

[wodwhsm]

Great video. Just came here to say that any life insurance product with « cash value » embedded is essentially just that the insurance company takes part of your premium to invest in some financial assets (e.g. S&P500 ETF) and passes on a tiny tiny fraction of the return back to you. You’re always better off of to just buy a pure life insurance product for a much lower premium and invest the money saved yourself.

[ZackThomas]

Disclaimer; nerdy budget nerds comment. I don't know if you've ever done a video on this but you can sort of use YNAB as a personal 3-statement financial model. The Income vs Expense report is ~an Income Statement. The accounts are a Balance Sheet. 'Budget Accounts' are Current Assets and Current Liabilities. I also do pre-paids in YNAB, such as prepaid insurance as an asset and amortizing it over time with scheduled transactions. Tracking accounts are Long Term assets (retirement, house, car) and long term liabilities (car loan, mortgage). You can amortize your car with scheduled transactions if you want, or just manually write down the value by reconciling it to an estimated market value. Then your Net Worth is what a company would have on the balance sheet as owner's equity. If you think of YNAB this way, it starts looking a lot like a tool to develop your direct statement of cash flows.