6 Common YNAB Mistakes You Might Be Making

New is hard. We feel you. If you've had a hard time making YNAB stick in the past, there's a chance you could making one of these common beginner mistakes. Learn about the six common mishaps we see when new users set out on their YNAB journey, and learn how to get back on track!

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Intro
0:49 Mistake #1: Adding future paychecks
2:47 Mistake #2: Waiting until the 1st to start
4:23 Mistake #3: Not utilizing credit card account type
6:25 Mistake #4: One catch-all savings category
8:11 Mistake #5: Having too few categories
9:35 Mistake #6: Getting hung up on the perfect plan
11:48 Outro
12:19 Bloopers

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[admcdona]

I'm 2 weeks into YNAB and loving it. I've been binge watching these videos like crazy. So helpful! My wife is probably starting to get a little jealous of Hannah at this point.

[AndrewWillisTN]

Fun story - got a call for an unexpected bill on our propane tank lease. I told the kind lady it was no problem because we had the money and I would just move some money around in our budget. Then we got chatting about YNAB and 20 min later she was thanking me so much for telling her about YNAB and she said she was also definitely going to share with her adult children. lol. That’s how great YNAB is in our life and how we share your awesomeness.

[dlbrowning]

Best lesson I learned was to reconcile my accounts every single morning. Takes me about 5 minutes over coffee - a little longer on paydays (playdays!) - and I always know exactly where we are with everything.

[justicht]

The credit card management is my favorite part of YNAB. I couldn’t imagine not using a credit card category.

[haveaday]

oh man trying to use a credit card as a "checking account" type would make things way way too difficult for my brain. i love how ccs are handled!

[jeezusjr]

I don't use the auto import because it is too inconsistent in frequency, so I manually import qfx files, which makes me happy. Took me a year to realize you can have it automatically assign categories based on text contained in the payee. Now I have to go and fix all my payee accounts (at least 1000). I wish the "payee manager" was more powerful.

[jroysdon]

YNAB is more strict that Ramsey's "Every Dollar" app by not allowing money to be earned that month to be assigned to the budget yet. As the resident household Budget/Finance, I really appreciate this about YNAB. With "Every Dollar" I have to worry about cash flow and making sure I have enough in the bank before I spend. This is not a problem with YNAB, yay, one less thing to worry about!

[amyjt]

When I started YNAB a couple years ago, I binged watched all of Hannah's videos. I love this one yet again for the great info AND the outtakes
😆

[ahalsey]

YNAB saved my sanity. Went from broke to ballin in a matter of months ❤

[natashabrandstatter]

Biggest mistake I made as a YNAB newbie (Ynoob?) is I ignored a 9 cent discrepancy between my checking balance in YNAB and in my bank because it seemed like “no big deal.” Fast forward six months and it was a $900 discrepancy 😅 RECONCILE PEOPLE!!

[hbirdy]

Something I wish I hadn't done was completely delete my earlier budgets when I wanted to start over organizing. After I'd categorized a couple years' worth of purchases, it would have made things like finding all my 1099 expenses WAY easier for taxes if I hadn't gone scorched earth 😭 We love a refresh, but maybe don't purposefully delete all your data??

[carlyhicks]

I love Hannah videos. They are my favourite YNAB videos

[michellebash]

Hospitality!! That's the category I have been missing. Was just trying to think up a name for such a category for stuff that's not necessarily donations or charity, but meals or supplies, serving others. Thanks Hannah!

[EdRamseyJr]

Enjoyed as usual! Would really love to see a video on reconciling YNAB with itself. Balancing the account side with the budget side. I had to do a fresh start last year because I didn't think through how to do this and lost confidence in my budget. I now balance both sides every month. Also, a balancing report would be real handy. Thanks. -Ed

[iainmcmullen]

YNAB has been a pretty big mind shift, but probably for the better in the long run.
Couple of the things I ran into:
1. Learning how to transfer money from one account to another, eg for savings or credit card payment.
2. Create a cash account, otherwise money withdrawal from an ATM just disappears 💸

[laurenlovesstories]

I'm two months in to using YNAB. My thing I learned is sorting the categories by how often I'll need to check them. It makes it so easy to fund all of my monthly bills and then collapse the category.

I had to learn this the hard way because my budget before YNAB was oriented around groups like "necessary for life" and "for fun." That's how I had set up my category groups in YNAB initially, but it quickly got annoying to scroll all the way past all my monthly bills in the same group to check on other things. Now, everything is sorted by how often I'll spend from them, so I can easily check how much I have for groceries or food delivery and quickly roll with the punches from those categories. And I can collapse my "monthly, " "yearly, " and "occasional" groups to get them out of the way day to day.

[PamJernigan]

The thing that bugged me at first was the timing of my paychecks. I had spent a couple years forecasting, but I get paid at the end of every month. So the paycheck I'll get April 30th is going to fund May. But right now, on the income/expense report, it looks like I've had all my expenses but no income, which used to stress me out a bit! Took a little while for me to wrap my head around that and realize I didn't have to fudge any dates, because the YNAB plan isn't really by month.

The True Expenses thing was a real mind-bender/game-changer, though. When I was doing cash flow forecasting, or planning on a spreadsheet, I didn't have any concept of saving up for much of anything (also didn't have hardly any money to save, but that's another story), but now I have a ton of things I'm saving up for. So much easier to set aside ten-twelve bucks every month and then have cash on hand to renew my Amazon Prime when it comes due. But yeah, it was weird at first.

[kezekiel]

The biggest challenge my wife had was trying to reconcile the budget to the bank accounts.
It took quite some effort the help her wrap her head around the budget not caring about actual accounts or where the money is stored. The $$ in groceries category is irrelevant to where the $$ reside, it’s just that the $$ are there

[floodo]

Last year I decided my budget was a little stale so I simply started a new one from scratch, only using my old budget as a reference for the fixed/recurring expenses. Was surprised at how it didn’t take long to be up to speed in the new budget & how refreshing it was to be making new categories that match where I am now in life.

Felt so good I’m considering doing it again, 1yr on! Let your budget evolve folks, and don’t be afraid to start over (-8

[motu]

There is one part of the YNAB screen capture where the gmail address isn't blurred out. Just a heads up!