YNAB - how long does it take to set up?

[Anonymous]

I'm intrigued by the idea of having a better sense of where my money is going. We live within our means and have a variety of retirement accounts including pensions but I'd love to cut down on the small expenses that I know eat into what we could be saving. How much time should I assume it'll take to get my account up and running? Can someone explain to me how you allocate spending when a credit card bills to something general, like Amazon or Target? Should I plan on spending a couple of hours pouring over our recent bills to really get an accurate assessment? I'm basically just wondering if this is a lunch break activity or I need to carve out a weekend afternoon.

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

I would recommend to carve out a weekend afternoon if you can. There is a bit of a learning curve.

You can do a free 34 day trial.

When I first signed up, I did a free getting started live workshop that I thought was helpful.

https://www.ynab.com/free-workshops

For things like Amazon or target it depends how you want to do it. Usually if I buy something at the grocery store, even if it’s toiletries, I just put it to my groceries category. Sometimes if it’s Amazon or target and I’m buying multiple things, I enter it in as a split transaction and I put it to whatever category it really is, but it’s up to you how in the weeds you want to get.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm intrigued by the idea of having a better sense of where my money is going. We live within our means and have a variety of retirement accounts including pensions but I'd love to cut down on the small expenses that I know eat into what we could be saving. How much time should I assume it'll take to get my account up and running? Can someone explain to me how you allocate spending when a credit card bills to something general, like Amazon or Target? Should I plan on spending a couple of hours pouring over our recent bills to really get an accurate assessment? I'm basically just wondering if this is a lunch break activity or I need to carve out a weekend afternoon.

Thanks.

It takes a bit to get the hang of it. I’ve tried budgeting for the last 20 years and nothing sticked.

It does take a few glasses of wine to get everything set up and the account imports set up, but once you dedicate the time to get it rolling it’s all automatic. You can add categories as you go, and credit cards don’t make sense until you see it in action for a few months (at least for me).

In its basic form, a budget just drives behavior. As you said, the small expenses make themselves known with YNAB.

For example, if I have $100 left in the eating out budget, I’m not going to get a $30 lunch on Thursday when the kids have a 3 day weekend.

What I like about YNAB is it’s an envelope system. When you get paid, you put the money in categories, or “envelopes.”

You do have to be a month ahead. So if you’re like me and pay your credit cards at the end of the month, you will have to take money out of savings to fund your envelopes.

I have had nothing but positive experiences with YNAB. It has change our behavior in a very positive way.

[Anonymous]

So it imports transactions automatically directly from website? No downloading fuels and importing every month. ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So it imports transactions automatically directly from website? No downloading fuels and importing every month. ?

It imports automatically but it might take 1-2 days etc for a transaction to show up. Sometimes it only takes a couple of hours. It depends on the bank connection.

Every morning over coffee I check my YNAB and accounts for 5 mins. I accept anything that was automatically pulled in, and I enter anything that hadn’t hit yet. I’m a real budget nerd now.

But my friend IRL just lets it automatically import everything for her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How much time should I assume it'll take to get my account up and running?
Can someone explain to me how you allocate spending when a credit card bills to something general, like Amazon or Target?
Should I plan on spending a couple of hours pouring over our recent bills to really get an accurate assessment?

1. It took me several days.
2. You choose your own categories. You can make them broad or narrow. You'll have to assign Amazon, Target, Costco, etc. purchases to the categories they fall under.
3. Don't overthink this because you can tweak later, but yes - taking the time to do an accurate assessment of your current spending habits is one of the most valuable things you can do when setting up YNAB.

[Anonymous]

I just want to say that I love YNAB so much. I just had my one- year anniversary.

OP, it does take a little while to get the hang of it. I started my free trial and worked thru it for a bit, then ended up doing a fresh start and beginning a new budget. It's been smooth sailing since then. I feel so on top of our money situation! And I love when DH andI get paid and I get to assign money lol.

I have our credit cards synced but not our checking account-- I enter all checking transactions myself.

[Anonymous]

I looove YNAB. But I don't import anything. I prefer to input each charge manually as I go, so as I'm checking out at the grocery store or gas station, I enter the charge right there into YNAB. It works for me.

[Anonymous]

This is me here in the link below and I almost made my own update post 1.5 years later & decided against it but instead you guys can just get it here. I love YNAB so much. Just being intentional with my money has made so much of a difference for me.

I started budgeting with YNAB April 2023 right after I made this post. Since that time, among other things: I paid for a screened in porch to replace our rotting deck (in cash), paid off my student loans ($30k), saved more than I had been for our retirement & kids’ college, and I still have $22k more in my checking / HYS accounts now than I did in April 2023. Pretty good, right? I don’t always feel like I’m making progress because day to day it’s small, whenever I take a bigger step back I realize how much I’ve really done.

There’s also a YNAB FB group that’s very helpful: YNAB (You Need a Budget!) Fans

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1128137.page

[Anonymous]

If you are an AI user, consider Copilot Money instead. Truly an amazing app and it took me only a few hours to set up.

[Anonymous]

Op here, thank you! I started the free trial yesterday afternoon and did spend an hour importing and assigning categories based on a quick review of recent months' expenses. I can already tell I'm going to love it, and look forward to seeing how my experience with it develops over the next month. Really inspired to hear some of your success stories!

[Anonymous]

Yay good luck! There’s quite a few of us here. You can ask questions here with YNAB in the subject line and we can try to help.

[Anonymous]

Another YNAB fan. I just started in the spring. To get started I spent a month just living my life and spending money as I normally did but kept strict track of my expenses in major categories (restaurants, groceries, etc) in an Excel spreadsheet. Then i set up YNAB for the next month using those amounts as a guide. I've tweaked along the way, both target amounts to assign each month as well as the categories themselves.

My favorite part is that it is forward-thinking and not retrospective - it forces you to really think about where your money is going not just in the next week but over the long term, i.e., "true expenses." Before, I would just pay, say, the car registration when it was due, but now I have a dedicated category in YNAB to sock away a little money per month so that when I have to pay once a year, all the money is there waiting for me. I sock away a little each month for yearly subscriptions, as another example. I have a million little categories like this that help me see where I am spending money and in turn how I can change my habits (if needed). There are no surprises with my money - there's an envelope to draw from for basically everything. Be prepared for the feeling of being "YNAB poor"; you'll get paid and all of a sudden after assigning your money for the upcoming month it will look like you have zero dollars left, but that's just because you've assigned all your money to its proper categories to be intentional about how it's spent.

Unlike many others, I have not set up my accounts to auto-import data. I have a few credit cards that I charge everything to, then pay in full each month out of a single checking account. For simplicity I just have a single "checking" category that I add my paycheck totals to each month, then manually enter each transaction as drawing from that checking account. My credit cards aren't even 'visible' in YNAB, just the cash that funds them in my checking account. Feels simpler for me, but everyone is different.

[Anonymous]

+1000 YNAB FTW all the time.

been using for 5 years maybe?

there is a bit of a learning curve, but dont get discouraged!

r/YNAB is very helpful

i've also have been in weird situations and reached out to YNAB, given them temp access, and they have always correctly identified the problem

best $$ i spend each year for the app.

no more credit card float, student loans paid off, renovations, emergency fund savings, school tuition, it is a very powerful tool, once you get the hang of it.

they've recently revamped the "review" section and it is amazing to see where everything is going, net worth, etc...

LOVE LOVE

[Anonymous]

FWIW I hated YNAB, things that seemed like they should be easy just took really long to setup or was extremely frustrating. I tried it out after Mint closed but cancelled before the trial period ran out.

Now I use Everydollar app and I'm enjoying it.