YAYNABQ (Yet another YNAB question)
October 1, 2023 7:49 AM Subscribe
I thought I had YNAB pretty much down, but now a new snafu has arisen. I have one credit card that I pay off in full every month. This month I made an extra, early payment, because I am expecting some large transactions soon due to a renovation. For some reason, YNAB is now saying my Credit Card Payment category is now overspent, and it's reduced what I have to budget for October. But it's not overspent, I just paid part of the balance early. Any insight/tips/help? I'd like to fully budget for October.
This morning I went through September's transactions and covered overspent categories per usual. I am a little puzzled about the "Credit Card Payment" category, which was automatically added and which I've never fully understood. Do you have any advice? My usual auto-deduct date is the 8th of each month.
I've alway suspected that I'm not using YNAB exactly right, but it's so useful even to a slightly incompetent user that I stick with it.
This morning I went through September's transactions and covered overspent categories per usual. I am a little puzzled about the "Credit Card Payment" category, which was automatically added and which I've never fully understood. Do you have any advice? My usual auto-deduct date is the 8th of each month.
I've alway suspected that I'm not using YNAB exactly right, but it's so useful even to a slightly incompetent user that I stick with it.
Credit cards in YNAB are sometimes a little unintuitive.
The most important thing to remember is that ultimately the line for credit card payments in your *Budget* is not the same thing as your credit card *account* in the accounts list.
In your Budget screen, the credit card payment line is a spending category just like rent or groceries. The "available" funds represents how much you have budgeted to make a payment. If you make a payment higher than this amount, you will be over-budget in that category, because it is what you have budgeted.
When you spend on your credit card out of a category like groceries, YNAB automatically Moves Money from that category to your credit card payment category, showing that you have promised the credit card company to pay that amount.
If you are paying off your credit card spending every month, the line for Credit Card payment *should* match the balance on your card, you should always be budgeted to make a full payment. But there are a few reasons why they get off from each other.
(1) when you first set up your credit card, you didn't budget money for the opening balance in YNAB. This is probably the most common mistake in YNAB with credit cards. When this happens, it means the user is paying off last month's credit card bill with this month's spending. It can work for awhile until they try to pay ahead or have a month with lower spending.
(2) making returns on the card can also cause the two balances to get off track, this one still confuses me.
YNAB support is really helpful, whenever I get confused about credit cards I reach out and they walk me through how to fix it. Typically the solution is to treat it like any other spending account and move money in/out of the credit card payments category to match your balance.
posted by muddgirl at 10:05 AM on October 1, 2023
The most important thing to remember is that ultimately the line for credit card payments in your *Budget* is not the same thing as your credit card *account* in the accounts list.
In your Budget screen, the credit card payment line is a spending category just like rent or groceries. The "available" funds represents how much you have budgeted to make a payment. If you make a payment higher than this amount, you will be over-budget in that category, because it is what you have budgeted.
When you spend on your credit card out of a category like groceries, YNAB automatically Moves Money from that category to your credit card payment category, showing that you have promised the credit card company to pay that amount.
If you are paying off your credit card spending every month, the line for Credit Card payment *should* match the balance on your card, you should always be budgeted to make a full payment. But there are a few reasons why they get off from each other.
(1) when you first set up your credit card, you didn't budget money for the opening balance in YNAB. This is probably the most common mistake in YNAB with credit cards. When this happens, it means the user is paying off last month's credit card bill with this month's spending. It can work for awhile until they try to pay ahead or have a month with lower spending.
(2) making returns on the card can also cause the two balances to get off track, this one still confuses me.
YNAB support is really helpful, whenever I get confused about credit cards I reach out and they walk me through how to fix it. Typically the solution is to treat it like any other spending account and move money in/out of the credit card payments category to match your balance.
posted by muddgirl at 10:05 AM on October 1, 2023
Best answer: I forgot reason (3) there was credit card spending in this month or prior months that was more than the budget, which is shown as yellow overspending in the budget screen.
posted by muddgirl at 10:22 AM on October 1, 2023
posted by muddgirl at 10:22 AM on October 1, 2023
This may be a philosophical setup issue and I should also note that I'm on YNAB4 (the classic desktop version).
I have my credit card listed like it is any other account. I track every single purchase put on the card to the category that corresponds to the purchase (Groceries, Gas, entertainment, etc). A payment is just a funds transfer from one account to the another.
In the budget section, money is allocated to the spending categories as listed above, not the credit card.
posted by SegFaultCoreDump at 7:06 AM on October 2, 2023
I have my credit card listed like it is any other account. I track every single purchase put on the card to the category that corresponds to the purchase (Groceries, Gas, entertainment, etc). A payment is just a funds transfer from one account to the another.
In the budget section, money is allocated to the spending categories as listed above, not the credit card.
posted by SegFaultCoreDump at 7:06 AM on October 2, 2023
Good point, I should clarify my advice was for the default setup of the YNAB online service.
posted by muddgirl at 9:27 AM on October 2, 2023
posted by muddgirl at 9:27 AM on October 2, 2023
Response by poster: Thank you everyone. I think after chatting with YNAB that the problem is Muddgirl's #3 scenario. I still don't totally understand -- if I overspend on the cc, it seems to me that it should just reduce the amount of "ready to assign" for the next month. But I haven't noticed this problem *before* this month, when I made the extra payment. So my conclusion is that i'm actually conflating two things. Anyhoo, I'm going to follow YNAB's advice and see if it works. Thanks all. Money/math is a hard thing for me.
posted by Ollie at 2:38 AM on October 5, 2023
posted by Ollie at 2:38 AM on October 5, 2023
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You just have to assign the amount of extra money you paid to the credit card line on your budget. If that’s for the reno, you can move money from your reno line to the credit card line. You paid extra on your card, that needs to
come from somewhere!
But YNAB should make it that you don’t need to do this! All the money should be assigned (ex. To reno), and when you spend in on your credit card for the reno, YNAB automatically moves that money from reno (so you can’t spend too much there), and to your credit card (so it’s available to pay).
posted by sillysally at 7:54 AM on October 1, 2023 [1 favorite]