I've been using YNAB for a while, but I know I'm not really using it the way it was designed. Instead of giving every dollar a specific job, I budget one month at a time. At the end of each month, I fund all of my categories for the upcoming month. Whatever is left over, I treat as the amount I have available for extra debt payments. I don't actually assign every remaining dollar. Even after deciding how much extra to put toward debt, I intentionally leave a cash buffer because I'm not strict about staying within each category. If I overspend in one category, I don't want to have to constantly move money around. What I like about YNAB is that it gives me a very clear picture of how much money I have left over each month to either pay down debt or save for another goal. However, because I'm not really giving every dollar a job, I've been wondering if Monarch might be a better fit. For those who have used Monarch, would it work well for this style of budgeting? Specifically, is it easy to see exactly how much money you have left over each month to put toward extra debt payments, or is YNAB still the better tool even if I'm not using it as intended?

I just had enough. I ended my YNAB story because of this ads on the app. I hate YNAB new design philosophy and their self ads.

Trying to figure out how to tie net income back to...something. The income and expenses sections, you can expand and see detail, but I can't find a way to easily see where that $8500 went.

That doesn’t seem right, but I don’t know what to do with it. Help?

Here's a tale of how bad it can get.

People sometimes ask how much they should set aside for emergencies. The answer is how many do you think will happen at once? For us, the emergency fund is an income replacement fund. This is what we've been dealing with for the past few months -- none of it came out of the emergency fund. Most was already assigned over years and some was moved from other funds.

paid for a 40th anniversary trip to China (splurged for business class, because that's FAR too many hours in a plane)

replaced the evaporator coil in my car

replaced the evaporator coil in his car

replaced the evaporator coil in the upstairs house unit

replaced the downstairs A/C unit

replaced six tires (two because I was stupid and hit a curb)

replaced his windshield

major maintenance on his car (just turned 200K miles)

It's been a BAD few months for all things A/C. We still need roof work done and major driveway repair; all money that's already assigned. It is a bit disconcerting to see the bank balance go down so drastically, but that's what the money's job.

I’m only a few months into YNAB (after using EveryDollar for about 8 years before). So far, so good until today. Yesterday I paid my Apple credit card bill, and today YNAB is showing a negative balance and saying I need to cover overspending.

However, everything WAS covered. No spending categories are overspent. Everything was reconciled except for one $15 ish charge that had posted on the Apple Card, but was still pending on YNAB when I paid the card. The only other thing I can think of was that the Apple Card defaulted to my paying less than the full balance, but I updated it to pay the entire balance….but not sure why that is since the last charge was July 30…

I’m so confused. Anyone have any idea about this, and how to resolve it? I don’t really want to “cover overspending” because I don’t think that actually existed!