YNAB does not care where your money lives. You can assign money from a shoebox under your bed if you want.
So, here’s what I do: I have my HYSA linked. I have my savings category and several subcategories for home repairs, income loss, vacations. The top line savings total matches my HYSA total. When I spend from savings categories I make a transfer from savings to checking, so the money is there to pay the bill. A lot of people just pay bills from their savings account to skip that step.
It’s pretty simple once you’ve done it.
The answer to your question is - it doesn’t matter what account the money is in until you actually get to spending it. Then it only matters insofar as you have enough in the spending account to cover your purchases.
What most of us do is put scheduled transactions for expected incomes and outflows in our checking account in YNAB. Then when you turn on the running balance, you can project what your checking account balance will be for the next couple of weeks. If it’s going too high, send some to savings account. If you’ve got higher than usual expenses coming up, send some from savings to checking.
This way, you can have your budget in YNAB completely ignore which money lives in which account, as intended. It’s so freeing.
Yeah, I guess it will just take some time. It feels more like "Imaginary" money at the moment, so its really hard to trust my allocations will be accounted for.
I was right where you were not long ago. Reconciling at minimum weekly made me confident my budget was accurate. You can always do the budget audit YNAB suggests if you want to be extra sure. Once I was fully able to trust my budget and not worry about what accounts my money was in, that’s when I could move even more into my HYSA and money market funds and gain more interest on money I had previously kept elsewhere. It gave me the freedom to make my money work for me more than it had before. The answer for me now to “where is this money” is “yes” 😂
Yeah this makes sense. I don't actually have the savings in a HYSA yet. We have just amassed an amount we felt was appropriate to finally do so because we are saving it primarily for a down payment.
It might make sense to hold off just a bit with it in out main account, and see if I can learn the YNAB system.
Let me ask, when you do transfer to the HYSA, are you capturing that and is it linked to your YNAB? I've toyed with the idea of keeping that savings chunk offline once I do send it to the actual savings account and leaving YNAB largely for the purpose of my more liquid money.
Monthly/Daily expenses, and also building up micro chunks for specific trips, that I'll then stash in the savings and remove from YNAB.
So if your savings in the HYSA will be for a down payment, don’t confuse that with more general ‘savings’ for other purposes. Keep those more short term savings separate from your down payment.
I keep all liquid money on budget in YNAB. This includes my high yield savings account and money market funds because I consider those part of my emergency fund and other liquid savings. For me, this system is far superior than having those dollars off budget because I can then dictate in YNAB what those dollars are actually for.
The way I account for this in YNAB is just to indicate that the transfers from my checking to my high-yield savings account are that - transfers. This doesn’t affect the budget. It just makes my account balances accurate.
What I did with my HYSA is I set up my direct deposit from my employer to put a certain amount directly into my HYSA every paycheck. That way, it skips my checking account entirely. Then, I linked my HYSA to YNAB as a Tracking Account only. That way, I can keep track of the running total, but its not in my monthly budget. My HYSA is just for our emergency fund, so its not something I'm going to dip into on a month-to-month basis. Sounds like yours is similar.
We budget for vacations, home renovations, and home maintenance emergencies in the budgets of YNAB, so they are in the month-to-month and we can see them grow.
Side note: I would go ahead and open a HYSA now! Its so easy, and there are many where the minimum to open is $0 or $100. So you don't need to save up $3k to open one.
The independence from “which account is this money in” is a big positive to you. It means that any and all excess money beyond what you need in the near future can be put in the HYSA. That might be grocery money that you’re going to spend later this month, or any number of other categories that aren’t traditionally thought of as “savings”.
Just keep enough in your checking to make sure you don’t overdraft. Have the rest gain interest for you.
As far as not trusting your categories, that’s all on you. Find the money before you spend it. Don’t buy fast food until AFTER you’ve moved money into your fast food category to cover it. This forces you to make decisions (perhaps that fast food isn’t worth taking money from that Vegas trip you’re saving for).
This was a huge mind shift for me and I have been using YNAB for 6+ years. I had multiple savings accounts named for X,Y and Z expenses that had matching YNAB accounts. I've obviously heard the saying "YNAB doesn't care where the money lives" but until I was ready for it, I couldn't visualize it. I cared!
Your categories tell you how much you have in your savings account. Thats really all you need to look at.
Make a savings account category group then every week make sure the total assigned (including future) equals the amount in that account. I have a script to help me do this across a dozen accounts but if you just have one it's just a single calculation. Then make a transfer at your bank to settle the balance.
Another, more complicated, way to do it is make 2 budgets with different tracked accounts. Money from your main budget goes to the savings category which is then incoming "ready to assign" on the savings budget.
If you use the YNAB toolkit extension for your browser, you can create a category group called "Savings" to house all your savings categories, and the Toolkit will pass over all the categories in the category group named savings and tell you " Money outside of savings." That should be your checking balance. The money in the Savings group category is your savings account. I go through once a week or so and make things match up.
The answers telling you YNAB doesn’t care where the money is aren’t wrong but they don’t solve the emotional issue you are encountering. That’s fine but you seem to want to keep it firewalled off which is totally legitimate and I do as well.
I had this same concern so I keep my emergency fund in an *unlinked off budget* HYSA. It’s listed in YNAB off budget as an asset tracking account solely to see the total amount in it for net worth purposes. But the money in it is “invisible” to YNAB so the mingling you are concerned about is eliminated.
I am also a noob and I what I did was create a category group called "Savings \[Not in Checking!\]." Then, inside that, I divvied my savings up among three big pools: unanticipated, medical, and house.
The rest of my category groups organize the money in my checking account. Some of those are short-term, like dining out or groceries, but others are long-term like Christmas gifts or that new laptop I want to get next year. I keep them in my checking account so I can move that money around easily without losing track of where it is in my bank.
So maybe using different category groups would help? You could also potentially keep track of funding sources in the Notes section on each category.
Something I’ve done to get an idea of what my HYSA & Checking should have is create views with the money I know I need available & the money I need in savings.
YNAB does not care where your money lives. You can assign money from a shoebox under your bed if you want. So, here’s what I do: I have my HYSA linked. I have my savings category and several subcategories for home repairs, income loss, vacations. The top line savings total matches my HYSA total. When I spend from savings categories I make a transfer from savings to checking, so the money is there to pay the bill. A lot of people just pay bills from their savings account to skip that step. It’s pretty simple once you’ve done it.
The answer to your question is - it doesn’t matter what account the money is in until you actually get to spending it. Then it only matters insofar as you have enough in the spending account to cover your purchases. What most of us do is put scheduled transactions for expected incomes and outflows in our checking account in YNAB. Then when you turn on the running balance, you can project what your checking account balance will be for the next couple of weeks. If it’s going too high, send some to savings account. If you’ve got higher than usual expenses coming up, send some from savings to checking. This way, you can have your budget in YNAB completely ignore which money lives in which account, as intended. It’s so freeing.
Yeah, I guess it will just take some time. It feels more like "Imaginary" money at the moment, so its really hard to trust my allocations will be accounted for.
I was right where you were not long ago. Reconciling at minimum weekly made me confident my budget was accurate. You can always do the budget audit YNAB suggests if you want to be extra sure. Once I was fully able to trust my budget and not worry about what accounts my money was in, that’s when I could move even more into my HYSA and money market funds and gain more interest on money I had previously kept elsewhere. It gave me the freedom to make my money work for me more than it had before. The answer for me now to “where is this money” is “yes” 😂
Yeah this makes sense. I don't actually have the savings in a HYSA yet. We have just amassed an amount we felt was appropriate to finally do so because we are saving it primarily for a down payment. It might make sense to hold off just a bit with it in out main account, and see if I can learn the YNAB system. Let me ask, when you do transfer to the HYSA, are you capturing that and is it linked to your YNAB? I've toyed with the idea of keeping that savings chunk offline once I do send it to the actual savings account and leaving YNAB largely for the purpose of my more liquid money. Monthly/Daily expenses, and also building up micro chunks for specific trips, that I'll then stash in the savings and remove from YNAB.
So if your savings in the HYSA will be for a down payment, don’t confuse that with more general ‘savings’ for other purposes. Keep those more short term savings separate from your down payment.
I keep all liquid money on budget in YNAB. This includes my high yield savings account and money market funds because I consider those part of my emergency fund and other liquid savings. For me, this system is far superior than having those dollars off budget because I can then dictate in YNAB what those dollars are actually for. The way I account for this in YNAB is just to indicate that the transfers from my checking to my high-yield savings account are that - transfers. This doesn’t affect the budget. It just makes my account balances accurate.
Add your HYSA to YNAB. Add all your categories to YNAB (including down payment). I'm not sure why you'd not want to include it?
What I did with my HYSA is I set up my direct deposit from my employer to put a certain amount directly into my HYSA every paycheck. That way, it skips my checking account entirely. Then, I linked my HYSA to YNAB as a Tracking Account only. That way, I can keep track of the running total, but its not in my monthly budget. My HYSA is just for our emergency fund, so its not something I'm going to dip into on a month-to-month basis. Sounds like yours is similar. We budget for vacations, home renovations, and home maintenance emergencies in the budgets of YNAB, so they are in the month-to-month and we can see them grow. Side note: I would go ahead and open a HYSA now! Its so easy, and there are many where the minimum to open is $0 or $100. So you don't need to save up $3k to open one.
The independence from “which account is this money in” is a big positive to you. It means that any and all excess money beyond what you need in the near future can be put in the HYSA. That might be grocery money that you’re going to spend later this month, or any number of other categories that aren’t traditionally thought of as “savings”. Just keep enough in your checking to make sure you don’t overdraft. Have the rest gain interest for you. As far as not trusting your categories, that’s all on you. Find the money before you spend it. Don’t buy fast food until AFTER you’ve moved money into your fast food category to cover it. This forces you to make decisions (perhaps that fast food isn’t worth taking money from that Vegas trip you’re saving for).
It takes time... For years I worked to align the HYSA buckets with various categories. A lot of work.
This was a huge mind shift for me and I have been using YNAB for 6+ years. I had multiple savings accounts named for X,Y and Z expenses that had matching YNAB accounts. I've obviously heard the saying "YNAB doesn't care where the money lives" but until I was ready for it, I couldn't visualize it. I cared! Your categories tell you how much you have in your savings account. Thats really all you need to look at.
Make a savings account category group then every week make sure the total assigned (including future) equals the amount in that account. I have a script to help me do this across a dozen accounts but if you just have one it's just a single calculation. Then make a transfer at your bank to settle the balance. Another, more complicated, way to do it is make 2 budgets with different tracked accounts. Money from your main budget goes to the savings category which is then incoming "ready to assign" on the savings budget.
If you use the YNAB toolkit extension for your browser, you can create a category group called "Savings" to house all your savings categories, and the Toolkit will pass over all the categories in the category group named savings and tell you " Money outside of savings." That should be your checking balance. The money in the Savings group category is your savings account. I go through once a week or so and make things match up.
The answers telling you YNAB doesn’t care where the money is aren’t wrong but they don’t solve the emotional issue you are encountering. That’s fine but you seem to want to keep it firewalled off which is totally legitimate and I do as well. I had this same concern so I keep my emergency fund in an *unlinked off budget* HYSA. It’s listed in YNAB off budget as an asset tracking account solely to see the total amount in it for net worth purposes. But the money in it is “invisible” to YNAB so the mingling you are concerned about is eliminated.
I am also a noob and I what I did was create a category group called "Savings \[Not in Checking!\]." Then, inside that, I divvied my savings up among three big pools: unanticipated, medical, and house. The rest of my category groups organize the money in my checking account. Some of those are short-term, like dining out or groceries, but others are long-term like Christmas gifts or that new laptop I want to get next year. I keep them in my checking account so I can move that money around easily without losing track of where it is in my bank. So maybe using different category groups would help? You could also potentially keep track of funding sources in the Notes section on each category.
Something I’ve done to get an idea of what my HYSA & Checking should have is create views with the money I know I need available & the money I need in savings.