Khaki Sander nope, it's still a manual edit to advance.

Hi Khaki Sander !

This feature isn't available yet, but we're looking into it! We just made a number of changes to the goals feature and we're working on improving them even further! :)

  Also it makes budgetting in the next month pretty errorprone. I'm trying to do the 3 month ahaed, so thatI have enough on the account to live 3 month, which means today I budget the money for february, but if a yearly goal is between now and the month I budget, all the Target By Date goals doesn't work, even if I set the goal for next year, as it looks at the budget and goes.. Yep you have the money, no need to add more, so I manually have to add to those.

For me the best would be the recurring goal, but a compromise could be add multiple goals and that the goals look into the upcomming payments, so if a payment is upcomming it should deduct that in goal calculations.. Hope that make sense.. 

Cornflower Blue Disk Consider budgeting only through next month and keeping the rest in an Income Replacement category. This avoids the issue with non-recurring goals and is far fewer numbers to edit as priorities and book about inevitably change. Not flipping back and forth through multiple screens saves time as well.

Totally agree on the recurring Goals, though. Such an obvious thing that should have been there from the start.

Cornflower Blue Disk This is what I do! Budgeting months in advance is a much better way to handle creating a safety net, than having the safety net as a line item in the budget. I know that I can exactly meet my next three months of a expenses. I love it.

Cornflower Blue Piranha I feel the opposite, as I can see I have 3x my income in a category at a glance. I don't have to flip through multiple screens to see how far my cushion will take me. I also don't have to change a bunch of numbers out several months when bill amounts or priorities change.

dakinemaui Gasp! Someone does something different than you! Story at eleven!

Cornflower Blue Piranha Not sure why the angst. I expressed a different opinion with reasons why I feel the way I do. I didn't say that you were wrong to do it your way or that you should change. My intent was to draw a contrast so someone else might make an educated comparison. YMMV as always.

Wizard Totally agree.  This was the first thing I was trying to figure out how to do with my property taxes, and quarterly federal taxes.  These are the two biggest monsters in my budget and I don't like the unease of not knowing whether I'm budgeting for these correctly.  +1 for this feature.

Forest Green Cheetah Our development team is currently looking into ways to further improve goal options. If you haven't already, you can let them know what options you'd like to see by submitting a Feature Request. Thank you so much!

Steve in PA Thanks for weighing in here! Our development team is currently looking into ways to further improve goal options. I can't give you a time frame, but it's on our radar for future ROI! ;)

Silver Inspector A particular day for a goal doesn't make sense when the budget is month-centric. Only you can know if you will budget to the category before the outflow in the finals month.

FWIW, there used to be a day, but was recently (finally) removed because of all the confusion it caused.

However, a recurrence capability will be greatly appreciated by many.

Hi Silver Inspector !

We're taking a closer look at how we can improve goals and how they function. I can't give any details just yet, but the goal is to make goals more user-friendly. :)

dakinemaui lol, there used to be a feature for calendar days and it got removed? How weird is that? Bills, birthdays, holidays, home closings, credit card payments and so on, happen on certain dates. Even Microsoft Money 95 had a calendar date setting feature for stuff, and that was a loooong time ago. I'm glad my Google calendar still has the days of the month in it. Oh well... You can't stop progress.

Faness thanks  looking forward to it!

Silver Inspector When the goal acts identically regardless of the day you specify, there is no point in specifying the day.

dakinemaui I'm pretty sure currently, that setting goals only has the option of picking a month. That's goofy. There should be a date too. The only things due on the 1st of the month (for me at least), is the mortgage and monthly HOA. Everything else has a different day. Saving an amount, by a certain month is pretty defeating and super confusing when in reality things happen on certain dates within a month. Unless you're well off enough to just stockpile money months or weeks ahead, the current goal setting without a date makes zero sense.

Silver Inspector I will repeat, there are no budget values for individual days. The budget value is for, say, February, which is a month. You should know whether your expected income arrival will allow a budget entry before the outflow date and set the goal's target MONTH accordingly.

If you will not budget before an outflow on Feb 15, then you need to set the goal's target for JANUARY. Specifying a Target Date of Feb 15 (assuming that was possible) would obviously leave you short.

dakinemaui Maybe I'm missing something, or don't understand how to use the YNAB system properly. My confusion is that I've got expenses that occur at varying dates and they're pretty much consistent throughout the  weeks, months and years.

Unless I'm at least a full month or more ahead in terms of money surplus, how would I do a zero based budget, based on only the money I've got currently and with each successive paycheck?

I thought the goals were supposed to help as reminders to fill up those priority money buckets that I mapped out planning where each dollar will be spent.

Hypothetically, if I've got bills throughout the month at various dates, as well as longer term goals that are date specific, how do goals work without a date? Or do you mean the current YNAB software has a glitch where regardless of having a date, it didn't work properly?

Thx

Silver Inspector When money arrives, ask yourself where it is needed before being paid again. Allocate some to those various purposes (categories). That is how you make a plan for those dollars. Repeat when you get more. Ensure the important things get money, because there is never enough to do everything you want.

Yes, a goal can be used to remind you, but it's certainly not mandatory. Naming your category "Groceries $500" does the same thing. Or even "Groceries $250/check" if you happen to be paid bi-weekly. YNAB works just fine without Goals. The only thing they really do is save a few keystrokes and possibly do some simple math. That is why they don't need a day -- they simply fill in the number you would normally type into this MONTH'S budget cell with the press of a button.

Silver Inspector I use the goals for monthly and long term spending. 

On the monthly bills I have set up the spending per month goal and then labeled the due date on the category line item as shown in this screen shot of my actual budget. I then arranged all of the monthly bills by due date and made sure they were funded no later than that due date. This helped me to be sure everything was funded during each paycheck period prior to breaking out of that cycle. The motorcycle insurance line looks weird because I pay it annually but I wanted to be sure I funded it the same out of my monthly budget and it wasn't accidentally overlooked. So the $688 spending goal is actually set for 12 month period but when it rolls over I don't want to miss it if I forget to reset the goal date.

In the long term goals by date it funds the goal by the 1st of the month it is set to happen in so that no matter what day of the month it falls on it will be funded. If this really worries you that you won't have it funded in time if you haven't broken the paycheck to paycheck cycle then set the goal to the month prior to the one it is due in. IE a Nov 2020 annual bill can be set as to be funded by Oct 2020 and then even if that bill is due Nov 1st 2020 it will be fully funded with no problems on last months money.

Now, as I said much earlier in this thread I REALLY would like the goals to automatically reset for the same period of time or, better yet allow me to select how often they recur the same as the scheduled transactions in the accounts page here in YNAB. Example, I have some that recycle every 6 months and one that recurs every 12 months but I have two subscriptions for it that are about 6 months apart. So this 12 month goal actually happens twice in that 12 months so setting it for 6 months would give me a truer budget line instead of doubling the annual goal or having two lines for the same name with different goal dates. 

dakinemaui thanks for the replies. I understand there workaround, (learned it from a YouTube video from a guy who lives in an airstream and travels with his wife). Its just disheartening that rather than being setup to help people trying to "get out of debt and stop living paycheck to paycheck", YNAB is actually better suited and optimized for people already out of debt, who are way ahead of the curve and have at least a month in advance worth of expenses already setup in auto pay at their bank. Funding everything within a month the month before and having it ready to spend the first of the month seems like a fairy tale to someone without the means. So much tech inside the software, but no calendar or reminders (notifications), seems ludicrous for a system that's designed to help a person manage money better.

I'm in a subscription now and still trying to make the best of it as is. I guess Google calendar is an option.

Silver Inspector Many people who need to manually pay a bill will schedule a transaction in YNAB for when they need to act. The scheduled transaction firing is exactly the reminder they need. The scheduler is essentially the "Agenda" view of a traditional calendar. If you're the type that needs more reminders than that, there are tons of To Do apps, no need for YNAB to reinvent the wheel.

I'm pretty sure that the majority of users are not a month ahead, and they don't seem to have issues. Certainly "living on last month's income" is easier, but it's not exactly hard otherwise. Many people group categories for Check 1, Check 2, etc. and allocate their check with a few clicks, some in the month, perhaps some in next month. TBH, I started with an earlier version that didn't have Goals; ripping through 50 categories manually typing in budget values took only a few minutes when I was not that far ahead.

TBH, the only hard part about YNAB is establishing/understanding your own priorities -- which you will face regardless of whether you are "ahead" or still paycheck-to-paycheck. With that understanding, budgeting is actually trivial (highest priority gets money first, stop when you're out of money).

Silver Inspector There will be an Underfunded warning in the month of the scheduled outflow -- an implicit goal, if you will.

This is fine for monthly recurrence, but most will use goals for less frequent outflows. Again, you should set the target month based on whether you can budget to that category prior to the outflow or not.

dakinemaui got it, cool. So instead of setting up goals like in the how to videos, (where they basically goal everything), I'd only setup a goal for something that land on or before the first of the month. I can't think of anything except the mortgage and HOA that is on the 1st, maybe I'll use it for that. Thanks again.

Silver Inspector Since you're a month ahead, the implicit goal via scheduler is fine for those monthly transactions on the 1st. (You obviously have the money ready to budget before the end of the previous month. Many people stash it in a holding category during the month and then release it at the end if the month.)

Silver Inspector I use both Scheduled Transactions and Goals rather heavily. Yes, I am buffered, which makes it easier. The Scheduled amounts do show up if you select a Category in the Budget screen and look in the right column (Inspector). It will tell you that you have 'n' upcoming transactions totalling 'x' and that this Category will have 'y' left after those transactions (might be negative!)