Credit Card Available in the RED
This keeps happening. SO FRUSTRATING. I do not carry a credit card balance. I pay in full. My credit card is LINKED, so money transfers to the credit card payment category when I purchase something. HOWEVER, almost every month...at some point...I have a a NEGATIVE red balance in the credit card payment category. I have reconciled...and everything is square there...so why this negative amount????? Thanks for help!
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I pay in full too. I do have to fix it sometimes. It is supposed to move money to the cc bucket anytime you assign a category to the cc transaction. So if you assign clothing for a $40 transaction your cc should have $ which was moved from the clothing category. Maybe it turns red if there wasn't $40 in the clothing category? (In this example)
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In the past; I have seen this and it is because I overspent in a category. Make sure your categories are not negative.
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None of my categories are negative. So confusing.
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You likely failed to budget for the initial balance on the card.
If you pay your card in full each month, the card category needs to equal the amount charged to the card. Adjust as needed.
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WordTenor hello! I am basically a newbie and I really would love to know about your good advice here - remembering to budget for the initial balance in the card? I have been YNABbing for two days ... I sadly have to carry some credit card balances so I can't budget to clear the whole balance but is it possible to explain the advice you give above about budgeting for credit card balance?
(I have tried YNAB several times and after several years break am now attempting again with determination!)
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Silver Deer The credit card payment category tells you how much of your cash you have reserved to make payments to the credit card. When you make a purchase on a credit card from a category that had money budgeted to it, YNAB will automatically change the job from paying for that purchase to paying back the credit card using that money by moving it to the payment category for you.
Any balance on the card that is there for any reason other than being a budgeted purchase in YNAB is not covered by your budget, so you must budget money directly to your card payment category if you plan to make a payment that is in excess of the amount the category has reserved.
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Orange Snow I know it can be so frustrating (jarring, even) to see red in your Credit Card Payment category! If you don't have any overspending in the current month, the first thing you'll want to do is check for credit overspending in past months.
If there's no overspending, WordTenor has the next step down - check to be sure you budgeted for the starting balance on the card when you set it up.
If neither of those seems to be the case, there are a couple of other things that can cause a shortfall in your Credit Card Payment category, like overpayments and certain returns/refunds.
Does any of this help explain what might be going on here? Let us know if not and we can keep spitballing!
