HappyDance I swear I learn more new things about this software from you than from all the "official" resources.

Vibrant 

Thanks. I enjoy helping others avoid the messes I got myself into, the one upside of having gone through some of this myself. 

Rhubarb314159 Meh. 😛

Rhubarb314159 I have a real “love-hate” relationship with YNAB for these kinds of reasons. I love it because it helps me budget and does things that no other software I have found does. I hate how often it frustrates me when things I need to do in order to sensibly apply the YNAB rules (like close a category I used to give my dollars a job that is now done, in this example) can only be done via a workaround or by taking lots of non-intuitive steps.

Chris Curtis Huh? I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Just hide it and be done with it.

Superbone as HappyDance said above “The trouble with hiding categories:  In your spending reports, all the hidden categories are combined into one group, so instead of your TV showing up in spending under it's original master category, it is now lumped in with every other hidden category.” 

It fits with the YNAB idea of always working from what you have now to the future, but it is often helpful to be able to see how you got here. Most software allows you to close a category, but leave reporting intact, or to filter what you show and don’t show. Part of the issue is that YNAB reports are quite limited.

Renaming categories to do new jobs is less than ideal too. Track record in in how you spend and what you spend it on is quite important information. Personally, I use quite generic categories (e.g house projects) for things with goals (I have separate categories for “House repairs” and “Household” to cover more routine spending, that have monthly contribution goals) and I can go back and look at what was saved and spent which might have been a washing machine one year and a replacement bathroom the next. Updating the goals (save x by y) makes sense.

Chris Curtis Thanks for the explanation. I guess I've never cared much about the YNAB reports. I'll occasionally look at them out of curiosity but other than that, I just use them at tax time. They're great for finding all I spent on alimony and charity last year for example. The one report I do view frequently is the Net Worth report but it is immune to hidden category issues.

Chris Curtis Same here on the "love-hate" relationship. What's so frustrating to me on this issue is that the current function is SO CLOSE to what we need.

If you click "Delete", it gives you the option to recategorize all the transactions to a new category automatically. What it doesn't do is also recategorize the associated budgeted money. If it did, the OP question wouldn't be showing up constantly. One challenge for developers (and moderators like Faness) is that the form of the question is always different, so it's not clear they all have the same solution . . .

Powder Blue Pony It only affects the option to view your budgeting history. If you keep the category, then you can go back to see how much you budgeted in each month (were you averaging $100 every month? Did you budget more in a certain month? etc.). If you delete the category, you can't see how you budgeted to get to the amount you saved, but the actual spending takes place in the other category so your reports are still accurate.

Faness ah, of course. Thanks.

Faness You're starting to get it! A long-time user either:

1) Has a tremendous number of outdated categories clogging their budget.

2) Uses "delete", and therefore has inaccurate budget history and possibly lost transactions.

3) Is constantly renaming categories, and therefore has inaccurate reports.

4) Has gone back months/years and rebudgeted every dollar from finished categories, then recategorized transactions, then deleted the category.

I'm currently picking option 4, but it's tedious and terrible.

Rhubarb314159 

Or 5) Has categories that are broad enough to capture a wide variety of similar transactions (note that this is what @jenmas and HappyDance suggested to the OP, also)

You made me look; I have 18 hidden categories, several of which are default categories that came with the web app that I didn't need (natural gas is rolled into my utilities, I don't pay separately for health insurance, "household" is rolled under "shopping" for me). This is in a 7-year-old budget. 

What I've found over the years is that granularity in categories I'm not carefully watching actually isn't that important, and that broad categories let me spend and save consistently. The budget history is totally irrelevant; only the transaction history actually matters. It seems counter intuitive, but it's correct. 

WordTenor I see your point, and I'm glad that works for you. I like having a couple granular categories for specific purchases. As do others, otherwise the "wish farm" idea wouldn't be so popular. I think it would be good for YNAB to improve options for closing a category.

Rhubarb314159 umm, with the wish farm you don't have a lot of granular categories. I have 3 - small, medium, and large that I save to. Right now my small category is (S) Canvas Stretching. When that category is full (needs about another $75), I will move the money up to Home Stuff and rename the category to (S) Next Thing I'm Saving For. No money is ever spent out of the wish farm category line item, just like explained in the Wish Farm article: "To avoid this, when it’s time to make your wish come true, move the money into the appropriate category of your budget, and pay for it there. Then delete the wish line item in your wish farm. For example, you would record the spending for new blackout blinds in the ‘Home Improvement’ category. . ."

RIP_MSMoney This is what I've been doing as well. The problem is that when you delete the category all of the budgeting information for it vanishes, and your budget history is no longer accurate. It's easy to recategorize transactions themselves (nice trick with the hashtags, btw), but no automated way to make budget allocations follow them retroactively.

Rhubarb314159 For me, after the item is purchased, I don't really care about the budgetting aspect. What was purchased is all that matters to me. For me, transactions and hashtags are all that matters.