Hi glynab ,

I hope you don't mind if I jump in for Faness here! We aren't able to see that kind of info on our end either, but it looks like Melissa just replied to your email to [email protected] , asking to take a look and run some calculations to make sure everything adds up right. You're in great hands!

As for the feature request, a log of actions is certainly something a lot of users are looking for, so you aren't alone in that. I've even submitted a feature request for it! Our designers are analyzing all this collected feedback to plan for what’s next  in YNAB. 

glynab Ahh, I'm so sorry that was a deal breaker for you! It truly isn't our intent, but I understand why you would feel some distrust going forward. A successful budget is one that's forward looking, but in cases like this you just need to look back! 

Anyway, knowing specific feedback like this is a huge part of our feature request prioritization, because when combing through feedback we always ask "How can this help YNABers gain better control of their money? ".  In this case, the usage is pretty clear. 🙂

Let me know if you have any questions at all (make sure to use the @ feature to ping me) or if I can help in any way! If this is the end for you and YNAB, whatever tool you choose to use from here, I hope it can still support the YNAB Method. 

Jannelle Is there a way to vote for feature requests because this exact thing is HIGH on my priority list as well as a way to undo a specific action in the action history without undoing everything.  I've spent a lot of time sleuthing out mistypes, and where money was moved, or buttons hit erroneously (like the "quick budget" without realizing it, after I'd already manually set up my budget for the month).  It's panic inducing and financially debilitating until you can rework it all.  Mistakes happen and there NEEDS to be a way to be in control of correcting them.  

Routhmom There isn't a way to "vote" on features, but we have changed how we collect feedback since this post was created. If you fill out our Feature Request form, it goes directly to our design team so they know what you'd like to see in the future! :)

Routhmom I just posted in the Q&A about this exact thing!! my budget is on hold until I wait 24 hours for support to get back to me when I accidentally cleared my budgeted categories to zero when experimenting with the quick budget features... there is no undo button is there??

Lee2lee yes, there is an undo button on the browser app. If you did this on the mobile app, you're out of luck.

dakinemaui i now know where the undo button is.  But it was too late.

Lee2lee If you have goals/scheduled transactions setup, the Underfunded button might correct most of those entries. Lots of people put the desired monthly budget value (or per-check value) in the category name for reference.

Hi Green Horse ! We're all about changing your budget as your priorities change (Rule Three: Roll With the Punches), and looking forward at where you need that money to go—instead of where it has been.

There currently isn't a way to track the movement of money between categories, but would you mind sending that over as a Feature Request to let our development team know you'd like to see that feature?

Our designers have a great process for digesting feedback, quantifying how it relates to the YNAB Method and how it might help YNABers reach their goals. They prioritize projects using that data as a guidepost, so it's really important to us! 

Hi Cornflower Blue Elk !

Thank you for taking the time to submit a feature request! An audit trail or historical action log is something our Product Team is looking at closely—especially as we explore the possibility of multi-user budgets, where that would be a desirable feature. For now, as we carefully prioritize our development resources, it hasn’t made it to our short-term roadmap It isn't something we expect to see in the near future, but we're keeping it on our radar!

Faness One of the core principles that makes YNAB useful is sprinkled throughout your videos, faqs, job aids - YNAB lets you be honest w/ yourself, *and hold yourself accountable*.  YNABs Four Rules make it very clear that YNAB cannot work as designed, if you pretend you have more money than you do; or your budget for certain categories doesn't align with your priorities.

THAT is its true value.  It's a mirror. You may not like what you see, but there it is - so you can't pretend you weren't told / aren't aware / don't have a roadmap to change.

So, its really disappointing to see this mail trail.  You've apparently been looking at this feature request for over a year.  It's not a feature request.  It's a huge gaping hole in the above core principles.

Being able to move money between categories, with no record of when, or why, kills accountability.  It allows folks to pretend that repeated infusions into underfunded categories are 'occasional' or 'one offs'.  It facilitates robbing from important areas like True Expense  or Savings cash stores, with little visibility - until the True Expense occurs, or the Savings are required.

It does not make sense that a $0.01 actual overspend will be flagged as 'red, need immediate attention' - but the drip-drip-drip towards insolvency, of continuing, unflagged, untracked category transfers in the tens or hundreds of dollars a month is not.

Please rethink this.  It's an amazing product, but you folks have blinders on for this one.

WhoMovedMyCheese Just FYI, a year is a quick turnaround for a YNAB feature 😁. 

I just wrote a long set of instructions about the process we ended up using to fiddle with the number puzzle without messing up YNAB. We used a paper to play on, then input into YNAB. That prevented weird mistakes from trying out scenarios. 

With regard to WAMing, just make it a rule to never pull from a category with a deadline (or at least use a goal that recalculates how much more you need to budget next month, then do it). 

With regard to creeping up on the overspending facilitation, those moves should be intentional and from lower priority categories. If they are commonly from the same category, maybe you're in a high spending phase (think heat in winter) or you just need to budget more than you think there. After you make the move, looking forward is more useful than looking back.

On the other hand, I have a few categories that are set up to WAM between, and I can easily see what I've done. Case in point: let's say we budget $500 for food per month. This month, WAMing has left 325 in the budget column, with only $100 left to spend. Where did that money go? Convenience meals, Dining Out, Treats, and Dog aren't funded for normal spending. Instead, when we consider buying that stuff, we look at the grocery budget for guidance. "If we go out to eat now, will we still have enough for groceries?" This month, we have been sick, so there have been more convenience meals. If we can stay under budget for food the rest of the month, great. If we have to move money to facilitate that, I've already identified the category it will come from, and only in the amount needed. 

In another scenario, we had a category reach it's savings cap (yay!), and then we borrowed from it to fund a purchase (hey, no interest). In order to "pay it back" to get it back up to the cap, it's back in our monthly budget contributions.

My point is that it may be helpful to develop structures/mindsets/workflows to help you be successful with the way it works now. 

With regard to multiple users potentially messing things up because they're not communicating outside of YNAB about making changes in YNAB (or mistakes happen, you know). A log would definitely be useful. We avoid this by having a main budget person and only making WAMing changes with affirmation from the other. 

WhoMovedMyCheese Great post and clearly stated. I'm so frustrated with this aspect of YNAB that I want to scream. I truly used to love this program but now I am realizing that it has some huge gaping holes that are obvious to us users and which don't get taken care of by the 'Product team'. What don't they understand about this problem? Also, the fact that they seemingly refuse to develop a way to print reports just seems stupid to me. The report function is pretty weak as it is. They at least knew the fundamentals of reports and printing in YNAB 4. What happened?

WhoMovedMyCheese So do you want a ticker tape +/- audit trail or some kind of notification system questioning the judgment of each money move?  It seems one is a quantitative solution and one is qualitative.  That's going to be some sophisticated programming.

No one touches my budget but me, so thankfully I don't have the worry of someone's mitts messing up my numbers and having to catch the culprit.  So I sympathize with those of you who may have other people messing up your budget.

But an audit trail of my deliberate money moves would look like the history of my email filtering for a week, or a spirited google search session, etc.  That would be some serious data logging that 99% of the time would be useless to me.  I tweak my budget regularly throughout the month, usually multiple times a week.  And it can be by mere pennies sometimes.  It's not because of damage control, but just because I like to change plans a lot and YNAB is great for that.  When I make a major adjustment to a category balance I write a quick note in the notes area.

So the way I see it, if you manipulate your budget constantly an audit trail is going to be an overwhelming data dump.  And if you only manipulate it occasionally, it's easy enough to jot down "1/19/20 -$200 for emergency x."

Annieland Nope - they're both quantitative

Annieland said:
s o do you want a ticker tape +/- audit trail or some kind of notification system questioning the judgment of each money move?  It seems one is a quantitative solution and one is qualitative.  That's going to be some sophisticated programming.

  No, just a audit trail, and a report based off that showing which categories were impacted by the transfers. If the time basis is left flexible, and a threshold variable is allowed (ie "only show categories which were  donors / recipients more than X times in a month / three months") - it would be useful, and not terribly hard to implement.

WhoMovedMyCheese Thank you for sharing your thoughts here! You've brought up a few details that would be nice to have our Product Team consider (such as a time basis for the audit trail, whether it can be changed, filtered, searched, etc.). We have a number of other points we want to address before deciding on a future audit trail feature and what it will look like in the budget.

We don't consider the current lack of an audit trail in violation of the 4 Rules. Your budget is meant to outline your priorities. When those priorities change, regardless of the reason, so does the budget. If you want to budget $200 towards a Rainy Day Fund, but realize the average budgeted is only $100, that means other priorities stopped that from happening. Other categories can be adjusted to make that $200 a larger priority, or maybe it's not as important as originally planned. For now, the notes section can help keep track of those changes if you want to keep a manual log of them.

WhoMovedMyCheese meh, the accountability happens when you decide to change your priorities and shift money.  If you have a drip drip towards insolvency, it means you are ignoring the priorities you set and not using your budget to guide your spending, you are only using it as a tracking tool. If you want that kind of tool there are plenty of other options. 

Faness The notes section is tiny! There’s no way you could add notes for every category change. Sorry but that’s a ridiculous suggestion. 
 

On that note the other thing that needs changing is the lack of a decent way of adding notes for the month and against the categories by month. 

Hi MiniMum !

I understand if that option isn't ideal, but some YNABers use the notes section in a similar fashion. You can let our Product Team know how you'd like to see the Notes sections perform by submitting a Feature Request. :)

Faness Actually it can't.  I've run into a limit with that field, Faness, and YNAB support (Todd) has confirmed it.  Around 5K characters - 4 pages of notes can be input - then, the NOTES field refuses additional detail.

so, that workaround is not a really option

WhoMovedMyCheese Wow.  You put that many notes on a category!

What benefit do you get from keeping the old ones?

Move Light Sound Life uh, 5K characters is the equivalent of 4 pages of double spaced text.  And this was over the course of 10 months, so  not exactly writing a novel here.

More to the point, I was first assured by Customer Support that the field was unlimited - which is why I started using it as a workaround.  Once I ran up against the limit - they rechecked, and found they actually didn't know their own software - and that a 5K hardcoded limit was in place.

The solution they proposed:  Create another category, with a similar name - and put the additional notes there! (anyone else see the target rich environment for confusion that would create?)

Not exactly a confidence builder.

WhoMovedMyCheese You might switch to putting the audit-trail type notes in the monthly note area (top of the budget).

WhoMovedMyCheese Sorry for the confusion there! Were you trying to replicate an audit trail for all time for a certain category? I picture that being hard to navigate even before reaching the 5k character limit. 

If you use the Monthly notes section (underneath the name of the month in your budget), like dakinemaui mentioned, you can list the changes for each category in just the current month to make them easier to sort through. 

We've made some headway on an audit trail feature, but our team is still looking into it and I can't offer any further details. You can submit a Feature Request if you'd like to share your thoughts on how an audit trail would be useful or how you'd like to see it perform.

Cornflower Blue Wizard No. It’s really not. Maybe go ask on their forums.

glynab 10+ years for me and it's never been an issue so you'll never convince me. I just followed the rules and it made me a rich man. Look forward, not backward.

glynab It's not a mistake. It's Rule 3. Good luck to you.

glynab False equivalence.

glynab In my budget, money leaves a category because I spent it or I reallocated it toward something more important. I don't get the attraction for knowing the specific "why" -- the mere fact it was something more important is sufficient for me. IMHO, if I could better predict the future, it wouldn't have been in the original category in the first place!

This is the same complaint of people who want to track where they intentionally WAMmed from, and I don't get that, either.  If you can't tell by looking at your category balances (and goals, if you use them) where the money got moved from, put it wherever it seems the most needed right now. 

glynab 

Have you considered setting up a "monthly savings builder" goal on most/every category in your budget? That'd give you a visible warning if any category dips below its goal target. Or for a less heavy handed approach, maybe category notes, or hints in the category name?

Those are all ways of "locking in" a target amount, for comparison with an actual amount, and would increase your awareness if (when) there's drift between target & actual -- accidental or intentional.

Disclaimer: I don't personally use any of those techniques, because I'm firmly in the Rule 3 camp here. My budget is not a static document; it's fluid and meant to change. I don't want to saddle every category with a fixed goal, because my life doesn't work that way. My goals/wants/needs in September are markedly different than they were in March. A lot of that's due to the pandemic -- still rolling with those punches. But a lot of it is just the ordinary everyday phenomenon of living my life. Discovering new interests and hobbies, deprioritizing old ones, and changing my mind about the ways I want to spend my money.

For those reasons, I'm pretty sure I'd dislike any audit feature (unless it was completely unobtrusive.) At best, I'd find it an unhelpful distraction. At worst, it'd be a source of guilt -- a reminder that I failed to achieve some past goal -- and become a subtle deterrent to allowing myself the freedom to simply change my mind about things. I don't want to chain myself to past choices -- I want to look ahead. (A long-winded way if saying that I want to avoid "anchoring bias," as nolesrule much more succinctly put it.)

nolesrule That is not anchoring bias. 

Having a trail of information is a tool for troubleshooting. It is just data that can help you troubleshoot a problem. No one is saying they need this feature to change the way they budget.

You act like mistakes can never happen. Especially with multiple people working on a budget.  LOL if you actually believe that then you have way more issues than any feature can fix.

Blue Screwdiver Actually plenty of people are asking for this as a way to change the way they budget, in this thread alone.

Herman Well then, if you take a hammer and decide to use it to put in screws because you think it's faster/easier... it doesn't mean a hammer is a bad tool and it shouldn't be available to someone that needs it for its intended purpose.

Let me use a hammer to drive my nails and they can do whatever it is they want to do. 

Blue Screwdiver it does if the goal is to teach people how to use a screwdriver. 

bret You're equating apples and oranges.  

As per your link, Goodbudget  category moves become actual transactions in the account ledger- which  would clearly junk up those account views, making reconciliation a pain in the backside, and providing little if no visibility.

The audit trail  I'm proposing is a report specifically showing moves between categories, with a rollup to  identify patterns.  It wouldn't contaminate the ledger, and it makes Rule 3 something that gets implemented with full transparency.  That report would no more degrade the experience with YNAB then the net worth report (which many don't use because the import feature for many investment / retirement accounts, if it works, is a one shot static number)

WhoMovedMyCheese Of course somebody named "WhoMovedMyCheese" is going to want an audit trail. You can't just accept the fact that your cheese has been moved and enjoy it from its new location. You want to know who did it and why! Just eat the moved cheese and carry on. 😉

Superbone 😂

but what if you found only half your cheese?! 

(I’m very much pro YNAB rules, don’t have a strong opinion on how to ease people into them, but just this evening my budget unexpectedly said I had overbudgeted. I don’t know how it happened or what I did, so just now wouldn’t say no to a trail)

Todd It's not so much we forget what it's like to be a newbie, but rather the sooner the newbie can make the paradigm shift, the better off they will be. When you provide functionality that prevents the paradigm shift, they will use it as a crutch rather than make the shift.

nolesrule Calling a proposed enhancement that reveals patterns of regretted behavior, in favor of 'just be perfect' - is silly.  The purpose of automation is to reduce the possibility of human error.  If an audit trail is a crutch, YNAB itself could be considered one, writ large.  Without automation and the transparency it brings, you could get the same results with an excel spreadsheet, or on paper, and the Four Rules.

Todd If the important thing is to make the shift, then giving something that will prevent them from making the shift is counter-productive.

nolesrule  Of course. We'll just have to disagree about whether that is the case. ;) 

Todd One of the best things that happened to me as a new YNABer was the inflexibilty of YNAB 4 and people like Patzer, Superbone, and Joel who were kindly uncompromising in their rejection of my insistence that my way was better. It revolutionized how I think about all my money, not just the little corner that is my YNAB budget and I am a much wealthier woman seven years later as a result. 
 

I realize that broke people are a lot more likely to buy the product if it works well with the mentality that is keeping them from getting ahead instead of forcing them into new ways of thinking. Yet, I am letting my financial planner go next week because I don’t need her anymore. I don’t think the current version of YNAB, with all its support materials and nice communities where people get upset if anyone says “Hey there actually is a right way to do this” would ever have enabled me to get to this point with my money. I feel sad for new YNAB users that all they get now is software. It’s loads better than nothing, but it’s not transformative anymore.

So yes, I reject out of hand the idea that I’ve “forgotten what it was like.” It’s precisely *because* I remember what it was like. 

I am always struck by the times on Reddit and Facebook that I give a response about budget philosophy (one was just yesterday, and was about this very issue) and several people go “OH MY GOD THIS IS GENUIS” and I’m like, “Yeah. This is how YNAB used to teach this and they don’t anymore.”

WordTenor We don't disagree on the positive elements of being opinionated where it counts. We just disagree, in this case, that making visible to someone the Rule Three actions they took would impair their ability to adopt the YNAB method. I happen to think it could help people use Rule Three more (and/or more effectively), not less.

Todd With all the people who clamor for a way to track paybacks when they "borrow" from categories, I strongly suspect this feature will cause them to stagnate with that view rather than embrace the viewpoint that their initial guess was simply not perfect.

I can see a detailed & persistent Undo capability that might have such information (similar to various image editing tools). In other words, it's available if they dig a little. I agree with nolesrule that if you give new users a sturdy crutch, most will continue to limp.

Just a persistent Undo alone would do a lot for people feeling comfortable reallocating or reorganizing. Perhaps with savepoints. That was a much loved feature of YNAB4.

 Todd Well, I hope for the sake of the people who are buying YNAB that you're right. But I suspect that this increasing press to make the software conform to the confused new user than strongly nudging the new user conform to the underlying philosophy of the software is going to mostly help YNAB get subscribers rather than help the subscribers learn to budget.

I can tell you exactly what I would've done with this feature. I was aces at paying myself back for various things. That was exactly what I had already been doing in my elaborate budget by account method. My budget would've become a track record of all my failures as a budgeter and I would've spent lots of time trying to "make up" for perfectly good moves. Of course, a good YNABer knows these aren't failures; they're changes of priority. But given a tool that would allow me to track all those failures, I likely would never have learned to think about them as changes in priority. 

The really interesting thing is that learning to think about my money as reflecting my priorities has had ripple effects far beyond my budget. Learning to own a choice to increase money here and decrease it there not as a failure affects everything from my investments on down. 

I agree with  dakinemaui that probably what is needed here is a persistent undo or save point (a feature YNAB used to have) or an undo on mobile (which is weirdly still not here after 4 years). I urge the company to listen hard to the really successful longtime users who think this is not a good idea instead of the users who are struggling to become longterm users who naturally feel like they need it. 

WordTenor 

WordTenor said:
My budget would've become a track record of all my failures as a budgeter and I would've spent lots of time trying to "make up" for perfectly good moves. Of course, a good YNABer knows these aren't failures; they're changes of priority. But given a tool that would allow me to track all those failures, I likely would never have learned to think about them as changes in priority. 

Very well said. If you allow users to keep doing what they've always done, they'll keep doing it. It's as simple as that. I think you answered your own question though. If there's a choice between selling more software subscriptions and keeping the method pure along with the magic that goes along with it, YNAB is choosing the money. And I don't know if you can blame them. Of course they want their users to improve their financial status but they also want to make money while doing it and that takes precedence.

This was obvious to me when nYNAB was released and the old Rule 4 (it was even Rule 1 before that!), Live on Last Month's Income, was replaced by Age Your Money and the dubious AOM metric. YNAB will continue to make more and more money but the YNAB system will continue to get more and more watered down.

Todd That's precisely the point I was making, 8 months ago.  Rule 3 the handgun of budgeting rules...it can be used for good or ill, if a user's "roll with the punches" approach, leads to persistent defunding of more important allocations.  The audit trail / report would make the current 'stealth steals' between categories radically transparent and easily actioned. 

WordTenor I think you're misstating both the scope and the intent of the ask for an audit trail.

Its not intended, nor would it be used by most, as a  "woe is me" failure record.  It's to specifically and quickly highlight patterns of behavior that require extensive manual inspection under the current software - which automation essentially its purpose.  The current stealth moves between categories  disguise those individually, and as identifiable patterns. 

nolesrule Maybe I'm just missing the context here, since I've been off the board for awhile - but I don't get this.

How  is providing an audit trail report, that shows where the category moves occurred, and rolling these up into a display making patterns clear - result in folks not shifting to intelligent application of Rule 3?

WhoMovedMyCheese You’re mistaken that a majority of users would not use it that way. Hang out for the better part of a decade on places where brand new YNAB users are and you’ll discover that one of the number one things they struggle with is not having a clear visible spanking when they’ve not correctly predicted their expenses. The shift to a budget that is not about whether or not you met some arbitrary goal is extremely difficult, and yet it’s one of the most powerful parts of this method. Providing a spanking indicator is not useful in making that shift. 
 

when you’re applying classic rule 4 and a principled rule 3, knowing whether or not you exceeded your initial target is a piece of cake, so not sure what you mean by “extensive manual inspection.” My grocery budget is $225. Since March, it’s been a lot higher. This month so far it’s $386. I don’t have to worry about where the money came from, because I trust that I didn’t move the money from any place that was a higher priorty than more groceries.  I know that groceries is up because I know what groceries usually is. And I know that it’s fine that it’s up. 
 

lots of new users seem to have the problem that they’re just moving money around their budget willy-nilly, so of course they want an audit trail because they aren’t thinking about what they’re doing when they move money. One of the most common newbie problems is “How do I make sure I don’t overspend this category?” The answer to that is not a programmatic one. The solution is not to provide an audit trail, but for people to learn to think. 

WhoMovedMyCheese said:
if a user's "roll with the punches" approach, leads to persistent defunding of more important allocations

If they are persistently defunding a category, then that shouldn't be one of the more important categories. 

glynab If you’re not really using rule 3 why need an audit trail? 

WordTenor Just curious - back in the days of YNAB4 how did newbies learn about the YNAB philosophy? Actually, how do they learn about it now as well?

(I bought the book on Kindle back in 2018 and had no idea at the time it was a budgeting software - I thought it was just a book with a great new way to think about budgeting! Then at some point the book mentioned the software so I decided to try it (I'm an accountant and had been using Quicken for my personal finances for 20+ years prior to that). By that that point I already knew about the philosophies, I just had to learn how to use the actual software to implement them...)

I'm constantly surprised on the Facebook groups what people don't know even while using the software/app!

Periwinkle Flute I can tell you how I learned back in the day. This was before YNAB 4, before YNAB 3. There was no book. But there was documentation. There were the four rules. I read them over and over again until they started to stick. Started using the software. Read the rules again. Kept using the software and getting better with money. Found the original forums. Discovered I was still doing some things wrong. Fixed them. Continued to learn from the forums. Asked questions. Mastered my money.  

Periwinkle Flute I started with YNAB4. I took every single live class offered. I read the documentation. I participated in the original forums. Back then, YNAB stated that they considered themselves to be an educational company first and foremost and the software was a tool to support the method. Though to be absolutely honest, I was one of the people that the whole method clicked for almost instantly, I just needed some reinforcement on the mechanics.

I completely and immediately embraced the idea that location of funds is different than purpose so if someone gives me a $50 gift certificate to Home Depot, I will add those funds to my single Gift Card account and budget $50 to eating out. I don't care where I WAM from. I trust that if I decided to reallocate from a category, I made the right decision and don't look back. Also, I can tell at a glance if a category has been WAM'd from because I budget the exact same amount to 95% of my categories each and every month. I don't use goals. I do 100% manual entry.

Periwinkle Flute I started in 2013, one year into YNAB 4. At that time, there were oodles of testimonials, really clear support materials which were not so video-based, and a very friendly forum. I took all the webinars, many more than once. The forum was full of people like Superbone, who had been using the software for years and who had biting insight into the nuances of it. The support materials themselves were really different—they focused heavily on the method and were much less cutesy. There was a wonderful video and page which showed the three steps of budgeting: get money, budget money, spend money. It was then used to extrapolate to the credit card float and show how floating was spend money, get money, in the wrong order. The support materials were laser focused on how YNAB was different and how the method worked. That you basically can’t get to them now is a real shame because many of the old ones are much clearer than the new ones.
 

The book is actually a great place to have started, though I can’t stand the new explanation of Rule 4 which is no longer really a thing you can take action on. And I find Jesse’s choice not to save for his kids college to be irresponsible and not generalizable to the average YNAB user. But generally its focus on the method rather than the software is welcome and I find it sorely lacking in most of the current materials. 

dakinemaui I agree in principle.  But 'should be' is aspirational.  Again, I see the point of software automation, especially in YNAB, as taking the pain out of drudgery (imagine doing YNAB as a set of principles on paper!), and insurance against human error.

dakinemaui savepoints! I had forgotten about those from YNAB 4, and you’re right. Those were fantastic. 

WordTenor I started in 2013 as well. I agree about the documentation and resources then: laser focused, straightforward, simple, highlighting how the methodology was different than other approaches. The resources now are almost overwhelming. I love YNAB and don’t mean to disparage, but it kinda feels now like the company has to justify the oodles of money they receive in subscriptions by hiring people who can pump out more and more cutsie resources — accessible, warm, fun, but less and less focused and clear over time. That’s all ok for me, as I’m set as a long term user. It bummed me out, though, when I wanted a friend to get the method and he felt too overwhelmed by the resources and trainings to keep it up. That’s on him, and I trust he’ll try again and it will sometime click. I just fell in love with the simplicity of the 4 days, and wish he could experience it as well. 

bret 

bret said:
But if you care about "making things visible" to users, here's a suggestion on where to start: The unresolved Stealing From The Future bug that is now 4 years old.

 If you go by when the phrase was actually coined, we're fast approaching the 5 year mark which will be in mid-November. I know those who participated in the closed testing new about the issue long before that.

nolesrule yeah I made the first report about it from my brothers couch in Thailand in July. 

dakinemaui but don’t you agree that deciding on priorities is rather a complicated thing? I mean, not complicated in a way, but ever shifting, dependant on things happening, but also on your thougths and feelings of the moment. When I’m feeling anxious (influenced boy both the news I just read as well as being tired, for example) I’m more likely to value a bigger sum for a loss of income category. When the sun shines, I have just been out for a run and feel confident, I’m ready to spend it on some new professional clothes to feel confident in the job interview I’m going to arrange.

The above doesn’t keep me from applying the 4 rules (I wasn’t around back then, but use living on last months income anyway. Glad the forum explained), but I wouldn’t be able to put all my categories in an exact order of importance....

Powder Blue Pony Oh yes, I absolutely do feel they shift about. That's precisely why I want to evaluate using today's priorities when I get more money. I might be hard pressed to put all my categories in order of priority. However, I don't have to.

When reallocating, I only need to find the lowest priority out of everything, which is pretty easy. Even if I don't get it exactly right (perhaps it's the second-lowest), as long as it's lower than where the money is going, that's good enough.

Conversely, when I get new money, I only need to find the most important thing that needs more money. Even if I reverse #1 and #2, hopefully there's enough to fund both. it's only when I get to the dividing line where I'm out of money that order starts to matter. I might have trouble deciding #18 and #19, but so what? If I have trouble deciding, then they are obviously very close in priority! So I just pick one. I can always reallocate later if it becomes apparent I was wrong.

dakinemaui ok, looking at it like that might be why it doesn’t bother me too much in practice.

in the beginning I drove myself mad with changing everything over and over. Because of coming up with competing very important categories again and again.  Often had to conciously decide for practice over perfection. But over time patterns appear. As if behaviour explains my true priorities.

But at the same time I do want to improve, learn, etc. So behaviour from the past and short term wants (disquised as needs) are not what I want to decide on.

Humans are complicated! I’m glad I learned to meditate!!! 😂

dakinemaui And that would be the case for an audit trail report.  Because if priorities are shifting about as Powder Blue Pony  alludes, due to emotional reactions, that report can help identify and break a pattern that doesn't serve your long term interests, before it gets established

Or go "old school" and rename your category "Groceries $225". Also already included. 😂

glynab suppose you could. But why would you...?

Also suppose I missed something.  😊 

glynab although I'm sure your comment was in jest, that's pretty much what YNAB is... except it also does the math for you. You know, cuz math is for school.

WordTenor The goal would just tell you by how much you've failed in a specific month.  Not where, if done through category moves, and if retrospectively, those were persistent bad decisions.

glynab Already doing this (notes) to backstop this gap. I might just post the notes I've accumulated in one category, just to illustrate how much of a kludge that approach is.

WhoMovedMyCheese Let me show you my notes:

Huh, Superbone your notes look just like mine.  What a coincidence! 

WordTenor Me too - I was just going to ask if Superbone had copied off of me!

You know that category a lot of people use when they're just starting YNAB, "Stuff I Forgot to Budget For"? I still use it but now it's called "Stuff I Didn't budget for Perfectly". I keep about $100 in there and just dip into it for a one off "oops". Just not worth it to me to have to do a lot of soul searching about whether buying my kids new underwear this month is a higher priority than that lovely bottle of (rather expensive) wine I bought. (although the answer is pretty obvious...)

Periwinkle Flute I DO NOT appreciate the insinuation! 😉😄

Superbone Okay, okay... I admit it - it was I who copied off of you!😰

glynab 

glynab said:
It seems everyone has some sort of mental or notes method for keeping track of what happened.

Nope, not everyone. I don't. It's just a crutch until you don't need it any longer.

glynab 

glynab said:
It seems everyone has some sort of mental or notes method for keeping track of what happened. 

 Did, perhaps. But not now that I trust YNAB.  It was a security blanket for me.

This is what traditional budgeters have the hardest time with. They're used to dealing with these hard defines. YNAB is a better way. Give it a chance to show you.

Oh goody goody. I'm so looking forward to conversations with more people on FB and reddit which begin with "Stop paying your credit card every five minutes" continue to "If you've already set up a budget for February in October, you have six budgets you have to change when Netflix increases by nine cents" and then now will go on to "Make solid decisions on the front end instead of chasing your tail paying yourself back for the burrito you bought with your vacation savings." 

WordTenor You forgot "Your 10 savings accounts you set up to save for individual savings goals aren't necessary and it's just more work trying to keep those balances equal to the balances in your YNAB savings categories."

WordTenor Eventually, Rule One will be: Eh? Give Some Dollars a Job If and When You Feel Like It.

Superbone  there was already a topic on FB today asking if anyone else likes to leave money in TBB.

nolesrule Rule 1: you do you, boo! 

WordTenor said:
Rule 3 has just become something not to do

They started that nearly 5 years ago by recommending you leave credit overspending alone to increase debt.

nolesrule Today's big topic (saw it in 3 different threads) was about the best way to get a month ahead by budgeting double in this month so that the remainder carries over to next month... What is up with all of this??

Move Light Sound Life I look forward to reading this.

nolesrule You're mentioned in it! 

Tonight, I'll see if I can get something basic written for the sections I haven't started yet. I would hate losing the organizational structure by posting the last couple points as comments. 

Here's the still generally unpolished first parts of my response.  I figured it needed to get out there even if it's not perfect.

https://support.youneedabudget.com/t/m1hmx6v