Need History of ALL budget moves and assignments
Once again, a mistake was made (or a YNAB Bug) where my TBB is clearly not correct. It is absolutely inconceivable that there is not a mechanism in place to figure out why. I can't stand the fact that money can be moved between categories with no history of this happening.
This is not the first time and I'm sure it won't be the last. We have multiple users on multiple devices. Nothing is more frustrating than not having a log of what has happened to my money. Maybe its a bug? Maybe I did it? Maybe my wife did it? Who the hell knows.
My time is going to go into finding another app than continually dealing with this situation. The app allows for easy mistakes, I could forgive that if the mistakes could be traced.
Feel free to blame me for making a mistake. I'll admit to making mistakes. Sometimes it takes days to realize it. What I do is blame YNAB for not having a way to figure out the mistake with a log of all money moves.
Yes, I am turning into a YNAB hater and have stopped recommending it because I don't want to support other users when I can't even support myself. The info is just not there to make an informed correction.
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I have a suggestion. Maybe WordTenor , Superbone , dakinemaui , nolesrule , Move Light Sound Life , jenmas should get together and write a YNAB book? 😁 The wealth of knowledge needs to be passed down (not to mention the pages and pages of notes you folks have 😋).
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LoaferDude Maybe someday. One problem I've noticed is most of our writing styles are a bit... brusk. Not sure it would sell, LOL. Given your latest moniker, perhaps you could translate? 😄
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LoaferDude I'm the late-comer in the party, but thanks for including me with the others. I know I've tried to summarize and compile what the others have said, but I always think people aren't really interested in reading my novels. Being concise isn't my forte...
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dakinemaui
dakinemaui said:
One problem I've noticed is most of our writing styles are a bit... brusk. Not sure it would sell, LOL.The Complete Idiot's Guide to YNAB? 🤣
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dakinemaui Let me find something appropriate for that I had in mind. Here we go: “Getting your sh*t together requires a level of honesty you cannot even imagine. There is nothing easy about realizing you are the one that has been holding you back this entire time.” . Given that piece of advice, I would say when it comes to financial advice, brusque is much more appropriate in this regard.
I got some brutally honest advice from the others I tagged about some of my investment stuff. Do I have to take it? No. Did I take it? Most of it, yes, leaving some of it to experiment with and learn. Would I have learnt to turn my finances around without that advice, or being mollycoddled? Most probably not. 🙂
What was that about my latest moniker? I did not get that point. Sorry. 😔
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Superbone I was thinking about that exact title!!! Or YNAB for Idiots? 😋
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LoaferDude Superbone
You Don't Have to Stay an Idiot; Here's Your Guide to YNAB. -
Superbone “A Complete Idiot’s || Guide to YNAB” or “A Complete || Idiot’s Guide to YNAB”? Which would you prefer? 😂
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LoaferDude
The guide is for a complete idiot
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LoaferDude
The complete guide is an idiot's guide
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(Technically an NP can't take a DP as a complement but I'm assuming none of y'all are that into X-bar syntactic theory, so....)
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LoaferDude bad attempt at a joke... "Loafer" meaning more casual, laid back, and more easily identified with by the masses that might purchase such a book.
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dakinemaui Oh haha! Actually "loafer" means someone who roams a lot aimlessly, as used in my native language's local lingo. :) Since I like to travel , I used that moniker (could not come up with anything more creative I guess). That explains the joke and why I missed it. 😂
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(also now feeling procrastinatory I kind of want to tree the relative clause that is the complement to to in "to You Need A Budget". That little triangle is obscuring a lot of structure...)
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Also about the gruff advice comment. We're in good company as the premier get out of debt guy, Dave Ramsey, is quite gruff.
One of my favorite, I like to think of it as straightforward and not beating around the bush, comments for people who come to YNAB and try to shoehorn their budgeting ideas into it is: "If what you did in the past worked so well for you, why are you using the YNAB method and software?"
I strongly believe that there is no better method for optimizing your finances. It doesn't matter if you are deeply in debt or have millions in the bank and in equities (much different than inequities 😉).
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Superbone One of my favourite financial advisors is Gail Vaz-Oxlade. She is Canadian and retired now but she was pretty blunt with people on her tv shows. Loved her and she was so practical. If you have a chance to see any of her shows, I highly recommend. She is a budget binder, write it all out, stop being an idiot advisor.
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Navy Blue Pegasus Now, if she is Canadian and blunt, that's really saying something! 😁
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Superbone 😂yep, she is a unique one!
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Navy Blue Pegasus
Actually, Gail is Jamaican-Canadian. She moved to Canada as a child when her family immigrated. I suspect it's her Jamaican roots that make her so outspoken. I've yet to meet a shy Jamaican.
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I did not envision this going down this path. 😂
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LoaferDude This is basically what happens when you invite linguists to parties. You make a benign observation of like "Oh hey, how funny there's actually two readings of this" and a normal person goes, "Oh huh that is funny" and linguists go "GIVE ME A MARKER I WILL SHOW YOU WHY" 😂🤓
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WordTenor My sister and my wife. Don't get them in the same room talking about grammar! hmmm. Maybe that's why we don't get invited out much?
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Bruce
Could be worse; they could be into economics or philosophy or want to discuss (shiver of distaste) personal medical conditions.
Personally, I think a discussion on the proper use of commas and the evolution of modern language due to the unexpected use of gerunds is endlessly fascinating.
By the way, Oxford commas rule!
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I had to go back and look up my grammar basics and linguistic basics twice to actually get that. One of the many things I learnt today, or re-learnt. 😊 Invite more linguists to parties I say!
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All I can say is that YNAB came through with a solution. The new "Money Moves" experience is fantastic! Thank you to everyone that made this happen.
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glynab We are SO glad you're loving it! We're pretty stoked about it, too 🎉😊
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Rachel
I love it, too! It just solved a problem for me, so I am glad you all rolled it out just before I needed it, LOL.
You may want to know, I updated to the new version of the app, and the first time I opened it, pop-up with info on it came up. While trying to scroll through it and close the pop-up, I realized that my taps were being taken as input into mu budget! I had to close and restart the app, and by the time I got in there, I had no idea what I had done. My TBB was way off, and since I don't know my category balances off-hand, I didn't know where to even start. it's one thing if accidentally put a transaction under the wrong account or something for flub the exact change, but I had entered unknown gibberish who knows where.
I found this thread while searching for a way to track movements to see if that is what happened. I was thrilled to find this had been added! This feature saved me a lot of time and hassle. Thanks!
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Man, this thread is wild. So much gate keeping by old heads. People who want a different feature set are not wrong just because they don’t share your exact mindset and experience. And for something as basic as a raw data audit trail?
Foe the record, I am delighted they added the Money Moves feature. This just saved me a ton of time and aggravation figuring out what on earth I accidentally did that jacked up my budget. Due to some errant unseen keystrokes, my budget got jacked up, and my TBB was negative. I don’t have my category balances memorized, so I couldn’t just glance and see what had happened. This wasn’t a priority shift. It was a literal accident. My financial situation is a lot more complicated than usual at the moment for several reasons, so figuring it out would have been a huge pain in the butt.
I found this thread while trying to look up a way to audit recent moves so I could just find the error and undo it, and hey! They added the feature and I did. This saved me a ton of time and hassle, and I appreciate it. I’m not going to abandon the method and spend hours of my time poring over every penny I shifted between budget categories. Who has that kind of free time? The rules are great, and they still work, but it’s nice to not have to spend hours resolving a simple mistake.
Data is data. It’s good to have access to data. If you don’t like it, don’t use it, but don’t condescend to other people for wanting something you don’t
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Slate Gray Admiral Like someone said up thread, no one has to take the advice. However, personal finance is based on both data and behavior. One of YNAB's main strengths is its ability to present the pertinent data for the decision-making at hand, changing the user's behavior for a more positive financial outlook.
That being said, I think the current implementation of the money moves feature does a good job of creating a safety net for unintended damage control without undercutting the psychological benefits of the method. I think this is especially true for your situation and for people learning the method and the software, as they can see a visible cause and effect without necessarily understanding the other signs to look for when tracking down mistakes. I think it will also be necessary when/if YNAB implements different permission levels for budgets (since you know people won't do their communication on their own).
And because I think it needs to be said: just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't make them condescending. The "old hats" on here are direct, frank, brusque, and opinionated. However, they're also respectful, helpful, and insightful - in my experience - not condescending.
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Move Light Sound Life
I agree that someone disagreeing with me doesn’t mean they are necessarily being condescending, but there is a lot of condescension in this thread. I binged the entire three years of this thread last night, so it’s fresh for me.
I don’t doubt that the old heads are helpful and knowledgeable, but there’s been a lot of catastrophizing , lecturing people how they are wrong for the experience they experienced and the features they want. It’s been suggested that people are too stupid to learn the method if they have the ability to access this data to troubleshoot genuine mistakes.
peoples legitimate use cases and experiences have been invalidated in this very thread. I weighed in to provide a counter example of the use case of this exact feature and why.
While I certainly agree that people could misuse the feature, people already misuse everything about YNAB, so that’s on them.
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Slate Gray Admiral said:
It’s been suggested that people are too stupid to learn the method if they have the ability to access this data to troubleshoot genuine mistakesMeh, I don't have time to really engage here, but I don't *think* anybody used the word stupid (I just skimmed). If you're upset with the use of idiot, maybe take a look at context. There's a whole set of books with that in the title, and it wasn't directed at anytime in particular here.
In rereading the thread, though, I am struck by the same thoughts and gut feelings I had initially. In nYNAB, the old "Budget on Last Month's Income" rule *can* still be implemented, but it's like a secret workflow now that forum users keep alive.
So many people come up with convoluted ways to "get a month ahead" now, dig their heels in that there is no better way, and then sheepishly come back and say, "oh, your way works better." The optimal way used to be both taught and encouraged through the software. Now, people have to figure it out (usually through trial and error) or stumble onto it here.
Time will tell if the same experience will be had with rule 3 because of money moves. It could be that they're well implemented enough such that no damage is done, while reaping the benefits of helping to hunt down errors.
I do see Money Moves immensely helping new users get used to the software as a scaffolding step. Whether that discourages the leap to maximizing the rule 3 paradigm shift is yet to be determined.
It's all about the paradigm shifts. It's funny how an absolute truth doesn't stop people from thinking it's relative.
Good luck to you, and have a good day! Thanks for the conversation.
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Move Light Sound Life
Right, I'm not saying those literal words were uttered, but the meaning was clear. I'm also not looking to debate my observed experience, so moving on.
FWIW, I've been a YNABer for a few years now, and the concept of living on last month's money still came through the training materials loud and clear. I can't speak to what it was like back in the Excel days.
While I do agree an audit trail could be useful for new users, it is by no means limited to only benefitting them. I know there have been times I've done some late night reconciliation, and it would be nice to have a way to figure out what on earth I was thinking at 1am after I've gotten some sleep and coffee in me, LOL. Or the next time you forgot to lock your phone before you put it in your pocket after you had your budget open. Ugghh.
This new feature does scratch that itch thankfully without being super in your face and disruptive to the normal flow of the app. I agree with you that it is well-implemented without being excessive.Thanks for your time, and I hope you have good one.
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