first month carrying over a credit card balance, help me understand
I've been using ynab for about 6 months now and I pretty much love it. I would really like to be able to track income and debt pay off better but whatever.
Up until now (Nov), at the end of every month I grey out all the categories and pay off my credit cards so I start fresh at the beginning of the month. This is the first month where I need to carry a balance to the next month on my credit card.
So let's say I have 3 credit cards, I pay off the balance on cc#1 and enter it as a transaction in ynab in my checking account, when I click on budget, at the top where the credit cards are, cc#1 is in red and has balance of $27. I clicked on it and covered it with money from "to be budgeted".
CC#2 and CC#3, I wanted to pay off CC#2 and pay the statement balance on CC#3 but I don't have enough. I have to pay at least the statement balance for each of them and as much as I can to CC#2.
So after doing that, what I owe on the credit cards does not equal the yellow amounts in the budget. What I owe on the credit cards is less than what is in the yellow categories. Can someone help me understand?
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Hi jules128 ,
I'd love to help here! When you say that what you owe on the credit cards does not equal the yellow amounts in the budget, do you mean that the balance of the cards doesn't match what you have in the payment field of each credit card payment category? Or are you referring to the overspending from last month? -
yes, what I owe on the left side does not equal what is in orange (overspent categories) on the right side in the budget. That was on the last day of the month.
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jules128 What you owe on the cards won't necessarily match up with the totals of your orange categories, but it depends on how much you ended up paying toward them. Did you still have green available amounts in the credit card payment categories at the end of the month? Or did you send all of those dollars towards the payments?
The key here is that you'll need to keep budgeting extra in each credit card payment category until you have what you need for the next payment on each card. Does that make sense?
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it doesn't make sense to me because on a regular month where I pay everything off, what I owe on my credit cards is equal to what I have set aside to pay them. and now I've spent some more on the cards for Dec expenses so it's confusing because in Dec budget, I don't see where I'm supposed to pay the cards
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jules128 Got it! So in a normal month, the balance on the card matches exactly what you have in the credit card payment category. Because there was overspending last month which wasn't covered, those overspent amounts are added to the balance of your cards. So your December credit card payment categories will be less than the balance on each card - do you see that in your budget? Because you need more money designated to those categories in order to catch up, you'll want to budget directly there until the amount you see in the credit card categories matches the balances on the cards.
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Hey jules128 ,
I'm going to go ahead and mark your question as answered, but don't hesitate to tag me if you still have any questions!
