Faness at YNAB I think you need to spend some time in a multi-adult household with 4-5 paychecks a month before dishing out such poor recommendations. Maybe even try YNAB4 for a year in that scenario (did you ever use YNAB4?). Then tell me if you could go back to budgeting every single individual paycheck every time it's received when there is a better alternative.

The official YNAB support advice is very poor when it comes to people that are actually ahead (especially since we're going on 2 years and you guys still haven't fixed Stealing from the Future awareness). Many  users of YNAB4 worked hard to get ahead and have the ability to budget income each month in a single pass and find the budgeting process to be more efficient with Income for Next Month, both in mechanics and in the time needed within the household.

How about you take the request back to the YNAB overlords to re-institute the Income for Next Month functionality... you might even get more YNAB4 holdovers to convert to nYNAB if you added it. There was no legitimate reason for dropping the functionality in the first place. It doesn't conflict with the process.

nolesrule Funny you mention multiple paychecks, I bring in the number you mentioned just on my own (big believer of multiple streams of income) and I'm married, so there's my husband's income streams, as well. I did use YNAB 4 and I don't prefer the next month's income option - everyone has their own preferences and I prefer manually adjusting my funds when I receive them rather than sending them to the future to be handled at a later date. I'm sorry you thought my recommendation was poor, but I'm glad YNAB 4 still suits your preferences - it didn't suit mine as well as the new YNAB.

I'll have to ask the design team if they prefer the term Design Overlords instead (it has my vote!). Either way, I'll let them know you'd like the option, but it's safe to say not everyone feels the same way (myself included). :)

Faness at YNAB My point was that with a minor tweak to the software it could be done either way. It never had to be one or the other. In the focus to attract new users, they chose to make changes that alienated much of the current active user base.

I and many others prefer not to have to budget every time income comes in. There's no reason for it.

And here is where the budget theory comes in that I think people don't realize and the YNAB company was never able to wrap their heads around (and you can read a lot about it in the older forum)... but it's almost as if when developing the new product they decided to intentionally ignore the feedback of the most experienced and helpful users of the software.

The Old Rule 4 (Live on last month's income) and the functionality (Income for Next Month category) realigns your budget from having to match your income cycle to matching your expense cycle. As a result it reduces the pressure on your budgeting process and allows you to open up and see the bigger picture. It completely changes your awareness of the income>budget>spend cycle. Many users have reported that it enabled them to get out of debt faster or save faster than if they were budgeting every single paycheck.

It allows you to more easily see right away if you will have surplus or deficit in a given month, and make smarter decisions on what to do about it (and without a need for forecasting). This is more difficult when budgeting by paycheck because you're too busy taking care of the trees to see how the forest as a whole is doing, and even if you are ahead, it just creates extra needless work.

And no one has still addressed Stealing From the Future, which has been a known issue dating back to November 2015 and the pre-release. A resolution was promised in January 2015 and an update in August 2017 said it was coming soon.  The budget deficit when budgeting in future months should be an in-your-face warning... not something you have to look for in future months. This is still, in my opinion, a major flaw in the software that can lead to credit card debt or account overdraft.

By the way, the idea of the fluidity of the TBB between months is almost hypocritical, because there are artificial boundaries introduced in every other element of functionality in the software. Having completely walled months so that the TBB is no longer fluid allows for more stability and pacing in the budgeting process.

Faness at YNAB Also, Income for Next Month was the one single piece of functionality that set YNAB apart from all the other envelope budgeting systems out there. It's what sold me, and many other users on YNAB. We thought it was genius.

But apparently we gave YNAB too much credit. What we saw as genius was apparently just a happy accident.

On the other hand, why are so many users still recommending workarounds to replace the functionality if it wasn't so essential?

Wei You're seeing "Stealing From the Future" in action. Over and over again I've seen YNAB support say that it's perfectly ok because the current month is more important than the future month. They don't seem to believe that a user may have the priority of maintaining revenue neutral months (walled months). Meanwhile, they keep telling people to budget money into future months to get ahead. Of course the farther ahead you budget, the more work it is to make sure you aren't stealing from the future.

Seems like a major conflict of advice to me and a huge flaw in the application design.

But you'll never get them to acknowledge that.

Faness at YNAB 

I'm with nolesrule on this one. Hate hate HATE the lack of walled months in the new YNAB. Budgeting every scrap of income as it arrives -- about 15 times / month in my household -- is maddeningly tedious. Especially if it means I have to constantly jump back/forth to future months in a UX that only displays one month at a time.  Yuck.

Worst of all, if I over-budget in the current month, it will silently "steal" from the future and I won't be aware of a problem unless I jump back into the future-most month.  I'm absolutely stunned that this issue hasn't been addressed in the 2+ years since this product was released. 

Wei An import part of budgeting towards future months, is to make sure the current month is fully funded first. Having a Budget Template in place can be a great help here. If you have goals in place to help identify how much you need in each category, or Scheduled Transactions in place to alert you of upcoming expenses, you'll see what needs to be covered before moving to next month. If there's a Monthly Funding budget in place for that Electricity category, the Available balance will be orange if you don't budget that $100 needed to meet that goal amount.

If you have variable expenses near the end of the month (like groceries or other expenses where the exact amount isn't known ahead of time), try to budget more than enough in that category before turning any attention to a future month. Positive Available amounts will carry over, so if you plan to spend $25 and budget $35 just in case, spending $30 will still leave you with an amount that carries over to next month.

Done in this manner, stealing from a future month will only take place with overspending and when you see the red overspending you can either use the move money tool to fix the overspending in the current month or adjust the future month.

nolesrule The new YNAB did change a number of things and features, but those changes were made to improve YNAB and the budgeting experience. We didn't ignore feedback, we tried to expand upon it - that's why we still collect feedback and analyze it for future consideration. Instead of building walls for each month, we broke them down in a way to still allow users to use that income in a future month. I think the biggest issue with future budgeting is trying to do it too soon. Funds shouldn't be budgeted towards next month until the current month is fully funded. When that's done, stealing from the future doesn't pose a threat. :) 

As for frequency, like bret mentioned, every dollar needs a job. I know that can be a bit time consuming depending on pay frequency, but it's important. YNAB 4 gave dollars a general job of 'next month' while the new YNAB forces you to give them specific jobs (sans any work arounds). As long as the current month is fully funded, the stealing from future months can be avoided, but there isn't a way around budgeting those dollars - they need jobs, too!

I'm always happy to pass along feedback, but I wanted to let you know Why these changes were made and how they're meant to help (not hurt) your budget and experience. 

Wei 

Wei said:
Sounds like as long as as I budget in full per month and am careful to only use the move money tool instead of manually adding and subtracting, I can avoid stealing from the future?

 Haha. You could write this another way....

If I only move money using the happy path that they've provided, even though they've also provided other methods of editing the budget, I can avoid stealing from the future.

Which of course then leads to the question of why are there other methods of changing the budget if they can lead to stealing from the future?

But it's a shame their happy path is so limiting. There are many use cases where editing the budgeted amounts directly is a simpler way to move money... pretty much any scenario where you are not doing a straight 1-to-1 movement of money between categories. In fact, I rarely ever have a simple 1-to-1 movement of money to cover overspending  or overbudgeting.

In those many-to-one scenarios, it's easiest to over-budget to cover an overspent category so TBB goes negative (or intentionally change a single category to a new number which introduces a state of overbudgeting because of an upcoming increase in an expense), and then remove money from categories until you reach the point that TBB is back to zero. But you can't do that when TBB doesn't go negative.

Faness at YNAB 

 like bret mentioned, every dollar needs a job. I know that can be a bit time consuming depending on pay frequency, but it's important. YNAB 4 gave dollars a general job of 'next month' while the new YNAB forces you to give them specific jobs (sans any work arounds)

Disagree. It's not important for me to identify a specific future job for the $30 of interest I just earned.  Perhaps it can cover 1.5% of my March mortgage payment? 😉

Budgeting each scrap of income as it arrives feels like "living paycheck to paycheck", and I'm simply not interested in budgeting that way.   

What is vitally important to me is being able to make adjustments to the current (in-progress) month and having confidence that I won't accidentally tap into funds that I've intended to set aside for the future. But that requires a lot more effort in the new YNAB.

bret nolesrule Wei

I really appreciate you all tossing your opinions and feedback around, so I hope you don't mind me asking a question! Is it that you dislike not being able to send income to the future in a general context (out of sight for the moment), or that you dislike it's possible to take that money back from the future without more of a warning - or just the combination of the two together? (We somewhat diverged and started tackling both issues here)

Since it's possible to budget current funds to the future already (even though it's by moving forward to that month and not just selecting for that money to be sent there), would that suffice if stealing from that future month was more safeguarded? 

Currently, there is a happy path to follow to prevent that issue, but I understand if you prefer a different route. I prefer budgeting to specifics, that way it's more like filling in the gaps when I get income in the new month (rather than budgeting from scratch). That's solely personal preference, but nYNAB allows for both if you create a general category to temporarily hold that income. 

Just want to make sure I'm correctly identifying the bigger issue here (stealing from the future), so any feature requests mention how to take out as many birds as possible with as few stones as needed. :)

Faness at YNAB The issue is not an either/or. There's one root cause, but they're both resultant problems. That you think it possibly could be an either/or concerns me with respect to what will ultimately be communicated to those who have the power to fix it. 

Honestly, most of stealing from the future could've been solved if the suggestions from the alpha testers to turn the current month to a red TBB $0.00 had been implemented. Or just something! All you need is a heads up in the current month that a future month is overspent.  

Having all your income for the month come in at once is about clarity. I confess that I started using nYNAB at the exact same time that I started a job that pays one a month at the end of the month. Prior to that, I still did budget income as I received it, but there was often a moment where I wouldn't budget the last bit until I really sat down to *budget.*  I also was pretty freaking broke, and every cent I earned was obligated to something. The more play you have in your budget the more you need to be able to see all that money at once before you make any decisions about what to do with it.  

Jesse says he does this by leaving money in TBB. The thing is that whenever you change the budget without using the move money tool, you run the risk of affecting TBB when you don't mean to. For me, who doesn't have a partner and types in the budget once a month, TBB would work fine. But for others, it wouldn't. Thre needs to be a way to be alerted that the current month has been changed. It's not enough to say, "just don't budget next month until you're done with this month!" because you suddenly become not done with this month the second you type $29.55 instead of $25.99 when you're adjusting the budget by hand.

if you could lock TBB edits after finishing a month, it would solve both problems. Two problems. Same root. Possibly same solution. But two problems, both important. 

Hey WordTenor !

I asked to make sure I was getting things clear here! :)

We actually take quotes (anonymously, for sake of privacy) from your feedback and send them directly to our development team. What you write is what we send along, with possible notes to point out key words for analytical purposes.

Two issues - got it! 

Wei 

Wei said:
In YNAB 4, you had two ways to budget.

The first method is budgeting each paycheck as it comes in. In this case, every time you get a paycheck, you budget and fund categories however much you can using that money. For example, you might need $100 for groceries and $200 for electricity for the whole month. When paycheck 1 comes in and is $150, you budget and put $100 to groceries and $50 towards electricity. Then as paycheck 2 comes in, you budget again fill in the rest of the $150 for electricity then use the rest towards other categories. "To Be Budgeted" here is simply asking "Have you given all of your money a job?"

The second method is if you're on the buffer in which cause you use both income categories. Instead of budgeting each paycheck as they come in, you squirrel them away into a separate pile ("Income for Next Month"). Then when the next month starts, you take all money and budget everything. In this case "To Be Budgeted" is actually "Last Month's Income" or "To Be Budgeted for This Month". You don't want to know if you've given ALL of your money a job because your total income could contain money for next month. You only want to know how your budget this month compares to last month's income. Since YNAB 4 had walled income, this workflow worked out.

In nYNAB, we only have the first method. All the money goes into a single income category and you keep on filling your categories as each paycheck comes in. When you're done with this month, you just roll over to the next month and start filling it's categories. This is the method you were suggesting. It makes sense because the goal is to fill categories as far into the future as possible.

The problem is, a lot of us use the second method because we're already a month ahead and want to budget one month at a time. "To Be Budgeted" still means "Have you given ALL of your money a job?" but we're treating it as "To Be Budgeted for This Month". This is why stealing from the future occurs. It's not a bug because if you treat "To Be Budgeted" as "Have you given ALL of your money a job", it only makes sense that any over budget this month will pull from next month's budget and TBB remains zero. The software is behaving exactly as it should. The problem is for YNAB 4 buffer users is we're expecting "To Be Budgeted" (or some number in the UI) to act as "To Be Budgeted for This Month" so we can compare this month's budget with last month's income.

 Thank you for this insight.  You are absolutely correct.  Those of us who have been arguing that lack of Income for Next Month and the resulting Stealing from the Future issue is a huge honking bug have been wrong.  It's not a bug, it's a deliberate design feature of the program.  I happen to think it's a dumb, counter-productive feature; but my problem is really with the budget philosophy and not with the program implementation.

I conclude that the YNAB organization is unlikely to change its budget philosophy to suit my tastes, so I will need to do a workaround for as long as I use nYNAB.  My energy would be better spent devising the best workaround I can to implement a budget philosophy that works for my situation, than arguing that the budget philosophy endorsed by YNAB and codified in the web interface should be changed.  It is unlikely that I will be able to get the YNAB organization to agree with my point of view on how the budget should work.

Faness The problem with the theory you propose is two-fold. Ensuring that you budget for the current month at the expense of funding that you "assume" you are allocating for the following month is detrimental to your budget. This is why walled funding ensures clear boundaries between "current" and "future" allocations. nolesrule  is trying to make this case. If there are categories that bust the budget, you are making it harder to compensate for this issue, if you are concurrently planning the following month; especially if you are using funds ahead of time. No doubt about that.

In addition, no two months will have the same budget. They NEVER should, so stating that a budget template will help is inaccurate. It does not help. In addition, you are assuming fixed income, which is not everyone's case. It makes sense to be able to "flesh" out a future budget as income is received. By dropping the walls between months, clearly outlining a future budget has become messy. 

 nolesrule   is correct, experienced users of YNAB4 will find this incomprehensible, and i truly think this will overly confuse new users. But what do we know...

Faness I think you can have it both ways. If you allowed incoming funds to be split and allocated for the future and for the current month, with walls in place, then money can be moved from future spending back to the current month, covering any overspending, but by alerting that future allocations are experiencing a negative impact, throwing that budget off and requiring adjustment.

 I have a category called Month Ahead where I park the amount in excess of the current month. Then next month I transfer month ahead to TBB and away I go. Or leave it there and just work with the current income.  We tried the budgeting out to the future and my husband didn't like it.  He likes to see the big fat amount in month ahead.

nolesrule I'm confused...if you're SO against how this program works...why are you using it? Sounds like you can handle things all on your own without utilizing YNAB  🤔

ItsCalledWhiskey Let me sum up for you. YNAB4 > online YNAB >  all other alternatives.

Hence I continue to use YNAB4. As soon as online YNAB becomes functionally tolerable by my personal definitions as related to wanted functionality from YNAB4, I will start using it, since it is better than all other alternatives except YNAB4.

Online YNAB does have some improvements over YNAB4, but not enough to make up for the  deficiencies.

ItsCalledWhiskey Some people look beyond their personal needs. There are continually new users who are confused and may even be burned by the various issues. There are obvious efficiency gains to be had as well. Thus the continued press for improvement by knowledgeable users who understand the requirements across the spectrum of use cases.

nolesrule nolesrule I agree.  The Budgeting for next month from this months income is much more straight forward than having a huge pile of money (the current bank balance) to look at and budget from.  This is the most confusing function (non-function) of the new YNAB program.  I want my budget this months income for next month feature back!!!!

NotMyName Yeah, it' simple. But a workaround is a workaround. There shouldn't be a workaround.

Also, you need to do it in a way so as not to mess up the Income/Expense reports, and that means the Income should be categorized directly to the holding category and then when you're done with the current month you re-categorize all of the income transactions for next month back to "Inflow: TBB" and budget them.

nolesrule Sorry, you're incorrect on this.  You're trying to do something different than the system was designed for, so indeed you need a work-around.   nYNAB is different than YNAB4 and if you're trying to do something different than nYNAB was designed for, a work-around is what is called for.  Also, you're making this wayyyyy more complicated than it needs to be.   The checks that come in during the month need to be tagged TBB and then moved to the category (sorry for not making that clear, but it seemed a given), then simply release the money at the beginning of the month.  There is no need to category directly to the category and then change it around later- indeed, that would be the thing that would mess up your reports.

NotMyName  You are right. I misspoke about the reports. i was holding too many thoughts in my head when I wrote it. I was thinking about a different topic.

But the reason to categorize them at the transaction level up front is so you don't have to manually budget each income event to a holding category individually.  The transaction itself will do that. Then when it's time to budget your next month, you simply do a mass recategorization in the All Accounts view by filtering on that month's inflows assigned to the holding category and then switch it to Inflow: TBB. 

I don't know about you, but I typically have 4-5 paychecks and about 20-30 other income events throughout the month.

After multiple trials and errors among several long-time YNAB users they found that it was the most efficient method.

As for the reporting, yeah, it's innacurate during the month, but it's accurate for all past months. I don't really look at the income/Expense report for the current month because it's always still in progress (although the sums would be accurate).

nolesrule NotMyName

I am trying to figure out how to align my reports with the "Budget for next month" workaround. 

I get a paycheck for $100 on 1/15 and set it as TBB. I then budget this $100 to a category I've named "For Next Month." As mentioned a few times in this thread, I can then release this money into February and budget accordingly. 

When I go into my income-expense report, however, that $100 is reported as income for January because that's when the transaction was. I want to see that $100 included in the February Income-Expense report. 

Am I doing something wrong? Am I thinking incorrectly? 

Thanks, 

Hal 

Salmon Keyboard The income and expense report is based on transaction date. Income received in January will appear in the report in January. And that is correct behavior.

nolesrule 

Hmmm... correct me if I am wrong but I think I recall that in YNAB4, money budgeted for next month would show up in next month's income-expense report 

Maybe I am completely misunderstanding the function of this report 

Hal Sitt Nope, in YNAB 4 the Income vs Expense report is based on transaction date.

jenmas nolesrule

I know this is tangential to the main topic of this thread so I apologize. I guess I am mistaken about this being a deviation from YNAB4 in how the Income vs Expense report works. The way I was thinking about it was that I should compare January's expenses with the income set aside for January and not the income received in January 

NotMyName New to YNAB and trying this for the first time. How do I do the "release those funds back to TBB and budget" from "money for next month"? 

AJ Morrow   So what I do is this:  Because I am fully budgeted for October by October 1st, all the money I make in October goes in to To Be Budgeted (TBB). I then put it in a budget category I created "money for next month".  Then on October 31, I will release the money back to TBB- I do this by simply changing the budgeted amount in the category to $0.  Then, all the money I made in October will be available in TBB.  I click over to November and budget it all.  The trick is having enough money to get there (also called "fully buffered" or "living on last month's income").  For me, I know I had to take some funds out of my house down payment category and use that to budget a month ahead the first time, but being buffered made budgeting so much easier that it was totally worth it!

AJ Morrow The release should be matched to how you put money in. If you categorize as TBB, you need to do something with transactions to release. If you budget into TBB, you need to do something in the budget.

Personally, I categorize directly to the holding category (e.g., Income Next Month is what I've called it) because that's typically automatic (scheduler or Payee rules) and one less action for me to do manually. More importantly, I know exactly how much to release. If you go through the budget, early-month income will mix with last-month's income, which is a problem if you don't get around to releasing at the "right" time. (Even that is error-prone if you're importing transactions.)

To release, I search for IncomeNext Month in All Accounts, select all those with the correct month in the date, and recategorize as TBB.

This is the easiest procedure that I've found that keeps reports accurate AND preserves the budget headers (e.g., Budgeted in <month>) AND prevents those funds from being pulled back with an errant budget entry during the month.

This is the easiest procedure that I've found that keeps reports accurate AND preserves the budget headers (e.g., Budgeted in <month>) AND prevents those funds from being pulled back with an errant budget entry during the month.

Completely agree; this is the workflow that I prefer as well. When you recategorize the "Income for Next Month" transactions to TBB to release those funds, the original transaction date is preserved, so historical income/expense reports will be accurate.   I would also add that it sounds more complicated to execute than it actually is; in practice it is quick and easy after you've done it a couple of times.

Joel One of the few things I liked about nYNAB was the lack of walled months. I went back to 4 after using nYNAB for a year. I find the income for this month or next month limiting.  If I have a check for $2,000 and I need $1,000 for this month and $1,000 for next month, I have to do a split transaction. In nYNAB, I just flipped over to the next month and budgeted the $1,000 to a category. Also, if I want to use this month’s money two months out, I can’t do it in 4. Stealing from the future wasn’t an issue for me and it would be pretty much a non-issue if they had more than one month on a screen. That for me was a huge drawback that sent me back to 4.

jayne_m Thank you for replying!  I looked for a long time for an app that let you put money into a month, when I found YNAB(4), it was awesome.  But really, I was a little disappointed in only being able to use This or Next month.  I wanted to just set a Month and Year!  So I definitely see your point there.  But I actually like splitting the 2000 into this and next months because I know this is meant for this month, and that is meant for that month. 

People were requesting 'Income for X' for a long time.  So, YNAB, in my mind, did what a lot of companies do sometimes, and try to overdo and overthink.  In my opinion.  People want feature X... so instead of providing it, they thought, ok why do people want feature X, ok so how can we do something so radical that it makes the request of feature X obsolete because we thought of this whole new way to think about it.  So now we have no Income for X because you can just budget anything anywhere... well... that certainly removes the ability for me to ask for Income for X when there is no 'Income for' options now, but I also lose walled months, can steal from the future, and feel less in control of my money.

Joel I used YNAB 4 and the new YNAB side by side for three months when I was just starting out. I liked being able to try both without bias and experience them both on an even playing field. While I liked YNAB 4, the new YNAB won out in the end (for me).

As Jayne_m mentioned, there's an extra step for handling income in YNAB 4 if you're splitting it between certain months. I didn't like splitting that income as a now vs. later thing. In the new YNAB I'm able to see everything together as I move through the month. I actually feel more in control that way.

I mentioned it above, but stealing from the future isn't an issue if the current month is fully budgeted for - though I do second Jayne's mention that side-by-side month's would be a great combination there. 

Faness at YNAB thanks. 

I still don't see what was stopping you from taking the "accumulation of a number of things." and just putting them into "savings" and "rent" right then...  But oh well.  I think it's something just beyond me.  The simplicity and ease of something earmarked for this month and next  month has forever blinded me.

jenmas I agree that having dollars sit is a Good thing, but I prefer they sit with a specific purpose. In YNAB 4, when I sent funds to next month, it wasn't Just savings or Just rent, it was an accumulation of a number of things. I didn't prefer having that income lumped together and then later piecing it out again - it was easier for me to form that plan as I received that income.

Not that that's the "right" way (or wrong, per se), it was just easier for me to process as I went along and to make changes if they were later needed.

Faness at YNAB Interesting, because I think most people who embrace Income for Next Month find it easier to formulate a plan when they can view an entire month as a whole. After all the majority of the expense cycle is based on monthly spending or multiples of months. Even the advice to break down True Expenses is based on saving monthly amounts. The goal system is based on monthly amounts.

The income cycle, on the other hand, does not match up well with expenses and the cycle. In our house I've got income events from one person occurring every two weeks and income events occurring every 15th and last day of the month.

This is where I think YNAB didn't do enough to truly understand the benefits of Income for Next Month in budgeting theory. The entire meta purpose of income for next month has become the ability to separate budgeting from the income cycle with multiple income events which ultimately allows aligning income with expenses and saving.

And finally, I will posit that if you are budgeting paycheck to paycheck, you are still living paycheck to paycheck. You are still having to decide which categories to fund when based on your paycheck cycle... just with a larger bank account. And really, what's the point of that when you already have the money to fill them all at once? It's most certainly not awareness.

It would have been nice if YNAB had actually talked to long-time YNAB4 users about why they felt income for Next Month was so valuable. because maybe then they would have understood. because i don't think from the answers we've gotten that YNAB does undertand. Like I said, the old functionality was apparently a happy accident.

I'm sorry you never had the moment of epiphany that so many of us had with "Income for Next Month" functionality.

And finally....

Stealing From the Future

Fix it already!!!!!

Do I need to link to my old YNAB forum on the topic? It hit me in the November 2015 nYNAB trial, and as soon as I discovered the bug, which still isn't fixed, i swore off even considering an upgrade. People are coming up with work around after workaround to prevent it.

It's sad that there have to be so many workarounds for what used to be simple functionality.

And don't tell me it's easy to avoid. One of my fellow old YNAB Forum members accidentally spent over $1000 in the current month that was intended for a future month because of the bug.

And one final, final thought. You can still budget each paycheck with Income for Next Month. So that should be a non-starter as a reason to eliminate it.

nolesrule I asked a question above about these two and level of importance/would one fix the other - I hope you'll chime in! :)

As for the income frequency, my husband gets paid weekly, I get paid bi-weekly and monthly, and we both have a few loose ends that come in up to twice a week. I understand the time that can take, but I prefer the multiple small sessions to the few larger sessions - I'm also the type to work on (ie. Stare at) my budget when nothing has changed. 😅

I'm not saying budgeting income to next month in YNAB 4 didn't work (it definitely did and some users prefer it), it just wasn't my favorite option. 

nolesrule Just adding my agreement with this. This is my situation as well. I just wish YNAB wasn't one way or the other. I would love a product that allows for users to choose how they want to handle certain things like this so that they can budget the way they want to budget, not the way we're forced to budget. Flexibility adds complexity, but if achieved properly it can increase satisfaction and user base.

nolesrule 

When I was using YNAB 4, looking at all my month's income at once was slightly daunting. I had the feeling of 'Here's everything you have to work with, don't drop it'. With how you explained it I can see how that bigger picture would actually be a helpful overview rather than the overwhelming feat I saw it as. It's why I prefer budgeting when I receive income - smaller steps towards the big picture - rather than all at once. I felt like tackling the entire month each month was a lot to bite off - I did it, but it took me more time to analyze Everything vs the one interest payment today or paycheck tomorrow.

That being said, Mrs. Nolesrule chose well - happy wife, happy life and a budget plays an important role in that equation somewhere. I don't mind taking the time for the more frequent budgeting steps, but I understand your point and the others made on this thread - convenience and ease, got it! :)

Passing this along to our development team!

jenmas And you don't have to be a high earner to get there. You just have to live below your means.

There won't be any gaps if you live below your means.

jenmas nolesrule

When I mentioned gaps I was referring to categories that haven't been budgeted for in that month yet. This is sans carryover; specifically categories that weren't budgeted for in the future month during the previous month. For instance, maybe all necessities were cover for February in January, but in February there's nothing budgeted in Car Repairs for the month of February, I'd call that a "gap". There's probably a better word for those than 'gap' or 'category I haven't gotten to yet', but those are usually where I send leftovers.

Faness at YNAB I have to agree with jenmas ; if you live below your means, eventually gaps as you define them become rare.  For me, a gap is something like needing to rebuild my Unexpected Expenses category because last month something unexpected happened.  Or, like this month, I could have the opposite of a gap (an overlap?).  When I was working, that meant funds could get thrown out of the budget to an investment account.  In retirement, that means I need to draw less from an investment account for next month's budget.  This is *much* easier to manage budgeting once a month (i.e., re-creating Income for Next Month) than it would be budgeting 4 times a month as the money comes in.

Patzer What would you refer to a category as if it doesn't need attention but has nothing budgeted towards it? For instance, if you fully funded one of those Unexpected Expense categories so you don't need to budget for it in the current month - I call it a gap (even if fully funded) because the Budgeted column is empty, but I see how that's misleading (especially when I sometimes add to those categories).

Faness at YNAB I don't have a label for categories like that, though I have some of them.  Unexpected Expenses does not get any funding in a normal month.  Most of the time, it just sits there fully funded at $2000, a number scientifically chosen in 2008 after my daughter drove my car with $1000 deductible collision insurance into the side of my garage with $1000 deductible homeowner's insurance.

Less dramatically, I don't usually put funds in the Postage category; it sits there with a dab of money in it in case I need to buy stamps.  After I buy stamps, I re-fund the category.

In other cases, I have categories where my "normal" funding is greater than an average month of expenses.  These tend to be lumpy expense categories like Auto:Service.  A repair can be costly, but isn't frequent.  I have a cap for that category and a par budget amount for rebuilding.  If the category is at cap, I salvage budget funds for other purposes; but if it's below cap, I want to rebuild it at the rate of the par budget so I can handle a repair that might arrive more quickly than they do on the average.

This is perhaps slightly more nuanced than the goals as implemented in nYNAB, but it's okay if I don't have a programmed goal telling me how to do this.  It's something I can manage without colored highlights.  It's also something that can be done if I can live below my means, and something I never *thought* of doing before I found YNAB.

I suppose both Unexpected Expenses and Auto:Service are what nYNAB would call True Expenses; by dollar weight, my budget is dominated by True Expenses.

Perhaps this sounds a little complicated, but I really was budgeting in less than 30 minutes a month in YNAB 4.  I'm not there yet in nYNAB, but I think I can get there . . . as long as I have a reasonably efficient workaround to re-create Income for Next Month.  Doing it while budgeting this month (or next month) piecemeal as inflows arrive just isn't as time-efficient.

Speaking of which, the program really ought to do Income for Next Month automatically like it did in YNAB 4, YNAB 3, and YNAB Pro (though it had a clumsier name like "Primary Income" back in YNAB Pro days.)  Some day, many of the people who start out budgeting paycheck to paycheck will improve their skills and financial position to the point where the time savings from doing the budget once a month instead of 2, 4, or 15 times a month will allow them to focus on other ways to improve their finances.

Patzer 

I've never thought of which section of my budget holds the most weight, but I have to agree with you - my True Expenses is buffered to cover a number of "maybes" or "just in cases", so it's my savings that isn't actual savings.

I can't imagine budgeting in 30 minutes a month. I spend more time than that just staring at my budget (outside of work!). It sounds like you have your budget down to a complete science, after years of experience with the YNAB program - which is a high level of impressive! :)

I think handling income as Income for Next Month sets up a streamline to handle everything in one sitting instead of dividing things throughout the month. With practice, I can imagine cutting that once-a-month time down, but I'd personally miss all the quality time I spend with my budget.

However, I hear you loud and clear and I'll pass this along to the development team! 

Resistant Punch Roller I would definitely say sans emergencies (or unexpected happenings) - I should've included that bit initially! Those are definite cues to rework your budget and arrange to cover those spendings, which would also be cue to watch for how that affects your future months.  

Faness at YNAB The cue to watch how it affects your future months needs to be in the current month header. How do I maintain the TBB of zero if the header doesn't give me a true zero that includes what was budgeted in future months?

This is one of my biggest problem with the restrictions that the new YNAB has placed on how things work. The cues that there were issues all used to be right in front of you. But now you have to check future months or look at the inspector to get information that used to be available right in the current month's budget with no extra looking around just to see if maybe, just maybe, you messed something up.

I mean, now you can't even rely on your category balance to make spending decisions. You have to check the inspector first to make sure that the scheduled transactions (that you can't move to the register because they are future-dated) won't cause your category to be underfunded.

That's the definition of tedious extra work. It's making it harder to be aware with accuracy, which is the opposite of what YNAB should be doing for your budget. They should be striving to be able to determine accuracy at a glance without all sorts of extra investigation.

Faness at YNAB as I said above, you can be as finished with the month as ever, completely locked and loaded, and the moment you move money manually and make a typo, you've drawn money back from next month. Depending on what it does to the category, you may or may not notice. 

Honestly, I prefer the permeable month boundary in nYNAB. I think it makes it much easier for new users to figure out how to become buffered. But without awareness into what'a happening next month, it can quickly become a problem. 

At one point, Jesse said that a fix for TBB was being held off for the fully functional mobile app. That made perfect sense--it involves the calculation engine in a pretty big way and obviously you'd have to incorporate that. But now we have the apps and the fix clearly got scrapped. That's pretty frustrating. 

Faness at YNAB

Faness at YNAB said:
Resistant Punch Roller I would definitely say sans emergencies (or unexpected happenings) - I should've included that bit initially! Those are definite cues to rework your budget and arrange to cover those spendings, which would also be cue to watch for how that affects your future months.

To paraphrase Resistant Punch Roller , there's a fundamental problem with this statement.  Before the month is over, you *don't know* that there will be no emergencies (or no additional emergencies) in the month.  And right when that unanticipated emergency happens is a Bad Time for paying attention to lots of details that must be watched in different places.  Your recommendation comes down to, "Don't budget February until January is over."

That puts me in a position of being forced to violate one or another recommendation.  Either I budget forward, and I have the stealing from the future problem; or I don't budget to zero, and I have the problem of remembering just *how much* I should be leaving in TBB at this point in the month; or I manually work around to re-create Income for Next Month, which was Jesse's most brilliant idea.

To be fair, it makes no difference to the flow of my budgeted expenses whether I budget on last month's income or this month's income.  Right now, I have about half of a budget month sitting in a 6 month T-Bill at Treasury Direct.  That T-Bill could just as easily sit in my off-budget brokerage account.  I could move another half month of budget there, and go to budgeting as the cash flows in.  But that's just plain more labor, and it would obscure my planning process for how much I need to draw from investments for the budget.

Jesse originally thought that budgeting on last month's income was a financial buffer.  It is that, sort of, with obvious limits like an end of month paycheck not being much of a buffer.  But the big deal is, it lets the user budget with real money *and* only have to budget once a month.  The old tag line was, "Budget in 30 minutes a month."  It was kind of a joke on the forums that people really spent a lot more than 30 minutes on their budget.  But guess what?  If you don't count the time spent recording transactions as they occur, I went from about 2013 to mid-2016 doing my my monthly budget in less than 30 minutes.  The promise was delivered.  And then nYNAB wants to take that away by asking me to budget however often money comes in, even assuming I can gloss over all the other problems that YNAB Support does not admit are problems.

Patzer WordTenor nolesrule

Thank all of you for further explaining! :)

I've gathered that there are a number of reasons stealing from the future isn't a favorable thing here - not just that it's occurrence causes inaccuracies that have to be addressed in the future, but also that its prevention takes more work. We want YNAB to make budgeting easier so, while workarounds exist and can be managed, I understand they aren't ideal. 

As for Income for Next Month, I see how it can help cut back on budgeting time. While I personally prefer budgeting as I receive income, I admit cutting back the time it takes to budget isn't a priority of mine. Budgeting in 30 minutes is an impressive feat, but it would leave me with even more time to do more staring at my budget. That doesn't mean I don't understand why others would find this important.

I'm sending both of these points (in a number of variations gathered from this thread) over to our development team.

If there's anything else you'd like to tack on, or any parts you don't think were fully covered in other comments, just let me know!

Faness at YNAB The issue seems to be that nYNAB allows and indeed encourages people to budget the way you prefer, but it makes it very hard to budget the way others prefer. YNAB4 allowed people to budget either way - you could assign all new income to Income Next Month and then immediately budget it, or you could leave it sitting in Next Month's ATB (TBB) until Next Month became This Month, and then budget it. It facilitated choice in a way that nYNAB doesn't.

I almost always wait until the bulk of a month's income is in before I budget it. I still use YNAB4 for several reasons but this is a main one. Sometimes, however, I get excited and budget in dribs and drabs. For instance, right now I have £539.15 in March's ATB in YNAB4. I could, if I wished, budget £400 to Mortgage, £100 to Council Tax and £39.15 towards Insurance (I'd have to add 85p when I next got income, because Insurance needs £40). Equally, I can leave it in ATB until the 26th when my wife gets paid, by which time almost all of February's income will also have arrived, and budget the entire lot in one go. Or I can do one and then undo it and do the other. No matter which I choose, it won't be affected by or affect February's budget, other than if I overspend in February and don't adjust February's budget to cover it.

maylou Thanks for weighing in here! You're absolutely right - YNAB 4 provided the option for both while the new YNAB has a workaround (which I know isn't the same as an actual option). I've added this to the list of feature requests sent over to our development team. :) 

Hi Joel !

We're still listening! We hear you and the feedback we receive gets forwarded to our development team. 

They collect it in a database, code it, asking questions like Where is this person in their budgeting journey? What problem are they wanting to solve? Then, in regular research cycles they analyze all this collected feedback to plan for what’s next  in YNAB. :)
 

Faness Jesse Mecham promised that the stealing from the future would be addressed in a holistic manner. If input from the founder, and CEO doesn't make it to the top of your developer priorities then the promise that you make all the time that the feedback is important and carefully tracked is just not believable any more. 

bret EXACTLY, yes, thank you for the perfectly queued Jesse Mecham quote! :)

bret Overspending isn't even the source of all adjustments. That's reactionary.

If you recall when I initially called out SFTF on the old forums over 2 years ago, it was because I had a monthly bill amount where I'd gotten the notification that it was going up about $0.86/month. So I changed the budgeted amount and TBB was still zero. Talk about a head scratcher.

Granny Bogle I assure you, the word fogies never crossed my mind! :)

While I don't want to refer to this as a bug, I think everyone on this thread has made it quite clear that Stealing From the Future is an issue and Income for Next Month is sorely missed. While I'm here to help and I can guide through how that feature is meant to work, I understand there isn't much appreciation for it. Definitely noted and passed along to our development team! :)

Agreed, and apologies, Faness at YNAB , if I've been at all rude. I certainly don't envy your position of simultaneously fielding Support and PR issues! Thank you for listening and trying to understand where we're all coming from.
 

MP Goodman Thank you very much for your kind words! YNAB users can be passionate, but I think that says a lot about what the program means to them. I know there are good intentions behind those words. :)

Resistant Punch Roller Absolutely no need to apologize (but thank you for that)! I love seeing how everyone utilizes YNAB, how it suits the needs of each user and where there's room for improvement. There's no better way to see that than hands on in the community, so thank you for being here! :)

Faness at YNAB Just throwing one more log on this fire. Logged into YNAB this am. Every dollar I earned in January has been allotted. Raised my Gas budget by $50 (because I had to fill up once more than I thought) and now it is a complete mess. I know the workaround(s), but goodness this seems so simple to fix. 

Please send along one more vote for your developers to bring back "Next Months Income". Strongly considering Dave Ramsey's solution if not changed soon. 😔

Matt Tanner Done and done! Thanks for weighing in here! :)

Admittedly, I have not tried the Dave Ramsey app. I may take a quick peak to see how it's handled there.

Orange Mixer If you want to make nYNAB work, there are workarounds to wall off income for next month. Or you could do what many of us do and stick to YNAB4. I'll be honest, I rarely, if ever, look at the mobile app. But if you need it, I'm sure some people can help you troubleshoot the YNAB4 mobile app on the old forum.

Orange Mixer I'm more than happy to try to help you make nYNAB work for you, even though I agree with everything you said and am upset at YNAB for these silly changes ;) Even with these flaws, I still feel like nYNAB is the best option out there right now. Mint is fine for answering "how much did I spend last month" but terrible at assisting you plan for the current/next month.

I tested setting up a "TBB - Next Month" category. Every time I get income throughout the month it is now auto-assigned to "TBB - Next Month". Only once the month is over, and we have completely finished the previous month's budget, do we change all the "TBB - Next Month" transactions to be the normal "TBB" category. Then we can budget for the current month.

It's silly that we have to spend that extra 3-5 minutes when it should be built this way, but it's worth it to us to avoid stealing from the future.

While we're on the topic, there are a few other things with nYNAB that drive me nuts that may bother you too. One is the removal of the Running Balance category. Luckily there's a Chrome plugin that adds this back in for you. I honestly don't get how people can fully reconcile without a Running Balance category, but somehow people must be doing it? Here's a thread that discusses the Running Balance missing and has a link to the Chrome plugin: https://support.youneedabudget.com/t/63pn1s

Orange Mixer Specifically re: the numbers at the top of the screen, Funds for Month is the sum of anything budgeted for the future from a past month and any income flagged as TBB in the current month.  The rest is fairly self explanatory, but the funds for month number can be a head-scratcher for a new user.

Faness I would like to add that the Stealing From the Future issue is a math problem, not just a workflow problem.  You have to reduce the equation in TBB to below 0 for it to be an issue to begin with, but for some reason there was a choice to obfuscate that from view in the current month.  If 0 doesn't equal 0, the software should let you know, regardless of what month it occurs in.  Technically, over-budgeting in the current month is what actually drops TBB to below 0, so it should reflect that truth immediately.

Orange Mixer I'd recommend posting a new thread since this one is already so full, but you could probably post a single thread with all your questions! :)

Matt Tanner The comment has indeed been answered.  Some of us don't particularly like the answer, but there is an answer.  In brief, don't hold your breath waiting for Income for Next Month to return to web-based YNAB.  If budgeting a full month at a time is important to you, the reasonable choices are to stay with YNAB 4 or to do a workaround to create the effect of Income for Next Month in web based YNAB.

Right now, I'm running YNAB 4 and web-based YNAB in parallel.  I don't quite have everything worked out to make web-based YNAB as easy to use as YNAB 4, but if YNAB 4 breaks tomorrow it will not be a disaster for me.  FWIW, I use a workaround to create walled months and budget a full month at a time.

Matt Tanner We're listening and we do care! I've been keeping an eye on this thread and passing along the feedback as it continues to grow. You've all made it very clear you'd like to see improvements in this area. For now, I'd suggest buffering the current month enough to prevent the issue you're running into. If that last tank of gas for the month is always the deal breaker, try budgeting more for gas this month so it doesn't affect next month.

Also, in case you missed it, there's now a Feature Request option in the forum! You can send your feedback and requests directly to our development team! :)