Pink Pegasus That's a terribly reactive plan. You can't pay your true expenses with money you used months ago to pay down student loans.

There is an alternative involving having your investment account as part of the budget, but given the fact your current plan for the future seems to be based on reaction, I'm not sure I should provide you with the details on how to do it safely.

Pink Pegasus I'm still not sure I get it. I've never met an average month in all the years I've been using YNAB. Some day I'll have to review the standard deviation. I just spent $4200 from a True Expense category yesterday.

Now, the truth is, I only keep on average 6.5 months plus a few other categories in cash at any given moment, with the rest invested. But I still maintain a comprehensive budget so I know what all my money is for, including how much of my budget is invested.

I don't think simplifying is advisable, because you'll eventually lose track of the individual expenses and either will suffer lifestyle creep or forget about things that need to be paid that just don't happen very frequently. Or at the very least it'll become too easy to lose track of your actual priorities and therefore your spending will no longer align with them.... which is the reason many of us continue to use YNAB even though we are probably in a similar, if not better, financial situation than your post represents.

nolesrule yes, I do fear the lifestyle creep.  I'm going to try this out for a few months and see how it goes.  Maybe I can ease my partner in to tracking transactions with the fun money categories and see how things go.  

goose61282 thanks for the feedback!

Pink Pegasus I'm not totally sure what your problem is. It seems it all stems out from the fact your spouse doesn't want to enter transactions. It's quite common and doesn't mean you have to modify your use of YNAB. My husband only looked at YNAB 2-3 times since we started using it (in 2014). He looked long enough to understand the concept and done. 
Since then, he never enters his transactions (didn't install the app). I use file-import to get all the transactions in YNAB regularly. He will simply discuss his shopping plans with me if he intends to spend a significant amount (I don't care about a coffee, a take-away lunch or a cheap gift etc.): 

Him: "I was thinking to buy some pants and shirts"

Me: "Sure, we have $200 and no need to buy clothing for the kids this month"

Or:

Us: "Should we change the stovetop?"

Me: "If we want, we can. We have the money saved for it"

Obviously, I probably have to WAM more than if he was completely onboard with YNAB but it is much better than no YNAB. And it seems to me, it would be better than what you are proposing.

Ceeses thanks for sharing your experience.  That could work as well.  Don't you get tired of matching up his transactions to categories? There's no tension when you ask "so what's this transaction?"

Currently, our credit union (therefore our debit card) isn't compatible with direct import.  Maybe we'll get a credit card that is compatible or it sounds like YNAB is getting a new partner for direct import. 

Pink Pegasus My wife has never done any data entry in YNAB in 6.5 years. She did put the app on her phone so she can see how much is in what category, after years of asking how much we have in a category. There's no tension about what category a transaction belongs to. I ask, she answers, I put it in YNAB. We're done.

One of the reasons this works is we have a pretty standard budget with lots of categories. Every few months we sit down and analyze the categories and make sure the funding amounts line up with how we are really spending. Sometimes, we  cut back a category (or even eliminate some expense entirely), other times we increase our spending. There's still plenty left over at the end of the month.

I'll be honest that the solution presented by the recently returned original poster sounds more complicated than just using YNAB for everything with a bunch of categories.

Pink Pegasus I'm like the others whose spouses do no YNAB data entry.  When we started over a decade ago, if he so much as bought a cup of coffee I needed to know immediately, things were that tight.  There was no direct import or even a phone app.  I got a $1.50 spindle from Staples that they use at restaurants.  He was instructed to put any receipts on the spindle when he came home from work.  I collected whatever was on the spindle like an inbox and entered and categorized.  It worked for years!

It's funny, these days when I ask him about a transaction so I can categorize, he starts rambling about what it is, why he had to buy it, how he's going to use it, blah blah blah.  I'm like, Dude yo, stop. I don't care, I just need to know if it's a business thing or if it's your stuff or a gift.  Done.  In reality, most transactions that come in on his end are memorized payees, nothing new.  

Also, what we've done since 2009 is each have a "Spending Money" category for cash.  That's cash withdrawn from the ATM.  I don't track it.  Get cash, buy your coffee or give it to the kids or whatever, I'm not tracking it.  It's around $100 and accounted for.  Done.

Be particular in where you choose to slack off, or you could come to regret it quickly :).

Pink Pegasus others have replied but I don't get tired of matching his transactions because now most payees are auto-categorised. The main issue is the cafe at his work. It may be an expense for him  if buying coffee or another category if he's buying lunch. I usually know if he is going to buy lunch so I just guess the highest amount around that date is the lunch.

I don't have access to direct import as I'm not in the USA. You should investigate file-based import, it works really well for me. And a simple trick: instead of approving every single transaction after the file- based import,  check your cleared balance is the same in YNAB and your bank,  then simply hit reconcile. The reconciliation will approve every transaction imported and matches,  etc. Then you only have to deal with categorisation. And maybe payee clean up at the beginning so auto- categorisation can happen in the future. 

Pink Pegasus Just a heads up with what I do with fun money and a spouse who doesn't YNAB. I hate having a bazillion payees, seriously do I need to know how much he spent at Jane's coffee shop vs Joe's Cafe? No! So when those transactions flow/enter into to YNAB I rename the Payee to "Shaun" and maybe make a memo about where the money was spent i.e "Joe's Cafe".

If it's not clear what the purchase was for that's when I ask e.g. he might buy a coffee & snack from the service station but it also might be a couple of litres of fuel for the lawnmower which would go to our "House Stuff" category and not his fun money category.

Plus, when I look at my reports I don't have 500 coffee & sandwich shops listed, instead I have one big, fat, expensive category called "Shaun" that I can shove in his face if he ever complains about not having any money 😉

Annieland  Similar for me. I am not planning to drop Ynab at all. It is so useful for organising my funds and knowing which money is available. I also don't need to check any categories before spending because I know I have the money for the job even if a transfer is needed. I don't get excited about payday as I did initially. I just do it when needed.

Annieland I wanted to chime in too after 4.5 years of YNAB. I firmly believe I'll never outgrow it. I had a journal on the old forum in 2016-17. Everything was tight, I complained a lot, I was feeding a family of four on a grocery budget of $250/month, etc. Our income hasn't increased a ton—lifestyle creep probably would have taken all of it without YNAB—but our budget looks so different now.

Things that have changed for me since I first started with YNAB

• Though we've been a month ahead since January 2017, I only added "income for next month" categories a few months ago. I separate this by freelance vs taxed income, then at the beginning of the month, take a fixed percentage of taxed income for donations and budget the rest, while freelance income gets a percentage for donations, retirement, and personal spending money.
• I don't really check categories at point of purchase anymore if it's a small item or planned, only for >$100 or so purchases to ensure the money's where I need it.
• I do all the regular budgeting, as I always have, and my husband and I semi-regularly discuss what to do with extra money or how to handle shortfalls in specific categories as they happen.
• I keep a physical list of my long-term priorities with my finances (for me, it's giving—including acts of kindness, retirement, and building up True Expenses to a point where I don't need a monthly pay-in except after they've been used to buy something), as well as a physical list for a Wish Farm, and make sure YNAB is getting me closer to those things.
• My husband and I both closed our personal checking accounts and have personal category groups instead. (We are big fans of granularity and have well over 100 categories in our total budget. It works for us.)
• I added my business checking account and expenses to our main budget as a category group, since I don't have a lot of overhead. I don't pay  myself regularly (I run my business with cash accounting, not a salary and separate expenses). I just look at our checking account balance and move money from business checking when I need to, making sure my business account never has less than about a $300 buffer more than the total money in my business category group.
• On a mindset note, I've had to teach myself to be comfortable spending money, and YNAB has helped me appreciate that those dollars exist so I can spend them.

I can't imagine much of the above being true without YNAB, and I find it even more helpful (and less stressful) than it was to me in the very beginning.