Help...I'm in a pickle
I just can't see what I'm doing wrong. I have all my accounts set up, one of which is a savings account titled Emergency Fund. I also have an Emergency Fund category in my budget which reflects the amount in that account exactly. So....today I had to pay out for an emergency. Paid from my current account and transferred money over from EF. All well and good, my accounts match up. BUT... my EF category is now wrong and however I try to change it, it just ends up showing in To Be Budgeted... I just can't get my head around it. Surely if there's more money in my categories than there is in my accounts it should flag up as overbudgeted?? And how do I change the amount in the category?
Any advice?
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It's ok... I sorted it 🙂
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Presumably your emergency caused overspending. Not sure how you sorted it, but I wanted to let you know that an easy way to handle it (but not an obvious way) is to click on the overspent Available to bring up the Cover Overspending tool and pick your Emergency category as the source of funds.
Also, as a heads up, you seem to be trying to keep an account synchronized to a category. That's unnecessary since categories keep everything straight in YNAB and actually takes more effort if you insist on doing so. You also lose out on interest from your other money that you don't need in the short term. You would do well to read this blog article (screenshots are from an earlier version, but the principle remains unchanged).
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dakinemaui Hey...Thank you for taking the time to respond to my post.
My emergency didn't cause an overspend as the money was in my emergency fund account. The money in my current account was however budgeted into February. So initially, I moved the money budgeted into February back into my (new just added) car crisis category, when what I should have done was move money from my emergency fund category to the car crisis category. I'm not sure if you can understand that but that's how I sorted it.
I appreciate that I don't really need separate accounts with YNAB, but I'm very new to this and at the moment I still get pleasure from actually seeing money in my Emergency Fund! I didn't particularly want to spend some of it on repairing damage caused by an unknown driver, but I guess that's why it's called an emergency fund.
Thanks again for your time...I am still learning 🙂
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Orchid Mixer Where did you take it from in your February budget? Presumably, it was in a category. Just move the money from Emergency Fund to the category you took the money (or another one if your priorities have changed, that's entirely your decision). To move money between categories:
- click on the number in the available column of the source (or the target) category
- type the number you want to move. If from the source, positive number. If in target category, negative number
- choose the category the money has to move to (or from) in the drop-down menu
Alternatively, enter "-" and the amount in the budgeted column of the Emergency Fund category. This will put the money in TBB. Then type "+" and the same amount in your target category. The first method is very strongly advised!
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Either move funds from the emergency category to the category of spending or categorize the transaction as emergency fund. As an aside, I would not recommend trying to keep a category and an account exactly the same. It ends up driving people mad.
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