Credit card payment=new confusion
Hey all,
I'm starting to get confused over here for the first time with my Fresh Start budget. I went in to pay my credit card balance yesterday, which was a little higher than what had been reconciled in YNAB (some transactions weren't posted yet), but I do have money budgeted in the categories of those transactions. Now I've got a lot going on that I don't understand in my budgeting screen, especially what I should do about a now underfunded TBB.
Why are my credit card account balance and my credit card payment balances so different? How do I fix this?
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I'm just having a hard time understanding what all of these numbers represent and why I can't get them to add up...
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Your payment available amount should never be more than the amount needed to pay the balance on the card. You have $114.92 available to pay, but a balance of $63.73 on the card. You need to reduce the amount budgeted to your payment category to get it down to $63.73. This will also clear up the negative TBB.
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nolesrule Thank you! That did clear up the TBB issue. I'm not sure if you'd know, but I'm just wondering why that happened and if I should have only paid my credit card balance the amount that I had available on the day I paid it, even though it was just a little off due to uncleared transactions?
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Colleen Cirocco You should never pay more than the CC Available amount in YNAB when you make the payment. If the transaction hasn't been entered in YNAB, whether manually or via download, it's not part of the CC Available amount, because as far as YNAB is concerned, you haven't made the purchase yet so the money hasn't moved in your budget.
Also, if you are a Pay In Full credit card user, as it appears with this card, just pay what you owe when you owe it and no sooner... the statement balance on or slightly before the payment due date. Then you will have less issues with transaction timing.
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nolesrule I see--I think this may be where I've been getting tripped up for a long time. I've always gone into my account and paid whatever balance there was, because I knew that I had the money budgeted. I guess this disagrees with YNAB's system though, because it doesn't know about these upcoming payments.
I pay my credit card twice a month because I have a low limit for the time being and am trying to stay under the 30% credit utilization window. Maybe when I go in to pay I will only pay what is available on that date from now on.
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Colleen Cirocco There is nothing wrong with paying it the way you are. If the balance you are paying doesn't match ynab's cleared balance though that means something is missing in ynab and should be rectified.
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