Retirement Account Budgets
Is it possible to track Retirement Accounts in a completely different budget and not just in the tracking categories? Or is there a ways to separate tracking categories for example keeping HSAs and Retirement accounts in different tracking sections?
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Of course you *can* do those things, but why would you want to? Typically, a retiree will arrange for funds to transfer monthly, effectively a monthly "paycheck" to be budgeted as normal.
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dakinemaui dakinemaui dakinemaui dakinemaui
Thank you for the reply. We are retired but do not draw out of the different accounts. I would like to see the balance of these accounts separate from our other off budget accounts.
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Hot Pink Android As you've seen, there is only one Tracking account roll-up per budget. One option is to delete the other tracking accounts if seeing the retirement total is the priority.
TBH, YNAB doesn't import investment accounts well, so people turn to other options. Personal Capital is a popular choice, though I've not used it.
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I love YNAB so much that I hadn't even thought about using anything else but that is an excellent idea! Thank you!
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You could probably set up a separate "budget" with only your retirement tracking accounts and use it as basically an excel spreadsheet with pre-programmed graphs to track your total balances, but I would say Mint or Personal Capital are a better option for that and both are free, although if you prefer your privacy and don't like Mint/PC marketing to you, then a separate YNAB budget, or just a spreadsheet that you update every month or quarter is a better option.
Actually, now that you mention this idea, I'm actually thinking I might like that idea. Right now I track my net worth in a spreadsheet, but it might be nice to have it in YNAB but not in the same budget as my actually day to day spending budget, which I want to only consist of my accounts that I actually spend from. It would be a budget without a budget though, just used to track net worth in my case. But then it would be easier to access and update than opening up a separate spreadsheet file, as long as there are not calculations I want to do with my data that the reports don't do.
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PhysicsGal
A big plus on keeping a separate Net Worth budget is that you no longer fear doing a fresh start and losing your report data. I created a separate Net Worth budget and input the 6-years of data for all my investment accounts as well as a monthly value for on-budget liquidity (all debt, all liquidity). It was a bit of a data-entry project for me.
At the end of each month, I open that budget and reconcile each of my accounts to update it all, and I no longer bother to keep investment accounts in my current budget.
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HappyDance You are ambitious! I had a bunch of net worth data over a long time in Mint, and technically I downloaded the data before deleting my account, and I could probably figure out how to put it into YNAB in my net worth budget (or even import it into the spreadsheet I started to replace Mint's net worth features, which was the only reason I still had the account for awhile after getting YNAB'd), but I'll probably just use YNAB from here on out to track net worth and not important any old data, and mostly I'm doing it so I don't have to open up my spreadsheet anymore.
Also, looks like I can always download my data in the future, so if I wanted to do a calculation that YNAB doesn't do, I can turn it into a spreadsheet again later and do some crazy fun math. Excellent! This separate net worth budget is the best tip I've gotten on the forum since I learned about using scheduled transactions for all my recurring bills and writing the month in the memo field once I edit for the new dollar amount due that month. Separate net worth budget here I come. Thanks!
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I much prefer my Net Worth in my main budget but maybe that's just me. I have full net worth going back to 2012. I like it being an always present reminder of where I am and where I came from and how I got here.
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Superbone
Thank you for responding. I also like to see my Net Worth but I wish I could have in a separate tracking area. I ended up making a second budget, which I didn't know I could do until this post, and just putting it in the tracking area and leaving the budget empty.
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Hot Pink Android My only question is why do you want it in a separate tracking area? That's what the tracking area is for. What are you separating?
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What I really like about YNAB is all the categories. I would like to put my off budget accounts in separate categories also. Maybe I just have too many off budget accounts but I would like to group them separately, health savings, short term savings, investments and retirement accounts all in their own groups. I only put money in my budget that is getting spent in a years time.
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Seems a super simple feature to allow folks to create their own groupings of accounts on the side bar. Why not support it? (And tags, oh, but I digress....)
