Pickle of the North some of the money has the wrong job if you want to pay off the credit card in full.   You need to change its job to credit card payoff. 

Pickle of the North once you cover the overspending then YNAB sends the additional $3 to the credit card payments category. 

That is not why you are short in the payment category....

Pickle of the North your understanding of covering overspending is wrong.  When you cover overspending in the same month YNAB absolutely sends those dollars to the payment category to pay off the card. 

When you moved to nYNAB you needed to budget to the credit card payment category to cover the balance due on the cards. Did you do that?

do you ever go back into previous months to make sure no overspending snuck through at the end of the month??

Pickle of the North to correct it you need to budget $1700 there. 

Do you reconcile your credit card??

after correcting it this time get in the habit of confirming that the total due on the card and the amount in the available bubble match. When they stop marching track down the problem immediately so it doesn’t become such a huge problem. 

Pickle of the North said:
I use cash and credit at about the same rate... I've always run with the fact that the budget doesn't care what method of payment I use, rather that the cash is available to cover the spending. What I don't get is that YNAB will somehow just kind of assume that I am covering overspending with my credit card, which is not true.

 Are you logging cash purchases/transactions under your credit card account? Just trying to understand this.

Pickle of the North What numbers are "in complete agreement"?

You said that the credit card payment category for your Visa is at -$1700, but the card is at $0, right? So, at a minimum, those two numbers aren't in complete agreement. And in the end, it's those two numbers that matter the most to be sure that your card is paid in full. The credit card payment category should, for a paid-in-full card, always be the inversion of whatever that card's balance is. If the balance on the card is -$1700, the payment category should be $1700.

Whenever you make a new  purchase (or use the Move Money tool to cover overspending in a category where you've used the card at all this month), those two numbers should change in sync with one another.

From what you describe, I'd say dakinemaui is right and there's a very old problem lingering on the card—that at some point the balance of the card didn't match the payoff amount, either because of transactions that were there pre-nYNAB, which need to be budgeted for directly to the credit card payment category, or something else.

But if the balance of the category is persistently negative after making a payment on the card, then you're right: the money has to come from somewhere, because it's already been spent.

(I don't know if this is any more helpful than what Dakinemaui already said, but hopefully if we can get clarification on what numbers agree and which ones don't, we can figure this out.)

Pickle of the North Correct. If you have an overspent category with both cash and credit transactions in it, YNAB will pull back cash from the next payment. Debt increase is seen as the lesser of two evils compared to overstated category balances not backed by cash.

Realistically, if you always cover overspending, it won't be an issue.

Pickle of the North It hasn't been properly allotted. That's the problem.

If your Payment category is negative then you did not have enough in it to pay as much as you did. I'm beginning to agree with others that the issue isn't the overspending in categories, but rather that you did not correctly realign your credit card management when you transitioned from a previous version of YNAB. So you are basically riding the credit card float, using money you don't have available for the CC payment to make the CC payment.

You need to adjust your budget to get off the float.

Pickle of the North 

... Look up Stealing From The Future...

That's the most likely way you spent money without realizing your plan was bunk.

Or the initial balance/float issue.

Or, if you've done everything else right (and not been bit by SFTF), the budgetary effects of refunds to your card could have built up if you pay your full balance to 0. 

Pickle of the North Were you ever at a point where your Payment Available was enough for the entire card balance? Or did you just budget a negative payment available balance until you got it back to zero?

Again, most likely this was a transition issue that was never caught and only manifests itself once you had a month where you used your credit cards much less than normal.

Pickle of the North Bottom line. Just fix it. I'm 99% sure you've never actually had the right amount in the category to begin with.

I don't know what your actual credit card balance is, but whatever it is, lop off the negative sign and adjust your CC payment category so that it is at this new number. And then move forward.

Yeah, your budget will take a hit, but at least you'll stop questioning things because you have a clean slate to start from.

Pickle of the North After you fix it for now, there's a whole list of things that can cause the CC payment category to get out of whack for a PIF user. Someone else can include that. 

Pickle of the North Sorry. PIF = Paid In Full, where every cent charged to your credit card could be paid entirely down to 0 at any time.  To ensure your budget maintains this status, the CC category available should always equal the absolute value (positive) of your negative CC working balance.

Pickle of the North I'm going to copy from a copy, which might be from a copy of the list with the possible reasons for the cc category to get out of whack. I'm sure there are not nicely formatted ones I've seen on the forum, but searching is a pain on here...

From https://support.youneedabudget.com/t/h49zf0/positive-credit-card-balance-inflating-tbb

Reasons [@dakinemaui] found that could cause the credit card account & payment category balances diverge (paid in full cards):

starting balance on a paid-in-full card - category is lower

overspending - category is lower

uncategorized transactions - category is lower

outgoing transfers to other on-budget accounts (e.g., gift card account, mixed funding splits) - category is lower

purchase/cash-back rewards (should be categorized to TBB) - category is higher

categorizing item returns as TBB (should use the original spending category instead) - category is higher

reconciliation adjustment - category is lower for an outflow adjustment, higher for an inflow adjustment

taking the account balance positive - category should be $0 in this case

To correct the problem, budget whatever is needed to make them agree. Some of them can also be fixed other ways (e.g., overspending).

If you're carrying debt on your card, your card balance and category balance will not, and should not, match. You can see the amount of debt being carried at any time  by clicking on the card's category and viewing the inspector: You'll see a line which reads, "If you pay [credit card payment category available] your account balance will be $X." That "X" is the amount of debt that is not presently budgeted to be paid off. 

@adriana01 FWIW, since coming up with that list, I've [@dakinemaui] realized another reason (not that it applies here): erroneous budget entries. Some newbies move money out of (or into) the CC Payment category, either because they don't understand what it represents or by accidentally clicking one of the Quick Budget buttons

Pickle of the North I've just sent you an email with a custom video explaining what's going on and how to prevent your Credit Card Payment category from ever getting out of sync again.

Pickle of the North WHEN YOU COVER THE $1.25 OF OVERSPENDING THAT YOU SHOW IN YOUR VIDEO, THEN YNAB MOVES THAT $1.25 TO THE CREDIT CARD PAYMENT CATEGORY.  It does not ding your credit card category.

Pickle of the North I was going to say pretty much what satcook says. Your video stops too soon. What happens when you cover the overspending in the Coffee category? That's what you/we need to see. Although we are pretty sure we know what happens then. 

If you leave categories overspent where some spending has been done by CC, then YNAB thinks you want to increase your debt. The other possibility would be to create cash out of thin air. If you cover the overspent in the Coffee category in your video and then don't understand what is happening, then we can discuss.

Pickle of the North do not create a sham transaction. That will not fix the issue. You might have had the money in your accounts to pay the bill, but it is assigned to other categories. You have now sent the credit card $1700 that you think you have available for other jobs.  That $1700 can no longer do the jobs you’ve assigned it to so you need to move it to the credit card payments category instead. 

Doing afresh start would probably be the best way to help you understand what has happened. As you allocate your money in the fresh start you will see that you can no longer fully fund all the categories as they are now. 

Once you are done playing with the fresh start you can go back to your current budget and fix it. It will still be there waiting for you and then you will have your history. 

Pickle of the North Well, online YNAB has only been around for a little over 4 years, so that means you were using a previous version if you've been using it for 5+ years. Your issue has to do with your transition, and not with the ongoing usage.

Bottom line, you didn't manage your transition correctly and ended up on the credit card float as a result. It's probably not your fault as the transition documentation is rather lacking, and people aren't aware they need to fix their credit card payment categories as part of a transition. But you need to get over it and just fix your budget.

Pickle of the North if that's the case, do a fresh start like satcook recommended (your current budget will still be available so don't worry about it, you can always go back to it). Fund all your categories so that the available balances match your current category balances (be sure to take into account pending transactions on your card. For example if you have a pending charge of $20 from a gas station, I personally would enter it as a new transaction). After you've done all this, then the amount left to be budgeted should be enough so that you can do a one time allocation to your credit card payment category and the balance of the credit card payment category will now be positive and an inverse of the working balance of your credit card account on the left.

Pickle of the North you will not loose the data! It will be in a separate file. Also we're basically telling you to do a fresh start to more clearly demonstrate what we are telling you. Once you see that you have gotten yourself onto the float, you can go back to your original budget and fix it by moving money out of your other categories (as much as you don't want to) and into the credit card payment category or setting a plan for yourself to slowly get off the float over time by budgeting extra funds to the credit card payment category until it matches the working balance of your credit card account.

Pickle of the North You are still not understanding.  We are saying - do a fresh start so you can understand what is going on in your budget.

Then go back to your old budget file and fix it.  You don't lose any history this way and it's all in one place.

bullfiniche YNAB doesn’t think you are spending with credit. YNAB is saying, you overspent using cash. Now you no longer have that money to pay the credit card bill. Once you cover the overspending then your credit card will again have all the money it needs....

satcook That's just it.  

1. YNAB is specifically saying I've overspent using credit.  When I check my credit card, it says that it's overspent even though the transaction specifically happened with my debit card, not my credit card. They are from two separate financial institutions. 

2. YNAB keeps budgeting the overspent amount to the credit card.  Now I don't know if this is YNAB's way of getting me to pay down my remaining balance of the credit card, but it doesn't make sense that I record the transaction from a checking account for YNAB to think that it's credit.  

And none of my accounts are linked to YNAB.

Pickle of the North You're not.  It's happened to me a couple times since I've added this CC last month.  Was going to make a thread about it today until I saw your thread. 

Def a bug.  

bullfiniche What happens to the credit card category when you cover the overspending??  The alert goes away, right??

satcook If I cover the amount, that amount is then budgeted to the credit card.  

So for example:

I got a coffee for $2.49 and I paid for this using my debit card. 

I budget in my "Dining Out" category in Ynab, and Ynab says I've overspent $2.49 on my credit card.  I need to budget $2.49 so that I'm not charging interest. 

When I budget the $2.49 in my Dining Out category, it adds $2.49 to the credit card as Available to Budget. 

Not once was the credit card used yet the software is thinking that I've used it.

Pickle of the North Perhaps. 

I just don't see why Ynab is saying I've overspent on a credit card when the card is not even being used.  

I can see if I used the credit card and Ynab said I've overspent using the credit card. That would totally make more sense. 

bullfiniche bullfiniche 

bullfiniche said:
Not once was the credit card used yet the software is thinking that I've used it.

 You are saying that you did not use the credit card for a dining out category purchase at any point in the same calendar month that you also used the debit card for a Dining out category purchase?

nolesrule That's what I'm saying.  I haven't used my credit card this month other than make payments to it.  

Pickle of the North That I understand. 

Except I do have the cash. lol.

Especially when I'm the account I use has a positive amount to it.  

bullfiniche I'm happy to look closer at what's going on here! If you’re up for it, go ahead and enable Support Access for your account. Once you’ve done that, let me know—and mention whether you’d like to continue the discussion here or via email instead.

Nicole I have support access enabled.  Can we discuss this via email?

bullfiniche Email sent! :)

Pickle of the North I would not do this until you fix the budget as is. If your credit card payment category is not equal to (but opposite sign) as your credit card account balance, then you are not in fact a paid in full credit card user. Just because you have been doing it, does not mean that you budget will support it.

Pickle of the North You certainly could do that, but it would have the same effect on your budget as the advice I've been giving you on how to fix it.... either way you're going to have less money for your other categories.

nolesrule I do think that since the OP says they paid the cc down to zero every month, but the red cc category has only happened intermittently since transition, that this is a SFTF casualty. OP spent money based on categories, but didn't realize it was not a viable plan. Sometimes the CC payment took the hit, but the OP didn't look at the category before paying and made it red. This time, it's built up a lot. Or had large transactions.

If they always paid statement balances, then I'd say it was just a persistent float, but since paying to 0 didn't always have a red effect, that's what I think.

Pickle of the North , do you budget in a future month on a regular basis?

Pickle of the North You mentioned this happened on the last of the month. If you flip back to January, do you see any credit overspending?

Pickle of the North Sorry about that! I didn't see your update lower in the thread show up until the page reloaded. 😂 Glad it's sorted!

nolesrule But they didn't pay the statement balance. They paid the full balance to zero.

Move Light Sound Life Now, but has it always been the case?

nolesrule 

Pickle of the North said:
and I have never had a credit card transaction that I didn't log, that I didn't reconcile, that I didn't pay to zero on a month to month.

 Their words.

Move Light Sound Life If you are using the card and logging transactions, it might not go to zero in YNAB. Timing is everything. And if OP is having difficulty grasping this concept, then those details may have gone unnoticed.

Cornflower Blue Boa I agree, this is too complicated, and we want to work on simplifying credit card handling...

...but if you block out the noise, it's also simple: if the amount in the Credit Card Payment category equals what you currently owe on the card, none of the other stuff matters. And if it's not equal, you know that there was overspending, or the card had a positive balance, or you took a cash advance, or one of the other more unusual scenarios that can cause a short Credit Card Payment category.

I think the most insidious cause of a short Credit Card Payment category is when overspending creeps in at the end of the previous month. That's definitely something we should point out more clearly.

Matthew The "trick" that make it easy (category matches the account) only work for paid-in-full users... which I would guess is not the majority of your userbase.

Cornflower Blue Boa said:
the user has overspent on their credit card by $75, but how would they know that?

The primary indication is that the category turns yellow. It's certainly not foolproof, as you might need to scroll, you might have the group collapsed, you may have become desensitized to yellow by frequently ignoring underfunded goals, or the category may be hidden.

I've suggested a simple GUI addition to summarize current month overspending for both cash and credit that can be clicked to take you to the next occurrence of either (expanding/unhiding as necessary). This problem plagues so many users. Obviously not a priority for the devs thus far.

Cornflower Blue Boa said:
In the example shown, the user has overspent on their credit card by $75, but how would they know that?

 I think it's important to make the distinction that the user has overspent one or more of their spending categories by $75, which is indicated by the yellow overspending warning in the relevant category/ies.

I do agree that there needs to be better flags once the month rolls over - the Toolkit's PIF Credit Card Assist (which flags your CC category yellow if the available amount doesn't match the card balance) helps fill this gap.

Cornflower Blue Boa said:
I'm not sure where that debt is reflected in the current product. 

The additional debt (for every purchase) is reflected in the CC account balance. No, it's not obvious when the debt increase is not accompanied by a corresponding increase in the Payment category.

YNAB is optimized for users who need to use credit (i.e., they can't cover overspending), as they don't need to do anything in the budget as a consequence. An interface that required a user action to increase/acknowledge post-payment debt increase would be better, to my way of thinking. (Yes, this is one of the features of YNAB4 that was dropped in the current product.)

Cornflower Blue Boa said:
I would expect that the budget for the following month (September) would show "-$75.00 Overspent in Aug" and the "To be Budgeted" amount for September would be adjusted accordingly.

Because the budget is solely concerned with your plans for your cash, this does not happen. Of course, the design could be altered slightly to always adjust the CC Payment category (i.e., assume you would pay off every CC transaction), and it would act as you described without any further action to maintain the post-payment debt at whatever level it was before the transaction. This would mean the user would need to change the plan (a.k.a., the budget) in order to finance something -- a good thing from a behavior-modification viewpoint. Overspending would also be consistent between cash & credit, reinforcing the "spending is spending regardless of payment method" viewpoint. Feel free to make a feature request.

Matthew thanks for the reply. I can't speak for others, but to me it would be a lot clearer if the "Activity" column on the budget page reflected ALL activity on the card—budgeted or not—and the Available column would show budgeted spending. In case of overspending, the Available amount could be flagged yellow or red. 

Referring back to the example shown in the screenshot, Activity would be $175, Available would be $100,  and the Available number would be red to indicate this is less than the amount owed based on activity. 

Not sure this resonates with others but this would make sense to me. 
 

dakinemaui to me the most confusing bit is that credit overspending is not indicated from one month to the next. The category turns yellow in the current month, but in the following month the categories have all reset to zero and it isn't obvious—until I look at my credit card bill—that I owe more than I have budgeted. In my reply to Matthew I suggested a small revision to the UI that could make this clearer. 

Cornflower Blue Boa Personally, in 5 years, I've maybe looked at that Activity dialog 4 times.  I find it completely useless.  I know the numbers are "correct" but it always looks confusing at first glance, and I instinctively want to start breaking down where they came from, and then I realize I'm not going to find out anything I need to know in the end.  Obviously it's an info panel they feel is important, but whenever anyone brings it up I just tell them to ignore it, it's not actionable in the slightest.

Annieland I agree the Activity dialog is confusing, but currently it's the only way to see that total spending exceeds budgeted spending on this card. 

If the interface were adjusted to show total spending on the main budget page, then all those confusing details on the Activity dialog could safely be ignored or removed. 

More succinctly, my suggestion is to redefine "Activity" for a Credit Card to include all transactions, not just budgeted transactions. 

Cornflower Blue Boa said:
it would be a lot clearer if the "Activity" column on the budget page reflected ALL activity on the card

Yes, that was my feature request as well. Effectively, YNAB assumes all purchases will be paid back. Yes, that causes issues with funds being double-booked in the plan in the case of overspending -- you know, exactly as cash overspending does. The user either handles it (I mean, there's a RULE for it, right?) or YNAB corrects it in next month's plan. Simple. Obviously, there has been no traction with the developers. 🙄

On a more pragmatic note, many who have grown tired of babysitting the CC Payment category just switched their paid-in-full CCs to use a checking account representation. Funds to pay the entire balance are implicitly reserved at all times. To switch, just balance transfer from a new checking account, ensure the CC Payment category is empty, and hide the old account/category. The only downside: if you wanted to finance something on the card or temporarily ride the CC float, you'd have to spend the 15 seconds to balance transfer back. 😉

Cornflower Blue Boa  you made me take a closer look a the screenshot and...either I'm missing something or those numbers are screwy. Neither budgeted spending in the inspector nor Activity in the main budget screen should be +$100 when the only transactions are both outflows, whether those transactions are budgeted for or not.

Vibrant Budgeted spending depends on how much was in each of the spending categories at the beginning of the month, which isn't known/shown. I don't see anything screwy in what is shown.

@dakinemaui Ah, I see where I went wrong. 👍 (I'm in Annieland's camp, I generally ignore that entire box and I should know better than to comment on a functionality I don't use.)

Vibrant The only reason I would use it is to see if the top two values differ as an indication of overspending in past months that's a little more reliable than expanding all category groups, unhiding all categories, and a lot of scrolling around. Made worse if anyone has underfunded goals -- also orange.

However, I do appreciate the consistency with the other categories.

Annieland 

Annieland said:
I keep my CC accounts as CC's because I'm just used to it that way.

 I keep my CCs as CCs for the artificial AOM inflation. I need validation. 🤣

nolesrule I wasn't going to admit to that one 😎.

Dave Mac For your reference, if the CC Payment category diverges after it was once in agreement with the account, then one of the following happened (possibly in a previous month):

• • overspending - category is lower
  • uncategorized transactions - category is lower
  • outgoing transfers to other on-budget accounts (e.g., gift card account, mixed funding splits) - category is lower
  • taking the account balance positive - category is lower and should be $0 in this case
  • purchase/cash-back rewards (should be categorized to TBB) - category is higher
  • categorizing item returns as TBB (should use the original spending category instead) - category is higher
  • reconciliation adjustment - category is lower for an outflow adjustment, higher for an inflow adjustment
  • occasionally a return/inflow to a category that has transactions from more than one card - a bug will sometimes impact two payment categories: one is higher and one is lower
  • erroneous budget entry - accidents or misunderstandings occasionally happen

Pickle of the North Clearly it works for you, but it's also clear the normal budgeting is not as smooth as other approaches. Have you considered a one-time allocation of some of your EF to allow you to budget both your checks at once -- filling out the entirety of the upcoming month?

Pickle of the North 

Pickle of the North said:
I diverge from the YNAB philosophy in that if I need a new fridge or something, I’ll take it out of the emergency fund rather than budgeting for it in its own category over time. In that way, I accept the fact that the (possibly poorly-named) emergency fund will cover off sorta expected large expenses as well as true emergencies, as I feel like it always has enough to do both. Starting a new budget category to cover off something that happens far into the future in my system is a lot of overhead I don’t really need.

 This will work perfectly fine until it doesn't, and to be honest more categories doesn't create extra work.

There are two reasons for being more specific with your categories rather than just using a giant catch-all, and they fall at opposite ends of the spectrum.

1. It helps make sure you are saving enough for pretty much everything.

2. It helps make sure you aren't saving too much when you could be doing something better with the money.

Frankly, if you can cash flow things all those things from the Emergency fund you'd be better off taking a chunk to fund next month and move to Budgeting using the previous month's income. At that point, funding your budget is a couple of clicks and the additional categories aren't overhead anymore once you've determined the correct monthly funding amounts.

Also, you don't need a specific category for each appliance, you just need to know how much each appliance costs in general and how long you have until you think you need to replace it. All my appliances come out of either our Home Maintenance (there are guidelines of much money to put in a category like this, inclusive of appliance replacement) or Home Improvement category (or sometimes some of each). We just bought a custom closet system for our master bedroom closet, to be delivered in 2 weeks. It came out of Home Improvement. And it doubles as my wife's birthday present!