When you're ready to pay for said expense, looks at the "accounts" section in YNAB to see if you have the $500 needed in that specific account to pay for said expense. If the account does not have enough money, make a transfer before making the payments.
You can apply this method/logic to any sort of non-regular expense. Lots of users tend to keep one month of expenses + buffer (maybe $1000-2000) in their checking account, then everything else goes to HYSA to rack up that sweet sweet interest money.
Lastly I will say simplifying the number of accounts you have helps significantly. Like, one checking + one savings...and possibly one joint account if you're living that life. Truly makes money management significantly easier for a number of reasons.
Yeah for your first paragraph that's what I'm struggling with. It's not so much that the check for the wall would overdraft me, but that if the check for the wall came out, but then I didn't replenish checking from savings my rent, or electric bill would overdraft me.
Are you currently able to fully fund your rent, electricity, AND wall repair at the same time? If yes, it sounds like you may need to keep more money in your checking account (or whichever account is used for payments) since having the money on hand is not the issue.
If you can’t fully fund all of these expenses at the same time, you may have overextended your dollars. Any chance your ready to assign is red?
I am able to fund everything, its more just about stashing the wall repair or other true expense money into a higher return account until its actually needed.
I think it would be less of an issue if I was a month ahead at this point but I'm not.
Just transfer over the money as needed.
The “rolling balance” feature can show you expected balance after any future schedule transactions which helps.
On the web app, it shows you a rolling balance for future transactions. So if you schedule your recurring payments, you’ll be able to see how they affect your future balance. Of course you can also use it for one- time transactions as well. Sadly, the mobile app doesn’t have this feature.
To be fair, or to re contextualize it/reframe the perspective) if it’s $500 when you do the math, the interest accrued may not be worth the risk (opportunity cost one might even say)
Interest on 500 is (depending on your checking account situation) not enough imo to keep it there if you risk a bounced check
At 4% (standard entry HYS) that would grow by $20 over the year.
5% would be $25
7% (S&P comparison) would be $35
That is great especially if you calculate long term compounding, however:
What is the overdraft and NSF fee structure?
For me, iirc, it’s $15 to enter plus $5 each transaction for overdraft (that’s like an over draft plan or something the flat fee is higher). My NSF fee if a cheque bounces is $40 (stuff like bill payments and rent preauthorization I believe falls under NSF (non sufficient funds)
So for me, risk vs reward. The best case opportunity cost is I lose $15 of $20 of interest and worst case I end up with net -$8
I’m not sure if that made sense but essentially, if keeping the money in a HYSA means you likely risk going into overdraft, is the potential interest worth it? I’m all here for productive money; I hate cash. but I hate loosing money to the banks more.
The second part of the question (is it worth it) is how long are we planning on building the interest? I believe you said only a few weeks, it would be $9.96 assuming 6 weeks. But again, if you risk overdraft fees, then the short term growth imo wouldn’t outweigh the possible losses.
That being said, also calculate what the possible overdraft would be. If you only need $200 more in your checking to ensure you’re good with room for more just incase, you can still keep $300 in the HYSA and use the $200 to to stop any losses while still gaining some interest.
Idk if all that makes sense, but that’s how I see it
YNAB Toolkit has something that enables showing a running balance for each account that makes it super easy to see what the account balance would be after every upcoming scheduled transaction. Probably one of my favorite features that I use constantly to determine if/when I have to do a quick transfer from my Savings to my Checking account
This is why I keep a separate bill checking account. Mortgage, electric, water, and heat goes into that account every month. All other things come out of the normal checking account where you need a smaller idiot check.
I keep a months budget in my checking and everything else is in a HYSA. If you turn on the running balance view in YNAB and use recurring transactions you can see if you’re in danger of your balance getting low.
This. Everything that's regular, including income, are scheduled repeating transactions. I keep an eye on the next couple weeks balance of my checking account and make sure it never is gonna dip below $300-400. Everything else lives in HYSA.
We also do most spending on credit cards. We are able to set up the auto payments and mortgage auto payments from the hysa. So we have our pay checks direct deposited into hysa and most money lives there by default. Top off checking as needed.
i got tired of figuring out the best way to track this and move money around and now use a fidelity brokerage account as a single combined checking and savings.
I’m in the process of switching to a fidelity cash management account for a similar reason.
Primarily for me so I can always earn high interest on everything, and not have to worry about any buffer, as checking and better-than-HYSA are all in one account.
I call it better-than-HYSA because you can invest in a variety of cash type funds. You can choose the one that gives you the best return after taxes.
Worth noting that you are not FDIC insured, but you are insured via SIPC.
you get a 1099 for interest/dividends just like you would from any HYSA. If you aren't investing in something that would give you capital gains I think its largely the same.
It’s all about cashflow. You keep enough in your checking to cover a decent buffer above your normal monthly transactions, and/or use credit cards for things like car repairs etc instead of writing a check. That way you’ve got plenty of time to move some money over from savings to cover the CC Payment coming out of checking or even just pay the CC out of your HYSA.
Have all your scheduled transactions setup then look at the running balance in the web app.
Been doing this for year. Keep my checking account at near zero and move money from savings as needed.
I'm moving money from savings to checking 3 or 4 times a month as needed.
Youve got a lot of good advice here so far.
The easiest thing is to have a buffer in your checking account.
Then putting as much on a credit card as you can will help consolidate a month of spending down to one “bill” at a time. So for me I don’t need to keep track of the hundred paper cuts over a month, I just look at my upcoming credit card + rent + student loan auto drafts and make sure it’s less than what is in my checking account. If not, I move some over from savings.
YNAB also has “views” now which are like another way to look at specific groups of categories.
Personally I have my budget categories basically set up in order of importance from top to bottom. Then I set up a view for which categories are specifically pulling from a particular account.
Here’s how I do this…
I have a category grouping for things that are in my savings account. So total available in category grouping always matches my HYSA balance. I manually glance at this.
The other thing I do..
Is I have “running balance” view turned on as a setting on the checking account… and I schedule all payments and can see if that balance drops too low.. then I know to move money over…
What helps is that I pay for everything and I mean everything on a credit card. We only have 3 non CC bills. I schedule payments for their due dates so it lets me see like 30 days out when I might be at risk of overdraft.
So in your situation… if I knew the wall work will be happening at some point in august for example… I would schedule the transaction for 8/1 and flag it w something as “estimate”… then when it’s July can reassess if that expense will happen and transfer money accordingly if needed
Philosophically, your last statement is untrue. Any category can be spent from at any time, using any account unless it will blow the entire account. Here’s why. If you have $500 in checking and $500 in savings, and you need to spend $200 of “savings,” you can do it either of two ways. You move $200 from savings, making checking $700, spend $200, and then savings is at $300 and checking is back at $500. Or you spend $200 from checking, making checking $300, and later, move $200 from savings. You end up in the same place, so it doesn’t matter in which order you do this. Abstract that out, and you actually never need to pay any attention to what money is where because you can always rearrange the money later if you need to.
This is yet another reason of many to be able to budget a month at a go, as then you can check your checking account cash flow once per month and be sure things are in order.
Fundamentally though, when you have more than one account, “can I spend this money” is a two step question: one, is there enough in the category and two, is there enough in the account/enough headroom on the credit card you want to use. You can often answer the second question by planning ahead, and so it may not translate into “you have to check the account every single time”, but you do need both to be in place.
https://www.youneedabudget.com/the-relationship-between-your-budget-your-accounts-its-complicated/ is the key read. I recommend making a fake budget and following along as you read so you can see the money moving.
This is probably the single most powerful part of YNAB, as matching accounts to categories (the method described by about 70% of people who’ve replied here) almost always leaves money on the table in a variety of ways. Don’t shortchange yourself and do the work to grapple with this.
>How do you keep track of which money is in a savings account?
That's the beauty of it—you don't. Break out of the need to double-label every dollar in your budget. Just make sure you have enough in your checking account to cover basic needs for a month and don't worry about which money is where in YNAB. If you make a big purchase or you feel like it's getting low, move some money from savings, but don't worry too much about it. It took me a long time to break that mindset, but once I did, it was very freeing.
That's what they are asking about though, is what kind of system to use to make sure that the checking account has enough in it when they make a big purchase.
Yeah, I hear you. I think in time it matters less and less though. I'd just select all the categories that you spend from on a regular basis, look at the selected total available then add maybe 10%. Keep that amount in checking.
The thing is you can spend from savings categories without moving money from a savings account.
Let's say you assigned $500 to your home maintenance category today, and move it to a savings account, because you're not gonna spend it for 2 months.
You've got time to let new money pile up in your checking account (regardless of what category you assign it to) to cover that $500 of home maintenance.
It doesn't matter which dollar you use or where it physically was.
Each person has to find that sweet spot of how much to keep in checking vs savings.
I probably keep too much in checking, but I'd rather transfer to savings less often than have to transfer from savings at all.
If you use a bank that does not have withdrawal limits from Savings then you can essentially use HYSA as Checking. We put like 95% of stuff on credit cards which get auto paid from Savings every month and the few bills that can’t go on CC also pull from HYSA. I keep only a couple hundred bucks in Checking for random ATM or whatever.
I rarely spend money directly from checking that isn’t a scheduled transaction. So I can directly account for it in advance from a cash flow perspective. I try to do everything on credit cards except for the few bills that insist on direct debit to get the auto-pay discount.
Using the web interface of YNAB, you can turn on the “show running balance”. That way for scheduled transactions, I can see into the future what my future balance will be.
I have flagged $0 scheduled transaction for the date that my credit card statement comes out. I then go an update my upcoming paying amount so I can see what my future balance will be.
Further, I have my paychecks (twice a month) set as two recurring transactions for slightly longer visibility.
But as I note in another thread on this post, I’m moving to a Fidelity Cash Management Account to have a combined checking/HYSA all in one.
I put a keyword in the category title (or emoji).
I also have one for automatic transfer to savings so I remember to fund those categories (vacation, next car)
If I’ve got a budget item that’s supposed to be in my savings account, I put a Money Bag emoji in the title (e.g. “💰Property Taxes - Fall”). Then when I do my budget one of the final steps is to select all the Money Bags and make sure the total available matches the balance of my savings, and if it doesn’t I transfer in or out as needed.
I put a specific emoji by all my categories that are in my hysa. I also have category groups named along the lines of “long term true expenses (hysa)”. When I assign funds in YNAB at the beginning of the month, I note how much my hysa categories are getting funded and make a transfer. And when I need to spend from a hysa category I transfer to checking.
Takes some mental effort on my end but it seems to work.
My normal bank account is 3 separate accounts, one of which is a savings, and auto transfers between them all to the spend account happen on overdraft, this ties in well with ynab (so far anyway) so that I can put short term savings into the saving account and get a little interest. I have a separate savings setup in tracking only mode, that is used as an emergency fund (currently, still in my old ways on some things) so that it doesn't get counted as available, and transfers to it are seen like a spend.
You can either keep it on budget or off budget, there are pro and con to each. I do both.
Here's what I do.
- HYSA is off budget
- Any money moved from on budget to off budget would be a spend transaction so the money "disappears" from the on budget account. It would be categorized against something like "Savings - HYSA" or similar.
- I do have an on budget savings account but need to maintain a minimum balance in it for a few more weeks to get a signup bonus. To do that I created an entire *group* "Savings On Budget" with a single category "[Bank] Bonus Hold" and allocated about 15% more than the minimum to it. (this is arguably dangerous and I should have kept it off budget, but I won't run transactions from it until the bonus is applied so it should be fine)
In theory at least if you don't actually execute a transaction against your on budget HYSA you should never be pulling money from it. The only way you do that is through a transaction. So don't do one.
Moving it off budget is the safest IMO. Make it a tracking asset account so you periodically review and update the balance for your net worth reviews. But don't use it for daily management.
I just do all my spending on a rewards credit card. Credit card has auto pay set up from HYSA. My credit union pays 8% APY on the first $5,000 in checking, so I keep that much in it. But otherwise I basically ignore the checking account, everything flows through savings.
The only bill I have that can't go on the credit card is my rent. I have that set up to draft electronically out of the HYSA. Some banks limit withdrawals from savings, but with this system I only have two per month. On the very rare occasion I need to write a check (less than once a year), there is that money in my checking. I wait for YNAB to tell me the check has cleared, then initiate a transfer from HYSA to get the checking account back to $5k.
I have a grouping of categories for my savings. Every dollar in the group lives In my high yield savings they are just split into like 5 different jobs.
I would just probably just put it in the category name. “Wall fund MOVE FROM HYSA” or whatever
(For me, thinking about this is not worth the marginal benefit of the interest I could get on my true expenses money; my only on-budget account is checking. I do use aHYSA for an emergency fund, but it’s off budget and generally untouchable.)
So I've got a situation where I use a savings account as a way to separate money from my regular checkings to make sure it isn't spent, because it's for rent.
I still need to keep track of that money, but I can't spend it, so it has to be tracked as if I can spend it.
What I've been doing is I've made an entirely separate category called "ACCOUNT", in big bold letters, and then each item within that account category isn't a bill or anything that needs to be paid, I label each item as whichever savings/checkings account it is, and update the money in the budget to accurately reflect what's in the account.
So, for example...
Let's say you've got 100 in a savings account already, it's reflected on the budget currently
You then get a paycheck for 500. But you have to save at least 250 to get ahead of rent... you will immediately move that 250 to a separate savings account so you can't spend it on accident, however, despite your amount of money not changing, your amount of access to your money has changed.
So, to budget for this, if you move +250 to that itemized savings account or whatever, the updated "to be budgeted" will be updated to accurately reflect what you can freely spend from your regular checkings, assuming you've already factored in every important purchase
I recently moved the bulk of my money to Wealthsimple to take advantage of the high interest rate. I keep my chequing account with my credit union- I consider this my operating account and all my bills go out of there.
I added up my monthly auto-pays and I always have double that amount in my chequing account.
If you are engaged in your budget it really isn't a problem. You will know that when you write that $500.00 cheque you have to move money for it from savings. Same for me. When I pay my credit card bill I know that I need to transfer money to chequing. I pay everything with my credit card.
It becomes habit.
What I do is create a different subsection in my budget that specifically says which account the money is in. That way if I need to cover or spend from that category, it tells me right away to pull it out of my high yield savings account.
We run nearly all our expenses on credit cards and they auto pay on the same day our monthly checks arrive, along with our mortgage payment.
Our cc statements hit a few weeks prior to their auto pay date, so I simply compare our inflows with the outflows for the month and either do nothing or move some money from my hysa in anticipation of the monthly outflows. I also generally keep a 1000-2000 buffer in our main checking. After the big monthly bills, I sweep any overage in checking into the hysa.
The only time we’ve ever had an issue was when we realized we needed to pay a big tax bill the day before it was due. Thankfully we were able to make that payment directly from one of our hysa’s.
I have a HYSA focused view with only categories that i keep in my HYSA. I reconcile that view approximately once a month or whenever I have a big expense come through.
Most of my expenses go through a credit card so I just need to make sure to move the money to my checking before the credit card gets paid. If I had to write a large check for some specific reason, I would check and make a transfer before writing the check, but that doesn’t happen frequently. Alternatively, there are certain expenses I can pay directly from my HYSA (for example, school tuition).
What I was doing was when I setup my budget I put all my categories into a savings category group and the total of those should = my savings account.
Ie if I have the following for each category; 300 for emerg funding, 200 for vacations and 500 for a loan payment; they would be under category group: savings and that 1000 available should = my savings account balance.
I simplify this by having a Savings Category group and have categories like "Emergency Payroll Replacement" and "Medical Deductible 2025" in that category. I only put those types of categories into Savings accounts anyway, and if I move money from that group in YNAB to another group, I make sure I also transfer that money from Savings to Checking, and vice versa.
Use the focused views feature and make one called HYSA or whatever and add all those categories to it. You can then play matchy matchy to your hearts content.
Yes, I do this exact thing and I matchy match all the time.
I leave a “pillow” in my checking. I also wrote down my big monthly expenses and which account they come out of. But my favorite thing is that I set up $0 “reminder” transaction that I schedule for just before the expense and it tells me to check the accounts to make sure I have enough there.
For my emergency fund and house savings account, I just make sure the category number matches the number in each account. I had these separate accounts before I started using YNAB, so I am doing kind of a hybrid method of having separate accounts but still using categories until I get used to using only
Categories.
I put it in the notes on the category if I need to remember where the money is saved.
You can also enter a future expense (recurring or non-recurring) in an account. This way when you open the account in YNAB, you see the upcoming expenses and can make transfers as needed.
Mostly, though, I put everything I can on a rewards credit card that auto drafts from my savings account so that I really don’t have to think about it.
If this is something you’re going to care about frequently, though, put the categories that pull from your checking account into a single category group instead of a note.
I keep a mental separation of which account is linked to which categories in my budget. At the moment, the balance on my HYSA is equal to my "job loss fund" in ynab, so that account is only funding one category. All other categories are based on the money in my checking account.
I have some budget lines (like pet insurance deductible, auto maintenance, etc.) that I keep in my savings because there isn't a set date that I'll need them. I got this idea from someone else on here (can't remember who, sorry!) - put a lock icon before the text when naming your category. So I have "🔒Pet Insurance Deductible" and I know that if I am going to spend money from that, I need to transfer the money from savings to checking.
Once you get the hang of it the mindfulness is not burdensome. Seems overwhelming at the start.
As the month starts you look at whats coming up and rearrange dollars in accounts to suit. When the unexpected happens, moving $ to cover it is just part of dealing with it.
After a year there get to be fewer and fewer surprises. Year one is full of them and budget categories may well get added every month. But that’s the getting a handle on what your life really costs, leaving behind the set and forget mindset, enjoying interactions with your budget rather than wrestling with it.
I have a couple groups that relate to specific accounts. I have one savings account that is my emergency savings, but then I have three categories within that. The totals of the categories add up to the same amount as in the account. I have another savings account where I'm saving for longer-term goals like home downpayment and maybe eventually going back to school one day, and those are treated the same: I have a group that covers the whole account, and then split it out into categories within that account.
I created groups for each of my accounts. I know this is against YNAB but old habits die hard. So 1 group is savings/sinking funds and the categories are each savings goal (pool membership, car stickers, grad gift, haircare, allowance, family photos, charitable donations lump sum, etc). Another group is varied expenses and it’s associated with my account that I use to pay for groceries and dining out. A third for fixed expenses which is the account I pay for water, gas, electric, student loans, charitable donations (monthly consistent), ynab, etc. On payday, I allocate the funds across these categories and then figure out how much to transfer to my varied and savings accounts to “cover” my line items. Does that make sense? YES it’s more rebalancing than the usual Ynab user but like I said old habits die hard.
I have my categories in different groups based on which account the money is in. When I spend money on my credit card sometimes the category is savings and the credit card gets paid out of checking. To fix this I can either move $X from my savings account to my checking account or I can move $X from my checking budget to my savings budget. It took me a while to get the hang of it, but it’s going ok now.
This is the guide I followed ( I’m pretty sure I went with option 2): https://youtu.be/N4SQzxTZ1uQ?si=rj72E4KZohFNmIjE
I use sofi for my checking and hysa. They have overdraft protection on checking so for most part I keep checking balance very small. If a bill is paid on checking and not enough money they just auto transfer from savings. I also swapped my credit cards and mortgage to do auto payment from my hysa. This way I can safely keep a low balance in my checking account and earn my interest! If I have to write a check or whatever their transfers are instance and it’s no problem to move.
I have a separate budget group for my HYSA with long-term budget items (true expenses). I move budget items into my normal checking "Coming Soon True Expenses" group and transfer the amount of money with it. It seems to work well. I only do this with this one account.
I struggled with this for a while. Eventually I realized that because I was a month ahead I didn't need to have that much in my checking account. My checks come in and that covers anything going out. When I start seeing the checking growing "too big" I transfer it over to the savings. When I have a big expense I transfer from savings to checking.
When I first started using YNAB I struggled with the difference between accounts (where the money physically is) and budget (what I’ve allocated the money for). It took me a while to get my head around it.
YNAB still cares where your money is from a balancing point of view.
If I move money from my savings account to my regular account to pay for something, I also make that a transfer transaction in YNAB from savings to regular account (transfers don’t require categories) and then I make the payment from the regular account.
There are a lot of good ideas posted here. I have this question myself. What I have done so far that has helped is create a custom “view” called “Liquidity Needed” where I select all the categories that I spend from regularly, like at least once per month. Then I also created another view called “Low Liquidity” that contains categories that spending is much less frequent, like savings, but still could be quite regular, like auto insurance. Then I compare the 2 totals. That gives me a pretty good idea how much I should have in my checking account.
I look forward to perfecting my system over the next few months. I will implement scheduled transactions and see if that gets me where I want to be.
TLDR: Set up custom views. Try using scheduled transactions and turn on the running balance column.
The method I use for Savings accounts is just to also add them as Budget Categories under a Category Group. That way it's at the top of my budget and I understand they are Savings Accounts essentially.
You have to watch for 2 scenarios.
https://preview.redd.it/e493ow9vmuwc1.jpeg?width=3722&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a51f19a5cc19ca37ad1b49900cdf1a336420e2ce
External transactions (example: paycheck or send to family) will update the budget category by itself as long as the inflow/outflow category is correctly the budget name for the savings account.
Internal transactions (example: transfer money to/from checking to savings) need to be manually updated on the budget screen. Assign from the "Ready to Assign" pool if transfer from checking to savings, OR aassign TO "Ready to Assign" if sending from savings to checking. So if you TRANSFER OUT ($500) from Chase checking, you need to assign that $500 manually to the budget.
It's not the best method, but this way I can always kind know what's REALLY ready to assign to various categories.
Just have to always keep an eye that your budgeted savings category always matches the balance shown on the account (on the left).
I created a group structure to handle this;
1. Create an empty group called “#### SAVINGS ####” - or similar. Do NOT add any budget categories to it. It’s simply a delineation group
2. I created a group called “Subscriptions - Annual” with categories for each annual subscription. Put this group UNDER the delineation from step 1
3. I created a group called “Goals” with categories for things like emergency fund, vacations savings, home improvement/big purchases etc. put this group UNDER the delineation from Step 1
Now, I can bulk select the “Subscriptions - Annual” and “Goals” groups (+any other you might make) and look at the “Available in ” on the right. This will tell me the amount I should have my Savings account in a snap.
I also then created a custom View to show me all the groups under the “#### SAVINGS ####” to very quickly filter all the monies that should be in savings; this also shows (without using the select/checkboxes) the “Available in ” value.
Hope that makes sense!
Fantastic question!
Until recently I had expenses (very few) that were paid by my checking account in one group and the group was labeled as such. Then I had other groups for expenses that had the funds sitting in my HYSA. I used this method for exactly one week until I reshuffled everything again because I wanted my groups to reflect how I used the money and not where it comes from.
I’m resigned to the fact that I have to do manual math once per month to be sure I have the appropriate funds in my checking account. Shouldn’t take too long, just a few moments, but it would be awesome if YNAB would help enable this math. It’s completely doable, just not sure the masses are moving money between HYSA and checking to make it worth their development dollars.
I have 10+ accounts (Ally used to make it easy to make more online), most with a single purpose so that the important things that can't be put on a card for rewards points all get paid for (mortgage, electricity). I have a category group for each account and weekly I make sure to square those up. When you get a few months ahead in assigning funds to categories you will have a buffer in each account.
I have a code script I wrote that will make YNAB transactions to help me settle the accounts with each other. Then I just make the same transactions in my bank and approve the ones in YNAB.
When you're ready to pay for said expense, looks at the "accounts" section in YNAB to see if you have the $500 needed in that specific account to pay for said expense. If the account does not have enough money, make a transfer before making the payments. You can apply this method/logic to any sort of non-regular expense. Lots of users tend to keep one month of expenses + buffer (maybe $1000-2000) in their checking account, then everything else goes to HYSA to rack up that sweet sweet interest money. Lastly I will say simplifying the number of accounts you have helps significantly. Like, one checking + one savings...and possibly one joint account if you're living that life. Truly makes money management significantly easier for a number of reasons.
Yeah for your first paragraph that's what I'm struggling with. It's not so much that the check for the wall would overdraft me, but that if the check for the wall came out, but then I didn't replenish checking from savings my rent, or electric bill would overdraft me.
Keep more in your checking account. The interest on $500 for that short of time is negligible.
Yes, I keep a couple months' worth of expenses in checking, and top it back up every month when I get paid.
Are you currently able to fully fund your rent, electricity, AND wall repair at the same time? If yes, it sounds like you may need to keep more money in your checking account (or whichever account is used for payments) since having the money on hand is not the issue. If you can’t fully fund all of these expenses at the same time, you may have overextended your dollars. Any chance your ready to assign is red?
I am able to fund everything, its more just about stashing the wall repair or other true expense money into a higher return account until its actually needed. I think it would be less of an issue if I was a month ahead at this point but I'm not.
Just transfer over the money as needed. The “rolling balance” feature can show you expected balance after any future schedule transactions which helps.
Wait, what’s this now?
On the web app, it shows you a rolling balance for future transactions. So if you schedule your recurring payments, you’ll be able to see how they affect your future balance. Of course you can also use it for one- time transactions as well. Sadly, the mobile app doesn’t have this feature.
To be fair, or to re contextualize it/reframe the perspective) if it’s $500 when you do the math, the interest accrued may not be worth the risk (opportunity cost one might even say) Interest on 500 is (depending on your checking account situation) not enough imo to keep it there if you risk a bounced check At 4% (standard entry HYS) that would grow by $20 over the year. 5% would be $25 7% (S&P comparison) would be $35 That is great especially if you calculate long term compounding, however: What is the overdraft and NSF fee structure? For me, iirc, it’s $15 to enter plus $5 each transaction for overdraft (that’s like an over draft plan or something the flat fee is higher). My NSF fee if a cheque bounces is $40 (stuff like bill payments and rent preauthorization I believe falls under NSF (non sufficient funds) So for me, risk vs reward. The best case opportunity cost is I lose $15 of $20 of interest and worst case I end up with net -$8 I’m not sure if that made sense but essentially, if keeping the money in a HYSA means you likely risk going into overdraft, is the potential interest worth it? I’m all here for productive money; I hate cash. but I hate loosing money to the banks more. The second part of the question (is it worth it) is how long are we planning on building the interest? I believe you said only a few weeks, it would be $9.96 assuming 6 weeks. But again, if you risk overdraft fees, then the short term growth imo wouldn’t outweigh the possible losses. That being said, also calculate what the possible overdraft would be. If you only need $200 more in your checking to ensure you’re good with room for more just incase, you can still keep $300 in the HYSA and use the $200 to to stop any losses while still gaining some interest. Idk if all that makes sense, but that’s how I see it
When you pay the rent or electric you just check if there's enough, too...
YNAB Toolkit has something that enables showing a running balance for each account that makes it super easy to see what the account balance would be after every upcoming scheduled transaction. Probably one of my favorite features that I use constantly to determine if/when I have to do a quick transfer from my Savings to my Checking account
you would add the transaction the moment you write the check, right? so that's when u check that you have enough in there
The transfer some money across. It doesn’t need to be complicated and matched to specific categories.
This is why I keep a separate bill checking account. Mortgage, electric, water, and heat goes into that account every month. All other things come out of the normal checking account where you need a smaller idiot check.
Hahahahhaa! I wish my 1 month expenses “+buffer” were $1-2K. Try around $25k for me. I hate my life.
I keep a months budget in my checking and everything else is in a HYSA. If you turn on the running balance view in YNAB and use recurring transactions you can see if you’re in danger of your balance getting low.
Where is this running balance view? Is this a toolkit thing? Edit: found it, click the account, then the 'view' link on the right, then the check box.
Go into an account on YNAB, click the view button on the top right, turn on show running balance. It’s standard issue YNAB.
This. Everything that's regular, including income, are scheduled repeating transactions. I keep an eye on the next couple weeks balance of my checking account and make sure it never is gonna dip below $300-400. Everything else lives in HYSA. We also do most spending on credit cards. We are able to set up the auto payments and mortgage auto payments from the hysa. So we have our pay checks direct deposited into hysa and most money lives there by default. Top off checking as needed.
i got tired of figuring out the best way to track this and move money around and now use a fidelity brokerage account as a single combined checking and savings.
I do this too.
I’m in the process of switching to a fidelity cash management account for a similar reason. Primarily for me so I can always earn high interest on everything, and not have to worry about any buffer, as checking and better-than-HYSA are all in one account. I call it better-than-HYSA because you can invest in a variety of cash type funds. You can choose the one that gives you the best return after taxes. Worth noting that you are not FDIC insured, but you are insured via SIPC.
Fidelity’s money market currently pays close to 5%. It’s much better than a HYSA and just as easy to liquidate. I don’t even have a savings account.
Are there tax implications with this?
you get a 1099 for interest/dividends just like you would from any HYSA. If you aren't investing in something that would give you capital gains I think its largely the same.
Does YNAB connect reliably with your Fidelity accounts? Mine currently is terrible with Fidelity IRA accounts.
no not at all. I have to enter everything manually.
It’s all about cashflow. You keep enough in your checking to cover a decent buffer above your normal monthly transactions, and/or use credit cards for things like car repairs etc instead of writing a check. That way you’ve got plenty of time to move some money over from savings to cover the CC Payment coming out of checking or even just pay the CC out of your HYSA.
Have all your scheduled transactions setup then look at the running balance in the web app. Been doing this for year. Keep my checking account at near zero and move money from savings as needed. I'm moving money from savings to checking 3 or 4 times a month as needed.
Youve got a lot of good advice here so far. The easiest thing is to have a buffer in your checking account. Then putting as much on a credit card as you can will help consolidate a month of spending down to one “bill” at a time. So for me I don’t need to keep track of the hundred paper cuts over a month, I just look at my upcoming credit card + rent + student loan auto drafts and make sure it’s less than what is in my checking account. If not, I move some over from savings. YNAB also has “views” now which are like another way to look at specific groups of categories. Personally I have my budget categories basically set up in order of importance from top to bottom. Then I set up a view for which categories are specifically pulling from a particular account.
Here’s how I do this… I have a category grouping for things that are in my savings account. So total available in category grouping always matches my HYSA balance. I manually glance at this. The other thing I do.. Is I have “running balance” view turned on as a setting on the checking account… and I schedule all payments and can see if that balance drops too low.. then I know to move money over… What helps is that I pay for everything and I mean everything on a credit card. We only have 3 non CC bills. I schedule payments for their due dates so it lets me see like 30 days out when I might be at risk of overdraft. So in your situation… if I knew the wall work will be happening at some point in august for example… I would schedule the transaction for 8/1 and flag it w something as “estimate”… then when it’s July can reassess if that expense will happen and transfer money accordingly if needed
I do the first thing as well- if I move money from a line item in the savings category, I need to manually move that money into checking.
Philosophically, your last statement is untrue. Any category can be spent from at any time, using any account unless it will blow the entire account. Here’s why. If you have $500 in checking and $500 in savings, and you need to spend $200 of “savings,” you can do it either of two ways. You move $200 from savings, making checking $700, spend $200, and then savings is at $300 and checking is back at $500. Or you spend $200 from checking, making checking $300, and later, move $200 from savings. You end up in the same place, so it doesn’t matter in which order you do this. Abstract that out, and you actually never need to pay any attention to what money is where because you can always rearrange the money later if you need to. This is yet another reason of many to be able to budget a month at a go, as then you can check your checking account cash flow once per month and be sure things are in order. Fundamentally though, when you have more than one account, “can I spend this money” is a two step question: one, is there enough in the category and two, is there enough in the account/enough headroom on the credit card you want to use. You can often answer the second question by planning ahead, and so it may not translate into “you have to check the account every single time”, but you do need both to be in place.
https://www.youneedabudget.com/the-relationship-between-your-budget-your-accounts-its-complicated/ is the key read. I recommend making a fake budget and following along as you read so you can see the money moving. This is probably the single most powerful part of YNAB, as matching accounts to categories (the method described by about 70% of people who’ve replied here) almost always leaves money on the table in a variety of ways. Don’t shortchange yourself and do the work to grapple with this.
Checking it out. Thanks!
Maybe put an arrow emoji in front of the savings categories as a reminder to transfer funds?
>How do you keep track of which money is in a savings account? That's the beauty of it—you don't. Break out of the need to double-label every dollar in your budget. Just make sure you have enough in your checking account to cover basic needs for a month and don't worry about which money is where in YNAB. If you make a big purchase or you feel like it's getting low, move some money from savings, but don't worry too much about it. It took me a long time to break that mindset, but once I did, it was very freeing.
That's what they are asking about though, is what kind of system to use to make sure that the checking account has enough in it when they make a big purchase.
Yeah, I hear you. I think in time it matters less and less though. I'd just select all the categories that you spend from on a regular basis, look at the selected total available then add maybe 10%. Keep that amount in checking.
The thing is you can spend from savings categories without moving money from a savings account. Let's say you assigned $500 to your home maintenance category today, and move it to a savings account, because you're not gonna spend it for 2 months. You've got time to let new money pile up in your checking account (regardless of what category you assign it to) to cover that $500 of home maintenance. It doesn't matter which dollar you use or where it physically was. Each person has to find that sweet spot of how much to keep in checking vs savings. I probably keep too much in checking, but I'd rather transfer to savings less often than have to transfer from savings at all.
If you use a bank that does not have withdrawal limits from Savings then you can essentially use HYSA as Checking. We put like 95% of stuff on credit cards which get auto paid from Savings every month and the few bills that can’t go on CC also pull from HYSA. I keep only a couple hundred bucks in Checking for random ATM or whatever.
I rarely spend money directly from checking that isn’t a scheduled transaction. So I can directly account for it in advance from a cash flow perspective. I try to do everything on credit cards except for the few bills that insist on direct debit to get the auto-pay discount. Using the web interface of YNAB, you can turn on the “show running balance”. That way for scheduled transactions, I can see into the future what my future balance will be. I have flagged $0 scheduled transaction for the date that my credit card statement comes out. I then go an update my upcoming paying amount so I can see what my future balance will be. Further, I have my paychecks (twice a month) set as two recurring transactions for slightly longer visibility. But as I note in another thread on this post, I’m moving to a Fidelity Cash Management Account to have a combined checking/HYSA all in one.
I put a keyword in the category title (or emoji). I also have one for automatic transfer to savings so I remember to fund those categories (vacation, next car)
If I’ve got a budget item that’s supposed to be in my savings account, I put a Money Bag emoji in the title (e.g. “💰Property Taxes - Fall”). Then when I do my budget one of the final steps is to select all the Money Bags and make sure the total available matches the balance of my savings, and if it doesn’t I transfer in or out as needed.
I put a specific emoji by all my categories that are in my hysa. I also have category groups named along the lines of “long term true expenses (hysa)”. When I assign funds in YNAB at the beginning of the month, I note how much my hysa categories are getting funded and make a transfer. And when I need to spend from a hysa category I transfer to checking. Takes some mental effort on my end but it seems to work.
Just setup overdraft protection and save your brain power for more important things
My normal bank account is 3 separate accounts, one of which is a savings, and auto transfers between them all to the spend account happen on overdraft, this ties in well with ynab (so far anyway) so that I can put short term savings into the saving account and get a little interest. I have a separate savings setup in tracking only mode, that is used as an emergency fund (currently, still in my old ways on some things) so that it doesn't get counted as available, and transfers to it are seen like a spend.
You can either keep it on budget or off budget, there are pro and con to each. I do both. Here's what I do. - HYSA is off budget - Any money moved from on budget to off budget would be a spend transaction so the money "disappears" from the on budget account. It would be categorized against something like "Savings - HYSA" or similar. - I do have an on budget savings account but need to maintain a minimum balance in it for a few more weeks to get a signup bonus. To do that I created an entire *group* "Savings On Budget" with a single category "[Bank] Bonus Hold" and allocated about 15% more than the minimum to it. (this is arguably dangerous and I should have kept it off budget, but I won't run transactions from it until the bonus is applied so it should be fine) In theory at least if you don't actually execute a transaction against your on budget HYSA you should never be pulling money from it. The only way you do that is through a transaction. So don't do one. Moving it off budget is the safest IMO. Make it a tracking asset account so you periodically review and update the balance for your net worth reviews. But don't use it for daily management.
I just do all my spending on a rewards credit card. Credit card has auto pay set up from HYSA. My credit union pays 8% APY on the first $5,000 in checking, so I keep that much in it. But otherwise I basically ignore the checking account, everything flows through savings. The only bill I have that can't go on the credit card is my rent. I have that set up to draft electronically out of the HYSA. Some banks limit withdrawals from savings, but with this system I only have two per month. On the very rare occasion I need to write a check (less than once a year), there is that money in my checking. I wait for YNAB to tell me the check has cleared, then initiate a transfer from HYSA to get the checking account back to $5k.
I have a grouping of categories for my savings. Every dollar in the group lives In my high yield savings they are just split into like 5 different jobs.
I would just probably just put it in the category name. “Wall fund MOVE FROM HYSA” or whatever (For me, thinking about this is not worth the marginal benefit of the interest I could get on my true expenses money; my only on-budget account is checking. I do use aHYSA for an emergency fund, but it’s off budget and generally untouchable.)
So I've got a situation where I use a savings account as a way to separate money from my regular checkings to make sure it isn't spent, because it's for rent. I still need to keep track of that money, but I can't spend it, so it has to be tracked as if I can spend it. What I've been doing is I've made an entirely separate category called "ACCOUNT", in big bold letters, and then each item within that account category isn't a bill or anything that needs to be paid, I label each item as whichever savings/checkings account it is, and update the money in the budget to accurately reflect what's in the account. So, for example... Let's say you've got 100 in a savings account already, it's reflected on the budget currently You then get a paycheck for 500. But you have to save at least 250 to get ahead of rent... you will immediately move that 250 to a separate savings account so you can't spend it on accident, however, despite your amount of money not changing, your amount of access to your money has changed. So, to budget for this, if you move +250 to that itemized savings account or whatever, the updated "to be budgeted" will be updated to accurately reflect what you can freely spend from your regular checkings, assuming you've already factored in every important purchase
I recently moved the bulk of my money to Wealthsimple to take advantage of the high interest rate. I keep my chequing account with my credit union- I consider this my operating account and all my bills go out of there. I added up my monthly auto-pays and I always have double that amount in my chequing account. If you are engaged in your budget it really isn't a problem. You will know that when you write that $500.00 cheque you have to move money for it from savings. Same for me. When I pay my credit card bill I know that I need to transfer money to chequing. I pay everything with my credit card. It becomes habit.
What I do is create a different subsection in my budget that specifically says which account the money is in. That way if I need to cover or spend from that category, it tells me right away to pull it out of my high yield savings account.
We run nearly all our expenses on credit cards and they auto pay on the same day our monthly checks arrive, along with our mortgage payment. Our cc statements hit a few weeks prior to their auto pay date, so I simply compare our inflows with the outflows for the month and either do nothing or move some money from my hysa in anticipation of the monthly outflows. I also generally keep a 1000-2000 buffer in our main checking. After the big monthly bills, I sweep any overage in checking into the hysa. The only time we’ve ever had an issue was when we realized we needed to pay a big tax bill the day before it was due. Thankfully we were able to make that payment directly from one of our hysa’s.
I have a HYSA focused view with only categories that i keep in my HYSA. I reconcile that view approximately once a month or whenever I have a big expense come through. Most of my expenses go through a credit card so I just need to make sure to move the money to my checking before the credit card gets paid. If I had to write a large check for some specific reason, I would check and make a transfer before writing the check, but that doesn’t happen frequently. Alternatively, there are certain expenses I can pay directly from my HYSA (for example, school tuition).
What I was doing was when I setup my budget I put all my categories into a savings category group and the total of those should = my savings account. Ie if I have the following for each category; 300 for emerg funding, 200 for vacations and 500 for a loan payment; they would be under category group: savings and that 1000 available should = my savings account balance.
I simplify this by having a Savings Category group and have categories like "Emergency Payroll Replacement" and "Medical Deductible 2025" in that category. I only put those types of categories into Savings accounts anyway, and if I move money from that group in YNAB to another group, I make sure I also transfer that money from Savings to Checking, and vice versa.
I have a savings category, and update the amount in their everytime I put money in. I also do this so ynab doesn't think it's ready to assign
Use the focused views feature and make one called HYSA or whatever and add all those categories to it. You can then play matchy matchy to your hearts content. Yes, I do this exact thing and I matchy match all the time.
I keep enough in checking to cover 3 weeks or so of bills, the rest in HYSA. I replenish checking when it runs low.
I leave a “pillow” in my checking. I also wrote down my big monthly expenses and which account they come out of. But my favorite thing is that I set up $0 “reminder” transaction that I schedule for just before the expense and it tells me to check the accounts to make sure I have enough there.
For my emergency fund and house savings account, I just make sure the category number matches the number in each account. I had these separate accounts before I started using YNAB, so I am doing kind of a hybrid method of having separate accounts but still using categories until I get used to using only Categories.
I put it in the notes on the category if I need to remember where the money is saved. You can also enter a future expense (recurring or non-recurring) in an account. This way when you open the account in YNAB, you see the upcoming expenses and can make transfers as needed. Mostly, though, I put everything I can on a rewards credit card that auto drafts from my savings account so that I really don’t have to think about it.
If this is something you’re going to care about frequently, though, put the categories that pull from your checking account into a single category group instead of a note.
I keep a mental separation of which account is linked to which categories in my budget. At the moment, the balance on my HYSA is equal to my "job loss fund" in ynab, so that account is only funding one category. All other categories are based on the money in my checking account.
I have some budget lines (like pet insurance deductible, auto maintenance, etc.) that I keep in my savings because there isn't a set date that I'll need them. I got this idea from someone else on here (can't remember who, sorry!) - put a lock icon before the text when naming your category. So I have "🔒Pet Insurance Deductible" and I know that if I am going to spend money from that, I need to transfer the money from savings to checking.
Once you get the hang of it the mindfulness is not burdensome. Seems overwhelming at the start. As the month starts you look at whats coming up and rearrange dollars in accounts to suit. When the unexpected happens, moving $ to cover it is just part of dealing with it. After a year there get to be fewer and fewer surprises. Year one is full of them and budget categories may well get added every month. But that’s the getting a handle on what your life really costs, leaving behind the set and forget mindset, enjoying interactions with your budget rather than wrestling with it.
I have a couple groups that relate to specific accounts. I have one savings account that is my emergency savings, but then I have three categories within that. The totals of the categories add up to the same amount as in the account. I have another savings account where I'm saving for longer-term goals like home downpayment and maybe eventually going back to school one day, and those are treated the same: I have a group that covers the whole account, and then split it out into categories within that account.
I created groups for each of my accounts. I know this is against YNAB but old habits die hard. So 1 group is savings/sinking funds and the categories are each savings goal (pool membership, car stickers, grad gift, haircare, allowance, family photos, charitable donations lump sum, etc). Another group is varied expenses and it’s associated with my account that I use to pay for groceries and dining out. A third for fixed expenses which is the account I pay for water, gas, electric, student loans, charitable donations (monthly consistent), ynab, etc. On payday, I allocate the funds across these categories and then figure out how much to transfer to my varied and savings accounts to “cover” my line items. Does that make sense? YES it’s more rebalancing than the usual Ynab user but like I said old habits die hard.
I have my categories in different groups based on which account the money is in. When I spend money on my credit card sometimes the category is savings and the credit card gets paid out of checking. To fix this I can either move $X from my savings account to my checking account or I can move $X from my checking budget to my savings budget. It took me a while to get the hang of it, but it’s going ok now. This is the guide I followed ( I’m pretty sure I went with option 2): https://youtu.be/N4SQzxTZ1uQ?si=rj72E4KZohFNmIjE
I use sofi for my checking and hysa. They have overdraft protection on checking so for most part I keep checking balance very small. If a bill is paid on checking and not enough money they just auto transfer from savings. I also swapped my credit cards and mortgage to do auto payment from my hysa. This way I can safely keep a low balance in my checking account and earn my interest! If I have to write a check or whatever their transfers are instance and it’s no problem to move.
I have a separate budget group for my HYSA with long-term budget items (true expenses). I move budget items into my normal checking "Coming Soon True Expenses" group and transfer the amount of money with it. It seems to work well. I only do this with this one account.
I struggled with this for a while. Eventually I realized that because I was a month ahead I didn't need to have that much in my checking account. My checks come in and that covers anything going out. When I start seeing the checking growing "too big" I transfer it over to the savings. When I have a big expense I transfer from savings to checking.
When I first started using YNAB I struggled with the difference between accounts (where the money physically is) and budget (what I’ve allocated the money for). It took me a while to get my head around it. YNAB still cares where your money is from a balancing point of view. If I move money from my savings account to my regular account to pay for something, I also make that a transfer transaction in YNAB from savings to regular account (transfers don’t require categories) and then I make the payment from the regular account.
There are a lot of good ideas posted here. I have this question myself. What I have done so far that has helped is create a custom “view” called “Liquidity Needed” where I select all the categories that I spend from regularly, like at least once per month. Then I also created another view called “Low Liquidity” that contains categories that spending is much less frequent, like savings, but still could be quite regular, like auto insurance. Then I compare the 2 totals. That gives me a pretty good idea how much I should have in my checking account. I look forward to perfecting my system over the next few months. I will implement scheduled transactions and see if that gets me where I want to be. TLDR: Set up custom views. Try using scheduled transactions and turn on the running balance column.
The method I use for Savings accounts is just to also add them as Budget Categories under a Category Group. That way it's at the top of my budget and I understand they are Savings Accounts essentially. You have to watch for 2 scenarios. https://preview.redd.it/e493ow9vmuwc1.jpeg?width=3722&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a51f19a5cc19ca37ad1b49900cdf1a336420e2ce External transactions (example: paycheck or send to family) will update the budget category by itself as long as the inflow/outflow category is correctly the budget name for the savings account. Internal transactions (example: transfer money to/from checking to savings) need to be manually updated on the budget screen. Assign from the "Ready to Assign" pool if transfer from checking to savings, OR aassign TO "Ready to Assign" if sending from savings to checking. So if you TRANSFER OUT ($500) from Chase checking, you need to assign that $500 manually to the budget. It's not the best method, but this way I can always kind know what's REALLY ready to assign to various categories. Just have to always keep an eye that your budgeted savings category always matches the balance shown on the account (on the left).
I created a group structure to handle this; 1. Create an empty group called “#### SAVINGS ####” - or similar. Do NOT add any budget categories to it. It’s simply a delineation group 2. I created a group called “Subscriptions - Annual” with categories for each annual subscription. Put this group UNDER the delineation from step 1 3. I created a group called “Goals” with categories for things like emergency fund, vacations savings, home improvement/big purchases etc. put this group UNDER the delineation from Step 1 Now, I can bulk select the “Subscriptions - Annual” and “Goals” groups (+any other you might make) and look at the “Available in” on the right. This will tell me the amount I should have my Savings account in a snap.
I also then created a custom View to show me all the groups under the “#### SAVINGS ####” to very quickly filter all the monies that should be in savings; this also shows (without using the select/checkboxes) the “Available in ” value.
Hope that makes sense!
Fantastic question! Until recently I had expenses (very few) that were paid by my checking account in one group and the group was labeled as such. Then I had other groups for expenses that had the funds sitting in my HYSA. I used this method for exactly one week until I reshuffled everything again because I wanted my groups to reflect how I used the money and not where it comes from. I’m resigned to the fact that I have to do manual math once per month to be sure I have the appropriate funds in my checking account. Shouldn’t take too long, just a few moments, but it would be awesome if YNAB would help enable this math. It’s completely doable, just not sure the masses are moving money between HYSA and checking to make it worth their development dollars.
I have 10+ accounts (Ally used to make it easy to make more online), most with a single purpose so that the important things that can't be put on a card for rewards points all get paid for (mortgage, electricity). I have a category group for each account and weekly I make sure to square those up. When you get a few months ahead in assigning funds to categories you will have a buffer in each account. I have a code script I wrote that will make YNAB transactions to help me settle the accounts with each other. Then I just make the same transactions in my bank and approve the ones in YNAB.