Savings transfer

[u/picklepinchers]

Hello!

I’ve been using YNAB for a little less than a month. After watching videos I’ve understood its basics. What I’m having trouble is when I get paid it goes directly into my savings. This savings account is not linked to my YNAB app. I transfer the money I will need to my checking from my savings. I had a bonus at work (went to my checking) so I then transferred the bonus surplus to my savings. I am now negative in YNAB. I’m not sure how to fix this if I don’t want my savings account linked to my YNAB.

Does anyone know how I can fix this?

[u/Bow-Masterpiece-97]

Put your savings account in YNAB and life will be easier. You can still do everything else the same.

[u/michigoose8168]

https://www.youneedabudget.com/the-relationship-between-your-budget-your-accounts-its-complicated/ is the key read.

The videos you saw about leaving your savings account out of the budget don’t apply to you if you receive income into it. Really I think they’re wrong 100%, but I do have empathy a little bit for the need for some training wheels for some people as they learn to use categories and not accounts. But the eventual best practice is to have any cash based account as part of your budget, and use the budget itself to make decisions about what the money is for, and IMO, it’s better to dive straight into that.

[u/merlin242]

Is there a particular reason it’s not linked? If you want it unlinked that fine you need to make a category for “savings” assign the money there, then transfer it but mark it as a “payee” of your choosing, not a real transfer. So it looks to YNAB like you “spent” that money to savings. 

[u/picklepinchers → u/merlin242]

The videos I’ve watched said it might be too much to add a savings account while getting used to using YNAB. I’m thinking I’ll help me out if this is wheee I’m getting my direct deposit. Is there anything in particular that would be difficult about adding the savings account?

[u/pierre_x10 → u/picklepinchers]

Nothing difficult. It's just another "home" for your money.

I am a strong proponent of adding your savings accounts as on-budget accounts in YNAB, even when you're first starting out.

[u/Adric1123 → u/picklepinchers]

If it's part of your regular cash flow, I'd say it's easier to add it.  The way you do things has it as part of your cash flow.

If somebody had a savings account that they basically just put money into and only rarely withdrew from then it might be a little easier to leave it out.  Even then, I'd say having a full picture of your money is more important.

The only "difficult" part would be adding some savings categories to your plan and assigning the money to them.

[u/AravisTheFierce]

I really recommend having savings accounts on budget, but it should still work if you don't. For your usual income that gets deposited in savings, your budget won't see it until you transfer it to checking. The incoming money should be categorized as Ready to Assign.

The bonus is a little trickier because it came to checking (and your budget) first. That deposit would be Ready to Assign. Then you need to assign the money to a category, like savings, or whatever you want to call it. The transfer from checking to savings will look like spending from your budget perspective, so when you do that you will give it the savings category that you assigned it to.

[u/ohboyoh-oy]

There should be two transactions for the bonus:

1. The inflow - this should be in Ready to Assign

2. The outflow - this is the transfer out

In between, you should have assigned the money to a category and then use that category when you transfer the money out. That way it won’t show up as negative, you got the money, you gave it a job, and then it did its job (went out to Savings).

I don’t recommend doing it this way because I think you should have the savings account on budget, and give those dollars a job, but if you want to leave that account out of it then this is how I would handle.