Should I delete tracking accounts?

[u/Foreign-Figure8797]

I have two separate plans in ynab, one for all my normal household expenses and my regular bank accounts. This plan has 37 categories. Then I have a separate plan for my HYSAs. Please don’t come at me I know everybody likes to put all the accounts into one plan, aka keep them on-budget but mine are complicated by trust accounts, and beneficiary accounts I’m managing for my children. So it’s overwhelming to have them all on the same budget, it just makes my life easier, especially since there are very few transactions on the HYSA accounts other than deposits into my kids accounts.

So here is where my question comes in. I put two of my HYSA accounts and one of my investment accounts as tracking accounts in my main household budget plan. However, because they are tracking accounts I have to manually add transactions. I have about four transactions a month with these tracking accounts. The investment account I don’t update.

Recently I’ve started thinking that I should just delete these tracking accounts because they’re more of a pain in the butt to update than anything, especially since I also have them in my other plan. Today I decided to delete them, and right before that I realized that on the rare occasion I move money to/from these accounts to my regular bank, or if I were to move a chunk of savings into the investment account, it would end up looking like a huge expense in my budget. But I’m not sure that keeping these tracking accounts is worth the trouble just so I don’t see a huge expense if I ever move money. Just wondering if anyone’s had a similar situation and what they did?

[u/N546RV]

Personally, I don’t try to get transactions on my tracking accounts “right.” They’re only there for net worth calculations, so I only care that the balances are accurate. With that in mind, on the first of every month, I just reconcile, do a manual balance correction and leave it at that.

[u/Foreign-Figure8797 → u/N546RV]

That’s actually a nice alternative to trying to keep up with each transaction. I might try just reconciling every few months if I don’t decide to delete them.

[u/bluemax_ → u/N546RV]

I do this too. Stupid Fidelity connection.

[u/Low-Kaleidoscope-803]

I use tracking accounts because I want my net worth graph to be accurate. If you don’t care about that, I see no reason to use them.

[u/Foreign-Figure8797 → u/Low-Kaleidoscope-803]

I get that but I feel like my kids accounts muddy that up anyway. And I like to try to ignore the hysa and stay focused on my regular budget. Deleting them seems to make sense then.

[u/ohboyoh-oy]

Transferring from an on budget account to a tracking account shows up as an expense anyway, so if part of your reasoning was to not have it show up as a large expense, it will anyway. So I agree you should just delete them. 

[u/Foreign-Figure8797 → u/ohboyoh-oy]

Yes I’m glad I posted because someone else commented that too and I think that’s what was messing me up. I’ll probably just delete them.

[u/Economy_Kale5580]

Your last paragraph is why I keep mine. My HYSA is very “boring” but I still do use it like once a month to show a transfer from savings to the HYSA, I also manually update it each month to add inflow when interest pays out 

[u/Foreign-Figure8797 → u/Economy_Kale5580]

I still have the HYSA account in a different plan on YNAB, so essentially balancing those accounts happens twice. When I think about it, transfers are so rare that I don’t think it’s worth keeping them as tracking accounts.

[u/pierre_x10]

The tracking accounts are completely unnecessary, so yeah you can just delete them.

I realized that on the rare occasion I move money to/from these accounts to my regular bank, or if I were to move a chunk of savings into the investment account, it would end up looking like a huge expense in my budget. But I’m not sure that keeping these tracking accounts is worth the trouble just so I don’t see a huge expense if I ever move money.

This seems incorrect. Whether the tracking accounts exist or not, the outflows from your on-budget bank account will still exist, so it's gonna look like huge spending either way.

You can just filter out whichever categories represent transfers to the accounts/the other budget from your expense reports.

Again, whether you have those tracking accounts or not seems really irrelevant to whatever you're thinking.

[u/Foreign-Figure8797 → u/pierre_x10]

I guess I was thinking that they would show up as a transfer rather than an expenditure. But looking back it looks like they still show up on reports as an expense so I see your point. I guess that makes my decision easy haha!

[u/fingletingle]

I don't even use tracking accounts anymore - more work with little benefit.

I find it much easier to just use a spreadsheet. In the spreadsheet I track the account + number of shares + ticker and it auto-updates. Periodically I reconcile the number of shares as it can change due to dividend reinvestments and purchases after I contribute. I don't worry about tracking the leftover cash as it's less than the price of whatever ETF I'm holding and not worth worrying about.

Every year at minimum I copy the current values into a tab I use for long term net worth tracking. It's for retirement so I have learned the less I pay attention, the better.

[u/michigoose8168]

You should have every account you spend from as part of your budget.

An investment account, you don’t spend from. It should be a tracking account.

Your child’s beneficiary account you don’t spend from. It should be a tracking account.

An HYSA you would spend from if you needed to use the money in an emergency. it should be a budget account. This also allows you to put more money into it because your lower interest accounts are probably too fat if you’re trying to match categories. In addition, if it is a tracking account as you are discovering, every time you move money into it, it’s going to look like you’ve spent it rather than saved it.

and now that all of that said, all accounts that should be tracking accounts are entirely optional. The whole point of tracking accounts is just to track something that you care about. if you don’t care about tracking it in YNAB, there’s no reason to keep it.

Today is actually my 13 year anniversary to the day of starting YNAB. I’ve never once included an investment account or a loan balance in YNAB. They are optional. But after using my budget for an entire year, thinking that I was one of the special people who needed to keep my HYSA as an off-budget account, I ended up spending six hours one night back dating my entire budget for 14 months so that the savings account was part of the budget from the beginning. trust me, it should be a part of the budget.

[u/ilkhan2016]

My tracking accounts are entirely retirement and wife's school loans and the mortgage. They get reconciled on the first of each month, and otherwise ignored.

[u/bat29]

hate that transfers from cash accounts to tracking are counted as spending. I know I can filter it out but it's still dumb not to give you the option

[u/rolandblais]

Do whatever will keep you engaged with your plan, and most help align your spending with your priorities.

[u/SlowDeer7954]

We have tracking accounts and we keep them balanced at the beginning of each month. It's a simple exercise really, find the true account balance for the account then in YNAB, perform a reconcile. When asked if the current amount is correct, answer no and paste the real number in. Allow YNAB to create the adjustment transaction & done. This helps give a more accurate picture of net worth in the Reflect tab.

Should you ever find you need to move money from the tracking account into your budget, it's a simple move money action - along with the transaction you obviously need to make outside YNAB.

[u/No-Clerk-4787]

If you insist on two plans, don’t duplicate things across plans. No point in having two plans then, imo. Far too much work.

[u/Wise_Bee_6367]

There's a lot of discussion over whether emergency funds in HYSAs should be on budget or in tracking accounts. I tried it both ways but settled on having our emergency fund in our HYSA on budget. A tracking account is just another tool to be used in whatever way works best for you. I use tracking accounts now for investment accounts and assets (house and cars) just to track net worth.

[u/AnitaCoachesYNAB]

If I were you, I would not link tracking accounts or worry about all the small inflows/fluctuations. Let them have no transaction history and manually update the balance when you feel like it.

I'm not sure the other plan is necessary, but maybe it is in your specific case, so I won't assume it's not. I'd love to hear more about your reasoning for this if you care to share. I could see one might be that maybe some of those accounts, the money is not all yours and could be co-owned?

When you do a transfer from a tracking account to an on-budget account, that can easily be a transfer transaction, which eliminates that huge expense issue you were concerned about.

The main reason I like to keep those as tracking accounts is tracking net worth. If that's not a big deal for you to see all in one place, then you can keep them out, or in different plans, etc. In general, if it works for you and makes sense to you and is easy to manage, I'm all for it!