#136 - Our Favorite Things to Do In YNAB | 2026 Edition

Nearly five years ago, in a very early episode of Budget Nerds (before the podcast feed!), Ben and Ernie discussed their top three favorite things to do in YNAB. Today they are revisiting that concept to share what still lights them up about using YNAB. Some things include slick new YNAB features such as focused views, others hearken back to the simple beauty of giving every dollar a job and reconciling accounts.

 

Ben's current top 3:

1. Reconciling accounts -- in typical nerdy fashion, Ben reconciles manually before his pending transactions clear with the bank, then compares the balances afterward to ensure they match. It's the harder, but (for him) more satisfying way.
2. Moving money out of overfunded accounts with "fill up to" targets. Ben uses a lot of targets that require him to fill up to a target amount in the category, but not all of those dollars are used every month. By using the overfunded focused view, he can pull those unneeded dollars out of the overfunded categories and voila! It's like finding $20 in the pocket of your jeans.
3. YNAB as a system of record. Ben's librarian comes through here. YNAB isn't just a tool for managing your money, it's also a useful database of your financial data. You can easily query it to find transactions for years past based on the payee or even notes you left in the memo field. This comes in handy when doing taxes, meeting with your accountant, or trying to figure out what restaurant you ate at and loved on vacation four years ago.

 

Ernie's top 3:

1. Cost to be me -- this is a newer feature that adds up your targets and shows you what it takes to fund your current lifestyle. You can compare this against your expected income and see how much margin you will have any given month.
2. Assinging into future months using the auto-assign feature. Ernie's addicted to seeing those pie charts for future months fill up!
3. Available amounts. This has been a feature of YNAB forever, but it still brings Ernie joy. Scrolling through his categories and seeing the available amounts brought Ernie a sense of peace and comfort when he first started using YNAB, and it still does today. These are real dollars, not hypothetical future dollars, and they are there to work for you.

 

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