#123 - How to Start YNAB (Simple, No Hassle Setup)
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How do Ben and Ernie introduce the goal of a simple YNAB setup?
I'm Ben. And I'm Ernie. And you're listening to Budget Nerds. You are not alone.
No, you are not. Friends, welcome back to another episode. Today, Ben and I are going to start YNAB from scratch. Yeah. A brand new plan we're going to walk through. And the focus for us is how to set YNAB up simply. How to not overcomplicate things.
Yeah.
And I'm going to need some restraint here because I so badly want to get into all the super power user things that you can do. But I think it's good to be like, hey, listen, you don't have to get into every nuance of every target and all these different features. If you want to get started, it's really easy. It's not a complicated thing at all. You can get into the nerdy details later. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So... I'm probably going to be pushing you a little more. Because I just love talking about this stuff. But we're going to try to keep it simple today.
And I think that'll be fun because I think we both do have different approaches to what simple means in setting things up. And I'm curious, too, for the veteran YNABers out there, do you want to see setting up YNAB advanced? Do you want to see what that would look like?
I mean, the answer is yes.
Probably. We could get... Super into the weeds on targets and categories and accounts and all that stuff. And this episode was inspired by the fixing a messy budget episode. That's where the plan had already been created, but it turned into a dumpster fire. Then you and I came in and kind of rescued the plan. So I thought we would go, we would start on the other end of things, just start it from scratch and see what happens.
Yeah.
Yeah, so why don't we just hop right in? And by the way, this is one of those episodes, if you're listening on the podcast and on YouTube, there is a major visual component, so you might want to wait for YouTube. Or, I mean, when we did the Messy Budget, I talked to a lot of people who were like, yeah, I just listened to it, and I could follow it, and it was fine. So it might be fun for you, too. Okay.
We must be describing things pretty well. Yeah. Okay. So here's the new plan. And I started it from scratch. I just, I went clicked on the name of the old plan and I selected new plan. And then I'm calling this plan budget nerds. Cause I'm super creative like that. And I have not even added the accounts yet. I'm hoping we can hold off on that, but maybe your take is different. Do you add the accounts right away? No,
Um, no, I like to start on the plan, start on the categories, uh, because you kind of have this whole thing where you design your life. And once you, once you add the accounts, you're kind of on a running treadmill, like you kind of got to, you know, keep up with it. And so I think it might be a lot of value and like maybe even taking your time, maybe take a few days to like really get these right or get, get how you want or get familiar, read, watch some content, read some content. Um, and then when you add the accounts, you're kind of going, you know what I mean?
That's what I've always felt like, too, because especially when you add those cash accounts, that money feeds into ready to assign. So you got this number just staring you in the face and your brain is like, OK, I got to do something with those dollars.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally, totally. Yeah. And I think our onboarding right now actually does have you at accounts pretty quickly. It does. But there's a lot of a lot of really good reasons for that. But I do think if I was going to sit down with somebody and walk through it, I would I would go through the categories first.
Yeah, so that's what – and I've already done that because I didn't want to spend a whole bunch of time customizing these categories. But I have made some changes. I added what all of the monthly bills are. And this is just a fictional family. We're not really doing role-playing here or anything like that. We're just kind of taking some common expenses. then I put the frequent categories there and I added some, some non-monthlies that, you know, I tried to be picked some categories that would apply to most new YNABers.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
How do Ben and Ernie introduce the goal of a simple YNAB setup?
0:06–8:56
2
Why should you design categories before adding accounts in YNAB?
8:56–14:54
3
How do you add and customize categories (emoji, group, name) in YNAB?
14:54–37:51
4
What are YNAB targets and how do they function like digital envelopes?
37:51–42:35
5
Which target behaviors (set aside, weekly refill, have a balance) should new users choose?
42:35–1:02:32
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Budget Nerds
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