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YNAB question - how do you track retirement accoun...
# budgeting
b
YNAB question - how do you track retirement accounts? Do you mark it as a tracking account and any money transferred to the account is marked as an expense? Or do you mark it as a budget account and it's just considered a regular transfer between accounts?
m
you shouldn't be tracking retirement accounts in YNAB
b
That was my 3rd option. So any contribution is just marked as an "expense"?
r
Sure that's what I do. I have them as tracking accounts and the inflows/outflows are expenses etc
m
So any contribution is just marked as an "expense"
I put it in the invest category
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r
@mysterious-tomato-10057 why not?
m
@ripe-state-85897 YNAB is for budgeting, the transfers that are happening internal to your retirement accounts aren't relevant for you budget, and will create confusion. Why have all your IRAs and 401ks linked? It's not relevant for day to day spending which is complicated enough. Budget in YNAB and everything else is RightCapital, nice and organized
same reason your business accounts shouldn't be in ynab
it's just the accounts needed for your family budget, as simple as possible
why should the fact i bought or sold stock affect my budget?
r
I see. I guess that's fine for beginners. I personally would rather use YNAB as my full holistic financial view instead of having 2 different softwares
m
i would say doing that would be good for beginners since YNAB is missing any holistic features like investment projections
so a beginner might want to keep everything in YNAB but if you are advanced you will want to leverage things not found in ynab
r
investment projections
I've yet to be convinced why I would need this. My market investments are in a mix of target date funds and index mutual funds. Not sure why I need anything fancy
m
how do you know how much to invest each money to meet your goals
you have many goals spread out over many years
how do you know you'll meet those goals with your current strategy
r
Yeah I get that, but I don't see how it would change anything wrt to my investment vehicles. And I save/invest currently as much as my budget allows for, so again not sure what it gives me. Unfortunately, I'm not dealing with a multi million dollar portfolio (yet) so it just feels like over optimization
m
If you give me the chance to convince you otherwise in a deep dive, i'd gladly take it
i would try out the software before discounting it
also i think if you knew statistically you needed to invest another $200 a month to hit your goals, you would find a way to make it work
r
I'm totally on board with trying it - I even signed up for it, but as it is I have my hands full with YNAB (I have 30+ accounts in it, because I do CC churning 😁 ). So adding more software has to be worth my time, I don't want to be spending 80% of my time optimizing for 20% :)
m
I would say to focus on YNAB then
( you can hire an international to categorize transactions for you to save time )
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r
Bh I have my budget on lockdown. Been using YNAB for almost a decade. I stupidly had been manually entering transactions (to be more intentional, as per YNAB guidance) until recently. Thankfully I just switched over to linking my accounts and now my YNAB workload has gone down by orders of magnitude. (I still recommend manually entering for normal people who don't have a million accounts like me.) Perhaps I'll take another look at RC in the near future.
m
👍
r
@mysterious-tomato-10057 any recommendations where to find a trustworthy international? Feel a bit uncomfortable trusting my budget to a stranger
m
I use upwork.com but you need to have trust in strangers if you want a good deal. for example, i don't give him my amazon login, but you can request a digital download of your amazon data and then send them the ZIP
you can read reviews on the ynab guys
but it will come down to trusting a stranger to look at your data
r
👍 👍
t
Woah just seeing this. I disagree with @mysterious-tomato-10057 because I like seeing it all in YNAB. Also how would you handle contributions? To answer the OP, you set them up as Tracking accounts and mark them as a transfer to the account. You’ll still need a category. I call mine…. “Roth IRA” and right now I have a goal set for March 1 2025 of $7000 which tells me how much to put in each month to reach that goal. But I’m also dragging my feet on right capital 🙈
m
Anyone who suggests putting all their investments in their YNAB id imagine does not have a ton of investments... It's an overload of transactions if you have hundreds or thousands of investment transactions monthly. It's simply the wrong tool.
If ynab was meant to track investments it would have a price tracker for the tickers and a graph to show value over time (the investments not just the balances)
And they make it clear it's as a replacement for net worth analysis, which isn't budgeting. Net worth analysis is best done in a net worth tool. Now if someone doesn't have a net worth tracker like right capital, it makes sense to at least do it in YNAB, but that is not what is best for the majority of people since you can't make investing goals in YNAB. It's simply not meant for a complete and total picture.
I can write a long list of features YNAB is missing to be a viable option for a holistic view. But it sounds like both of you feel this way and also don't use right capital or another monte carlo tool, which I think proves my point as to what demographic would want to put everything in YNAB.
But I agree that for @ripe-state-85897s use case it makes sense to focus on YNAB first. Absolutely would not be my general guidance though.
Even more annoying than the transactions to me is the need to balance every single transfer to your investments. If it's not included, you just call it an investment and you're done and you don't need to make sure they all match up with transfers on each end.
At the end of the day they are both viable options. One to me just is much easier for most people.
r
> hundreds or thousands of investment transactions monthly is this because they have actively managed accounts? Seems excessive. What I do is: enter the outflows on my regular accounts, but don't enter the inflows in my tracking account. Instead, every 3-6 months, I just go to my tracking accounts and enter a reconciliation adjustment
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m
Then you aren't linking them... And you agree with my premise since you're not actually treating it as a real YNAB account but rather a shell.
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b
I think the tracking accounts are shells (as you put it). Mine (a different one than referred to in the question) never adjusts even though it's linked.
t
That’s exactly what I do @ripe-state-85897 !
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v
I have found the empower PER a great app to track your net worth, investment and also has some budgeting tools. You can easily remove an account if you don't want to track it. And you can manually add any other cash or account which won't connect through plaid.
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m
Yes I also like the empower app a lot. It's much better than mint for ner worth tracking. The reason I switched off is bc YNAB is better for budgeting and right capital is better for planning bc it has a lot more planning features than empower. I get everything empower has and more with right capital.
v
Thanks, I'll try out Right Capital
Does anybody else have issues connecting Cit Bank to any system? It usually takes a long time to connect to the bank and it doesn't automatically update any transactions.
m
Citi?
https://frum.finance/start if you checkout right capital, do it from here so that frum finance covers the license fees.
v
m
I don't know that one. Right Capital uses yodlee for connecting to accounts. I wonder what empower uses. If it's the same, you'll have the same issue.
v
I have the same problem with Right Capital
I just added it manually
m
😭
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