Easy You Need a Budget question

[krisskross]

Hi all

I'm getting back to grips with YNAB atter 6 months out- i have forgotten most of it!

One really easy question for those of you used to it- i obviously have lots of reccurring monthly payments, eg mortgage. They show up as recurring monthly in my account, but are not recurring in my budget. Do i need to manually input every single recurring expense every month? This is v time consuming. I understand that i have to clear the payment, but i thought previously they still recurred in the budget.

Thank you.

You still have to allocate money each month in the budget, is that what you mean?

Otherwise once set up they should come up in your transaction list automatically every month and then you need to authorise them. Under your list of transactions there should be a 'scheduled transactions' option and you set them up in there.

Thank you noodle. I'm getting my head around it again.....from what you're saying it's a two stage process....put them in scheduled transactions, then put them in the budget? Thank you!

Yes. Think of it like this:

Accounts - what transactions have taken place
Budget -where you intend to spend money.

So in YNAB, by making a recurring transaction, you're logging that a certain amount of money is going out of your account. But unless you allocate an amount to the corresponding category, you haven't budgeted it. You have to make a conscious choice to use your available amount on that item.