Starting out negative? and maybe some other questions. :P

[jrelkaw]

Perhaps this is the wrong place for this, if it is just let me know!

Long story short, my laptop died on me with my old YNAB4 budget on it. Problem being, this month has been absolute garbage for me financially (couple emergencies, had to use CC to charge some things and I prefer not to carry a balance). I plan on using my next paycheck/transferring to cover these negative balances. They're scattered across a few categories.

How should I go about putting these negative categories in so I make sure when I get paid tomorrow, they're covered and I don't think I have more money than I really do? I can still see in my YNAB app which categories are negative, but when I input my CC balance and my Bank balance, the negative number doesn't match up to what it should be (I think, since I have no access to my old budget on desktop, just mobile).


Let me know if this doesn't make sense. I can maybe take screenshots to show what I'm talking about.

[Billy_McSkintos]

I think you have two options.

1. Enter a transaction for the amount of -ve category under your CC account.

2. Budget a -ve amount for that category

[jrelkaw]

@Billy_McSkintos thanks for your reply!

As far as those options go,

1. That would throw the "balance" of my CC account off, would it not? That has the correct balance in it already, just doesn't show which transactions make that balance (I started using financier yesterday). I suppose I could go through my March statement already and input those as opposed to having a "starting balance"...

2. I tried this but it seems to give me more money to budget with, as opposed to taking away (like YNAB did, unless I'm doing this wrong) and ends up just confusing me more. I could also just be super stressed out and not thinking clearly. 

[jrelkaw]

Oh, I forgot another question I had!

I saw that it's possible to import your YNAB budget - but from the budget file. Is there any way to find that file on DropBox that anyone knows? That would probably help me out a ton.

I've contacted YNAB support via their website and twitter to see if this is possible, but have yet to hear back.

[asromzek]

If you haven't come across this blog post yet, it explains how to find the right file to import into Financier.

https://blog.financier.io/convert-your-ynab-4-budget-to-financier-149c4b46d57

Basically, if you have Dropbox installed on windows you're looking for a file called Budget.yfull, which you can restore into Financier.

[jrelkaw]

@asromzek not windows, but unfortunately I don't have access to the desktop version of the program anymore since my laptop is dead. I can only access the dropbox files.

[asromzek]

@asromzek not windows, but unfortunately I don't have access to the desktop version of the program anymore since my laptop is dead. I can only access the dropbox files.

If you can log in to Dropbox website, you should be able to navigate through the directories to find the Budget.yfull file. As an example, my old YNAB4 budget is buried under...

\YNAB\MyBudget~BD55C421.ynab4\data3-42EB4CF6\D34C6FB9-BCD4-A535-B418-29BF3FADA57F\Budget.yfull

If you can find that file, you should be able to download it to any computer and then import to Financier.

Edit: After re-reading your last post, were you using a Mac with YNAB4?

[Joel]

Did you know you can just install Dropbox on your computer and you will regain access to your ynab4 files?

And you can look up your ynab4 serial number to continue using 4.

All that said, they have helped you understand how to migrate that file to financier as well.

[jrelkaw]

@asromzek yeah I kept digging for the file on dropbox's website but must have missed it! I was using a Mac with YNAB4 but I got it all sorted out!

@Joel I didn't know that but accidentally figured it out just before reading your post.   I was able to get everything migrated over to financier and my balances figured out.

I'm super stoked to start using this, it's great so far. Thank you all for your help!