Should I get a "No Category" warning when I make a transfer to an off budget account?
I think it's trying to tell you that there should be a budget category allocated for that transfer.
For example when making a car payment you would presumably want to budget the payment itself so you would set up a budget category called "car payment". When you make the transfer to your off budget car loan account the category to account for the expense in your budget would be "car Payment".
That's how I use it anyway.
Transfers to off budget accounts absolutely, positively need a category. 🙂 You wouldn't leave a normal transaction uncategorized, would you?
I was transferring money from my checking account (on budget) to my savings account (off budget). I don't really have a category for that sort of thing. I don't want to put the savings account on budget since I don't want it to show up as available to budget.
Quote from: MacMichael on November 11, 2016, 09:18:34 AM
I was transferring money from my checking account (on budget) to my savings account (off budget). I don't really have a category for that sort of thing. I don't want to put the savings account on budget since I don't want it to show up as available to budget.
When dealing with on-budget accounts no category is used. But since the "From" account is on budget you have money leaving the budget.
I have off budget investment account. I made a category "Investments" to allocate a job for money (hopefully each month) and then when I transfer I assign this category. I had to do this since it was off budget.
Quote from: MacMichael on November 11, 2016, 09:18:34 AM
I was transferring money from my checking account (on budget) to my savings account (off budget). I don't really have a category for that sort of thing. I don't want to put the savings account on budget since I don't want it to show up as available to budget.
Transferring money between two on budget accounts does not require a category because no money is leaving your budget. You need a category any time money leaves or enters your budget. So a transfer to an off budget account means that the money is no longer a part of your budget.
It is kind of a mind shift, but with this methodology the location and purpose of your money are disconnected. I have 18 on budget accounts, of which 4 are savings accounts, 5 are checking accounts, 7 are credit/store cards, and 2 are cash accounts. There is no way you could add up any of my category balances to equal the amount in my main checking account.
If you aren't at the point where you can quite get to that mindset, one option for you would be to create a category called savings and manually make sure that the category balance is always equal to the savings account balance. It takes a lot of work to maintain. Every month when the interest comes in you have to add it to the category balance. Any time you transfer $100 from your checking account to savings account you have to find $100 in your budget to move to the savings category.
Quote from: MacMichael on November 11, 2016, 09:18:34 AM
I was transferring money from my checking account (on budget) to my savings account (off budget). I don't really have a category for that sort of thing. I don't want to put the savings account on budget since I don't want it to show up as available to budget.
I always recommend to making savings accounts (or anything that doesn't fluctuate in value) as on-budget. Then use your categories to define the purpose of the money. It's perfectly okay to have categories that you never spend from and have uses like "Never spend".
Thanks for all the tips. At this time I will keep the savings account off budget and create a category for it. That is the way I did it in YNAB4 it worked fine for me.
We just set up our Ally Bank savings account and have 3 categories which that savings account is intended to fund. The categories are confined to a single master category, and we intend to keep the balance of that master category and the savings account in sync. That way our saving money isn't bleeding into our monthly budget, or vise versa. Since all the accounts are on budget, transfer between physical accounts are simple, and don't show up as an "expense" in Financier.
My normal categories ended up with a large enough balance that I didn't want to keep all that money in my checking account. That's why I stopped trying to match my savings account with a category balance.
This is the first time we've had more than our checking and credit card on budget, so we're starting cautiously by syncing the savings master category and actual savings balance. We probably should run our checking account closer to the edge with the bare minimum to get through the month, but I don't really want to have to transfer money out of savings very often to cover normal expenses.