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How to deal with temporary categories? (self.ynab)

submitted 1 year ago by ghostzero to c/ynab

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Hi everyone! I am planning a short vacation in the upcoming months and for that, I wanted to add a category group and a few categories (travel, food, accommodation, etc). But then I started thinking about what to do with these categories once the trip is over and I don't need them anymore.

Since I haven't done this myself yet, I was wondering how people deal with these types of temporary categories? Rename? Or put it all in a more generic "travel" or "next big expense" category?

I'd rather not simply hide them forever, as this could feel a bit messy over time :)

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[–] mr_tyler_durden 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I haven’t done this myself so take it with a grain of salt but you could have a generic vacation category that you then move some of that money into the your normal “food” category when it comes time to take the trip. You’d leave some money in the travel category to cover transportation/accommodations since normally that’s just 2 transactions or so.

Though for myself I’d just spend from the travel category since for most of my travel the flight/hotel is paid ahead of time so once I get to the destination anything left in the travel category is fair game.

One more idea if you are saving for multiple trips is to have a generic travel category and then a “current trip” category that you move the appropriate amount of money into from the main travel category when you are about to embark.

All that said I have a number of hidden categories like for things I saved for then hid once I had bought. You could do the same with your handful of travel-related categories and just un-hide as needed. I don’t ever think or worry about my hidden categories.

[–] ghostzero 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah on the one hand, you want the fine-grained detail of separate categories for everything but then again, a general vacation category saves me a lot of headache.

I've seen people use the Wish Farm approach and first tag the transactions (e.g. #2023-sydney) using the memo field, and then delete the category which will prompt YNAB to reassign the transactions and remaining money to another category. So a specific trip could go to "travel", something for the house could go into "home improvement", a new drawing table could go into "hobbies", etc.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I do exactly this. I wish farm for specific things, but when i'm done, I delete the category and assign the spending to a more generic one. For instance, I might save up for a new motorcycle helmet. Once purchased, I delete that category and move the transaction to the more generic 'motorcycling' category.

I like this becaus, it lets me prioritize individual larger purchases, but also gives me an idea of how much spending i'm doing overall