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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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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

My take:

I don't want to have my normal spending statistics messed up by vacation spending (food, going out, etc).
I do like to see how much I've spent on travel overall.
When I'm out, I don't want to think about categorizing expenses (especially if I'm somewhere where I'm using mostly cash). Vacation is for vacation, not for stressing out about categories.

That's how I feel anyway, so how I do it is:

I have a category group for Travel.
When I have a new trip coming up, I create a new category for it and fund that.
During the trip itself, I charge everything to that category.
Once I get back and transactions have settled, I add something to the memo of the transactions (e.g. #2023-10-my-trip), then I delete the category and move all those transactions to a generic Travel category.

This way, I can still differentiate between trips if I want to go back and look, but I also get to see an overall view of my travel spending (without cluttering my everyday categories).

Pretty painless, works well for me.

[–] ghostzero 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah I mentioned this more or less in another comment but this is currently my preferred approach as well 👍

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

Nice! Yeah I've been doing this for about a year, and I've been really happy with it. Minimal overhead, but I don't lose any information (and I don't have a mess of hidden categories at the end).

[–] PlutoniumAcid 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Isn't it a pain to go back and edit every single transaction?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Nah, adding the hashtag to the memo takes a couple minutes at most. I think that YNAB toolkit will do this for you too, but I've never used it so I can't say definitively.

Then when you delete the category, it'll ask you where you want to move your transactions, so that part is easy.

[–] StereoTrespasser 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why not just hide them when you're done? It's not really messy because you don't see them again. I create temporary categories all the time, especially when I'm saving up for something.

[–] ghostzero 3 points 1 year ago

Fair point, it's definitely the easiest approach.

One reason is the way that hidden categories are just sort of lumped together in reports, which makes it harder to see how you have spent your money. This is why I'm currently considering an approach where you delete the temp category after you're done, and move the money to another general category, so you don't lose that info.

[–] mr_tyler_durden 3 points 1 year ago (1 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

[–] kn33 2 points 1 year ago

For vacations, I have a vacations category. However, for one-time large purchases (like furniture), I hide the category forever afterwards.