How to Use YNAB Focused Views

[@gabriellebradley3566]

I couldn’t think of a Focused View when the feature first launched because my groups are very specific. But once it became available on the mobile app I created an “On the Go 🏃🏾‍♀️💨” view so I could quickly see things like groceries, gas, eating out and spending money…things we spend from regularly but while we’re out and about.

[@nosirrahm]

I pinned those categories to the top of my budget.

[@YNABofficial]

Nice! I'm glad you were able to find a way to use the feature 😃 ~Ernie

[@gabriellebradley3566]

@@nosirrahm I considered that. But the overall order is really important to me and sometimes I budget from my phone so I didn't want them pinned. The focused views is really good for someone like me.

[@abedbeforetroy_]

I use views a lot! I do use the views for matchy-matchy (don't at me), but this is after I simplified my accounts. So it's only two new views. I also made views for a 50-30-20 budget breakdown just because I was curious (one view for each portion). The view I use the most, though, is my "month ahead goals" view. I'm working on getting a month ahead, so I made a view of categories I want to prioritize for this. Once I can reliably get a month ahead for the categories in the view, I'll start adding more until all of my categories are in there!

[@jlott4211]

I added a focused view for absolute necessities. This view includes things that I would absolutely need to keep paying for if I lost my job or had some other type of emergency where I would not have income for an extended amount of time. I cut out monthly bills like cable, gym memberships, etc. Basically this category is my bare bones absolute necessity, true expenses. Then I use the focus view to budget ahead as many months as I can. This way the immediate next month is fully funded and the months after that only have the categories in this focus view funded. This gives me peace of mind knowing exactly how many months I can live with zero income.

[@peleela]

I'm using Focused Views to help us plan our retirement. I'm trying out a "stuff" view (for things/tangible goods like groceries, household items, etc) and a "service" view (for expenses that involve labor like auto maint, medical, that all important tree category, haircuts, etc). The reason why I'm doing this is because the cost of living increases for anything involving service or labor is usually much higher than stuff. Now I can see what our average expenses are for these two categories, and then plug some numbers into our retirement planning and get a much more accurate picture.

[@allisondiller]

In order to keep all my multiple endeavors in the same budget, I include both my personal and business accounts. Now I can use one filter to view personal when I need to roll with the punches, and another to view business items.

[@katiemoss6802]

Me too. Great idea!!

[@YNABofficial]

Interesting! I'm guessing it will be a lot easier to manage both accounts from one budget now. ~Ernie

[@MindyTunnell]

New user as of June here, man I can't tell you how much this app has helped. Looking forward to the next budget with me, Ernie!! I love seeing new ways to arrange the budget and make things more efficient!

[@YNABofficial]

It's gonna be Tuesday, August 1, 6pm CST on Instagram! I hope I remember to save it in case anyone can't attend. Also, I'm doing a live Monthly Rollover video on Monday, July 31! That will be on KZbin, and I'll be posting a link later on Thursday. ~Ernie

[@moniques5545]

I LOVE focused, especially custom, views - assigning money is so much easier. I like a theme-based budget (home, transport, pets, my kid, annual exp, monthly bills, living…) but until now that was tricky as a theme group can include some monthly costs, some true expenses and optional things. Problem solved with custom views I made for the order I want to assign money and get a month ahead: 1. Home fixed, 2. Monthly bills (from all groups), 3. Other essentials (groceries etc), 4. Annual, 5. True expenses, 6. Fun stuff. Each view includes categories from various groups. Venn diagram budgeting, how nerdy is that :)!

[@JessicaMcCafferty94]

This is what I've done - so much better now!

[@YNABofficial]

Venn diagram budgeting 🤣- I love it! ~Ernie

[@samahaidouni6934]

we can all agree that Ernie adding emogis to his categories is the real highlight to this episode ! We wanna See earnie show us the Emogis :D

[@debratakagawa4764]

I just created a focus view for my vacation categories. (Food activities and so on) Then the other is called last week of the month. It allows me to see which bills are do what payments are expected to come in, my groceries budget which always has trouble at the end of the month.

[@daneller933]

Looking forward to playing with this new feature. Since I’m not quite a month ahead my plan is to make a view called “Fund First”. When I get my last paycheck for the current month, I can flip forward to next month and quickly see the bills due in the first half of the month plus groceries, gas and personal spending which we also like to have available right away.

[@angeljuarez93]

OMG!!! 😱 Ernie has emoji’s 😂 (in the front) yessss lol congrats 🎊

[@YNABofficial]

Thanks, I'm really excited about this new budgeting adventure 🤣. In all honesty, though, I've really liked having emojis on my categories! It makes the budget feel more alive. ~Ernie

[@angeljuarez93]

Yes it does. And just like the category name matters, the emoji matters 🤣😊

[@Cclaudia228]

Setting up the matchy matchy savings view was the first thing i did 😂 It’s great to be able to see that my HYS account has the amount of money it “should” in it, so i can maximize the amount of interest I am earning in that account with increased interest rates these days, without also being at risk of not having enough money in my checking account

[@bridgettebakes]

love this idea! brilliant

[@MolleanStotts]

For holding category users… I’m trying a focused view called “This Month” that shows everything except for my Rule 4 (Next Month Rollover) Category. It seems like a good way to hide that holding category, and only see your totals for the current month. But easy to flip back to the “All” focus view if needed.

[@nosirrahm]

I budget into the next month for the things that never change and have a holding category for gas, groceries, fun money, dog food, etc. It gives me the chance to take advantage of the left over from the previous month if needed. I think it’s wild that Ernie just jumped off the cliff of focus views. The anxiety he caused and I didn’t change anything. 😂

[@toasterbotnet]

It's super easy to differentiate between accounts with these views. I have a bills, a consumption and a savings account and one for the house. So I can just select the categories for these and always have the exact amount of dollars for each account. I know this is not the YNAB way. But I like it and it works for me. I also use custom "to be budgeted'-holding categories and weird hacks where I let my scheduled paycheck split directly to different categories and not even go into 'to-be-assigned', which i call auto-budget categories. Yeah I do weird stuff and have tons of categories, so for me this focused view feature is the best feature you guys released in a long time. I like it

[@nosirrahm]

I used to manage my YNAB by account. Then one day I figured it out and that I could pay from where ever and it didn’t matter. It freed up all that time when I needed to figure out paying my credit cards ($250 from this acct for these transactions; $150 from this account…). Now I just pay it from whichever account had the money (easy acces to transfer from savings). It took me a year to realize it doesn’t matter. 😮‍💨

[@toasterbotnet]

@@nosirrahm It's not a matter if figuring it out for me. I know I can do it differently but I'm a bit autistic in this regard. I need my bills budget match my bills account and i need my daily expenses budget match my consumption account. It doesn't even matter because I have enough buffers anyway. But as i said I'm a bit autistic with this. Everything needs to be perfectly in order and planned. But since i'm here watching a budget nerds video, I guess many feel the same way xD

[@nosirrahm]

@@toasterbotnet - fully understand. I’m a bit divergent myself and I was so rigid, but finally I got tired when something was off and the time spent trying to find what and where something went wrong. I know everyone has to arrive at their way and can’t make the change until your brain allows the connection to be made. Like I said, it took me a year to make that connection and it reduced my anxiety of trying to make everything account match. I could never do what Ernie did and ditch all my category groups. That made my head explode. 🤯 😂

[@miles4448]

My budget is organized by type of expense (car expenses, living expenses, subscriptions, self care, goals, etc) so I have been using focussed views to prioritize what gets funded first, essentially adding a "Flexi versus Fixed" kind of view. I have a Fund First and a Fund Second view so I can prioritize my most needed categories when I get money into Ready to Assign. Then I just use the Underfunded view once those are all taken care of. I also have a lot of categories called "Archive:_____" (Archive: Rent and Utilities for old homes, Archive: Debt for loans I've paid, Archive: Wish Farm, Archive: Goals etc.) since if I hide these it throws off my Reports. So I made a view just called "Budget" that is just the categories I presently fund, versus all my categories which include the Archive and Frozen categories. At first I thought the feature wouldn't be useful for me but I love it! Thanks, YNAB!

[@vectorhacker-r2]

I started using focused views a while ago. I made a Budget Lite, Role with Punches, and Emergency view

[@sandraarn]

I have an insurance view, a mobility view (car, insurance, motorcicle, bike, bus) and a flat view so that I can see how much these things cost in total!

[@michaelaberry1276]

I'm doing the 52 week savings challenge (£1 week one, £2 week two etc), using the money for 'non-emergency' savings. I've used a focused view group just for those items because they normally live in all different categories

[@unefillesrb]

What's this challenge about? :)

[@michaelaberry1276]

@unefillesrb Google might help but its literally as simple as it sounds. The first week of the year, you save £1. The second week you save £2. Continuing like this until in the final week of the year you save £52. It adds up quite quickly (by week 2 you've saved £3. Week 3 you'll have a total of £6)

[@YNABofficial]

Oh, I hadn't thought of using a view for some sort of challenge. I like it! ~Ernie

[@nosirrahm]

@@michaelaberry1276 - I would die at year end. :) Some folks do backward/forward so each paycheck only needed $53.

[@michaelaberry1276]

@nosirrahm I do it randomised so I don't have all the big weeks back to back. I use a random number generator (and a list) so I might have £40 one week then £3 the next. I find that makes it more achievable when you're on a budget that makes £50 quite a lot

[@FeetintheGrass]

Is there a workshop for those of us who are not super savvy on these new changes? I’d love an old YNABber workshop to upskill!

[@YNABofficial]

Maria is going to be talking about Focused Views Thursday night in her Customizing Your Categories workshop! www.ynab.com/free-workshops/ If you can't attend that one, try one of the Open Q&As-we will cover any budgeting topic you want in those! ~Ernie

[@nosirrahm]

Love focused views. I have priority categories that I want to fund first before I fund the remainder (categories that money must be paid/or charged to credit card). I have orange emojis on these categories - they’re in different categories groups. So now I have them all in one focussed view to gather them all together. I also have one for the discretionary spending. I don’t fund those until the first day of the month so I can choose to fully fund or only assign enough to get to funded. Obviously use the Underfunded view so I don’t have to look thru each group to find the underfunded cats (which was a pain).

[@ChristopherHills]

I have added 2 extra views to default ones. MINI (everything related to the car) and Important (stuff I need to fund first as I kept forgetting to fund them)

[@PrashantAgrawal]

I'd love to use focused views for the reports.

[@slghtrtrn]

I fund two full months ahead and have a parking lot category for excess until I decide where it goes. Just started using the custom view. I started with categories that are specific to my partner (who hates budgeting).

[@raychelle8]

Could you guys do a video talking about the issues with roll-over and money disappearing for those of us who are still learning how to be nerdy? I was loving being 2 months ahead and had all my funds allocated to their months (the way Ben does it) but when I want to reallocate things or need to fix overspending it makes things go really wonky! It got so bad recently I had to do a fresh start and now have a holding category for the next couple months (like Ernie). I've listened to your month ahead video but I would love to know what the money-issue is when these kinds of messups happen!

[@periteu]

19:21 - I think it remove category groups by theme; i think category groups is still useful for fixed vs variable groups. 28:00 - Interesting. I think the wish list is better to add on an actual to-do list haha

[@randerlynn]

I also just added a view called "Bare Bones" that are the categories that would have to still get funded in case of job loss or extended leave without pay. And for now have a 1st and 2nd paycheck views at least until I'm able to stay a full month ahead.

[@AIRFORCEFREAK1]

I have not turned them into views but now I'm thinking about it!

[@azsuntea3454]

Hi, Ben and Ernie. Love YNAB, but was that you, Ben, in "An Unlikely Angel"?

[@dakotadrone]

Ben, please do a YNAB Budget With Me! Who else would love to see Ben do a YNAB Budget With Me?

[@jennivanhart3016]

OMG I am a matchy matchy person. Our HYSA "has" to match several categories. I'm in heaven. Every couple of months I had to click each one (and remember which categories go in that number) and then check the balance and transfer from checking the difference. Now with ONE click I'm done and I don't have to rely on my memory. Squee!

[@LB-me7us]

Take the caps off them so we can create as many as we want please! Thanks:)

[@KBell-sd3dx]

YNAB needs a focussed view for funded categories so I can enjoy the green without my unfunded categories getting in the way.

[@janeknight3597]

To be honest I would have liked a few more flags (more colors) rather than filters because I use the phone app all the time and use the flags for quick and dirty reports on a weekly basis - groceries have a yellow flag. I expect I will adjust to views in the end.

[@allisondiller]

Using a single category group will mess up your reports

[@YNABofficial]

I don't use reports much 🤷‍♂and when I do, I can always filter by category. ~Ernie

[@moniques5545]

P.S. #ynabwin - a month ahead on home fixed and monthly bills

[@arambladen3087]

My "focused views" is set up as follows: 📅 Next Week's Budget, 👇🏻 Priority Right Now!!, 🌟 Bare-Bones, 👨‍👩‍👦 (family), 👦🏻(kiddo), 🧔🏻(hubby), 👩🏻(mommy), 💏 (Date night). I'm only using the emojis for those last five, the words are there for explanation! It's the best thing ever created and definitely beats the search bar/category filter for sure!! 😆 I may add a "Defeat Debt" View 🤔