Chris: This is the Penny Forward podcast, a show about blind people building bright futures one penny at a time. I'm Chris Peterson. Liz Bottner and MOe Carpenter are also here, but I am recording this intro separately, because we are doing something we've never done before on the Penny Forward podcast. Every week Penny Forward holds a weekly Wednesday workshop, where we cover a financial topic in detail, and offer some interactive discussion about how we might apply that to our own lives. And last week, we opened that Wednesday workshop up to the public, because we invited the people from YNAB, You Need a Budget, on to the workshop to talk about their app, its accessibility features, and how you use it to implement their budgeting approach. It was a really great call, and we felt it was so good, that we decided to do a little bit of editing, and release it as a bonus podcast episode. So, without further ado, I turn you over to the Wednesday Workshop from February 28, 2024. MOe: Hi, Everybody. I'm MOe Carpenter. I am the Penny Forward program coordinator. Chris Peterson is our president and CEO, and we also have here Liz Bottner, who is our vice president. Beyond that, we do have our YNAB people here. Uh, Britney, do you want to go ahead and introduce everybody, since you know who your people are? Britney: Absolutely. This is Britney speaking. I'll let each of them introduce themselves here in just a moment, but we have, um, Ernie, Rachel, and Paton from the YNAB team on the call this evening. Ernie will be giving a presentation on the YNAB software, and then there'll be some time for Q and A, for everybody to ask questions about YNAB, I know many of you have read the book, so we're looking forward to hearing your feedback, but, um, Ernie, Paton, Rachel, if you want to take a minute to introduce yourselves, that'd be great. Ernie: Absolutely. My name is Ernie, and I'm joining you from Oclaire Wisconsin. I saw that Penny Forward is located in Minneapolis, so we are neighbors for a few of us I'm sure here. That's kind of fun. And I'm one of the teachers around here at YNAB. Paton: My name's Paton Chance, and I'm coming to you live from Washington D.C. I'm a product manager here at YNAB, so I collaborate with the designers and engineers that build and develop the YNAB software. Rachel: Hey, Everyone. Rachel here, um, coming at you from Durum North Carolina, but I'm a Midwesterner at heart, so, big ups to Midwesterners. Um, I am the product operation specialist on our product team, so I help the product managers do their best work, and I also run our beta testing program, and, uh, am responsible for all of our, sort of, uh, qualitative feedback streams. MOe: Thanks, Guys. And I am in Iowa actually, Ernie, so, um, Chris is in Minneapolis, and then Liz is out in Washington D.C, so we've got a couple people pretty close to a couple of your people. (Laugh.) Our overview for today is that Ernie is going to do his little presentation, and then we'll have some question-and-answer time, and then of course we will wrap up and make sure that we share with you guys our resources and any feedback streams that you need to get in contact with us. And Ernie, I think you can go ahead and take over. Ernie: Excellent. Well thank you so much. First and foremost, YNAB is a method for managing your money. And then we just happen to also have an app that implements that method. So, whether you choose to use YNAB the app or not, you can still utilize the method. That's what I love the most about YNAB. It's accessible to anyone. So, I'm gonna spend some time walking through the YNAB method. And then once we walk through the four habits of the YNAB method, we'll get into setting up YNAB in the app, I'll show a little bit of demo, and be sure that I verbalize exactly what I'm doing there so you get a sense of what it could look like in your life, and then we'll go into the question and answer time. So. YNAB method. There are four rules of the YNAB method. Now if you're reading the book, you've probably already read about these rules, and for the longest time, we've referred to them as "rules." But lately, we've been thinking them, of them more as habits. Because they're things that you're doing regularly with your money. MOe: Can I interrupt you for just a second? Ernie: Absolutely. MOe: Can you tell us what YNAB stands for. Ernie: Great comment. You Need A Budget, but YNAB for short. So, the YNAB method, the You Need a Budget method, and it's the secret sauce. It's the way that you gain clarity and confidence with your money. So let's go through the four habits. Habit number one, give every dollar a job. So with this habit, you're simply deciding what to do with your money, before you spend it. And this is actually kind of revolutionary, if you think about it. If you've tried budgeting in the past, which, I'm sure, all of you have probably, that's why you're in this group, right? You've probably done it in a sense where you create these spending limits. "Here's how much I want to spend in this category. Or for this particular priority." And then you track your spending, and then at the end of the month, you kind of look back and you see how you've done. But YNAB flips it on its head. With Rule 1, we're gonna take a proactive approach. So before we start spending our money, we're gonna tell it what it needs to do. So right away, when, if you sign up for the app, you're gonna add your bank accounts, and you're gonna give jobs to those dollars. Right? "Here's what this money needs to do before I start spending it." And then you're gonna repeat that habit every time you're paid. And you're gonna find that as you implement Habit 1, you're gonna all of a sudden gain clarity around your money. I don't know, maybe you can relate to this. The bank balance, pre YNAB, my bank balance didn't mean anything to me. It was just this number. And when I went to spend my money, I would look at that bank balance and I would think "Huh. How much can I actually spend at the grocery store? Or at the restaurant with my friends?" And then I would always do some mental math, "Okay, I've got this bill coming out tomorrow, I've got that bill coming out next week, then, okay, there's that expense," all this mental math, and basically by the end of it, I was guessing as to how much money I had available to spend at the grocery store. Or at the restaurant with my friends. So it didn't give me the clarity that I was desperate for. Rule 1 gives me that clarity. I'm telling my money what it needs to do, so when I go to the grocery store, I look at my groceries category, and it tells me exactly, "Of all the money I have at the bank, here's how much I have set aside for groceries." Habit 2. Embrace your true expenses. True expenses are the things that you don't spend money on every single month. The yearly Prime membership. The three-month water bill. Gifts. Holidays. Things like that. With Habit 2, we're gonna be embracing them by setting money aside for those things every single month. That way, when they happen, we're ready. So really, habit 2 is just thinking about Future You. And it's setting Future You up for success. Maybe you can relate. Because for me, Rule 2, Habit 2, was revolutionary. No matter how hard I tried, I could not set money aside for things like my water bill, and Christmas. Those are the two expenses that always stick out to me. Even though the water bill happened every three months, and Christmas every December, they always took me by surprise. So when the bills landed, I'm scrambling to try to come up with the money to pay them. And a lot of times, if it was a bigger expense like Christmas, I would just put it on the credit card and then try to pay it off with next year's tax refund. But with Habit 2 now, I'm taking a proactive approach. I am, every single month, putting a little bit of money aside for those true expenses. For those non monthlies. That way, when they happen, I'm all ready to go. I've already got that money sitting there, waiting to pay the bills. And so, it's relieved so much stress, and there's so much less scrambling around trying to come up with the money to pay these things. All right, now we're at Habit three, and this is the one that often becomes YNABERS' very favorite habit. Roll with the punches. And the reason they love this one so much is because it gives them flexibility. Traditional budgeting tells you that you have to be rigid and restrictive. "I'm gonna spend two hundred dollars on eating out, and if I go above that, I've failed." And then through the month, if you try to stick to that, it kind of feels like that white knuckle control. We're not about that around here at YNAB. We want your spending plan to be fluid. So as your life is changing, as your priorities, as your circumstances are changing, your spending plan can change alongside all of that. And the way this plays out in the app, is, you have the freedom to move money around between categories. So it's a, "Oh. I spent a little bit more than expected on eating out this month. No problem. I'm gonna take some extra money that I have in my transportation category. And I'll use that to cover the excess eating out." Super simple. And what I also love about Habit 3 here, there's no guilt involved. I can change my plan at any time, for any reason. And then finally we have Habit 4, age your money, the idea of aging your money, it's putting time between when you earn, and when you spend. And the idea here is that the longer you can put between those two events, earning and spending, the more flexibility you have with your finances. The more stability, and security. Here's another situation maybe you can relate to. Early on, my wife and I were paycheck to paycheck. So, as money was coming into our bank account, it was leaving just as fast. We would get paid on Friday, and basically, by Friday, that money was gone. (Chuckle.) Because we had this pile of bills sitting there waiting for the money. So our money never was able to age. It basically got to three hours old, and then we were shipping it out and spending it. But with Habit 4, we're trying to put distance between those two. Right? So, the ultimate goal here with Habit 4 is to get you to a place where you are a month ahead with your finances. Meaning, you're using all of your current month's paychecks for next month's expenses. So just imagine, all the paychecks, the money that you've been earning this month, February, you don't need that money this month. Because that's the money that you're gonna now be spending in March. So by the time you end up spending those February paychecks, they've been sitting around for thirty, forty-five, maybe sixty days? And so all of that time, that's where that flexibility, security, and stability comes in. All right. Those are the four habits. And like I said, they're the secret sauce behind YNAB, the money management method. So now, I'm gonna hop on over to the YNAB app, and I will show and talk through how that method is implemented. All right. First, let me start with the accessibility features in YNAB, I'll start with the web app. So, in the web app, you can zoom in, zoom out, we have an increased contrast option, which, it highlights the available column. The available column in YNAB is the important one. It is telling you how much money you have available to spend, to give, or how much money you have currently saved. There are navigation options. You can, with the tab key, navigate through the interactive areas, elements of the budget, and you can also utilize keyboard shortcuts. And then, YNAB also works well with VoiceOver on Mac, and Jaws on Windows. And then for IOS users, you can utilize the "differentiate without color" option, and that's gonna impact the "available" column, so those category balances, they will have different borders dependent on what's going on in that category. And then you can also use the "increase color" option, and VoiceOver as well. And then for Android users, we, uh, you can adjust the font size, and you can use TalkBack. All right. Web app. Broken down into its most basic form here, we have the accounts on the left hand side. And you can add all of your spending accounts. Your checking accounts, savings accounts, credit cards. And then on the right, and this takes up most of the budget screen, you have your categories. And also your category groups. The category groups are how you organize your categories, and the categories are just a reflection of you. And your priorities. They represent how you spend your money. So here's how I've organized this particular plan. I have a monthly bills group, and then underneath that group, I have my rent, electric, Internet, and cell phone categories. I have a "frequent" group, for all of those things that I spend money on all the time, things like groceries, eating out, transportation. In my "non monthly" group, this is what I created to embrace those true expenses, garbage, clothing, home goods, gifts, and holidays. In my "goals" section, saving for those upcoming Viking tickets, and an emergency fund, and then a "quality of life," I have a "hobbies," "entertainment," and "health and wellness" category. So all of the %groups, all of the categories, are fully customizable. You can change names, you can add emojis, you can delete, you can add, you can rearrange. Again, these categories are an expression of how you spend your money. How you save it, how you give it, so, we encourage YNABERS to take some time, and make those their own. All right, so I'm going to close the accounts tab, this big navy-blue area, we have an arrow down at the bottom, I'm gonna close the accounts tab, that opens up my categories a lot more. And now, we're gonna start implementing the method. So, I've already added my checking account. My checking account has three thousand, one hundred and forty dollars, in that account today. And that's a big difference with YNAB. We're only working with the money that we have right now. I'm not forecasting any future paychecks; just thinking about those dollars that I have available today. So YNAB then feeds those bank balances into the "ready to assign" box. That's that big, green box at the top of my categories. My colleague Dave calls it "the big green kitchen table." And once our money is on that big green kitchen table, this is where we're gonna be working Habit 1. Before we even start spending any of that money, we're gonna decide what it needs to do for us. And then once we decide that, we can start, we assign it, to the individual categories. So, I've got three thousand, one hundred and forty dollars in "ready to assign." What does this money need to do for me? Well, it needs to cover the upcoming rent. So I'm gonna take sixteen hundred dollars from the big green kitchen table at the top, and I'm gonna enter sixteen hundred into the assigned column of the "rent" category. Once I assign sixteen hundred dollars to my rent category, now, I have sixteen hundred dollars available. That money is available to spend, and, the category, the available category pill, turns green. So I've got that green light to go ahead and spend that money now. All right. After assigning 1600 to the rent category, my "Ready to Assign" took a big dip. Now I only have 1540. So what does that remaining money need to do for me? It needs to cover my upcoming electric bill. So let me assign a hundred dollars, into the assigned field of my "electric" category. Now I can see I have a hundred dollars available to spend on that bill. All right. I'm down to 1440. I need to assign money to my Internet category. So I assign seventy-five dollars, now I have money available to pay that, cell phone. This is the last bill I need to cover. I have 1365 left over. My cell phone bill is a hundred and forty dollars. Oh! The other thing I'm gonna say here. These numbers, these assignments that you're making, they don't have to be perfect. It's absolutely okay to take a guess as to how much money you need for groceries. Or maybe you don't know to the penny what your cell phone bill costs. Every month. Totally okay. Remember, YNAB'S flexible. So we can always assign more money, or we can unassign from the category at any time. We can make changes. Okay. I have covered, I've set money aside, to cover the four bills. I've got one thousand two hundred and twenty-five dollars left over. Again, what does that money need to do? Now I'm gonna put this towards those frequent expenses. My groceries, eating out, and transportation. Groceries, I think I should give myself five hundred dollars there. That's kind of a guess, but again, I'm okay with that. So I assign five hundred, that money's available. Eating out. Let's give myself a hundred there, and how about I assign seventy-five dollars to my transportation category. So now I have money available to spend in those areas. All right. Five hundred and fifty dollars is still available and ready to assign, and I've set money aside for all of those monthly expenses. So now we're gonna start working Habit 2. I'm going to embrace those true expenses. Those things that I don't spend money on every single month. So my non monthlies, in this very simplified budget, garbage, clothing, home goods, gifts and holidays. Garbage. Well, that's about 90 dollars, I pay it every three months, and I just paid it in January. So how about, I assign thirty dollars to my garbage category. I'm getting a head start there. And then what happens is, the money that I don't spend in a category, it's gonna carry over into the next month. And then I can add more to it. Maybe I add another thirty dollars. And then I'll have sixty dollars available. And then I'll add another thirty in what is that? March, April, and I'll have ninety. And then I'll have that ninety dollars ready to pay that bill when it lands on my doorstep. Okay. Clothing, go to the clothing category, I'm going to assign, uh, fifty dollars there. So that leaves me with four hundred and seventy dollars in "Ready to Assign," let's keep going. I'm gonna be going. I'm gonna be giving jobs to these dollars until my "ready to assign" is at zero. "Home goods." We'll do fifty there. "Gifts and holidays," seventy-five. All right. Now I'm down to, three hundred and forty-five dollars in "ready to assign." It was a lot easier when I had a lot of money available, but now as we're getting down closer to zero, now I have some real decisions to make. But I always think this is kind of fun. Because this is where your priorities begin to surface. As you're getting down to that last couple hundred dollars, you're like, "Okay, how do I want to use this money? Like what is really, really important to me?" And I've got to admit, those Viking tickets are really, really important to me. So, uh, I'm gonna put a hundred dollars aside for those, so now I have a hundred dollars available, and this is, again, one of those categories where I won't be spending the money that's available this month, so it will roll over next month, and I'm just gonna keep adding, and adding to this category until I have enough to purchase some tickets in the fall. All right. How about I put two hundred dollars, I'm going to assign two hundred dollars to my emergency fund category, now I can see those two hundred dollars are available, okay, I only have forty-five dollars left over. And I have three categories remaining. Now, I don't have to assign money to every single category. Remember, this is my money, I get to do whatever I want with it. It's all about my priorities. But, in this case, I think I'm just gonna split that forty-five across the three remaining categories, 'cause I want to have a little bit of fun here. So, maybe twenty dollars for holidays, I'm going to assign 15 for entertainment, and then, I don't know how much ten dollars can get me for health and wellness, but that's probably the lowest priority category that I have, so, (Chuckle.) It's gonna get the smallest amount of money. And there we go. NOW my ready to assign says zero. And what this means, is that every single dollar that is now sitting in my checking account at the bank, it has a job in the budget. I've organized my dollars by categories. So again, this is where that clarity comes in. Now, any time I want to spend money, I can look at my categories for guidance. Going to the grocery store. How much money do I have available to spend on groceries? My groceries category when I look at the available balance. here at the end of the category, it's telling me I have five hundred dollars available to spend on groceries. Perfect. So that's the clarity that I'm looking for, and then there's also confidence. Because I can know I can freely spend that money, and still have money left over to pay my other bills, I still have money left over to save for the true expenses, I'm saving for those goals, and those fun things as well. All right. One other demo. Actually, let’s do two other, and then we can get to any questions. I want to also show you what habit 3 and Habit 4 looks like. So, the plan has been all set up, but now life is actually gonna start to happen. Now I’m gonna leave my computer, I’m gonna go out into the world, and actually start living life, and spending money. And the key is to make sure all of that spending gets back into YNAB. And you can enter the spending yourself, either from a mobile app, or the web app, or, you can link your account directly to your bank. And then YNAB will automatically import that new spending for you, and all you have to do is categorize the transactions. You just have to tell them, “Here’s where I want you to take that money from, in my spending plan.” So quick example. Let’s go ahead and … Which … Let’s pay the electric bill. That’s due tomorrow, so I’m gonna open up my accounts tab, I’m hitting that arrow at the bottom of that screen, so now my, my, accounts tab is open over on the left, I’m gonna click on my checking account, that opens up the checking account register, and at the top of the register, we have the “Add transaction” button. Click that, and now I’m just gonna enter a few pieces of information about that spending. In the “payee” field, this is who I gave the money to. I don’t know about you folks in Minnesota, or Iowa, or near by here, but Excell Energy. That’s who I pay my money to. Category, where am I taking that money from in my spending plan, so I click into the “category” field, and YNAB will bring up all of my categories. So now, I can scroll through that list, find my “electric” category, select it, and then that populates in the category field. And then out flow, this is the field to enter the amount of money that was spent. So let’s say my electric bill’s 125. I click “save,” and now that transaction is live in my register. Meaning it updates my checking account balance on the left here, and then in the budget, it updates my “electric” category available balance. And now my available balance is negative twenty-five. I have overspent this category. But remember, this doesn’t mean that I did anything wrong. It’s just a math problem. More money came out of this category than what was available. I assigned a hundred, the activity field is telling me what I spent, 125, and then the available field is telling me my available balance. Negative 25. So now with Habit 3, I’m gonna roll with the punches. I’m just going to change that original plan that I created. So I’m gonna take twenty-five dollars from some other category. Or, maybe I take it from a combination of categories. In this case, I think … let me see here. And what I’m doing, is I’m scrolling through all of my available balances for my categories. And I’m trying to find a category that has some flexibility. So maybe there’s a category that has a little more money than what I think I need, or maybe I don’t quite need that money right now. Maybe I could fund that category with a future paycheck. And then use the money that’s there now to cover the overspent electric category. I think what I’m gonna do, yeah, it breaks my heart, but I’m gonna take twenty-five dollars from the hundred dollars that are available in the Vikings tickets category. As much as I want to buy those tickets, I’m not gonna be buying them until probably August or September, so I’ve got a lot of time to come up with the money. So what I’m gonna do, is I’m gonna click on this negative available balance that is red, YNAB brings up a prompt. “Cover this overspending with …” I’m gonna click that arrow, and again, we have a list of the categories. I’m gonna scroll through those and find the Vikings tickets category. Perfect. Click that “okay” button, and once I click “okay,” YNAB moves the money for me. So it takes twenty-five dollars out of the Vikings tickets category, now I have seventy-five available there, and it puts another twenty-five in electric. So I’ve paid that category back, I’m good to go, and I just move on. Right? There’s no guilt, there’s no shame, I change my plan, and I’m happy with that change. All right. Final demonstration, I want to show you Habit 4, so first I’m going to, in my checking account, I’m going to enter a paycheck. Let’s say that I was paid today. Click that checking account, “account,” in the register I’m hitting that “add transaction” once again, “Payee,” this is the name of your employer, or the source of your income, so I click into the “Payee’ field, and I’m gonna say”YNAB,” my employer. Always categorize income as “ready to assign,” and I’m gonna enter the amount that I was paid in the “in flow” field. So let’s say I was paid eighteen hundred dollars. Save that transaction, now it is live in my account register, so my checking account balance goes up, and then in the budget, I have a brand-new eighteen hundred dollars in “ready to assign.” So the big green kitchen table has new money to work with. It’s all back to Habit 1. What does that money now need to do for me? And so I’m gonna be looking through my category balances, and if there’s a category that needs more money, I’ll add a little bit more. But let’s say as I’m looking through all of these available balances, I’m thinking, “I’m pretty good for February. Like, I, I like where I’m at, I don’t think I need to add anything extra. So what I’m gonna do now, is, I’m gonna take that eighteen hundred, and I’m gonna start assigning it to my March budget. I’m gonna age those dollars. I’m gonna put time between when I earned them, today, and when I spend them. Sometime in March. And again, as I do this more and more, paycheck after paycheck, I start getting further and further ahead, I increase that stability, and that security. So, at the top of my budget, we have the date picker. Right now I’m in February 2024. I hit that arrow to the right, now I’m in the March plan, and then from there, I can start assigning jobs to those dollars in the March budget. All right, Friends. That’s my demo. Why don’t we open it up to any questions that you have, any comments, myself and the team, we’re happy to help in any way that we can. Chris: Hey, Ernie, I have a question if you don’t mind before we open it up. I was intrigued that, uh, when I was uh, looking at, at the uh, places that I could get the YNAB app today, that there is an Alexa skill, sorry, Everybody, um, for YNAB. Do you know anything about that, or could you talk about that briefly and what that can do? Ernie: I do not know much about that. I’ve heard, because I, I remember a time where our founder, Jessie Mecam, was using Alexa with YNAB. And I think he was using it to enter spending transactions. So, “Hey Alexa, I just spent, you know, forty-five dollars at High V. Categorize that to groceries.” And I think you can also use Alexa to tell you how much money you have available in your, your category balances. But I’m not finding anything here. Chris; Yeah. I, I saw a page on it earlier and if I can find it again, I will paste it in the chat. But that was what I did read, and I’m intrigued to try it. I just, have, I discovered it this afternoon, so I haven’t had a chance, but uh, it definitely gave some examples of, you know, “Figure out how much you have left to spend in a certain category, log expenses,” there maybe were a few other things that it could do, it looked uh, it looked very interesting. And I think many people on the call may be as excited as I am to try that out. Hey, why don’t we open it up to the floor? There’s a lot of people here, and I’m sure that some of them have questions. Liz: Over here in Zoom, we have Christina with her hand raised. MOe: Go ahead. Christina: Hello. So I was playing with the YNAB app, and it was really interesting. I haven’t read too much of the book. I haven’t gotten a chance yet. But I was trying to figure it out, and I ended up with a negative number on my available, but I didn’t mean to do it, so, is there a way to fix it? Ernie: Christine, are you talking about the number at the top?? The “ready to assign number,” or is it one of the— Christina: Yeah. Ernie: Oh, right at the top. Yeah. So what probably happened, is, you started funding categories with money that you don’t quite have yet. Christina: Oh. Ernie: and so the way that we fix that is, you unassign money from your categories. You take it out of those categories, and you send it right back to “ready to assign” until that’s at zero. Christina: Okay. All right. Chris: I had that happen to me too, Christina. I, I’m really sure of a lot of my categories, and, and I wanted to be proactive and kind of just go in and fill them all in, and uh, … Christina: Yeah. That’s what I was trying to do. Because … Chris: Yeah. They don’t want you to do that. They only want you to spend the money you have, and, and that, that does mean that sometimes you’ve got to wait to fill in some of those categories. Christina: Oh. Ernie: It’s a mind set shift. It’s, it’s different. Chris: Yup. Moe: I will say that that was probably the one thing that I had the most trouble adjusting to when I started using YNAB, was just the whole mind set of not forecasting, … Ernie: Yes. Moe: And to actually use the money that is actually in the bank and cleared. That’s, that’s the other big part, is the cleared money. (Laugh.) But I’ve really come to like it now that I’m much more used to that process now. Ernie: If you … because I understand the importance of planning. And a really good tool to help you plan, like “Here’s how much money I need for all these things,” is using targets. Targets tell the category, “Here’s how much money I want or need,” and you can even put a date on when you want that money by. Christina: Okay. I thought I broke it. So, I was like, “Oh no.” I thought I did something really wrong, but I’m glad I can fix it. Ernie: Not at … You just did what millions of other YNABers have already done. I did that all the time at the beginning. Christina: Thank you. MOe: Has anyone here been able to read the book? I know we have a lot of the ACB community here, and so, you guys might not have gotten quite enough, um, heads up as to what we were doing this evening. (Laugh.) I know me and Chris have, and Liz have. (Laugh.) Chris: Yeah. And, for those of you who, who weren’t aware, the National Library service does have the book, and it’s read by Jessie, and it’s about a five-hour long book. So it’s not a bad read. Um, Ernie, I had a question, and I think I did notice that there were some hands raised, but, when we are working, or want to be working, and we’re also dealing with agencies like Social Security and maybe Medicaid and stuff, we have to report to them, not only what we make, but we have to report to them the types of expenses that allow us to, to work. If we’re looking through the red book, at what blind work expenses are, or impairment related work expenses, qualify for, we might, say, create a category for “guide dog expenses.” Or for “technology expenses, or for transportation expenses. Some of those things might be useful to us then to be able to report to social security and Medicaid and so forth, in addition to our income, because if we do that, and we do that correctly, then we can be allowed to make more income by deducting those um, those expenses from our gross income. So, … Ernie: Got it. I think the easiest way, because there isn’t a report that you could print out and send along, but you could export all of your data. So if you click on the “Name Your Budget” in the top left, and then down the option menu there, you should see “export budget,” and it will give you two files. It will give you a “category file,” and it will give you a “transactions” file. And I think that transactions file would be the one you want. ‘Cause that would then itemize all those expenses by category. Chris: Yeah. Yeah. There are some other things that might turn out to be useful, and for all of you that, uh, wonder what kinds of things Penny Forward might be able to help with, I did note that YNAB has a, an API, I am a former software developer, so I look for things like this. Ernie: Oh! Chris: And uh, so, you know, in the future, we may investigate, through Penny Forward, partnering with YNAB to use their API to create reports that might help you with things like this. So, uh, Ernie: Very cool. Paton: This is Paton from YNAB. One idea that came to mind is, if spending that needs to be reported, or that you’d like to be reported, to really any entity, you want it to exist across categories, where maybe, maybe some of your transportation spending is relevant to those entities, and some of your transportation spending isn’t, one alternative approach is to use flags in YNAB, which you can give custom names to flags, and then when you do that export that Ernie talked about, uh, if a transaction has a flag, that will be exported along with it. And then you can filter down to just the ones that you’ve flagged. It’s how many folks flag certain things that need to be, uh, deducted from taxes. One process. Chriss: Well very interesting. Good. Thank you. Well, uh, y’all should know that, uh, our very own Moe Carpenter is, we hope, going to be going through the YNAB coaching training, so she will be a certified YNAB coach, and uh, … Ernie: Awesome! Chris: We will be looking into how to make the most use of YNAB for some of those reporting things that get a lot of us stuck. I am noticing raised hands, so I’m gonna turn it over to Liz to open it up to some of those people to get their questions in. Liz: Sure. First we have Rob. Rob: I would be using the, uh, web site, instead of the app. Is that separated out? In other words, if I enter my credit card, and um, checking account, and stuff like that in there, um, I don’t want everybody looking at that. So is that data my data? Ernie: Your data is your data. Yes. So, Penny Forward has, even though the subscription would be through that organization, Penny Forward, they have no access to your data. Moe: Unless we get, um, a coaching experience created and you share it with us, but we can’t do it by ourselves. Liz: Next we have Laura. Laura: Hi, Everybody. I do have a couple of questions. I’m very interested in this app, uh, for many reasons. My questions are, I have, um, things like property taxes, that I have to pay, that vary, and, uh, different kinds of insurance, and I don’t know what the exact expense of those is gonna be. And as I said, they can very, uh, definitely property tax will vary between summer and winter. I can set up something for what it might be, but how would I kind of guess ahead of time, or, or try to estimate what that could be, or, do I just wait till I get the bill? ‘Cause I do like to get my payments in early if possible, I don’t like to wait till the last minute. Ernie: And saving anything is better than waiting till the last minute. So you can’t go wrong by putting anything aside, you know, any kind of amount every single month. But, in those situations, I find it helpful to just look at what I paid the last time, … Laura: Mhm. Ernie: If you have easy access to that information, and then I always give myself a little bit of buffer. You know, so if the property taxes were, in Wisconsin we pay them every single year. You know, if it was three thousand dollars, well, maybe for the next year, I try to set aside thirty-two hundred. Laura: Mhm. Okay. Ernie: And then maybe also having, having another category that’s almost like a miscellaneous, or “Stuff I Forgot,” or maybe like an overflow category where you just put a little bit extra in every single month. Then you can utilize those funds if you have planned, and you don’t have enough. Laura: Great idea. Well I was interested in, I think it’s interesting that you put the money forward to the next month. I think that might be a very good idea, but I was interested to see what you did with it, and that you didn’t put it into the emergency fund. Ernie: Yeah. In that particular demo, I mean I … if I would have kept going with that demo, I would have added my savings account,. Laura: Mhm. Ernie: And I probably would have used some of my savings dollars to fund the emergency category. Laura: Oh, you can do that on the app, or … Ernie: Yeah. We encourage you to add all of your, your accounts, your credit cards, your savings, your checking, and then for those cash accounts, like the checking and the savings, it’s giving jobs to all of those dollars. So then you have that full picture of what all your money’s doing. Laura: Okay. Um, I hadn’t thought about it quite that way. I guess I figure once you put it into savings, it just kind of sits there and waits for you. Ernie: Yeah, I like having my savings in YNAB because then I have, I just, I know. It’s accounted for, … Laura: Mhm. Ernie: So when I see what my checking dollars are doing, I can also see what my savings dollars are doing. Laura: Okay, great. Great idea. Thank you very much. I’m, as I said, I’m very interested in getting the app and, uh, working with it. I’ve wanted a budget for a long, very, very long time, and just didn’t get the help I needed. Chris: Let’s take one more question, and then I would like to close up, and I did see in the chat, um, “How do you get the subscription,” and I will make sure that we get that answered. LizL Okay. Uh, Rita. Rita, you may ask your question. Rita: Hello. Um, got a question, that, uh, is this been tested with VoiceOver so it is working correctly with VoiceOver for reading all the fields? On an app? Ernie: I turned it on to experiment, and it was working for me. And I see that in our support docs, it is saying that it works with those applications. Chris: And to add to that, Rita, when we started Penny Forward, way back in 2020, one of the first things we heard, from Steve Sozen, I don’t know if you recognize that name, but he is uh, a pretty well respected accessibility professional in the field and a blind person. And one of the first things we heard from him was, “Oh, you’ve got to try YNAB. It’s so good with VoiceOver.” So, you know, nothing’s ever perfect, or, you know, almost nothing’s ever perfect, but uh, there’s some really good endorsements there. And uh, you know, we, we have good connections now with YNAB to help uh, figure out any, any issues you might find. Uh, so, I want to thank Ernie, and Briteny, and Paton, and Rachel, who else am I forgetting, um, … Really apologize if I’m missing somebody, but gosh. It was really nice to have you all here, and all of the people that joined us on the call this evening. If you joined late, or had to leave early for some reason, we’ve made kind of an executive decision, to make this recording available as a special bonus episode of the Penny Forward podcast. We’ve got to send it over to Brynn and have her do some editing and stuff, so it might be a week or so before that gets out, but uh, if you’re subscribed to the Penny Forward podcast, it will show up there, and if you’re not, this is a good excuse to go and do that. To get the subscription to YNAB, if you’re already a paid Penny Forward member, simply send and email to pennyforward@pennyforward.com and say, “I would like to get my subscription,” and Moe will respond back and send you a link that you can use that is unique to you, that will allow you to sign up. It’s as simple as that. If you are not yet a paid Penny Forward member, simply go to www.pennyforward.com and select the “Join Penny Forward” link, it is very near the top of the page, and uh, sign up for either a monthly membership at $9.99 a month, or a yearly membership at $99 a year, whichever works best within your budget. That’s why we did it that way. And uh, and then, once you have signed up, send an email to pennyforward@pennyforward.com and say, “I would like the subscription.” And Moe will send you the link. And if you need any help with the technology, you can always give us a phone call. Our toll-free number is 888-332-5558. Again, that’s 888-332-5558. We do have a really small staff, so if you happen to get a voice mail machine, please do leave a message with your phone number on it, we’ll call you back, and uh, we will be happy to help you sign up over the phone, we will be happy to help you get your subscription link, although we do send that by e-mail, and uh, like we said, Moe is, is going through the YNAB coaching training, so we’re gonna be able to help, uh, coach you through the app as well, which I think is just really awesome. So, thanks to Moe for helping us to get this partnership established, it’s really really cool. Thanks to all the people whose names I’m going to forget if I try to list you out individually from YNAB for being here, Ernie, that was a wonderful presentation, and thank you to all who joined us tonight. Really appreciate it. Good night, everyone. The Penny Forward podcast is produced by Chris Peterson and Liz Bottner, with assistance from MOe Carpenter, audio editing and postproduction is provided by Brynn Lee at superblink.org and text transcription is provided by Anne Verduin. The music is composed and performed by Andre Louis. Penny Forward is a nonprofit organization founded and led by blind people, and together, we help each other navigate the complicated landscape of personal finance through education, mentoring, and mutual support. Learn more about us, and join us today, to get your free YNAB subscription at www.pennyforward.com Now, for all of us in the Penny Forward community including Liz Bottner and MOe Carpenter, I’m Chris Peterson. Thanks for listening and have a great week.