Praying Scarlett!!!

Yes. Yes. Yes. To all of it. From what I saw with my husband's patients and what I have heard him tell people: As wathe said, surgery is a last resort when the pain can no longer be managed. A lot of it is just SO patient dependent. The ones I have seen do really well are pretty active anyway and don't take many pain meds. They typically didn't let pain stop them before. They are like, "Wow! I am pain free!" I have seen many of my husband's patients ( including some of his relatives he worked on) like this. Many older women and especially the Honduras patients were like this. They also got very little pain meds and reported no pain afterwards... However, others like his dad and his uncle ( he didn't operate on them) were so pain adverse that they didn't do the PT they needed to do. They probably hurt as much after as they did before. My dad was also like that with his injury. Any pain at all and they complained, complained, complained. (Not just about their knee surgeries but any injuries before and after.) My husband's grandmother was running, holding up her walker a month or two after major hip replacement. Same thing with many other older women who got knee or hip replacements. But again, they were very active before their surgeries.

Ok, so have Targets set up. But another question... So in March, I will have a massive bill for my husband's whole life and our long-term care policies. I assigned money in the savings account that I had already saved and called it life insurance. Then I have a target/budget category I called NML where I save the amount per month that I need. So when that massive bill comes, how will I do that? The amount in that target category will cover the long term care premiums, but the life insurance will need to come out of that savings account. I am pretty sure that for that life insurance, when I categorize it life insurance it will take it out of that account. But the issue is that the money needs to come out of the checking account, so i need to transfer it from the savings account to the checking account to pay for it... The way I do it now, each quarter I transfer all of the money to savings from the checking to the savings.... (Sort of.... really, so much of it was going back and forth that many times it was really just in my ledger and nothing got transferred at all because I needed to transfer 2400 to the mission savings but needed to transfer 2500 to checking account from savings for a long term care payment, so really I just transferred 100 from savings to checking for the quarter. ( We have 10 or more savings categories each month.) Right now one "paycheck" goes into our regular checking account and pretty much all of the expenses come out of that account. Another "paycheck" gets put into a different savings account. That is the money that gets transferred to the money market/CD savings account and sometimes gets transferred to the other checking account like when we make a large purchase or something. But we live pretty much on that one "paycheck" in our regular checking account. So it feels like I have chances to get overdrawn in my account because YNAB just treats it like a giant pot of money. But I don't want to keep our savings accounts in our checking account that earns no interest as opposed to the over 5 percent we are earning on the money now ( It has our short-term, long term and emergency savings in it.)

Ok, it looks like I put 700 a week instead of a month. And the truth is that there are NO transactions since it didn't download any. It just has the lump debt on the credit card or lump sum in the checking account. We haven't spent any money on groceries since I created it. It is green now... I am not sure why changing it made it go from yellow to green since the money was in the accounts to cover it whether it was 700 or 2100. I will need to have some expenditures, which I don't have yet or rather they haven't posted yet. I know my husband has made some Amazon purchases that are showing pending in Monarch, but are not showing in YNAB yet.

So sorry and this is the second sudden death of someone in their fifties that I know about. A Sunday School member went in with pneumonia and was dead within 24 hours. So strange.

But I didn't spend 2100 on groceries and when I click on that, nothing clicks. I have no idea where that comes from. Ok, honestly, I don't need what you described in the last paragraph. We typically spend 3600 a month on discretionary spending like groceries, bills, gifts, and such. We have no car payments, mortgage or anything else. We average 2700 a month on various insurances (health, house, etc.). Together that is about half of our first source of monthly income. The rest of the categories for that first source are put into savings or given away.

Ok, I cannot do what half of you say. And I am so confused because I put in my budget yesterday, but now all of the screens have 0 for assigned. So do I have to enter the amount for every single category every single month?????? Here is my screen:

Don't know what I was doing, but the 1 for the hundred thousand place just disappeared every time I tried to enter it... But I realized that since we had already paid, it shouldn't have that much in it anyway. Ok, I am so confused. I am putting in the budget. But like right now it says I need 992 more dollars to fund auto insurance. I click on that, and I can't figure out how to see the transactions. I put in the monthly amount, that it would be if you took it out evenly. But we pay our car insurance twice a year, so I am paying 6 months at a time. How do I fix it? And like it shows over 2000 dollars in groceries and I have no clue where it thinks that money was spent. I spent more like 500, so it is categorizing something wrong. But I have no clue how to fix what it put in there...

Houston... I think we have a problem So, can you assign more than 100,000? When I try to assign a category with more than that it will not let me? For example, we have an RV fund that was over that as part of a savings account. We just purchased one, so it will not be over 100,000 anymore, but it needs to start at over 100,000. We actually only spent half of what we budgeted for it. But we will keep that account and continue to add a little bit to it in case we want to buy another one in 15-20 years. (If we are physically able to RV at that point.) But our emergency fund part of that savings account will be over 100,000 as well.

Actually, it is looking like Monarch will give me the picture I need for December. It was very mint-like and I am through categorizing December now. I think I will be able to do the budget for December with it. Then I will just have to do last year by hand. I have January - November already done with Mint ( as we went along) and categorized. But I normally do a year in review and look to see what categories if any went down or up substantially. For example, son graduated from seminary in May, so he is totally supporting himself. I had a category of expenses to help him with while he was in school that no longer applies. We no longer have cows, so our farm budget has gone way down. But I will have to add it all up by hand because Mint there is no way for me to only do Jan-November. it gets the half of December before it stopped working. Ok, so I guess. YNAB will be starting Jan 1... Still not sure I understand it. But we will see. Will ask if I have anymore questions.

But they will never truly be paid off... I mean I pay the entire balance that is due for the due date, but we have made more charges. So I get the bill that is due January 10th and I pay 3, 478 but the entire balance is 5129. Plus, if I do do 0 that means January will be totally screwed up and there is no way I can get it set until February... One credit card is due on the 10th the other on the 25th.

So how is going to reconcile it?? So I am just making up numbers. So for Mint, when I spent the money on the credit card it put it in December budget so if I paid 250 to Walmart, it put it in Groceries. So now, it shows me with a debt of let's just say 3, 457 on one card. I will pay it out of the checking account January 7, but the money was actually spent in December . So it will just show 3, 457 out of checking account... But they should be from 30 or more different categories... I am so confused....

Ok... but I have over 5,000 on it and it just put it as a lump sum. Where are the actual transactions? I think I understand what you said. But I need December budget.

UGGHh.. sounds like most of you don't do credit cards. That is pretty much all we do. We pay them in full each month. All of our expenses are pretty much paid by them with the exception of 5 bills that get automatically withdrawn from the checking account. We pay our charity on credit card to get the miles. So does it not work if you use credit cards? I am really confused.

UHHHHHHH I M SO FRUSTRATED. I could not figure out the budget categories in Monarch. It wouldn't let me do the overarching... I don't know I found it very confusing. When I imported my checking account in YNAB and created the budgets it was so incredibly easy. But now... I imported the credit cards, but all it did was just do the balance... WHAT???? I have 100 or more transactions in the credit cards under different categories. Most of our spending is done through credit cards. We pay it in full each month. We put our big charitable giving on them...gas, everything. Our current credit card we get miles for United on it. Anyway, I am totally stuck. I know you are right. I probably shouldn't do both, but I want something easy that I can quickly do in a couple of days.... I am so upset....

Ok, to be honest, I do not completely understand it. Does that mean the vaccine only worked for 30 days and basically my previous vaccinations are useless. So, if I got my Covid booster in September, it will be useless for my travel coming up to Africa?

Yep. So sorry, Dawn. Your dad will be missed and left quite a legacy. I think I told you how well the chaplains spoke of him in Africa. A life well lived.

Yeah, I do not have time to enter everything manually. Way too much to enter. When I used to have to do it, I was always behind and that was before traveling. With Mint, I spent maybe an hour a month changing the categories it put...mainly for Amazon and Walmart, but sometimes our charity got wonky as well. Then I spend another 30 to 45 minutes analyzing the report. Moving stuff over to savings, etc. For now I have a trial for both. I will decide which to cancel before we leave. I will continue to update the thread for those that might find it later and are curious. Both use Plaid, so no extra liability on that front.

Yeah, this one is taking me awhile. Sigh... I have 30 different budget categories and trying to figure out how to make them work and change the budget. Might sign up for YNAP as well and try. I am just on overload with new things. Our RV cracked its frame, so they totalled it and we used that money to buy one and brought it home and trying to start setting it up. We have a month when we get back from Africa before we take a 5 week trip to Indiana in it. Trying to figure out all of the new systems. (We were just out practicing hooking and unhooking it.) Then our phones had issues and we had a free upgrade...plus made it to unlimited as we have been running into our limits with all of the traveling. But now none of my apps work, not connected to phones.. etc. I am just over my head in new technology to try and figure out. Also heading to my mammogram in an hour and always super nervous about that given my family history. Most times I don't think about it, but the day of until I get my results I always wonder if my number is up. ( Both my grandmother and my mother were around my age when they got it. Yes, done all of the genetic testing. None of us had any of the known cancer genes.)

I do no financial stuff on my phone at all. I only use my laptop when it is on our very secure wifi to do any financial stuff. And I do a lot of it by hand like reconciling bank statements and attaching receipts to credit cards and such. I don't know... it is just right now YNAP would cost me 99 for the year with only a 7 day free trial whereas Monarch gives me a 30 day trial with it only costing 50 for the first year.

Ok, I watched this video for YNAB and it looks incredibly confusing.... This is the one I watched for Monarch and it looks much more similar to Mint and makes sense to me: Unless I am missing something. I think it would take me weeks to get YNAB set up.

Ok, sounds like the discretionary might make it worthwhile...maybe. Still looking at Monarch. It costs the same as YNAB, but I can import my Mint stuff and it gives you a 30 day free trial instead of 7 day. Also, it is giving Mint users 50 percent off the first year. Also, as I have looked at reviews, everyone says YNAB has a tough learning curve. As far as the wouldn't I be 2 months behind. What I had planned to do over the next few days is do December. Then next week, I look at what we have spent for the year and what we need to change and leave off or put on or increase or decrease for the year. If I have to learn a new system, I won't get that done before we leave I'm afraid. But Mint is no longer updating our main checking account. Ok, let me try to explain what we do. We have two sources of income. ( I do not count our investment dividends and such as income.) Pretty much the same amount. Our goal is to live on one. So out of that one source of income that goes into our main checking account, we do our living expenses ( which are not much as we don't have a mortgage or anything. Insurance is actually our biggest expense really.) At the end of each month, I then take out saved money for : insurance, property tax, wedding, car ( we probably won't buy one for another 10 years or more, but we have always saved like we had a car payment, but keep them for 20 years), mission work, vacation. I guess I need to redo our health insurance and save for it. It has gone up like 50 percent over the last several years even though we keep taking off a child every year or two.. Most of the time, we do go over into that other salary at least a little bit for those expenses I listed above including all that savings, though not always. It is deposited in a different account. Again, there are some expenses like lawyer fees for the stupid thing with his past practice that we didn't know we would have and are substantial. I will budget for those better now that I know we will have it. So then every quarter, we sit down and look at the extra money. We then give away a large percentage of it and decide where to invest the rest or maybe to add to the remodel fund because we will need a new roof in the next ten years. Anyway, we have a lot that isn't categorized if that makes sense. Not sure if that makes sense, but it has worked for us. Also, we have a lot of accounts. Some of our cash savings are in various money markets, CD's etc. We have several different checking accounts beside the main one. One that the other check goes into that we use for big purchases as that has a lot of savings. We have an LLC account, long story won't get into. We have a travel checking account that we use for our overseas travel so that if it gets hacked somehow when we use EMpesa or whatever other type of payment the country uses, we don't lose much.

Some are saying Monarch. Also costs, but looks like it might be more what we want?

Also, I am a little worried about YNAB's zero budgeting approach. Some months we spend way more than our budget like when we have the giant life insurance payment or tax payment or whatever big payment. Other months we go WAY WAY under. ( But it is coming from savings accounts we have that we put money into.) Overall we are way under. Plus we give away a lot when we have extra... Mint thought we were always way over budget, which I didn't care about. We have a basic expenses that I want to keep track of. The rest is discretionary... Hard to explain. Is it going to MAKE me cause everything to reconcile?

I should have investigated this, but thought I had until March... I do not have time to learn an all knew system... I am so beyond frustrated... I have got so much to do.... Daughter's boyfriend is coming tomorrow. They leave the 7th. We leave on the 9th. So much to do... I just do not have time for this...