#120 - Your Categories Are Not Alone! The New YNAB Templates

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Jul 16, 2025

Feeling overwhelmed by budgeting? Discover the magic of YNAB templates! They offer preloaded categories for everything from vacations to renovating your kitchen. Personal anecdotes reveal how these templates can simplify your planning. Hear about the importance of detailed budgeting for memorable trips, along with insights on finding joy in financial preparedness. Plus, learn how these tools support various life stages, from getting a new pet to planning for retirement. It's budgeting made fun and easy!

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ADVICE

Travel Template Simplifies Budgeting

Use YNAB travel templates to break vacation budgeting into specific categories.
This provides peace of mind and better tracking than using a single misc category.

ANECDOTE

Vacation Budgeting Changed Experience

Ben's wife felt comfortable splurging on crab legs during vacation thanks to detailed budget tracking.
They created photo journals using a trip treasures category, enhancing family memories.

INSIGHT

Granularity Boosts Saving Accuracy

More granular budgeting categories can lead to more accurate saving and spending awareness.
Templates help reduce mental overhead by providing a ready-made category structure.

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Have you felt overwhelmed trying to think of categories for your money when you start a fresh spending plan? Or just wished someone would come up with new categories for you when you need to plan for a major life event? You're in luck, someone has done all that work for you! They are called YNAB templates. In today's episode Ben and Ernie take a look at the new templates feature in YNAB, and share their experiments incorporating templates into their own spending plans.

There are a number of templates available, ranging from very general, such as the beginner and minimalist templates, to highly specific, such as getting a new puppy or renovating your kitchen. Templates have categories preloaded and organized for you, and some even have targets with ballpark figures. The idea is to help you think of the various things you need to plan for, big and small. For instance, when planning a vacation most people immediately think of airfare and hotels or Air B&B, but there are also small expenses like parking and souvenirs that can add up to big bucks over the course of a trip! With the travel template, all these things have already been considered for you, so you can just import the template directly into your plan and set targets that fit your trip.

Ben and Ernie each picked a template to import into their plan (it's easy to import templates -- just find the one you want to use, one click and it imports straigth into your plan). Ben chose travel and used it for a recent beach vacation. Ernie chose food since he and his family have recently changed their habits around eating out and shopping for groceries. Of course, templates aren't set in stone, so Ben and Ernie modified them to fit their own situation.

If you find yourself stuck on building categories in your plan, or just need some fresh inspiration, try out a template!

Find your YNAB template here:

https://www.ynab.com/templates

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Share your YNAB wins with Ben and Ernie!

budgetnerds@ynab.com