Beemind reconciling in YNAB with this one dumb trick

Tech
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My big problem with my /ynab goal is that I actually do reconcile transactions in YNAB regularly. Often I even do it right after I get a beeminder notification for it! And then I don’t enter the datapoint because I’ve completed the task and move on to something else. And then Beeminder support has to deal with me for the upteenth time.

So I’ve been trying to automate my ynab-beeminding.

Zapier and YNAB integrate, and Beeminder and Zapier integrate. Zapier has a few available triggers for YNAB, but I picked “Spending in category”. Zapier just watches that category, and when a new transaction is added there, I get a datapoint on my goal.

The YNAB category I’m using for this is my Acorns category. The dumb trick is to set up a daily automated import to a savings account and just beemind that import. I use Acorns but anything works.

If I reconcile every day, I get a new datapoint every day. Can automatically reduce safety buffer if I don’t want to reconcile every day. Works pretty well.

Anyone doing this in a less-dumb way that I haven’t managed to think of?

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Come for the click-baity title, stay for the awesome automation hacks! :rocket:

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Ah, that’s wonderful! Nice work!

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I didn’t realize that YNAB connected to Zapier! I’m going to create a goal for a mini-habit to update YNAB with some trigger or other like this right now!

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I don’t understand how this works.

So you have an automated import to Acorns daily, and that automatically gives you a datapoint through Zapier.

Doesn’t that mean you automatically get a datapoint every day, no matter what?

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Good question, I did leave this out — I do use automatic transaction import for my bank and credit cards in YNAB. However, automatically imported transactions still have to be approved manually, and the Zapier connection only triggers on approved transactions! So I only get a datapoint once I approve the transaction.

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So whenever you reconcile, you just approve the automated daily Acorns transaction, and approving it automatically adds a datapoint?

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I approve all of my new transactions, including the daily Acorns one, and that approval adds a datapoint.

Obviously there’s ways to weasel here but this is more automation than I’ve been able to achieve before.

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Ooh cool! I like it.

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In case you haven’t seen our post on Ice Cream Truck Loopholes, this sounds like a classic example of one. :grin:

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I have seen that post and had that same thought when setting this up, haha :joy:

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