I’m a little late chiming in here, but I wanted to answer your questions. With YNAB, it doesn’t matter what account your money is in as long as your checking account has enough money to cover the checks you are writing. I have several different accounts. One of my checking accounts is used solely for paying my mortgage. I don’t keep an extra month’s mortgage payment in there, though. The balance goes to $100 every time I pay my mortgage, but I do have enough $ in other places to cover the next month’s mortgage payment (along with all my monthly expenses).

Also you were asking how to get your surplus from this month to roll over into primary income so it shows up next month. I don’t think there is a way to do that directly, but you can have a buffer category or something like that to budget your surplus into this month. Then if you want to put it into another category next month, just enter a negative number in the budget column for your buffer category and it will go into your available funds for that month.

My only gripe is that it can sometimes be difficult to sort out the system in your head for the first few months. Just a matter of getting used to the new work flow. But that’s just the nature of upgrading your personal finances from a paycheck-to-paycheck mentality.

the primary benefit is that you really get a clear picture of what your money is doing every month.

In our businesses, it’s pretty difficult to predict income. But most of the budgeting software doesn’t “understand” anything other than a fixed amount of income, lol! i.e. certain categories–like rent–are fixed amounts every month, but other categories (clothing, entertainment, eating out) have to change or be eliminated entirely in months when we don’t make our income goals.

I once had a kick-butt Excel spreadsheet that was awesome except that i had to manually enter all my complex calculations. If I found a program that did that job for me, I would pay for it in a heartbeat.