YNAB with multiple currencies

YNAB is a great way to give every dollar a job. But each YNAB budget has one currency. If you're paid in dollars, pay rent in euros and still have a mortgage back home, you have to choose how to bend your money into that one currency. These are the usual ways people do it, and what each one costs.

Workaround 1: one budget per currency

Make a separate YNAB budget for each currency. Every number stays true, but you never see your whole picture in one place. A transfer from your dollar account to your euro account becomes two unrelated entries in two budgets, and your net worth lives in a spreadsheet.

Workaround 2: convert everything into your main currency

Keep one budget and type every foreign expense already converted. It's one place, but every number depends on the rate you used that day. Your euro account never matches the bank, and you reconcile it with a manual adjustment every month as the rate moves.

Workaround 3: a browser extension or a script

Some tools convert amounts inside YNAB for you. They save typing, but they still turn your euros into dollars at some rate, so the problem from workaround 2 stays. And when the tool breaks, your budget waits for it.

What a budget in several currencies needs

• Each currency with its own accounts, categories and money to assign, so no rate ever changes a budget number.
• An exchange recorded as one transfer with two amounts: what left in dollars and what arrived in euros.
• One view that adds everything up at today's rate, only to show you the total.

Loculum does this

Loculum is a budgeting app that works the YNAB way (give every unit of money a job, before you spend it) with several currencies in one budget. Each currency is its own budget in a tab, and the All tab shows everything together, including net worth across currencies.

Coming from YNAB? Export each of your YNAB budgets and import them into Loculum. Each one becomes a currency in a single budget, with your accounts, categories, planned amounts and transactions.

It's manual on purpose, with no bank connections. It's free for 30 days with no card needed, then $29 a year.