Well, the best-laid plans of mice an dmen often go awry.

So, I'm 7 months into my YNAB journey. Everything was going smoothly. For 5-6 months I have made serious progress. I ended the paycheck to paycheck cycle and built a light buffer. Some big expenses came through, but like they say emergencies became inconveniences. But I finally hit a point where it feels like the wheels came off.

I have carefully curated my budget and followed the rules. Yes, I made decisions, moved money from bucket to bucket (categories) and I thought I was doing well.

But the last 2 months or so, the reconciliation would not resolve and I have values that were off. I dug and found about 8+ or so transactions that were duplicates. I cleaned those up, but it was triggering a cascade of money available to assign. But I knew that was wholly incorrect as the duplicates should have lead to over-assigning values. I kept digging and found a few more.

My transactions and cleared items are all accounted for, but the bank balances do not match my plan. My plan shows that I have about $695 more available than my bank account actually has.

I'm torn. Do I do a fresh start and try again? I cannot find how I supposedly have an extra amount when I know those do not match my bank balances. I don't even know what to share or ask about. I feel a bit lost.