This week I’m talking with, Jesse Mecham, the founder of the hit budgeting software, You Need A Budget - or as it’s more commonly abbreviated YNAB - now I understand, that the term, “hit budgeting software” does come off as a little strange, but it is honestly something that has quite the cult following. And I know that the idea of budgeting can seem a bit overwhelming so don’t worry we get into that. Also while the software is called You Need A Budget, that isn’t quite the focus of what’s going on. And while this software wasn’t designed for people with ADHD, the underlying tenents have really resonated with a lot of ADHDers.
In our conversation today, Jesse and I discuss YNAB's four key habits for money management, including giving money "jobs", planning for future expenses, building flexibility, and aging money to create financial breathing room. We also talk specifically about how these methods can aid those with ADHD by promoting intentionality and creating helpful friction in spending and saving.
William Curb: All right, well, it's great to have you here. Do you think you could do a quick introduction and tell me a little bit about yourself and a little bit about you need a budget?
Jesse Mecham: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. My name is Jesse Mecham. I am the founder of a company that we now originally called you need a budget. Now everyone just says YNAB. So it ended up kind of taking on its nickname. I started it in 2004 because my wife and I needed to figure out a way to make some extra money. So launched it and it's just kind of organically grown over time and ended up growing into something that's got a very passionate user base. And that's a two-edged sword sometimes. But yeah, it's fantastic. So we've mainly grown just by word of mouth. We've never taken any investment money.
We've never gone into debt to keep the business afloat. We've just gotten nice and slow and steady. And I have to say it's not the career I imagined for myself, but it's way better than than I imagined. It's really gratifying to be able to have people shift how they manage their money. It kind of creeps into everything. So it's fun to make those changes.
William Curb: Yeah, it's one of those things we're especially here in America. We don't want to talk about money culturally, but it is something that's on everyone's mind. And so there's this like shadow of like, we don't know what to do about it because we're not talking about it, but we're really stressed out about it.
Jesse Mecham: Absolutely. I mean, if you are stressed about money, you are normal. That is for sure.
William Curb: Yeah. And it was funny to see like how much of a cult following the software has because it's like, oh, this is like budgeting software with a cult following. That's not exactly what I think about. So it's like looking at the red and I'm like, oh, there's like 170,000 people here.
Jesse Mecham: Yeah, there's a good little crew. And I mean, it is a blessing. Like it is so fun to have people that are so invested in something that you work on every day. And, you know, we try and obviously make it better. And there are a lot of people that are invested in that success right along with us. So it is truly a ton of fun.
William Curb: Awesome. And so an interesting thing about this conversation for us specifically is that the software isn't developed with ADHD in mind, but it seems to be something that does resonate with a lot of people that have ADHD.
Jesse Mecham: I wish I could say like, oh, I saw it. I could tell I knew this, but not any of that. We stumbled into it and a lot of people came to us and said, hey, you know, I have ADHD. I mean, ADHD used to not even be a thing. We know when I grew up, the age was added later. I was ignorant to it for so many years, but so many people came up to me and just said, I struggled with this for years and yours is the first solution where I feel like I'm getting this, you know, like no one's perfect at it, but they're just like, man, I've made demonstrable progress. So yeah, I'm kind of learning as I go as well in this space. It's been fun to see.
William Curb: And I think it's for a lot of people that use ADHD tools, they work really well for people that don't have ADHD. Yeah. So that's kind of how I see it. I'm like, oh, yeah, even though this isn't designed for it, it does still mesh with how our brains work, which is great because.
Jesse Mecham: Yes, absolutely.
William Curb: I know so many people that struggle with the idea of trying to manage their money. It's not something people talk about and they're just like, what do I do?
Jesse Mecham: Yes.
William Curb: Or they come up with this is like, I'm going to come up with the most convoluted system ever and then not be able to follow it.
Jesse Mecham: Yeah, it'll work for like five minutes. And then you're kind of like, oh, I remember when I did that, you know, you find the remnants of some system you built on a whim over, you know, some two hours sprint and then you find it a year later. So we try and you've got to be something sustainable. And I feel like we're slowly cracking the code on it.
William Curb: Yeah. So the names vary on the nose with you need a budget, which is everybody kind of feels like I need to be doing something. Yeah. But I feel like a lot of people feel very hesitant about actually starting because it's like an overwhelming prospect. So is there ways that people can get? What is the drive of people to use the software? Like, what are they going to be getting out of it?
Jesse Mecham: Yeah, I mean, most of the time, what kind of the impetus for it is someone will have an event in their life where I don't know, like maybe they get their W2. If they're in the U.S., they get this W2 form in the mail. I'm sure you've gotten them in years past and it's like, here's how much you earned. Here's how much, you know, what you need to tell for taxes. And you'll see that amount. And a lot of people have this experience where they're like, oh my gosh, like I made good money. Like I made an adult amount of money or something.
And where did it all go? Or something more joyous, like they're having a kid, you know, they're usually their first kid or they're getting married or they're getting divorced. Like, or they're buying a house. Like these events seem to kind of be the drivers where someone's like, I've got to kind of get stuff together here. And when that happens, we hope to be there where someone says, okay, like, how do I go about this? And then we attack it head on, not with software. But with trying to really ingrain habits, we say, okay, when it comes to money, we're going to build these four habits. That's going to be the ticket software is kind of second fiddle to this idea of how we think about the money.
William Curb: So yeah. So what are the kind of the four habits that we're looking at then?
Jesse Mecham: I mean, more generally, we're talking about a framework for decision making, right? And we want to be able to make the best decision possible. And people work hard for their money and they convert all that effort into a dollar and we don't want to see that that person's effort just kind of frittered away. So it's important and it matters. And when we're looking at, okay, how do I best spend my money?
It's not tactically like, oh, you know, when you're out buying a shirt, make sure you ask for a coupon or it's not something like when you're buying a car and negotiate this, all that's fine and good. We're saying more meaningfully, like, what do you love? What do you want? What brings you joy? What are your goals?
What are your aspirations? And money actually is supposed to help us fulfil those things. So very first we scope it and we say the very first habit is. You need to be giving every dollar a job and you start as far as tightly scope with what is in your bank account today right now. So you don't try and forecast in the future. You don't try and say, okay, in three weeks, I'll earn this and then I've got this other windfall coming and maybe you're in a variable income and this is going to land and I'm doing my receivable stuff, whatever.
No, just what do you have on hand? And people will sometimes push back and they'll be like, Jesse, I've got 300 bucks. Like it's not, this isn't even worth talking about and they're wrong. It's actually really worth talking about because it's such a small amount that their actual priorities and needs are very easy to establish. So when we're first kind of developing this muscle, what we're trying to say is, okay, given the fact that you have a finite amount of money and few of us aren't dealing with that issue, what do you want this money to do before, you know, new money comes in? And when it's so tightly scoped, like 300, $3,000, whatever it is, a person can very easily be like, oh, this doesn't feel that hard.
Like I can tell you the gas tanks at a quarter full. I don't want that to happen. I'm going to put a little in there. I need to buy some groceries and there's this one bill that's, I think, buried under a stack of paper. I need to go find that and make sure that's paid. And then they're done. That is where they've said I have $300 and I've given every one of those dollars a job. What that's done is it's created a really positive scarcity where because it's finite and scarce, their real priorities, their real needs and wants can easily kind of come to the surface. So that's habit number one.
William Curb: On the other side of things, like if you had a good amount of cash in your account, I feel like that would also be really confusing to go into because you're like, I could spend on anything, but that's also a terrible idea too.
Jesse Mecham: Yeah. I mean, the idea of just this green field is kind of tough. We deal mostly with people on average end up with fairly small checking accounts because they spend them down very fast. So they, they make good money and then the money just kind of leaves quickly. But what you're talking about is kind of this, I mean, maybe someone's sitting there with a good amount of money.
They're a natural saver and they just feel like they should be doing better, whatever it may be. The same principle applies. You would just say, well, what do you want this money to do? And it's fun in this sense, cause they'll say things like, well, you know, the ones I just listed and I don't know, like I just always kind of buy whatever I need and I've never really had to worry about money too much.
I would then probably introduce the second habit, which is what we call embracing your true expenses. And I would just be like, if I were working with you, William, I'd be like, all right, William. So we've talked about like Williams needs.
But what about Williams needs? And you're like, what are you talking? What do you mean? I'm like, like future William, what about William a month from now? What does he need?
You're like, Oh, I don't know. Or what about William six months from now? How is William six months from now? How's the car doing? How are the car tires? How's the roof of the house?
How's the HVAC system? And pretty soon you just start to kind of work that muscle, that new habit of thinking about future you instead of just you in this very moment. And what's cool is now you have like future William and current William that are both at the table, both discussing the 10 grand in their checking account. And they're both like, well, I need that for this. And current Williams like, I'm going to sushi tonight. Like no questions asked. And future Williams like, okay, that's cool.
But Christmas is coming or whatever, you know, holiday spending's coming up, want to be able to do that. And they start to have this really cool negotiation. And that's that second habit is where you're bringing the future into the present. And you're able to kind of negotiate and feel the priorities, not just in the now, but across time.
And you start to make again, just better and better decisions. The cool thing about the software, if I can kind of plug it for a moment is you get to see it all visually. Like it's not something you have to keep in your, I mean, haven't helped us if we tried to keep it in our head. So it's all just sitting there visually. And it's just kind of like, okay, this is my future stuff.
This is my current stuff. It's easy to kind of dive into something deep. And it's also pretty easy just to step back and be like, okay, this is kind of my whole picture and I'm looking pretty good. So when I'm dealing with someone with a lot of money at the outset, I pretty quickly introduce that second habit of embracing, you know, your true expenses. It's not just about, you know, your monthly bills. It's about things like property taxes and the fact that you want to go on a vacation in five months and maybe pay cash for it and, you know, buy whatever you want on the beach and not stress about it. All of that comes into play.
William Curb: Yeah. Had my daughter getting braces soon and I'm like, oh
Jesse Mecham: Yeah, that's gonna be a little braces story. That's gonna be an expense coming up. Like honestly, braces are one where I'm like, okay, when your kid is born, it feels like everyone should just be like braces, 80% chance. Like I really feel like that's what we're dealing with these days.
So that's a classic one where it's a big enough hit. It doesn't feel good just to try and float it as it comes. Right. And it's also usually predictable enough that you can be like, well, I'll just throw something aside for a perfect teeth and then move ahead. So absolutely.
William Curb: All right. So we got these first two habits. So what's our third one then?
Jesse Mecham: The third habit is basically we kind of tell everyone, especially these perfectionists on my work, it's funny when someone's like, I've never done money like this before, but now I'm going to be perfect at it. That's really what they say. And so our third habit is it's funny because we end up saying, change your mind. We call it rolling with the punches. You know, when something happens, you got to kind of be adept move. It's a boxing metaphor. But the idea is, you know, life throws a punch at you and you move your body in the same direction as the punch so that you kind of lessen the blow.
And life's going to happen. Like there's no normal month. There's no steady state.
It's just life. And so this habit is just get used to the idea of changing your mind, changing your plan as needed or even as wanted. So sometimes when someone starts, especially if they're walking around with the word budget in their minds, which I try and extricate them from that, we're really talking about just their plan and they've never had a plan before. Now they have a plan. And as soon as they set that plan up, it's still their plan. We're trying to coach them more in the habit of like halftime adjustments and like game time decisions.
Instead of just, well, I studied tape for two weeks. I have this rock solid plan and no matter what I see from the opponents, I'm using lots of metaphors, I'm just not going to change anything. Right. And that's what we don't want. So we set the money plan in place. And then as soon as it's in place, we're kind of ready to be like, okay, what's going to happen? What will I need to move? And so when you were like, yeah, I've got races, let's say you started funding that, I don't know, two years in advance, but then something else pops up and it's like, oh my gosh, the car just, you know, did some weird noise and now it's on to the side of the road.
You might say, you know what, I'm going to kind of, I'm going to move some money out of the braces category. That one's still a little ways away. We'll replenish it. But you're finding where you can pull money from and just keep your plan going. The worst thing you can do is say, I guessed wrong on life. This doesn't work. We don't want that conclusion.
William Curb: Yeah. I do a lot of the same kind of ideas for like planning my day and when I talk about the podcast about because it's like, yeah, you're not you're going to plan your day and it's really helpful to do, but stuff is absolutely going to come up no matter how well you plan.
Jesse Mecham: I like almost like saying, well, what's your intention for the day? Because intention people are like, oh, well, you're allowed to not have like this rock solid 15 minute time blocked intention calendar.
Like people are okay with that. But as soon as you say like plan or calendar or appointment, then it's like this constricting thing where they're like, oh, it's like this binary, you know, succeed or fail. And we really want to get away from that where you're just like your intention with your money is to give every dollar a job. It's to think about future you. It's to be flexible. That kind of a thing.
William Curb: Yeah. It's like you have, you're going to have these like non-negotiable expenses that you're like, okay, these are going to have to hit no matter what. Like I'm going to pay rent because otherwise things go bad. Yeah. Got to pay for food. Okay. Where can I move things around then so that this still works?
Jesse Mecham: A lot of people have their very common categories that they kind of raid where they're like, well, my clothing category, I can defer a clothing purchase for a month to cover something that popped up. First deposit on the braces. You might be like, ah, that's not my favorite thing to buy. But and then you can kind of pause and be like, but you know what? I'm actually pretty proud of the fact that I can do it. You know, that's also a win through another lens. Yeah.
William Curb: Because it does not feel good when you get there and you're like, I knew it was coming, but I didn't do anything.
Jesse Mecham: Yeah, absolutely. And so we want to do something with it. And sometimes people will push on me and they're like, well, Jesse, how do you know how much it'll cost?
How do you know when it'll happen? And I can only assure them it will happen in the future and it will cost more than zero. So there's only one wrong conclusion. And that's to save nothing for these eventualities. And we can usually convince people to set a little bit aside for car repairs, set a little bit aside for home maintenance, things like that. You know, stuff always dies two days after the five year warranty expired, things like that. So you should be ready for it.
William Curb: And it's also, you can just do a quick Google like, hey, how much does this cost in my area? Or, you know, like, hey, absolutely. Social media is a great place to ask those kind of specific questions too.
Jesse Mecham: Yeah. You'll probably get more than you ever wanted to know, honestly.
William Curb: A lot of stories you don't want to hear too. But you'll at least get some kind of answer.
Jesse Mecham: Absolutely.
William Curb: All right. So let's move on to the fourth habit.
Jesse Mecham: I mean, we call them rules habits, but it's just a way of thinking. And what we want to have people do, we call it aging their money, but it's this really foreign idea for most people where you can just let money sit. And we want to get people to a point, we call it aging because the software actually calculates how long a dollar sits in your pocket before it's used.
Not just a dollar, but that dollar. So that dollar goes in and it might sit for two minutes if you're in a pinch, or it might sit for 20 days, 30 days. We want to get people to a point where what they earn this month, they're actually using next month. And it eliminates the variable income.
How do I know how much to plan? It eliminates that. It also just buys them breathing room.
We call it optionality. It gives them time. When something goes wrong or a little bit sideways, they're not just living paycheck to paycheck. They're not with their back against a wall. They have some breathing room and they can say, okay, let me think about this. Let me analyze all of my options.
What we don't want to have happen is you have no time, you're under the gun, you need to come up with money and your decision quality suffers. So if these four habits are really just all meant to improve our spending decisions, then this fourth habit is basically, hey, step away from the edge, give yourself time between when you earn and when you spend and watch your decision quality continue to increase. It's one of the most passive habits you do because as you follow the first three, you really end up just kind of looking at your check-in account and saying, you know, I used to sit with like 300 bucks in there on average and now it's 14 grand. And frankly, I don't know how this all happened, but people will look at it and say, I no longer am stressed.
They're sleeping better. Decisions between partners where they're sharing finances, decisions suddenly become a lot less charged. It would be like if you and I were walking on some razor thin canyon, cliff type of trail, we couldn't just have this casual conversation.
Everything would be kind of amped up slightly because there's just this danger we're dealing with. As soon as we get to green fields and wide open area, we can kind of relax a little bit, but a lot of couples when they're sharing finances, all of their interchange happens when they're on that razor's edge. And so any like just nuance in the voice about, you know, hey, oh, we bought this today. Suddenly that's like, I'm sorry, what did you say? Like that, like these are fighting words and you're like, oh, I meant it this way and it's too late. You know, you're falling off the edge, so to speak. So to be able to step back from the edge helps you individually, but it also really tremendously helps in couples are sharing finances. There's far less, you know, incendiary stuff in those conversations that helps a ton.
William Curb: Yeah. Cause I was thinking about the idea of doing more collaborative budgeting because it is software and it's on your phone now too, right?
Jesse Mecham: Oh yeah. On the phone everywhere.
William Curb: Yeah. Cause I had tried using the software out more than a decade ago.
Jesse Mecham: Oh, wow. You know, G guy. Okay.
William Curb: Yeah. But it was well before I had my ADHD diagnosis or was doing things about my ADHD. So I didn't stay with it cause I didn't stay with doing much of anything.
Jesse Mecham: Yeah.
William Curb: Like I was like doing, I should probably try and pick that back up again. Cause I kind of know what I'm doing with managing my ADHD now. So it'd be a lot easier.
Jesse Mecham: Well, we've come a long way in the last decade. So hopefully, you know, it's doing a little better from the software side.
William Curb: So I'm like, yeah, I'm like, I'm probably, I will open up and I'm like, I recognize nothing. Fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. There we go. Yeah. Cause it's interesting to think about with the couples and stuff, like the, just the emotional attachment we have with our money and just, we like to think we're very rational with how we do things. And it's especially with money. There's just all of this. We apply so many ideas to it that we just don't even think about like this is good or bad way to spend money. And we don't even think about where we got the ideas from originally.
Jesse Mecham: No. Yeah. I mean, it's just memetics all the way down. I think we just, we copy a lot. We see what others do. We see what our parents did. We see what our parents didn't do. And we do our best to kind of emulate or avoid, but there's no, you know, playbook where it's just like, this is the definitive guide to money. And so what we really, I mean, where we try and lean is we teach the habits as people work them, they find out how they work with money.
And I think that's where the wind happens is you and I can completely disagree on what we spend our money on, but we can totally agree on how we spend it. And there's a nuance there, but you can be like, Hey, Jesse, I just bought this. I'll be like, William buys the dumbest things.
Like I don't even get it. And I can be like, Oh, I just bought this. And you're like, that is the dumbest thing I've ever, but we can all be like, Hey, were you really intentional about your purchase? Were you thoughtful?
Are you thinking about future you? And we both nod back. Yeah. Well, then good victory, victory for both of us. You know, and, and so it's not really what you're spending, but how you're spending, that makes all the difference in the world. People should be able to spend and save and give joyfully without any guilt or second guessing. And until you're to that spot, ADHD or not, until you're there, we are telling people, you have some really fun, rewarding, enjoyable work that you can do. And we would love to help you do it. That's the pitch.
William Curb: One of the things I was thinking about too, with ADHD, so yeah, I have my example of like, yeah, I didn't stick with it because obviously not managing my ADHD, but I was wondering if there are like specific things you see from users that help really help keep them engaged in following up with this.
Jesse Mecham: Yeah. One of the things is obviously like habit stacking is big. So we find it's easier and this is for anyone, but we find it's especially important if you if you have ADHD where you, you want to be in it frequently, you want to kind of have like a rhythm that is more frequent than maybe someone else would be required to have. So I would say be in it daily until it's just a part of you. And in it might mean as much as like, you know, after I brush my teeth, I'm going to fire up my phone and hope that that dumb phone doesn't distract me with something else in the meantime, because I maybe don't have ADHD, but I'll turn on my phone and be like, I'm here, but I know I wasn't here for this reason. So that can be one thing where, you know, you finish brushing your teeth, something you do daily and you just fire it up and you look at it. Just look at it.
No task to be done or anything. That's one that really helps us to kind of have it stack and look for a daily frequency. There's some tactics specifically not to the app. One thing that we encourage people to do is not to save their credit card info in their browser, make it a little more thoughtful, put some friction between you and the spend in wine abs specifically, we have this mantra where we tell people find the money first. So let's say you suddenly just like, I want to buy this thing.
Cool. We want you to be able to buy almost whatever you want, but maybe not almost whatever you want on a whim. So when it comes in that thought of like, I want to buy this, right? When that comes in, we just want you to first say, I'm going to find the money.
And that means you open up wine app, you look in your spending categories and you just say, okay, I'm going to get the money from here. I'm going to pull it from here. I'm going to pull it from here. You fund it basically. You show, you prove to yourself how you're going to buy that thing. It's interesting because sometimes people will be like, cool, cool, cool. I'm done. I'm spending it.
Okay. And a lot of the time the exercise itself will kind of kill the magic of the moment. And that's exactly what we want to have happen. So that's, that's another one is that little mantra of like, okay, I want to spend, find the money first in the software and then go for it.
William Curb: Yeah, I can absolutely see that, especially with the ADHD impulsivity is you're just trying to get that quick dopamine hit and like get it in and having that separation from want to actually doing it. It's like too many purchases from the Amazon buy it now button that I'm like, show up and like, why did I buy this? This is seemed like a really good time.
Jesse Mecham: Yeah. Worst is where you're like, did I buy that? Did I do that? Even, you know, I mean, I've had that I'm where I'm like, oh, yeah, that was me. You know, I mean, yeah, it like the impulse stuff is strong, like, and not to be like all tin full hat, but the system is engineered.
William Curb: Oh, absolutely.
Jesse Mecham: To have you spend as much without thinking as possible. So we're trying to introduce a little bit of our own kind of positive friction into the situation that again, that spending needs to be joyful. And if it's impulsive, we all could probably safely bet that's not that's not very joyful. We'll get there.
William Curb: Yeah, there's definitely that aspect of like, yeah, that seems like such a good idea. And it feels good in the moment. And then later you're like, I feel terrible that I bought that thing was dumb.
Jesse Mecham: One other that's kind of an interesting tactic is sometimes it can be hard. Like you have a big goal where you're like, I want to save five months of expenses as an emergency fund. That's good, solid personal finance advice, you know, and what we'll find is referencing your kind of quick dopamine hit.
The quick dopamine hit continually beats out the long term future William that would like five months of emergency fund. Like they keep, they keep going head to head and they just keep losing. My kids are this funny thing with our eggs. We have, you know, we have hens and we get these eggs and they do this thing where every morning they want to crack the eggs and they'll take one and like they'll crack them against each other.
And there's always a winner. And then they'll like, this is really funny, but they'll actually mark total tangent, they'll mark like how many eggs an egg beat. So every morning they're like, Oh my gosh, dad, this egg is beat 25 eggs. It's the most random thing that they do.
But it's funny because there's this one egg that keeps winning. And to get back on subject is the idea of like the quick dopamine versus the long term goal, the long term goal just keeps losing out in that kind of present decision. And so what we want to do is start to try and morph that long term goal into maybe more of like a quick hitting dopamine kind of a costume. And so I would just say, like, let's, let's go for like short term goals as much as you can.
So where you say, oh, I don't, I'm not saving five months of money, but I am going to save $10 today. Right. And just hit it. You're like dopamine hit you like literally log into, you know, your Chase bank or whatever, transfer money to a savings account or in YNAB, you don't need to do all the account moving. You just go to your savings category and you pop in the $10 there. And you'll start to find that there's a little bit of that same mental like dopamine hit.
It's probably not quite as strong as like buying the new shoes or whatever, but it's there and maybe it's enough to win some of those head to head battles with the impulsive buying. Awesome. Yeah. That's another one that I am a lot of like our users that kind of chimed in and they're like, Hey, I do this. It works really well for me.
William Curb: All right. One question that has been kind of percolating in my brain too is how long does this the initial setup take to do this? Cause that seems kind of switching gears here cause, but it was something I was like, Oh yeah, like this seems like a great idea, but I, we had overwhelmed feeling of like, Oh, this is going to be really hard to do.
Jesse Mecham: The initial setup is, you know, you'd speak about it in terms of minutes, right? You'd say like, okay, I've got my bank accounts connected. Um, I've got kind of my, my spending categories lined up, you know, those jobs that we want our dollars to do. It's funny cause sometimes people of your wiring will, will be like, Oh, I don't want to spend time setting it up. But then six hours later, they're like, Oh, I set it up. I got it. I read it. I watched every YouTube video.
I know everything. Like it's, they go down the rabbit hole so far. Then what happens is it just kind of gathers some dust sometimes. So what we want to do is just have it integrated again, back to that habit stacking, be integrated there as fast as possible. If I were starting with you, I would just say, okay, let's time boxes to 20 minutes. Let's have you just fire up the app. Let's have you, you know, walk through the little wizard. Hey, what do you spend money on? What's this?
What's this? And it kind of builds it out for you, connect your bank accounts. And then you just, where I would stop is where you have money at the top. And we just say, okay, let's fund your spending. Let's decide where this money should go, what it should do. Once we're done with that, you just are done. And then I would just say, Hey, fire it up tomorrow morning, just to look at it. Just to remind yourself, like this is kind of what your plan is and see what happens next, but it's usually a pretty quick process.
I mean, if we're in person, I'd, you know, probably do it 30, 40 minutes, but you can be quicker if you just want to kind of want to get in and get out.
William Curb: Yeah. And it's good to hear if there's also like all the resources like the YouTube channel to like, Hey, watch through this. If you're feeling overwhelmed.
Jesse Mecham: Yeah. I mean, we have a frame on our website. It's like, do you have a lunch break? Do you have a weekend? Like we kind of frame it like, how much time do you have? Cause we offer different resources for where you're like, Oh, I'm serious. I'm going to, this is a full length movie situation. I want to dive in or some of it's like, I've got 15 minutes and we, we offer really good resources for both. We also have really good live workshops where you can ask questions in the moment. And they're, they're tight. They're like 25, 30 minutes long and people get a lot of value out of that.
William Curb: I'm also just thinking about like, Oh yeah, it'd be great to also figure out if I'm like, have these like subscriptions that I'm not using kind of thing.
Jesse Mecham: They'll all start coming out as you start to give dollars those jobs. You'll be like, wait, what is this happening over here? And we never tell people like, Hey, cut your spending, cut your spending, you know, austerity, we never say that. But what we do start to highlight is money is doing stuff you don't actually want it to do.
And that's, that's when the cuts start to happen. And what's funny is you don't feel deprived. You don't feel like you're missing out. All your other goals are getting accomplished. You're buying things you still want. It's just, there's just a less waste and waste is purely defined as things. William was spending money on that. He didn't actually want to spend money on. That's it. Cause my waste and your waste, they're not the same. That's a very personal definition. It's fun to see.
William Curb: Fantastic. Yeah. I just see the way of introducing the intentionality behind what you're doing. Yes. Which is what I always tried to do with my regular planning stuff when I talk about on the podcast is like, yeah, just be intentional with you want to do rather than, you know, following whims.
Jesse Mecham: Yes. Absolutely.
William Curb: Yeah. Awesome. Well, is there anything you'd like to leave the audience with?
Jesse Mecham: I preached at you guys for a while. So I feel like I'm pretty, I'm pretty content with the level of preaching. It's, I mean, winab.com and people can just go there and just poke around. We teach these habits for free. So you can go in there and be like, you know what? I don't like Jesse's software. I don't like any of that, but I like the habits. Cool. Take it, run with it, build a spreadsheet, spend all weekend on it, whatever you want. The, the win is people spending joyfully, no guilt, no second guessing. That's what we're going for. That's the reason we exist. Awesome.
William Curb: That sounds great. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really enjoyed it.
Jesse Mecham: Yeah. Thanks for having me.
This Episode's Top Tips
Give every dollar a "job" - Assign your money to different spending categories and priorities when budgeting.
Plan for irregular and future expenses - Don't just budget for fixed monthly bills. Save for things like car repairs. We need to be flexible with our budgeting to allow for when things come up.
Add friction before purchases - Don't save card info in browsers. Figure out where the money is going to be coming from before purchasing to make spending more thoughtful.