Budgeting Like A Beast w/ Jesse Mecham (Bestie) #926

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Happy New Year, everybody, Joel, I should say Happy New
Year to you first, sitting here right in front of me.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Yeah, why you gotta tell everyone else first?

Speaker 1 (00:07):
I will say this is our last best episode for
this holiday season. But with it being the new Year,
we figured there. I don't know, there might be some
folks who were taking the day off. We certainly are
taking New Years off, but that doesn't mean we wanted
to leave you hanging without how to money episodes.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Well, in this one, it felt like the right one
to play at this point time because a lot of
people but budgeting is a four letter word to some folks.
Well folks, some folks hate budgeting or they've been inapropriately
taught about budgeting. They should give it a shot. The
way it's been talked about has been like, uh, frustrating.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
I'll think about the way we talked about it most
recently on Monday's Financial festiv Us. Think about all the
folks who were able to make significant changes to the
personal finances because they said, and this this is ingrained
in my mind and I don't know why, but multiple
folks said that they religiously track their spending and.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
The amount of money they were able to find in
their lives because of it significant thirty thousand dollars the
fact that they were able to, oh my gosh, buy
a home for the first time.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
These are the kind of money moves that we want
to see people making in this coming year. And like
you said, though there are a lot of there is
a lot of pushback when it comes to budgeting, Just
give it a shot. Like the upside is it could
be massive, right, like it's yeah, and the downside okay,
maybe you waste a little bit of times.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
And if anyone can convince you to budget, I think
it's Jesse in this episode, Like Jessa is Jesse Meachum
started the business because he was so in love with budgeting.
Why nab you need a budget? He's got an infectious
way of talking about budgeting that hopefully can help it
sink in past your brain to your heart.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
It makes me think about like scheduling a date night
with your signific with your significant other. What's the worst
that could happen? Okay, maybe you waste a little bit
of time.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
But the upside, oh my gosh, like you've just mean,
like your dates are a wasted time sometimes.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
No, not mine, But like if somebody else is out
there and they're thinking, I don't want to we don't
do date nights. That's not that's not how we roll.
I think the potential, like the potential growth within. I'm
not going to give like relationship advice here, I wish
you would, but there's a massive potential for what could happen, right, Like,
it feels like it's only up into the right and
the downsides are pretty minimal.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
So that's how we think about budgeting, like, just give
it a shot. Why not?

Speaker 1 (02:15):
The worst thing that could happen is that you just
realize maybe okay, Yeah, in fact, I don't really like enjoying.
I don't enjoy doing this, But the potential for you
to start saving so much more money, I think.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Could be huge. Yeah. So I think if your history
with budgeting is not good, like either you couldn't stick
with it or you have a bad taste in your mouth,
this is the episode for you, I think to It's
like a cleansing mint after eating a lot of gar
like or something. So yeah, check this episode out. We
hope you like it, and we hope it helps you
as we enter twenty twenty five to make budgeting a

(02:46):
part of your life so that you can crush your
finances this year.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
And we'll see you back here in a couple of
days with the fresh Friday flight.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Welcome to Hat to Money. I'm Joel on Matt. Today
we're talking budgeting like a Beast with Jesse Meekham. That's right,

(03:18):
Jesse Meekham. He is joining us on the podcast today
and we are going all in on budgeting.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
I'm guessing there's a number of folks listening who might
recognize his name, but I'm guessing even more folks are
familiar with the company he started back in two thousand
and three while he was still in college. You need
a budget, or why NAB as it's commonly known what
we call it. Millions of individuals have now used why
NAB to get on a budget, which has allowed them
to achieve their life changing financial goals. And so whether

(03:46):
that's simply paying off debt or the complicated endeavor of
getting on the same page as your partner, that's difficult.
Jesse has likely thought more about budgeting over the past
twenty years than anyone else out there, so we're excited
to talk with him about all the things that he's
learned and observed Jesse, thank you for joining us today.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
I am so glad to be here.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Thanks guys, Jesse, We're glad to have you. And the
first question we ask everyone who comes on the show
is what's your what do you like to sporte on?
We call it your craft beer equivalent because Matt and
I we spend more money than most people would think
is normal on craft beer because we love it. But
we're happy to do that because we're saving and investing
well for the future while we're spending a lot of
money on beer. So what do you what do you
spend a lot of money on that maybe people might

(04:28):
think is kind of crazy. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:30):
I wouldn't mix beer and what I spend a lot
of money on, but I would say my wood shop
is a It is a money pit and there's always
another thing you can buy. I'm currently in the shop
for a floor or in the market for it like
a floor standing variable speed drill press.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah, So what are you making in this wood shop?
Are you making like canoes? Ron Swanson style? What are
you doing?

Speaker 3 (04:57):
If I had these skills of Ron Swanson, I would
have a rived. But I he's in real life. He
is a killer woodworker.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
That's yeah, yeah, I mean making beautiful handcrafted canoes.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
Yeah, it's insane. So yeah. Anyway, I have his book
here actually called Good Clean Fun by Nick Offerman. It's
it's excellent, but the yeah, I will make anything. But
right now I'm working on shop furniture like I'm because
you can kind of learn like it's if it's if
it looks bad, it doesn't matter because it's all in
your shop. So I'm learning a lot of the basics.
I'm I'm taking like a general like basic woodworking course

(05:31):
where they go through all the different joinery, kind of
the foundational joinery. And I love just being a novice.
So I I have a shop that looks like I'm
a professional, and I am a novice, and I'm not
ashamed to admit it. I just I think it's fun
to get the new tools. So whenever I can squeeze
it into the old plan, I do it very nice.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
So are you pursuing this purely out of just with it,
you know, with it being a passion as you know,
as oh yeah, an interest, not something that you foresee
being able to sell.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
You know, fine, I would have ruined it. I don't
want to ruin my hobby about monetizing.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
He's gonna open up like a woodside stands. People are
gonna be like, I'm not paying for that.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
It was Jesse might get so good that folks are saying,
please let me buy that that beautiful.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
I will give. I will gift it to them. I will,
but I refuse to transact in this way. I don't
want to taint it.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Don't take, don't ruin it. Jesse, I love it.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
Well, let's kind of start talking about money, not just
the wood, but so unlike most folks, it sounds like
your parents actually had like a positive influence on you
when it comes to getting you started down the path
of personal finance. How is it that you first started
learning about money?

Speaker 3 (06:38):
So, I, uh, my parents modeled it well. They modeled
frugality well, I will say they were really good at
just saying we don't have money for that, we're not
gonna spend money on it. We we lived, I mean
we were you know, middle class, but we lived below
our means as far as I could gather as a

(06:58):
as a kid and kind of observed. So they were
just very, very frugal. I used to think that the
word vacation meant driving ten hours to Grandma's house. I
didn't know that there were other options besides just driving
up there. And then literally one time, starting to read
the encyclopedia at a I got to Abacus. I didn't
make it very far, but like, I just bored on

(07:20):
my vacation, so that, I mean, that's just what we did.
And I didn't know any different, and it was great
and they were loving, and so you can't complain at all.
But one thing that my dad in particular did, I
think I was fourteen, and he said, hey, you should
read these books. And so he didn't just say I
want to teach you about money. He was just like,
you might find these interesting. And he gave me a couple.

(07:41):
He gave me Ramsey's book that was Financial Piece, and
I think now the Total Money Makeover is kind of
their his more flagship book, but Financial Piece was the
one that I read, and Ramsey taught me not to
like debt at all, to hate debt even as a
fourteen year old, and I thought, okay, that sounds good.
And then he gave me The Millionaire next Door, another
great one to kind of learn like it's not about

(08:03):
what you see, but it's about what's kind of under
the covers a lot of the time. And then the
final one was The Richest Man in Babylon, which is
probably my favorite overall, just those principles approachable. It's the
same first one I would give, you know, I give
my kids when they are like, hey, I want to
learn something. I don't want to sit down and teach them.
I just want to say, well, here's a book. And
I think as a kid it's easier to learn sometimes

(08:25):
from someone else, and so I think it was wise
of my dad just to say, well, hey, learn it
from these you know, from these books, And it formed
a lot of my early opinions. Some of them have
developed over the years a little differently, but it was
early informative. And I am forever grateful that I had
a disdain for debt early on and avoided it in
college because of that, and that I saw early on

(08:47):
that I should start with start with investing, and get
an early jump on it. So yeah, I will be
forever grateful for the to the authors of those books
and to my dad for giving them to me.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Well, you talk about modeling your parents, modeling the right behaviors,
but then not being the ones to necessarily preach it
at you, you know, over and over. And I think
that's really important because I think modeling goes the farthest.
Then let someone else do the preaching and maybe that's
the best combo. And it's interesting you mentioned your kids too.
You've got seven kids, which is as much as Matt

(09:19):
and I have kids, and we got to catch up.

Speaker 3 (09:23):
I mean, you need a spreadsheet to run that many kids,
right right, you guys would be fine, but.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
Yeah, it's easier for us. I've got family five, he's
got a family six. But you got it, you got
a massive family. So how does that How has that
impacted your Did that like make you feel like you
needed a budget? Obviously you started your journey even before that.
But have you found it to come in even more handy?
Have you? I've been big of a family.

Speaker 3 (09:44):
Well, honestly, the first the thing that made me and
my wife's name is Julie, that that made us feel
like we had to really be careful early on was
we were we were dirt poor, and we were both
in school and just eching by, and then we were
going to get married, and so combining these meager finances
together it doesn't do any there's no synergy there. You're

(10:05):
just like, okay, now we both make I mean, there
was just no win and we were actually paying more
in rent than we would have been as single kids anyway.
So I'm just like, man, Julie, we got to be
really careful. So we get married. I build this little
spreadsheet that later became wine app but at the time
it was just for me and for Julie and we
start watching everything really close. But the thing that pushed

(10:25):
me to say, hey, maybe I could sell this spreadsheet
was it had worked for us for that year. We
were able to start saving money, and then we saw
that a baby was coming and it was planned, but
we were still not making a lot of money, like
ten bucks, you know, eleven bucks an hour and trying
to get through school and so to have a baby inbound,

(10:46):
that was what made us think, Okay, we got to
try and figure out some way to let Julie exit
the workforce and have me be able to try and
balance maybe earning some side money and finishing up school.
So the push of providing for kids, oh, that was
what gave us that that drive, and so I'm grateful

(11:08):
for it. It's not fun in the moment, but it
does kind of squeeze the creativity out of you at times.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yeah, it's kicking the pants.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yeah, nothing like in another human being being dependent on
your ability to manage your own finances in order to
provide for them. So that certainly can be that, like
you said, you'll kick in the pants. But like, what
would you say, Jesse, to folks who or otherwise than
just repulse by the idea of making a budget. Essentially,
I would love for you to maybe make a case
for budgets for those out there who don't necessarily feel

(11:36):
like it's something they need to do.

Speaker 3 (11:37):
Yeah. I mean, I don't even like the word budget.
I wish that our company was named something really I
don't know, fancy, like that sounds like a perfume. Maybe
I don't know, something different. Because people they hear the
word budget and they think restriction, no more fun diet.
It's just like everything's just going to kind of bear
down on them, and maybe their their spouse or significant

(11:59):
other tells them, hey, we need a budget, and then
it's like double worse. It's like, Okay, not only will
we a budget, but you're going to be running the
budget and I'm going to be the one that's making
all the mistakes and just nothing is good about it.
So a budget is really it's just a plan, and
all we really care about is that people are intentional
with their money and that's it. That's the end of it.

(12:23):
We want people to love how they spend their money
instead of having their spending just stress them out, strain
their relationship, suck the fun out of everything. I mean,
people are so worried about a budget taking the fun
out of life, but they will go on vacation with
this like this low burn like kind of simmer in
the back of their mind. As they're racking up credit
card debt. They're just like, I know this isn't good.

(12:44):
I know this isn't good. And so I'm trying to say, well,
maybe try the thing where you save up for the
vacation and you actually get to spend money guilt free.
So a budget's just a plan, and it's your plan
and you get to make it however you want. But
if it means that if you have to do a
budget in order to have a pile of intention kind
of like rising up behind your money, then that's that's

(13:05):
what we want. And that's what we're gonna call it.
We are you got. You gotta love how you spend
your money. If you feel guilty about it, there's a problem. Right,
If you're arguing with your spouse, it means there's a problem.
And so we want to get that spending lined up
with your real priorities. And then man, you're off to
the races. That that's when money becomes fun. And I
don't know, I can't imagine any other way.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
So do we just rename you need a budget to
you need a money plan, wine amp.

Speaker 3 (13:27):
Something like that, or or the can thing I could like,
you know, mystique or something I don't know.

Speaker 2 (13:31):
Okay, all right, well, yeah, you let me know when
you're ready for that rebrand. I'm curious to hear how
how it takes out cool water. I think when you're
in middle school a car. Maybe that was a good one.
Uh well, Jesse, some folks in the financial independence community,
they're just super naturally frugal, right, and so they would say,
I am intentional with my money, but I don't feel
like I need the budget part. And so based on
what you just said, I wait, what would you say

(13:52):
to someone like that who says like I'm handling things
pretty well. I've got a huge gap between incoming and
outgoing investing a lot for the future. Like, do I
need to sit down and actually like mess with the
numbers every single month or every other week?

Speaker 3 (14:06):
Yeah, I know, No, they don't. If if they're if
you're have some massive gap between you know, money in
and money out, and the net worth keeps climbing even
if the market's doing what it's been doing, especially, then
you're good to go. You have a plan and the
plan is working because the score that we're keeping is
net worth, and especially I would say the score is

(14:26):
how much you are sending to your investment pile. Not
so much fluctuations in the market, you can't totally control that,
but the fact that you're you're you know, you got
a big shovel and you're flinging tons of money over
the wall into that retirement bucket you're winning. So I
wouldn't change a thing now for someone that's like, hey, Jesse,
my net worth it's you know, I'm not really saving

(14:47):
a ton, but I know that I'm frugal, then I'd
be like, oh no, they or they like I already
know the much. Yeah, they're like, I already know how
much I spend. I'm like no, or I I know that,
I just I EQ anyway, so I already am tight.
I don't need to look. That's all just ways of
saying like I don't really want to be aware, or

(15:07):
I'm actually unaware, or I think I'm aware and I'm not.
All those things we want to make sure we iron out.
So but for the person that like literally their money
just keeps growing and growing, yeah, you hit it, you're
doing it. You just don't. You aren't super granular in
your plan for your spending, but you're you're nailing it
on those big big movers, you know, those big goals.

(15:28):
Then yeah, you're good to go. I wouldn't have you
change a thing.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
I don't want to say those people are unicorns, but
they're not.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
As it's just I'm not worried my market's going to
disappear by just you know.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
Yeah, that's that's maybe one percent of the population that
really is is in that realm of managing their finances.
But I do think it's important to mention that that
some of those folks is exist and they might not
need a budget in the same way that most.

Speaker 3 (15:51):
Now, if I could interject one more thing, someone that's
you know, Elon Bezos, these massively wealthy people, they still,
hopefully with all of this resources, hopefully are being extremely
intentional with all of that value that's there. So when
you have someone that's like I make tons Jesse, I
don't have to worry about it. I would kind of

(16:12):
turn around and say, listen, man, you you have been
gifted this, You've worked for it, however you want to say,
this came into your possession. You have something tremendously valuable
in this world. Let's not be so cavalier and so
flippant about the fact that you have this massively useful

(16:33):
resources that could potentially be, you know, deployed to have
some great effect in the world. And I'm not even meaning, hey,
you know, shame on you for not giving it away.
There are plenty of charities that I'd be like, oh,
that probably wasn't a great use of money, if you know, Like,
I'm no judge of that, but just let's take you
and make sure that all of your intention, all of

(16:55):
the best parts of you are channeled behind that big
pile of money, and that it becomes something great and grand.
Let's not have it just be frittered away. So for
those that have a fantastic pile of resources, I think
it's incumbent upon them even more so to be really intentional,
really thoughtful, careful about what they do with it.

Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah, maybe that looks like a budget, but like you said,
it's having a plan. And I think even those folks
would be able to benefit from a plan because you
take a high reformer and you put them under the
direction of an amazing coach, and all of a sudden,
they're doing stuff that they never thought was possible. Right,
if making millions came easy to them, we'll just think
what you.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
Could do otherwise.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
But I like what you said too, Like, at least
from an investing standpoint, they're kind of knocking it out
of the park. But I mean, one of the reasons that,
or one of the ways I guess my wife and
I were able to Kate and I that we were
able to get on the same page just when it
came to budgeting, is because we saw it as a
way essentially, as a way for us to have some
freedom and how it is that we spend our money.
Because I think, I mean, my natural tendency might be

(17:56):
to not just be frugal, but just to seriously deprive ourselves.
And so yeah, exactly, we saw an ability for us to,
like you said, be intentional with our money, but just
we had the freedom to then spend our money in
the ways that we said we wanted to. But maybe
in practice we found that to be harder. Yeah, moving

(18:17):
it from like the head and what we said we're
going to do on paper into reality for us was difficult.

Speaker 3 (18:22):
Yeah. Absolutely, It's it's liberating to have the plan allow
you to do things. It's weird because you set up
the plan, you agreed to it, you wrote it down
a week before or whatever. It's weird that we suddenly
divorce ourselves from the plan as if it's not us,
but it is. But it allows us to kind of push,
like defer back to it and say, well, what did
the plan say I could do, Oh, the big plans

(18:42):
so I could buy these fantastically expensive boots that will
last forever. And I say that because it's a real
example that I'm in the market for. So splurtis again.
But you know, it's like, oh, okay, this will be
really cool. I'm really excited about this. But push came
to shove. If the plan weren't telling me that I
actually could do it, I think I would struggle with
it because I'm just now actually wired to squeeze, you know,

(19:02):
squeeze those dollars. So I love that it gives you
the permission, like you give yourself the permission, but in
this indirect way that allows it to fill a little
more free flowing.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yep. Again, I don't know what percentage of the population
those natural, ridiculously frugal people are. I think Matt and
I might both be those, and actually making a plan
for our money has helped us feel free to spend
in the ways that we otherwise would probably not do.
And it's really it's helped my marriage out because then
I'm not like saying no to everything, even though those
are things we want to do. But I guess, Jesse,
I want to I want to know more too about

(19:32):
winnab And you talked about kind of how it started
with a spreadsheet that you created just to be able
to get by making very little money and to help
your wife stay at home. But how did it turn
into a fintech company and a wildly successful one. I mean,
I saw at the end of last year, the Wall
Street Journal said why NAB was the best budgeting gap?
Like that's huge, Like that's massive. Yeah, So how did

(19:54):
you get to that point?

Speaker 3 (19:56):
Well, you know, almost twenty years in you get the
Wash Journal to write about it, you know what I mean?
So that a decade ago, guys, Yeah, like that would
have helped a lot. But I've always loved the topic.
I've always loved teaching people about it, and I am
a teacher at heart, and so we've always had the model. Now,
the software, the spreadsheet's been long gone as of like
I think six or something, But then we had some

(20:18):
really you know, some great software that you would download
and install and paste a license key for people that
grew up without apps and whatnot. But then the apps
came along, and now the WebApp, and so it just keeps.
The software keeps kind of hopefully keeping pace with what
technology is allowing us to do. But the method behind
it has has always been kind of like the special juice,
the thing that makes it work. So we always say

(20:41):
that the software is second fiddle to the method, to
the thinking. And if someone can take what we teach
method wise, these four rules, and I'm sure we'll get
into later. But if they can take that and run
with it, no matter how they implement it, it'll work really,
really well because the method works very very.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
Well, even though the technology has changed. There are four
rules in particular that you wrote down a long time ago.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
So we're gonna talk about those rules. We're gonna talk
about them in stone tablets.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
Actually, yeah, we're gonna talk about maybe some just some
general budgeting strategy as well.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
We'll get to all of that right after this break.
All right, let's keep rolling. Let's talk about budgeting like
a beast. We're still talking with Jesse Meekham. And if
there's Matt anybody to cover this topic well with us,
it is Jesse.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
It's the guy that's a woodworker who's saving up for
some nice leather boots to wear in his woodshot Exactly.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
I don't want to you don't want to puncture those
toes if like some mistake app is or anything like that.
But Jesse, you talked about the four rules. You alluded
to them before the break, but that's where everything starts.
I when it comes to the wine app software, can
you give us an overview of those four rules and
why you think that that's kind of the revolutionary. Like
Matt said, secret sauce to making budgeting work for people.

Speaker 3 (21:59):
Yeah, I mean I had mentioned earlier that we want
people to love how they spend their money, and spending
is just decision making at the end of the day,
and people try and dress it up and make it
some other thing. That money is different, but it is
just decisions. And the method that teaches is for rules
that's essentially just to help you make better decisions. So

(22:21):
our first rule we call it giving every dollar a job.
And what that means is if you decide to spend
money on tool A, you can't spend money on tool B.
If you decide to go out for sushi, you maybe
can't also go out for you know, drinks another day.
It's that if I spend here, I maybe can't spend
over there. And it's the it's acknowledging that we have

(22:43):
finite resources. And while while finance capital f large industry
wants you to feel like you have infinite resources and
you can spend and swipe and buy out, pay later
and all that stuff that they want you to feel
like you never run out, but you have to ignore
knowledge that you run out because that helps you crystallize

(23:03):
what your priorities are and start to make better decisions.
So when you operate with a zero based budget, whether
it's with wine app or any number of other tools
that do that, it's that idea of it's finite. So
with that in place, you're now weighing your priorities and
good decisions come from that. We then move to rule two,

(23:23):
where we call it embracing your true expenses, and essentially
that's looking ahead and thinking about larger, less frequent expenses
and then dividing those up into more manageable monthly amounts.
So I mentioned sushi. It's kind of like me saying,
all right, I want to go to sushi today, but
also I'm looking at Christmas that just happened, and I'm saying, oh, well,

(23:43):
Christmas is in twelve months or whatever. Is this going
to work? Is Christmas and sushi today going to work?
And people don't make they don't do that kind of calculus.
Or it's a lot like if you're standing, like I
don't know, in the tire store or something, and your
tire just blue, and the guy's there and he's like, Okay,
the four tires are going to be let's pray that

(24:06):
they're only like eight hundred bucks. Right, The four tires
are going to be eight hundred dollars and you have
the money for the four tires. So you're like, man,
I'm feeling good. But it's like a pizza delivery guy
walks into and he's just like, Jesse, I know those
tires are eight hundred, and you have the eight hundred,
but don't you want to spend one hundred bucks on
pizza for your kids and their friends and maybe their
friends and just have some. And you're like, no, I

(24:29):
absolutely do not want to do that, not because of
all the kids in the house, but because I want
to pay for the tires. And so it's this interesting
situation where with rule one, we're prioritizing, and with rule two,
we're prioritizing with future priorities and current priorities, and they're
getting equal footing during our decision making process. So, Faye,

(24:53):
my youngest daughter, I have to refer to my spreadsheet
to make sure I get that straight. But you know, Fay,
my youngest she's like, Okay, I want to save up
for this Christmas gift for fee, and I also want
to buy this thing, right, now and suddenly you have
a really interesting prioritization that's happening. Now do I sit there?
I'm always like, oh am, I going to take a
gift from face Christmas? No, of course not. But as

(25:15):
you're doing the decisions, you are. And so this idea
of future you and current you, and then future Julie
and current Julie, we're all sitting at the table, you know,
table together negotiating and there's one that's like I want
money for tires, and other ones like I want pizza tonight,
and we're weighing that. So between rule one and rule two,
decision making starts to really improve. I'll pause there just

(25:38):
in case you guys have questions. But I'm like an automaton.
If you put a quarter in me or ask me
about the four rules, I just kind of go.

Speaker 1 (25:44):
So I get, yeah, let's ahead and jump in here
before you move on with the additional rules. Because you know,
when you talk about giving every dollar a job, like,
it makes me think about just budgeting in general. Right, Like,
if we ask you to define the word budget, I'm
curious to hear what you'd say, because you know, you
did say a plan earlier. But it's like, at the
heart of budgeting is the first rule, giving every dollar
a job where you are just being intentional when it

(26:07):
comes to like you said, the decisions that you're making,
is does that seem accurate?

Speaker 3 (26:11):
Yeah? I think I would say if I were to
define I've never done this before, perhaps, but if I
were to define it off the cuff, a budget is
a plan attached to finite resources.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
That's it given a specific timeframe as well, you know,
when it comes to embracing this true expenses, because I
think a big part of those those true expenses is
the fact that I think there's so much in our
life that feels urgent, that seems urgent, and so oftentimes
we're just looking to whatever pops up in front of
us and we think, oh, okay, that is now something

(26:40):
I have to tackle, that's something we have to spend
money on. And it's just about it's almost about getting
in front of that a little bit and knowing that
it's on its way, as opposed to you just reacting
to something passively. It's proactively managing those expectations absolutely knowing
they're going to come down the pike.

Speaker 3 (26:54):
Yeah, absolutely, it is. It is completely and totally proactive.
You know, if you manage your day the way you
manage your money, I'm speaking to the eighty percent that
don't do it well, you'd be a wreck. You know,
you're a train wreck. You we're just reacting to everything
that comes along, and at the end of the day,
you're always like, well, geez, I didn't get the important
thing done. That happens with people's money all the time.
They're just like we manage time. We're just trying to

(27:14):
manage another finite resource that also can essentially travel through time,
and we're looking at how our future will look, how
our you know, the current environment looks, and we're trying
to weigh that together. It's interesting to do it this
way because what we want people to get in there
kind of in practice is not that budgeting is where
you're forecasting your income. You're saying I will earn this,

(27:36):
I will earn this. We tie it back to the
finiteness of their money, and we say, how much is
in your checking account right now? Okay, what do you
want that money to do before you're paid again? And
that question whether you're making one hundred grand a year,
three hundred grand, fifty grand, doesn't matter that question starts
to push on the priorities and starts to force the decisions.

(27:57):
So then you can say, well, okay, I've got all
these current needs, but then we get future you to
come to the table. Also, it's like, well, you know,
what about in three months when you wanted to go
on vacation, you know, do you want to throw some
money there. So it's more about allocating not just for now,
but also almost like you're allocating to these different jobs
along a timeline, and in that way you can be
really ready for the future. It's funny too, because people

(28:20):
mentioned when they've started using wine up for they've used
it for a while, they stop needing the traditional kind
of personal finance emergency fund because they're finding that they
are having fewer emergencies. Because the car tires that wear out,
that is an emergency only if you don't have the money.
But if you do have the money, it's no emergency
at all. Or if the HVAC goes out or property

(28:43):
taxes are due, it's whenever we have the money. We
never label it an emergency. We're just like, well, now
if physical harm is you know, if there's a fire, okay, yeah,
that it's an emergency physical harm, but when the financial
ramification can be handled by cash on hand, we're pretty
resident red and say like, oh, yeah, that was an emergency.
Oh no, no, it really wasn't you know?

Speaker 2 (29:03):
That's true.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
You had the money.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah, And we're planning ahead for some of those known
irregular expenses too, like car tires, right, that's I don't know,
every fifty sixty thousand miles you're going to need new tires,
and so that's something you can kind of start to
plan ahead for. Or a new roof. You know, the
timeline of a roof is twenty five years, but you
can see if your roof is starting to get decrepit.
It's not typically this massive unknown I needed a full

(29:25):
roof replacement and I had no idea what was coming.
And some of those things we like to categorize as
an emergency, but it's usually just a lack of preparation,
a lack of planning, and Okay, but I want to
know too. Like one of the things that we get
questions on a lot, and we try to answer the
best we can is for folks who are paid irregularly, right,
folks who work for themselves, they run their own business,

(29:46):
or they're a contractor, like, how should they think about
budgeting when they're not sure how much money is coming
in month to month, whereas the person who gets paid
every two weeks, it's so much easier to know exactly
how much you're going to have on hand.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
Yeah, so never ever, ever budget with money that you
don't have on hand. Never forecast. Now, if you want
to dream and kind of plan big and start to say, like, oh,
what would it be like if I landed these three
other clients and I had sold these three houses or whatever. Yeah,
you want to do that kind of big picture planning
and dreaming, that's cool, But when it comes to decision

(30:20):
making about your spending, you only ever talk about money
that is in the account, not that you're going to
get that is there already. So for a variable income person,
there's there's that rule is number one, do not plan
with money that you do not have in hand. That's
that's the first. The second rule is, because your income

(30:41):
is variable, you have to build more buffer. And that's
kind of jumping to rule four, but you have to
essentially build more runway for yourself, just more breathing room
to allow yourself to roll with the fact that it's
it's not you know that it is irregular, and I
I can I mean, I've been down that road for

(31:02):
a years, you know, years and years where we had
a very variable income and it just is what it is.
So only ever plan with money you have and build
more buffer than your friend that's paid every two weeks
by the city, you know, and that's that's just your reality.
But once you do that and you start looking to
the future with rule two, and when there are flush months,

(31:24):
because variable income, a lot of times people are like, oh,
variable income is tricky because when I don't have any money,
I have a problem. They never mentioned how they had
a lot of money two weeks ago, you know, And
so it is just up and down, up and down.
And so when you are flush, when you are like,
oh my gosh, honey, we are rich, your first thought
is let's celebrate. We landed the big deal. Let's celebrate.

(31:44):
And yet cool do celebrate, but also recognize there are
going to be some lean times and do a little
bit of like Joseph in Egypt where it's like seven
years feast and famine, and start to look ahead and say, well,
you know what I'm going to fund half of our
mortgage for a month from now, and then three months
later you're like, I'm going to fund the rest of
our mortgage for next month, and I might fund half

(32:06):
of our mortgage for two months out. And we'll get
people that are running wine app that are on very
extremely variable incomes that have funded their kind of their
core you know, must have fixed expenses. They've funded them three,
four or five months out because they know that there
can be some lean times. And I'll just add one
little thing just to pitch for this. When you are

(32:29):
operating on a variable income and you've eliminated the variability
in your stress level tied to it life changing, Well.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
Isn't that the biggest reason to make this plan? Like
is there anything better?

Speaker 1 (32:44):
Is?

Speaker 2 (32:44):
Yeah, we want people to get their money together. We
want them to be confident in how they handle their money.
But the biggest problem when you're not confident with how
you handle your money and you are living paycheck to
paycheck is the stress. The rain cloud of stress that
hangs over you every single day and it's weighing you down.

Speaker 3 (32:58):
Yeah, and it makes your decision making in your business
and elsewhere. It really has a negative effect on it.
You start to be really you react really quickly. You
take clients that you actually don't want. You don't stop
jobs that you hate that are low profit, because you're
just taking anything you can. And we want you to
be choosy, We want you to be really selective. We

(33:19):
want you to be making the best decision for you
and your whole life. And all of that starts to
kind of be hurt when we're just so stressed out
and so reactive. So those two rules fix variable income.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
You kind of alluded to this, but we can. We'll
give you a chance to get back to rules three
and four. But we kind of touched on how that
variable income having more cash in hand. That's rule four
of the four rules, right, Like you're talking about aging
your money, you're about you're talking about, like you said,
only spending money that you have on hand, and in
some ways, like when it comes to that variable income,
you're kind of like pushing that money off.

Speaker 2 (33:51):
Into the future.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yes, yeah, you know it's money that you're earmarking for
future purchases, like you said, must have things like a mortgage,
paying for food. So we kind of covered forward. What's
the third rule that you think is important for folks
to keep in mind in order to have a successful budget.

Speaker 3 (34:06):
Yeah, and remember we're talking about really good decision making.
It's just a decision making framework to make sure that
spending lines up with priorities. And that's where the magic happens.
So if we're giving every dollar a job, and we're
also looking head to future dollars and we're giving those
jobs and we're weighing our priorities. The third rule, it's
interesting that we have to have it be a rule,
but we call it rolling with the punches, and it's

(34:26):
essentially saying, be flexible, change your mind if you need
to as new information comes in, change the plan. You
would alluded to, like a coach that can really capitalize
on someone with a lot of great raw talent. And
there's also the coach that has a really solid game plan.
And then as soon as the ball is hiked or

(34:47):
the tip off happens or whatever it is, as soon
as that happens, the coach is making adjustments and you're
seeing how your opponent is reacting to your plan, and
you're reacting to that plan. And it's this big game
of chess, which is another great example of reacting and
acting and so we want the plan that you've set
in place, this budget. We want you to be flexible.
Rigid budgets break, and flexible budgets last a long long time.

(35:10):
Too many people, first of all, they've never budgeted before,
and so they think that they're just going to suddenly
be this like wunder Kin, that's going to be like,
oh I got this nailed, and you don't. So you
want to give yourself lots of grace. And when we
talk about being flexible, give yourself the flexibility to say like,
oh I thought I wanted to do this with my money,
but then my friend called me and they said, hey,

(35:30):
should I you know, do you want to come out
to eat? And you're like, yes, I do. So reallocate
some money, shift things around, change your priorities a little bit.
You're good to go. You know. It's like you're planning
a beach day and then it starts to rain and
you think vacations don't work. You know, we don't like no,
it's just that it's raining. So you just make some
adjustments and keep rolling.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
Yeah, okay, so quick follow up here? Would you reckon
for folks to revisit their budget every single month and
make small tweaks. Is this like a quarterly thing? I
say this because because I recently my wife and I
had our big end of the year sort of.

Speaker 2 (36:04):
Meeting where we look back at from it.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
Yeah, we look back at the past year and we
make some of these larger changes. But yeah, I'd be
curious to hear your thoughts on making these adjustments, how
often they should be and to what extent.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
So it depending on how much progress you are trying
to make and how much room you have between how
much you spend and how much you make. So if
you have a lot of room in there, then you
don't need to be quite as engaged. You don't need
to be. It still still may serve you well. But
as people are really trying to transform their finances, maybe
they're trying to get out of debt, they're trying to

(36:37):
read some financial goals, they're maybe not in the same
spot you all are or your listeners are. They need
to be actively in their budget. I mean a lot
of people like to at least weekly sit down and say, okay,
where are we at. But when someone is first starting,
just be be in the budget every day. Replace Instagram
with scrolling through your categories and being like this looks good.

(36:58):
This looks good. And when you're about to spend money,
you want to look at the app and say, well,
can I spend the money here? And if you can
spend it joyfully, no guilt, record it or the bank,
maybe I'll send you the transaction we hook up with
the bank or whatever. But at the end of the day,
you want to be actively always kind of reallocating based
on how the spending is shaping up. As you get

(37:18):
more wiggle room in the budget, this becomes less necessary.
But if you are trying to make real, meaningful progress
with your finances, which means real behavior change, the more
frequently you are in the app kind of exercising a
muscle that's been dormant for a long time, the better
results you'll get.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
Yeah, that makes sense. It's like the longer you've been
doing anything, the better you get at it, the less
intense you have to be about focusing on it. I
want to ask you too. You just mentioned scrolling on Instagram,
which is a problem for a lot of people. When
it comes to that could be like a budget buster
in their lives. The rise of buy now, pay later,
or something that we have talked about a lot on
the show We hate it targeted ads to start getting

(37:57):
ads for nice boots now right exactly, they get them,
go get them exactly. It's like, sick guys, let's get
them to spend some of their money on this stuff.
So so it feels like everything around us is conspiring,
leading us towards making worse decisions, towards money outflowing you.
Do you feel like it's harder for folks to resist
impulse spending these days? And do you feel like that's

(38:18):
part of what's leading leading to like an inability for
folks to budget and to to come up with a
good plan for themselves.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
Yeah, it absolutely is. It's uh And I don't like
framing it as like you're you know, you're a victim
of the the man, the system is out to get you.
At the end of the day, I have to side
on the on the side of take responsibility, take action.
You can control your situation. You can change, because anything

(38:44):
else would be a disservice to a person that desires change. Right,
So you can change. You can do this now. Conspiring though,
I love that word because I mean I'm a profit
seeking business owner just like everyone else and all of
these all this funantilization of everything is for profit, and
you can say it's good or evil or whatever you want,

(39:06):
but it just is. So knowing that they're kind of
out to get you does help you maybe feel a
little bit of motivation to be like, oh no, you
don't and a little bit of like some gumption that
might come on. So totally that could be helpful, but
you also want to make sure that when you do
want to spend the money, that you enjoy it. So
I don't want to I don't want people to associate

(39:29):
spending as bad. It's not. It's just spending when it's
out of alignment with what you really want. That's where
we don't want to have all the misses.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
And again that's where the craft beer equivalent for us,
that's something we talk about all the time out of here.
That is something we hammer home, like find the things
that do move the needle for you, because there are
there's a lot of deprivation mentality in the personal finance
space and we don't want to contribute to that.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
Yeah, Jesse, I'd love to hear your thoughts on lifestyle
creep as well, because like, as.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
Individuals make more money, like I think it's fine.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
To use some of that to like give some folks
more breathing room to spend to maybe not have to
revisit their budget quite as often. But it can also
be a slippery slope, right, And so like, how do
you want people to react, say, when they get a
pay raise, when they see their income go up, how
would you encourage folks going back to a word that

(40:19):
you've already said, prioritize how it is that they spend.

Speaker 3 (40:21):
Yeah, I wish I had a better answer for this.
It's no different like if you get double the money
all of a sudden, you just got a sweet raise,
I mean awesome high five, Like, let's this is awesome,
you know, so you just got to go back and say, okay,
how much you know, what does this money need to
do before I'm paid again? And now you have more money,
and so you think, well, what does this this money

(40:42):
need to do before I'm paid again. I don't like
the phrase lifestyle creep. I used to use it all
the time. It's one of those things I mentioned early
on where it was like, oh, I know, you should
just always be spending less, and lifestyle creep makes it
sound like it snuck up on you. It just kind
of like it sounds creepy, and that seems negative, so
I don't like anything about it. I think when people

(41:03):
are talking about lifestyle creep they're really talking about the slow,
almost imperceptible misalignment of spending in priorities. And with that,
I'm like, I'm on it, Like, yes, let's get rid
of that. But if you're saying, hey, Jesse, you make
I don't know how much more than when Julie and
I when we first started wineapp I mean, gosh, I
don't even know, guys, ten twenty thirty times more. I mean,

(41:26):
it's in some insane amount. Are you saying that I
still should be living in the same basement apartment that
gave us respiratory issues the whole time?

Speaker 2 (41:34):
You know?

Speaker 3 (41:34):
And it's like, well, no, no, that's okay, you know,
but we just don't want.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
Lives to draw the line. Yeah, And it's like, where is.

Speaker 3 (41:39):
That line drawn? Well, I'm not going to draw the
line for your listeners or for you guys, and it's
up to everyone to especially when you're sharing finances, you
two hand in hand, you know, you grab the sharpie. Actually,
it's not a sharpie. It's something erasable and you draw
the line together and then you recognize that you're going
to revisit it regularly every year. I promote the idea
of a of a budget burned down, meaning you just

(42:02):
you drop all assumptions. It's like, should we have health insurance?
Should we not? You know, of course, get catastrophic health insurance?
Should we rent or should we buy? Should we have
five roommates or should we get rid of our five roommates?
Should we get rid of all of our cars? I mean,
just burn down every single assumption to kind of start fresh.
And it's a way to make sure that this lifestyle

(42:22):
creep or misalignment of priorities in spending hasn't happened to you.
I mean it will have happened, like it happens to
all of us all the time.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
Even allows you to rethink what you truly love and
what you truly want to spend money on, right, because
we get used to doing things and we continue those
things in perpetuity, and we might say, wait a second,
the second car doesn't matter to us anymore, but the
trip to Europe does, and so I want to strip
that out. And that's a big, massive change, but probably
in reality the same amount of money that you're going
to spend in a year. So I think that's a

(42:51):
really really cool concept. Yeah, Jesse, I want to hear
your updated thoughts on debt because you just talked about
how some you talked to at the beginning about reading
Dave Ramsey and how maybe that is influenced review of debt.
But I wonder if that's changed. We'll get to a
couple questions on that with Jesse Meekham right after this.

(43:16):
Right we are back.

Speaker 1 (43:16):
We are talking about just the different ways that you
can budgets, the different strategies to take, whether or not
you are using a specific software or not. And Jesse,
just before the rake, Joel brought up debts.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
Let's talk about that.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
I'm curious to hear your thoughts on credit card specifically,
right just because I mean, you know you're massively pro budget.
Does that mean you are anti credit card? What is
the what's the wide ap approach to credit cards?

Speaker 3 (43:42):
Yeah, so I'll start with the wine ab approach first.
We are agnostic as to the spending instrument you use. Now,
that means that we've done our best in the software
to create a system where a credit card acts like cash,
because we've talked a lot about finite resources, and a
credit card lets you not acknowledge finite resources, and people

(44:06):
can say all they want about well, I do this
and I always pay it off. But at the end
of the day, you are spending money and it's not
money you have. Now you could say, oh no, it's
in the checking account, but the cash has not left
your system yet, so you just straight up that's how
it is. Now. What we've done in WINEAP has tried
to make it act like cash, where if you spend

(44:28):
on the credit card, let's say hundred bucks for groceries,
no cash left your system, but we take one hundred
dollars from your grocery category and we move it to
your credit card payment category, so that when that you
know when the credit cards due or whatever. It's on
auto pay, if you're doing it, well, it just the
cash is there. So we've done our best to say, hey,

(44:49):
this is this is like cash. Treat it like cash. Now.
If someone's coming off of a lot of credit card problems,
I say, just don't use them for a while, like, hey,
they bit you already, Like let's not let's not mess
with those for a while. They are more complicated than
just swiping with a card and having money go out.

Speaker 2 (45:07):
This psychological element, absolutely.

Speaker 3 (45:09):
The reconciliation is more complicated. The bank transactions come in
and do weird things. Sometimes a refund will hit and
it hit from it hit two months before, and you'll
see the refund go back, and so you'll be sitting
there with your software like what happened. It makes it
more complicated. That's bit me in the past. So I
say that all to be like, we're trying to get
the credit card to not be a credit card in

(45:30):
our system, which is funny, which just tells you how
negative they really are because we're trying to I don't
know whatever. The opposite of negate is this negative thing.
And that's just it's telling my personal experiment this year,
and this is this is early days. But I didn't
cut our credit card or whatever. I threw it in

(45:51):
a drawer, but I moved all of our spending off
of what was basically our primary spending card for Julie
and I and we are using our debit cards. My theory,
my theory, and I don't care about the rewards or
the points like there's one way to tell. This is
a little bit of a diversion. There's one way to
tell if banks like the rewards or don't like the rewards,

(46:14):
and it's that they keep pushing the rewards.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
So it's the fact that they exist, they.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
Exist, they exist, and that banks are wildly profitable institutions.
So you can say, oh, Jesse, I'm not a sucker.
I don't pay those rewards, but they still get paid
every time you swipe. Every time you swipe, a bank
get a banker gets its wings or whatever. However that
goes right. So when when you swipe, you are giving
the bank money because they get a cut. They get

(46:41):
a little cut. And there are a few people that
there's a processor that gets a cut, there's a gateway
that gets a cut, and there's a bank that gets
a cut in somebody. There's another bank that gets a cut,
like the issuer, and then the holder. There's weird words
for it, but like so many people have their fingers
in this pie. That's these transaction fees that we all
pay that the merchant pays on our behalf, that we
all end up paying because the merchant's paying it. Right,

(47:02):
if you assume that you're in a fairly competitive market,
so in that instance, we are paying it. So when
someone says, well I get one percent back, well, the
bank got more than one percent for you swiping, so
there's still totally okay with this. So that's one way
to view it, is just like, oh, maybe that the
banks are okay with this, not just okay, but that

(47:23):
they love it. So that's one thing. The other thing
you could do is say, well, who pays for all
of these rewards? If it's not me, well, it's someone
that's paying late fees and interest, And so you might
approach it from an altruistic sense, which, honestly, to be
totally frank, it doesn't like move me. I'm necessarily like,
I'm going to do this because I don't want someone
else to have to pay for my reward. It doesn't.

(47:43):
But I know a lot of people that for whom
that really is the moving factor, and they just say,
you know, altruistically, I don't want someone else that's struggling
to be paying my reward fees. Also an interesting view.
There's a third view that I'm curious about for my
year of experiment, and that is is we've always talked
about how a credit card is handled in wine app

(48:03):
as if it's a debit card, as if it's just cash,
so we kind of feel good about it. And so
we're like, whenever you want something, you just will adjust
the budget to make sure it happens. And if you're
using a credit card or not, it's fine, but you're
always kind of saying, I want something, I make the
budget allow me to have that thing done. My theory
is that the credit card specifically might be upstream and

(48:26):
be actually affecting our wants. And this is early for me,
so I'm gonna I'm putting myself out there in this way,
not fully formed thoughts. But if the credit card, if
the use of a credit card actually affects your wants
center like your dopamine hit center, and there's good research
to say that it does, then it's actually affecting your wants,
and then you're forcing your plan to adjust to this

(48:48):
newly influenced want that came about because of credit card usage.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
So man, that's like another level deeper right there.

Speaker 3 (48:55):
Yeah, And so I'm just curious about it. So I'll
be back next year or whatever, and I'll let you
guys know that I'm I'm like filthy rich now because
I don't use it. You just you know that's not
gonna be the case. But I will say one other
one other win is it's far simpler. It's just far simpler.
Just to have one instrument that you use. Fraud protection
on debit cards is as good as it's ever been,
So that one really doesn't hold water anymore, like it

(49:16):
did you know fifteen years ago?

Speaker 2 (49:18):
Well, you know the points guy, if he was to
talk to you, Jesse, he'd be like, I guess you
just don't want that for your trip to Heati broh,
Like what's your problem?

Speaker 3 (49:23):
You are telling, Well, you're talking to a guy that
has literally millions of points, because because we spend in
the business where we know in business you don't even
you can't even have corporate spending without it being on
a some kind of a credit system. And so even
if you try and avoid it, you you almost can't.
It's like built into all of your corporate spending. Employees
have cards and things. So yeah, you're talking to a

(49:45):
guy that has loads of points, and you know, does
it make us spend more on the business?

Speaker 2 (49:49):
Man?

Speaker 3 (49:49):
I sure hope not, because those millions of miles are
way more expensive than being able to spend less. The
fact that the banks love it so much. That's as
my eighth grade you know, as my eighth grade daughter
would say, that sounds a little sus you know, Yeah,
no it does.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
Yeah. I totally get where you're coming from. And I
think it is an interesting thing to consider. And I
think you make some good points, and it's worth thinking
about whether or not the we're being short sighted in
credit card usage, and I think I think some people,
a lot of people probably are. But I want to
know too about maybe your take on like a bigger
debt question, like good debt versus bad debt. Some people

(50:25):
would say, we've had, for instance, Michelle Singletary, who writes
for the Washington Post too we respect a ton who's
been writing about personal finance for decades, and she says
there is no such thing as good debt. And then
other people would say, oh, my gosh, you have a
mortgage at two and a half percent and inflation's you know,
running hot at seven percent right now, you better just
hold onto that thing. That thing's good for you. Do
you have a take on.

Speaker 3 (50:45):
That, Yeah, it's more of a personal take. I paid
off my mortgage as fast as I could when I
when we bought our first house, and then we sold
that house and we bought a more expensive house, and
I had a mortgage on that for a few years
and paid that. I just wanted to pay it off
as fast as I could, So then I was sitting
mortgage free with the first one. So I kind of

(51:07):
jumped ahead and we bought a town home as like
a rental, and so I had a I put fifty
percent down. This was back when real estate didn't cost
you like your firstborn. This is like twenty twelve or
something like that, and so I got a mortgage on that,
and it was kind of my own. It was our
only mortgage. And then I bought another town home and
I ended up with with four townhomes that were all

(51:30):
over this period of years with very modest mortgages, totally
cash flowing. At the end of the day, after we'd
paid off our personal you know, our second home that
we had bought again, I still ended up just paying
off those, even the real estate. So I just don't
want to be stressed like I and that's that it's
worth so much to me, and I do benefit from

(51:51):
a business that's profitable, and so it's not like I'm
trying to make real estate my livelihood where I'm really like,
I got to eke out financial, real financial return from this.
And so in that instance, I can be more hand
wavy about the financial upside to leverage. But push comes
to shove as far as personal goes, I just I've

(52:14):
never liked it. I feel like it it messes with
your decision making in a real way and not in
a good way. And so I like the idea of
paying cash for stuff, saving up for things. And I've
just never seen anyone say, you know, gosh, I really
wish I were in more debt. I just never hear
anyone drop that line. So I guess I agree with

(52:37):
your friend of the Washington Post. I don't really think
that there's good debt. I think if a lot of
people could own their home free and clear, they absolutely would,
regardless of how crazy low, artificially low, like crazy low,
those interest rates are. And that's that in and of itself,
is a financial camara, almost how low they've been for

(52:57):
you know, it's like our age that you know, I'm
guessing we're all about the same age. We think it's
normal to be at that rate, you know, two, three, four,
And that's nothing, that's nothing normal about that. It's just
that it's always known for the last twenty years.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
Yeah, we've been talking about Oh I saw an article
today interest rates are so high and it's curbing the
housing market. It's like they're not high historically. They're high
compared to what we've experienced lately over the past, you know,
a few years, but they're not historically high. They're they're
still pretty low. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:24):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (53:25):
And we were talking about, you know, winnapp specifically, the
software that you founded. How can folks learn more about
winnap And I'm actually curious too, y'all specifically you have
a thirty four day free trial, So A where can
folks learn about wynapp? And b why why is it
a thirty four day trial?

Speaker 3 (53:45):
Yeah, so they can learn about it at winam dot
com and take classes, jump on YouTube, watch the videos.
It's a different it's a really different way of thinking
about money. So I would hope that they wouldn't just
be like, oh, I used to use quickened, so I'll
just replace it like it's different, And so you really
want to make sure you see where the thinking is

(54:06):
coming from and then look at how the tool integrates
with that. As far as the thirty four day trial,
we want you to see how it works with a
month rolling over. So no matter when you start, if
with a thirty four day trial, you'll always have a
month plus a little to kind of see like, oh
I set aside money this month, that money is available
next month, and they can start to see that rule

(54:27):
too in action and things starting to you know, cash
starting to build up. It's liberating for people to see that.
So yeah, thirty four day trial all day long helps
people kind of make that early connection on what it's
going to be like to save up for stuff, you know,
like save now, buy later instead of whatever we have.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
Oh gosh, let's make that a trend. Let's let that
catch on seriously. And it's always free for students too.

Speaker 3 (54:50):
Write yeah, we give a free year for students, so okay,
graduate student, high school student. And also we launched wine
app together. So if you're listening to this and and
you're like, oh man, this would be great for me,
but also for like my teenage kid, you can buy
you know, you buy subscription. It's one hundred bucks a year,
so it's it's certainly reasonable. But then you can have

(55:11):
I think up to five other people and we intend
for this to be like family, you know, close family,
but you could put your kids on it. You don't
have to pay an extra subscription fee things like that.
Once your kid flies the nest, which you hope happens,
they get the free year and then they can go
off on their way. So honestly, we really want the
kids to be hooked on this like we wanted to

(55:33):
just to think, oh, yeah, this is how you do money.
You save up for stuff, you evaluate your priorities, you
spend guilt free. We want to check all those boxes
for these kids.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
I love it. Jesse, thank you so much for joining
us on the show today. Man. We really appreciated it.

Speaker 3 (55:46):
Yeah, I appreciate it all right, Joel.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
What a great conversation man, talking about something that is
a fundamental building block when it comes to your personal finances.
Talking with Jesse about budgeting, but specifically why NAB software
that he pioneered, that he founded. What was your big
takeaway from our conversation with him today.

Speaker 2 (56:05):
Well, one, I feel like you love budgets more than
you love me. That's your best friend, and so I
feel like this was probably like your favorite episode and everything.
Everything he said. I was just like, yes, I can
see over there, you're just like you're jeweling a little
bit as he talked, Yeah, you're really into it. So no,
I really appreciate every all the he was diving into,
like the whole time, like the time space, money continue

(56:26):
very much nerding out. It's one of those things I
was going to say, this is one of those things
that it's hard for us to conceptualize, but software can
help us actually understand how that's working and then make
plans accordingly. Sure, but like our feeble human brains have
a hard time with that. But the software actually really
I think helps drive that home for people, which is
something we need to wrap our minds around if we're
gonna you know, save and invest effectively. But I think

(56:47):
my big takeaway from this combo with nugget Yeah, he said,
knowing that you'll run out of money helps crystallize your
priorities and the realities that we're all going to run
out of money at some point depends on how quickly,
depends on how much money we're making and how fast
it's going out. But knowing that it's going to run
out is going to help you crystallize those priorities, and
so what is it that is most important to you?

(57:10):
It's all about trade offs, right, And a lot of
people look at our family and they're like, you guys,
you guys are like, make enough money to afford two
nice cars, what do you do? I'm driving one old,
beat up junkie minivan. It's like, we just don't care.
But knowing that it's going to run out helps us
crystallize our priorities, and our priorities lie elsewhere. Someone on
Twitter today said, what if you just got a million dollars,

(57:30):
which one thing you would not upgrade? What's one thing
you would not spend more money on? And I'm like,
my car, I just don't care enough and I would
rather see that money go elsewhere. You think about the Rivian,
but you wouldn't pull the truck. Oh, I think about it.
I'd lustily look at pictures on the internet, but then
after that I would say no. And so I just
think that's really important for you to know because we
all everybody has limits, right, and there's only so many
yachts that Jeff Bezos can even buy. Well that's probably

(57:53):
bad example, but like, we all are going to run
out at some point, and so let that crystallize in
your mind the pose of ways that you can use
your budget to funnel money towards the areas it really matter.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
Nice man, I like that mine has to do with
how it is you spend as well. He was basically
at some point earlier. I don't know his exact words,
but he said that essentially, you shouldn't have any spending.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
On your books that you feel guilty about.

Speaker 1 (58:19):
Essentially, everything that you spend money on, it should be
something that you are maybe not necessarily excited about, but
it shouldn't be something that you feel bad for doing.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
And that's because hopefully you have.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
Aligned how it is that you are spending your money
with the ways that you want to spend your money.
And so if there are ways that you don't want
to spend your money, well certainly it could have arisen
from previous decisions that you made, maybe that were poor decisions.
So if you're making like credit card payments or payments
towards something that you have changed your mind on, well
that might be a case where things aren't aligned, but

(58:52):
that's because you made a you know, you made a
poor decision in the past about pushing those expenses into
the future.

Speaker 2 (58:57):
As opposed to push all done. Push.

Speaker 1 (58:59):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely supposed to pushing your money into the future.
But yeah, I think if you do have something in
your life that you are spending on every single month,
and not only is it not providing you you joy
and it's not providing you value, but you feel like
it's something that like you have some sense of guilt
associated with that, I would encourage folks out there to
stop and to think why is it that you feel

(59:20):
that way, because it can It might either be something
super simple, It could be a practical reason. Is that,
oh well this is a category maybe that we shouldn't
be spending this money in this way. And so not
only is it, can it be fixed in a very
practical way and that you just change how it is
that you're spending But maybe it could lead to you
taking some time to self reflect and to think, why
is it that I don't you know that I don't

(59:41):
feel great about how it is I'm spending my.

Speaker 2 (59:43):
Money in this way.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
I think it could potentially lead to change in both areas.
But I like that that you should not have any
spending on your books that you feel guilty but I
love too.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
When you talked about the budget burned down and it's
this way to like completely reassess everything, because you might
have just listened in your like big old reset. There's
a bunch of stuff that I really want to do
that I can't actually afford. But I got all these
other old expenses laying around in my life, and if
I could just cut a couple of those out, then
maybe I could actually spend more money, money more freely
on the things that I really actually care about. And

(01:00:13):
so you might have three cars in your driveway and
you're like, listen and budget burned down. I'm gonna sell
one of them and I'm gonna rent the other one
out on tour. What if we only had one? Yeah,
wait a minute, those are the cars. Yeah, But if
you just there is that sort of thing that happens
to all of us, inertia bias. We start, we've done something,
we kind of keep it going in perpetuity. But the
budget burned down allows you to reassess everything, and I

(01:00:35):
think that that can be helpful. You might not want
to change a bunch of stuff, but you might you
might want to change a lot this year, so it's
worth of thinking about. All right, let's get back to
to the beer that we had on this this episode.
This was Igneous IPA by Hutton and Smith. Or your
thoughts on this one? It's really good, man. This is
a dry hopped IPA.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
These guys are out of Chattanooga, and.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
Yeah, it was tasty. It was dry hopped.

Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
Oftentimes you expect some of those I don't know, I
guess I saw dry hopped, and I saw the color
of the cannon.

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
I was expecting like a New England like dry hot beer.

Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
But it definitely was kind of more in that traditional
IPA vests and it had some some of those sharper
notes that you get from a dry hot beer.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
A little more piny, a little more bitter.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
Yeah yeah, but not like over the top with like
that West Coast resin. It's still had some sweetness that
still had a multi backbone to it as well.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
But definitely enjoyed it. What were your thoughts? Yeah on
this one? Similar Basically it tasted really like a classic IPA.
It reminded me of like beer some of those olds
here and about it I pas that are just yeah, classics,
but they don't make them like that very much anymore.
Like the tendency is toward the juicy haze bombs, and
so this one has that more those like more piny,
traditional bitter characteristics torpedo a little bit, but not over

(01:01:44):
the top either. So yeah, I liked it. I liked it.
It's and it's nice to have a change up in
I pas because we do drink so many of those
orange juice IPAs, Yeah, big juicy one, So it's fun
to try something, you know, a little more old school.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
Absolutely all right, Well, we'll make sure to link to
whyab where you can learn more about you need to
budget there budgeting software. You can find that link up
in our show notes at howdomoney dot com. Joel, that's
going to be it for this episode, Buddy, until next time,
best Friends Out, Best Friends Out,

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Hosts And Creators

Joel Larsgaard

Matthew Altmix

Popular Podcasts

Monster: BTK

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Budgeting Like A Beast w/ Jesse Mecham (Bestie) #926