Episode 166- Four Simple Rules For Successful Budgeting, Why You Need A Budget & Entrepreneurship Lessons w/ Jesse Mecham

Jamila Souffrant 0:00

You're listening to the Journey to Launch Podcast. Budgeting changed my life and finances so in this episode, we're gonna be talking about the Four Simple Rules for Successful Budgeting and Why You Even Need a Budget with Jesse Mecham.

Recording 0:17

Welcome to the Journey to Launch Podcast with your host Jamila Souffrant. As a money expert who walks her talk, she helps brave journeyers like you get out of debt, save, invest, and build real wealth. Join her on the journey to launch to financial freedom in five, four, three, two, one.

Jamila Souffrant 0:44

Hey, hey, hey journeyers. Welcome to the Journey to Launch Podcast. I'm super excited to have you here as I always am. Now, if you're all caught up on the podcast on the episodes, then you know it is July 2020. If you're listening to this in real time, we are celebrating the three year anniversary this month because I launched the podcast three years ago in July. And so I've been celebrating all month and it's been an exciting month, we just closed doors to the Money Launch Club. So if you are a new member, that's the online community I created to help journeyers like yourself, people who wanted more than just the podcasts more, who wanted more, more resources, more tools and the community. So I created the Money Launch Club to do that. And we closed doors last week, and I'm so excited for all the new members that joined we won't be opening up doors again until probably 2021. So I'm going to be focusing on the amazing members inside. And if you want to join us if you want to get some in the know stuff in the meantime, go to moneylaunchclub.com and sign up for the waitlist.

But there also have been some really cool behind the scenes things happening. Maybe I'll share that at the end of this episode or I might create a whole new episode about it but I'm really excited about your Journey to Launch is going, where I'm going, how I am really making my visions come through with what I want this to be, so I'm excited about that. Now if you're all caught up and you've been listening you know that YNAB you need a budget has been sponsoring the podcast all month, which has been amazing because I literally use this budgeting tool YNAB when I first started. When I first started to budget and get on this journey years ago, right like, right when I kind of started Journey to Launch I used you need to budget the app. I still use that today for my personal budget is what I recommend to people when they ask me hey, what budgeting app should I should should I try? I always recommend YNAB. So it's been amazing that I was able to partner with them that they were able to come on and sponsor the podcast for this month.

So with that I'm really excited because I get to talk to the founder of YNAB, Jesse Mecham. He's coming on the podcast today. And let me tell you this conversation. It was so enlightening for me, because yes, we're going to be talking about budgeting and the four rules that YNAB is based on. But what I really loved about this conversation is talking to Jesse about how he grew YNAB from a spreadsheet. That was a concept in 2003 and 2004, to what YNAB is today that has over 100 employees and his changing lives like it is a we didn't get into the specific numbers of how much this company probably makes, but I'm sure it's millions. And I was so impressed and also inspired by his vision. And as someone who was in the personal finance space and has dreams and a vision for what I want Journey to Launch to be, it was really inspiring. So I think from this episode, you'll get a lot. You'll get a lot about budgeting so we talk about the mechanics of it like the why you should try it out why you need a budget, but in also the entrepreneurship journey that he went on. So I think you'll get a lot a lot from this episode, and I'm excited for you to hear it.

Now if you want to get YNAB a try for free for 34 days, no credit card required, you can go to youneedabudget.com/journey. One of the things that Jesse mentioned in the interview is that they actually do live classes. Live classes every day that you can sign up for they're free. So even before you do the trial, if you just want to check it out, and I think it's between, it's like under 30 minutes, you can see exactly what this thing is like what makes it so powerful. So I would definitely recommend going to youneedabudget.com/journey to give it a try.

By the way, if you want to watch this interview, you can go to my YouTube channel. This is one of the episodes that I actually recorded the video to this interview. So you can go to my YouTube channel, search the episode show notes, or go to YouTube put in Journey to Launch.

Okay, journeyers I'm really excited because I have so this whole month we've been celebrating the three year anniversary month of the podcast and we had a special sponsor, YNAB come in and basically help celebrate with us. Not only that I actually am a true user of YNAB. I've been talking about YNAB since the beginning of starting Journey to Launch as my budgeting app. So it's amazing now that I get to talk to the founder of a YNAB, Jesse Mecham. So hi, Jesse.

Jesse Mecham 5:16

Hi. Thanks for having me on Jamila.

Jamila Souffrant 5:18

Yeah. So before you press record, I was telling Jesse that I want to kind of talk about all the things because I'm so intrigued by his journey into entrepreneurship, building such an amazing company, but then also budgeting, like I do want to talk about budgeting. And because key, it's a key tool for anyone wishing to reach a financial goal or financial independence, which is what we talk about here. So I guess first, Jesse, can you talk about like how you came to come up with the concept of YNAB? How did you even start to get this thing going?

Jesse Mecham 5:51

Yeah, well, I it started Well, before I ever have had the thought to make a business out of it, for sure. But my wife and I, we got married pretty young. I was let's see, I just turned 22, a couple months before when we got married. So we were very young, my wife wrapped up school, I still had about three years of school left to get a master's degree in accounting. So she was making the money. And we were just, we were just trying to like, get through school, I was working part time. She was a social worker. So she wasn't making a lot of money, but it was enough to support us. You know, we had not a lot of needs really, just tuition books, essentially. But then we decided we should have a baby, which is great. Except we both just were like, we really want it when this baby comes. We just want her to be able to just focus on the baby, be able to leave the job completely.

So we ended up just kind of staring at a situation where I thought, okay, at this point when our first, Porter, when Porter arrives, we'll have two years of school left. I can work part time, but I was trying to figure out how do we make it through I didn't want to borrow money at all. I didn't want to borrow any money for school and I'd had a little bit of a scholarship that was helping get us through. But at the end of the day, I had one an idea once where I was like, okay, Julie, we need about $350 per month, Julie is my wife, and we need to get $350 per month is like our shortfall. How do we make that up? I can't work more. And I said, well, maybe I could sell this little spreadsheet that she and I've been using a manager money. Maybe I could just sell this, maybe other people would want it. I've put probably 100 hours into this spreadsheet and tweaked and I felt of course, if you've built a you always feel like it's the most amazing thing ever, you know. So, and she said, she said I don't think anyone would buy it. And that was that for like, like four days. And then I was riding the bus home and I was with a buddy we live in the same neighborhood. And I floated the idea to him. And he was selling something online. I can remember what it was on the time. This is so early days and he's like, oh, I sell I sell something online. I could show you how to do it.

So that he told me I should and so I went Back to GIS, I think I'm going to give it a shot and we kind of gave it some rails, you know, like, we're only gonna spend this much time on it. And we're only gonna spend $63 to get it started. That was one of our, our things. So I just started working on getting it out there and put it out there in September of 2004 a couple months after Porter was born. And it didn't really do a lot for about eight months. But it was just enough, like a few little sales here and there, where I thought, oh, this is kind of fun and interesting. And then I rewrote our sales copy. And instead of talking all about the spreadsheet and how it calculated things, I started talking about the rules that the spreadsheet was built upon. And then sales started, started to happen. And still we're talking small, you know, but for us, it was a big deal. And, and so it was, that's something that stuck with me forever is people weren't willing looking for a tool, they were looking for a way to think about something. And that's what the four rules really have done. And we've just, we've stuck with that we just teach those rules. And I feel like we'll teach them forever. And the tool gets better and better. It's much better than a spreadsheet now, but we got rid of that quite quite quickly thereafter. But, but the rules have really been the magic.

Jamila Souffrant 9:22

And I want to definitely get into the rules. But there's so many questions and comments that came up while you were talking. So you launched it in 2004. Like this spreadsheet?

Jesse Mecham 9:31

Yeah.

Jamila Souffrant 9:32

And it was just like a downloadable file someone should go to and download. Remember the price point back then for it?

Jesse Mecham 9:38

Well, here's here's the lesson for any entrepreneur. I launched it at $9.95. And nobody bought it for two weeks. And I was running out of my $63 because we were doing ads like Google Ad Words had just launched pretty recently and things were really cheap. Like you could get a click for five cents, but no one was buying and I talked to that same friend who had told me I should sell it. I said nobody's nobody's buying it. He said, oh, it's too cheap. No one's gonna buy it if it's that cheap. And I was like, how does that work? That's backward, you know? He said, no, no, they're gonna buy it. So I put a one in front of the nine. So we sold it for $19.95. And I changed the little button. And I got my first sale that next day. So, so much of the time, we, if we're the creator of it, we love that thing. But we also devalue it right out of the gate. And so I word of caution to any any creator of any kind, you tend to just not think what you're offering is really that special. And it is, and a lot of the time you have to significantly increase your price to even land at an appropriate market price. I was I was low, like, I was so low, people weren't even thinking there was value there. And then you know, you double the price and things happen.

Jamila Souffrant 10:49

Yeah, there's so many lessons here about scale too, right? Like if you don't have a lot of sales, you'll you'll be at a loss. You won't be making profit at all selling something too cheap, but what sticks out to me what I love about YNAB and what I've tried to do with my brand is because you know, okay, there are probably a million budgeting sheets and a million blogs about budgeting and reaching financial freedom and which is all great. But what I find is that there's like a story and soul behind your brand admission, like when you talk from that angle, like that's what connects people because again, they can find this stuff for free, or put it together elsewhere for cheap. But you just talked about sale, like a sales copy. Right? So like changing it to not just be about, hey, here's what you get, just budget template you get, here's what you're unlocking in your life. Here's like the strategies or methods or methodologies behind it. And I think that's key for anyone, especially entrepreneurs, people trying to sell something. Now, the other thing is, you know, in the money space, do you think it's harder to sell things? When you talk about money and saving money? I've found that maybe it's more internal insecurity, but when I talk about Okay, should save money which I've made a conscious effort to stop saying spend less than less, but more optimize, optimize, spend what? Like what matters? Because then when I turn around and say, Well, here's something that can help you, but it cost this much, or it's an investment. I find that sometimes people are just like, wait, I'm trying to save money. Do you have any thoughts around the that kind of thing that happens for us?

Jesse Mecham 12:20

Yeah, it's interesting. This is just like personal Jesse talking. It bothers me when someone's like, you should invest in this pair of jeans. I'm like, No, you use that word wrong. You know, we're not investing in jeans. So I feel like sometimes we'll take that too far, where you're like, oh, invest in this new car, you don't invest in a car, you straight up spend money on a car, that is you know, the end. But in what you're pitching is, to me that is when you say invest, then you would expect ROI, and that that's the contender. And so you just have to paint that picture of return. What is the return here? The return doesn't have to be dollars. If we could magically wave a wand and when you started YNAB not to be not to make it sound creepy. But if someone was doing YNAB, and then we suddenly could see how many little spats did they have with their significant other and to see that number go down. That's ROI, right? Or to see that there's literally sleeping better. That's ROI. So we have to make sure that you get to the core of what you are doing for your customer. And there is there's tremendous value there. Tremendous value. It reminds me of the time Julie and I we used to regularly kind of go toe to toe on. Hey, Julie, we should spend less on groceries. She's a phenomenal cook. And so it I was kind of speaking out of both sides of my mouth. I'd be like, oh man, I love what you cook, but also, we should spend less so that wasn't very cool. But one day she she taught me this killer lesson like 10 years into our marriage. And I said Why? We could spend less here we could do some coupon and she's like, Listen, for me. A successful grocery trip is, at the time we had four kids. She says I go in and out as fast as I can. And the kids don't melt down that that was her value. So here I am trying to pitch like saving 20 bucks here, 30 bucks here, that wasn't even on her radar. So you have to really understand that the job that she was doing, there was just a smooth experience. That's what she's paying for with that grocery budget with a little bit of room where she doesn't have to stare at two different cans and figure out the per unit value and all that. It was a completely different value proposition for her. So when you're pitching something, you got to be crystal clear about the value that you're that you're delivering. For me what we're really delivering is better financial decision making, so that you do the things you should and also so that you do things you want. Those two things need to be happening. There's room for lots of people in that market.

Jamila Souffrant 14:50

I totally agree. And sometimes that is hard to measure, but it's sometimes if he hasn't so invaluable, like it's so valuable that you can't measure it and being someone in the space And earning money from it. It's, it's up to us to figure out how to communicate that properly to our audience. You know, as you were talking, I don't mean to like, um, challenge you, Jesse. But what it is. But when you you know, I think some people do say, and again, I'm all about if you want to buy the car or the jeans, whatever your choice like you say you spend on what you want, but they would probably argue and say, but this also maybe made me happier. Maybe it's if it's surface level, it's still happier, like there is a ROI, maybe not money because, you know, the cars depreciate, but I can see how someone can say, hey, but like that is actually an investment because it actually makes me happier.

Jesse Mecham 15:37

I like that because then you really, if you push the lens through that idea that push spending through that lens, I should say, then you would really say what is the ROI for these jeans. And maybe you can be more intentional and aware of what it is that you're actually looking for. So if you're just kind of, you know, some Instagram influencer says I love these jeans, tap here and you're like tap, tap, tap. It's like, well, I would I don't know about that. That's more impulse, less investment. But if you're if you're sitting there like, what is my ROI and you're really thoughtful, that's a good point. Because then we're we're being real about what it is we're looking for. In that instance, you're not looking for jeans, maybe you're looking for, and I'm way out of my league here. Maybe you're looking for like, you know, it makes you feel good. It makes you feel a little like, I don't think I'm speaking out of turn here to say, like, everyone, when you feel good in your clothes, you feel good. Like there's a factor there. So I could see that maybe I spoke too soon on investing in jeans. Now I'm trying to think of an example where you couldn't potentially just be really intentional about any purchase and I don't know, maybe so I like to challenge me. That's good.

Jamila Souffrant 16:40

Yeah. And I think that's the amazing thing about when we talk about money and why the conversation needs to switch at a certain point, right? If someone is coming to me or coming to YNAB and trying to figure things out, and they want all the things right like they want the nice car, the nice house, which is all fine, no judgment there, but then they're swimming in debt and other things like yes, you know, like, there is a priority, perhaps in how you invest. So we're investing in YNAB, right? It's a cost. It's you can try it for free for a certain time. But there's an investment to continue, or investing in certain things like that can help you get the tools or have the tools and the support to then be able one day to afford the car afford the jeans to get out of debt. Like that's where you should start first. So there there is an order of operations, I think in prioritizing what you should be doing, but I think it could be done eventually if you do it the right way.

Jesse Mecham 17:35

Absolutely. And I mean, part of our brand play, and part of probably just my personality that's kind of permeated through that over the years, is I really don't care what people spend their money on. I just want to make sure that they're being honest with themselves about it. So we did this thing for a while where we would call debt stories on the podcast and I would interview people and they would tell their story of getting out of a crazy amount of debt maybe a small amount of debt, but like all these varying stories, different income levels, and I would always ask them the question, What did you do to get out like, you know, you were in all this debt, then suddenly you're throwing 500 bucks a month at it extra or whatever, even more. And I never wanted to say like, did you do this? Did you do that? Because I didn't want to seed an idea or in any way influence their answer. So I would just ask, where did you find the money to pay off debt? And I've probably only done 30 of these interviews. So maybe that's not statistically significant, but they would, every time without exception. Each person has said they eat out less. And it's the first time where I've thought, should we tell people to not eat out as much? Or maybe we can just keep doing the same thing. Just telling them get in front of your money, start weighing your priorities, and then it's a natural conclusion. I think what you're telling me is order of operations I think most people can intuitively start to see the correct order. As soon as they're willing to tackle it, look at it, assess it. So people are really their own best financial adviser if you can give them good information.

Jamila Souffrant 19:16

Right. I think awareness is the first step. It's like the first thing, like even being aware that things are not going as well and being able to admit it to yourself. So awareness and then admitting it because you can be aware of it and say, I'm just going to ignore it, I'm not gonna do anything. But understanding that there's an opportunity to cost for everything that you do. So you can write like you can then if that makes you feel good in that moment, and you're consciously spending on it. And you could have been also put that money somewhere else, like paid off debt, like as long as you know, the opportunity cost like, okay, if I do this thing, it's going to take me this much longer to accomplish this goal that I set, and you may very well decide at that moment. You know what that matters to me most at this point, I'll take that risk, or I'll do it fine, but it's when you don't know and you just kind of doing it and then you were like, wait, I can't what's happening, you don't know what's happening.

Jesse Mecham 20:03

That's the key in that instance, where you have a fully aware individual. And they're saying I could pay off debt a little faster, or I could take this weekend trip with my family. And they decide to do the weekend trip. In that moment, they've made the correct decision. And that sounds a little counter and I hate debt, like, I don't have debt. I've, anytime I've had any I've, I've paid it off, I'm done. I just never, I never would want to touch it. But that's so personal to me. And in other instances, you have people that they just think what's gotta be this exact order. And I just don't think that's the case. There's way too much going on, for us to be able to just sit outside of that person's head and say, oh, well, they should have done this. They should have done that. If you have a fully aware individual, and they're making that call, then I would say that's the right call. Now, you could probably start to come up with exceptions and things but I think as an operating principle, We would say if that is a fully aware individual, fully functioning, okay, they made the right call. They recognized, I can't keep up with this pace of debt pay down. If we don't get a little bit of a breather, this pace is not sustainable, we need to slow down a little bit. All those things, to me are extremely valid and better for the long term, more often than not. And I've seen it happen too often, where people have just decided, I'm going to go all out, I'm going to go crazy, and they flame out. And then we've seen the flip side, where you have people that have just kind of said, I know I've got 30 grand in student loans, and I know it's gonna take me 10 years to pay it off. But they feel good. They like their pace, they're making progress. How are we supposed to mess that up?

Jamila Souffrant 21:42

It's almost just like, knowing I always related back to this idea of being in traffic and you see all these red lights in front of you. And if you don't have a GPS system, you know, you don't know how long it's gonna take you to get home so you're more anxious because maybe you have things to do. But if you have a GPS system, that's the least telling you even with the traffic, it's gonna take you two hours. Not that it makes you feel any better. That's gonna take you two hours. But you know, it's going to take you two hours.

Jesse Mecham 22:06

Yeah, there's a lot of peace in that.

Jamila Souffrant 22:08

Right, which is why something like YNAB and any tools that you want to invest in to get to your goals are important. Because that relief, that clarity, and that helping you have direction is so important. You don't like you don't really realize how much value it is to having that.

Jesse Mecham 22:26

Yeah, yeah, what we try and do with YNAB and this is I guess this is our first rule really, when we talk about giving every dollar a job. And you'd mentioned this earlier talked about kind of trade offs or opportunity cost, you're like, well, if you do this, you can't do that. All we do with budgeting is present you with that regularly, where you say I could go, I mean I hate giving exams because it makes it sound like I care. I don't really care about any examples at all. But you know, I could go to sushi or I could fund a part of Christmas for my kids. Well, that's a weird decision to be making in you know, in July or whatever. But that's the kind of thing that we want to do. There was a speaker that I just listened to last week. He said, awareness is the first point of decision. If you have someone that's unaware, an alcoholic that doesn't know they're an alcoholic, they can't stop that. There's, they're unaware. But as soon as you're aware you, that's your first point of decision. And we just try and always be surfacing that awareness. It's like, well, you can do that. Sure. But that will mean this, this and this, do you still want to do that? Yes, I do. Okay, go for it. No, I don't. Okay, we'll, we'll readjust. It's just awareness constantly bubbled up, and all rule one is, is just saying, If I give money here, I can't do it here. And I feel good about that, you know, or I need to change things around. So it that it's we just run that loop forever, and people make good financial decisions.

Jamila Souffrant 23:42

Right? Well, I'm happy you brought up the first rule, I do want to go through them. So rule one is give every dollar a job which you essentially said which I really like because and I will say like get bossy with your money like you are in control. You tell it what to do, because if not, it's kind of telling you what to do and you're working for it.

Jesse Mecham 23:58

Yeah.

Jamila Souffrant 23:59

So anything you want to add about the first rule before we go on?

Jesse Mecham 24:01

Well, one thing about the first rule is every other rule is just a function of that first rule. So all we're ever doing is giving dollars to jobs and getting bossy as you'd say, which I like. So, that second rule, we talked about embracing your true expenses. When I say list your expenses most people you know if I'm speaking or something, they'll they'll start to list just their monthly deal. Monthly this, monthly that. And you're like, okay, okay, and then they're kind of asking also, why don't I ever get ahead I make this much my income or my expenses of this much there's this gap. That should give me some room to play. But they they don't ever think about the larger less frequent expenses Christmas that I've already mentioned, property taxes. vacations are an expense, they sound fun, like they shouldn't be but they're totally an expense. Saving up for a new sofa or something, replacing something in your house, your car tires blow out. All those things are real true expenses. And so when I mentioned like, am I going to sushi or on my funding Christmas so I can get little Faye, a birthday present I'm not really always making that decision. But indirectly I am saying, you know, Julie are like we want to spend this much on the holidays. And we pay ourselves a monthly amount that goes into a YNAB category. And that Christmas account builds. And it's just like you have a Christmas bill every month. I mean, people probably still have a Christmas bill if they're paying off the prior year's cards. But aside from that, we have a faux Christmas bill, where we're just setting aside what that does. The beauty of thinking about larger, less frequent expenses, is you can grab kind of a bit of that future. You can pull it back to the present. And then when you're you know, a buddy causes is hey, do you want to go play golf? And you're like, okay, when I play golf with Bill, we also always go out to eat. He also likes to play a full 18 He always wants to do the cart anything and Bill's expensive. And so you have the this opportunity of like, well, do I go play golf with Bill? Or do I fund my car repair and the car repair hasn't even happened yet.

That's the weird thing. That's where people are saying, well, do I still feel good about this? What we're doing is we're removing the checking account balance as an information source. The checking account balance is like the biggest liar in personal finance. People look to it and say, Can I afford this? Can I afford that? It's like, Well, that doesn't tell you all it does it tell you how much is in your checking account? Nothing else. But if you can look at that big, hopefully, it's big, this big account balance. And you can say, well, I've got money for car repairs here. I've got money for this here. And Bill wants to go play golf. Yeah, I should do it. Or no, I shouldn't. But either way, you know, you've got that awareness. So rule two is just looking to the future and then using one to evaluate your priority.

Jamila Souffrant 26:41

Yeah, and I love that and to give like an like a concrete example because some people are listening to this and they are budgeting already. Some people are not or have an aversion to it. And so thinking about the bigger expenses and how you save up and plan for it, I just want to give an example. So if we are starting in January and Christmas 12 months away, you may have you spent 1200 for Christmas you look at your past how much you spent and you're you decide being proactive, I'm going to spend 1200. Then what Jesse's talking about what you can do with budgeting with YNAB is you can earmark every month that you're going to put away $100 for Christmas. So like a sinking fund is what typically it's called. But you can do that so that way you can by the time it gets there, right, you know that December 1 have 1200 dollars earmarked in your account. So also the thing that happens for people is like well, I have like two or three accounts between saving and checking, and the money's just all swimming around there. But what I think whether it's a spreadsheet or YNAB allows you to do is if you're tracking it right when you go to that you can see well it has $5,000 in my savings account, but my tracking system is telling me 1200 of that is for Christmas, so I know that already versus like it just like you said it just shows you that much so in you don't know where it's supposed to go you're earmarking every dollar to have a job.

Jesse Mecham 27:59

Yeah, absolutely. And the beauty of that is most people wouldn't have a savings account they know they should save. It's like, it's like, well, I should save. So they have a savings account, they put money in the savings account, and then the money comes out of the savings account. It's like this revolving door. And people are always wondering, like, why will my savings account go up? And it's just because you haven't been proactively assigning like, this money is for that specific thing. It's just been kind of this Grobe idea of savings because one should, and we want you to get more tactical and specific and say that $5,000 $1200 is for Christmas. Eight hundred is for car repairs, eventually, two grand is for the house because something will break. And you just allocate that all along the way. What happens is most YNABers they end up not really. They'll have an emergency fund, like in the traditional sense, three to six months of expenses don't maybe do that. But most of them notice that because they're so thoughtful about future expenses that are large and less less frequent. Even the kind where you can't estimate like a medical bill. I mean, what if someone has a COVID bill like, who in their right mind a year ago was like, oh, I'm going to save up for the pandemic expenses. I mean, no one's no one would do that. So there's an interesting thing here where we, we just try and think as much as we can ahead and then you start to pull back those expenses into your present and start to allocate money to them, you find that the emergency fund as it's traditionally known, doesn't really get touched. Because if your car tire blows out, that is not an emergency because those car tires are not built to be infinitely indestructible. If they are, if they are car tires like that, I would, I would buy them, definitely. But we like cars, break down roofs, need repairs, refrigerators break all that. We should never be surprised by the fact that something more out. So emergencies can kind of be set aside and it's this very intentional, like I'm saving for this. I'm saving for that. And it's what's fun is when you're weighing, should I buy this now or should I save for this thing later, it's so much easier to be saving for a specific thing. than it is just to say, oh, I should save, or I should go out and you know, eat sushi with my friends. Like when one is so weak and rudderless and the other one sounds very fun and present and very appealing. It's hard to stay on track but when you're when you're giving those dollars jobs, there's a lot more purpose there. I think that purpose gives us a lot of energy.

Jamila Souffrant 30:19

Yeah, and I like to say to it's like you're planning for the expected unexpected expenses.

Jesse Mecham 30:24

I love it. Yeah.

Jamila Souffrant 30:25

You know, they're gonna come up eventually, you know, you can run from it and be lucky that something did not break for a while, but it's going to happen eventually. So it's like, expected unexpected. Okay, rule three, what's rule three?

Jesse Mecham 30:37

Rule three is it's a weird that we have to make this a rule but it's we call it rolling with the punches. It's a you know, a boxing metaphor. You move your body in the direction of a punch so that you don't, you know, so you lessen the blow of that punch. It's really just change your budget as needed. You can liken it to a basketball coach you have like, let's say you've got this woman who has this amazing game plan and they're going to go out and just, they've studied film of the other team. And they've practiced all week long. And it's like, we're going to do this, this, you'll take her, you'll take her, and like, everything's going well, and all dialed in. And every one of those team members like, we know the plan. I know my assignment. I know my job. Thank you coach, and the coaches like you got this. And then as soon as the game starts, if that coach wasn't making adjustments immediately, we would be screaming and so upset. And so you just have to recognize you do your best you make the best game plan you can. And then you recognize that you will learn something new tomorrow. And you'll you may need to adjust as you go. The budget it's weird, because one of the aversions you use that word like some people have an aversion to budgeting, which is so true. One of the aversions they have is like I'm going to be restrained. I'm going to be in jail here essentially like it's like you're dieting like now okay, as soon as I start dieting and I won't eat and it's just that's not healthy for dieting. It's not healthy for budgeting. So, instead of thinking about it being a restraint, just think about it being a game plan, like, what will we do? What about when this happens? What will we do? And you want to be more proactive, it's not about spending less, it's about, well, one, it's about spending guiltless because that would be wonderful to be able to buy the jeans and, and not feel guilty three days later, would be awesome. But it's also it's about being proactive. Really, the whole thing is one big plan to spend even your savings for retirement. This is a bit of a tangent, but even retirement savings is still you acknowledging I'm going to spend that money, or at least I might give it to my kids. If you're kind I haven't decided yet if my kids will get any money, but it's all spending. It's just spend now spend later, but like let's let's let go of the idea that if you've set up a plan, that you also can't change it. When did you lose control of that? So I rant on reel three because it it frustrates me that people are like oh budgets so restrictive. I'm like you did it. it like that was yours, you know? So rant over rant over.

Jamila Souffrant 33:05

The thing about it is like, I don't want to say go wrong. I'm not a pessimist. I'm actually an optimist. So I'm not gonna say like, you know, no matter what you do, something will go wrong. But I'm a realist. And once people understand that, like, they don't expect to come in and get everything right now, you don't even come in and expect to get the process for budgeting right away. Correct. I think some people go on with that, too. And it's just like, it's a little complicated or hard for them. And then they give up because maybe they think it's not supposed to be so complicated. And it's really more as it's like, no with this, like, you know, the growth mindset of being adaptive. It's like things will go wrong, or things will happen. It's not that if they, if it will, or won't, it's more about how I respond to it. And so it's not that you expect bad things to happen. It's just that you're prepared that when things happen, you can adjust and it's not over. And so I think that's what people should also adjust or think about their money and spending plans and budgets.

Jesse Mecham 33:59

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, sometimes good things happen. You know, you have someone that says, hey, I'm going to be in town, you know, you haven't seen him in 10 years or like, let's go out. And you're like, shoot, I've got $5 to go out. That's not very cool of me. And so you move money around you say, well, I'm going to take money from this eventual car tire blowout category. And I'll catch up later because this is worth it. I mean, would anyone say oh, yeah, I saw my long lost uncle for the first time ever. What a horrible experience because I had to spend a little more on groceries when he came to visit and I don't think we'd worry about it. So a lot of the stuff is just, I like your idea of kind of saying like, it's not bad, it just, it just is are you alive, okay. Then things will happen, you know, and there are degrees of severity most definitely, especially, you know, as we talk about this now, like so many so many lousy things are happening. What are we supposed to do there? Are we supposed to adapt or just curl up? You know, and I think, I mean, if people are listening to your podcast, I think they're of the mindset that you adapt budgeting is changing. If you are not changing your budget, you're doing it wrong.

Jamila Souffrant 35:03

Okay, I love that you just like went back and just button that up. Say that one more time.

Jesse Mecham 35:07

If you aren't changing your budget, then you are doing it wrong.

Jamila Souffrant 35:10

Mm hmm.

Jesse Mecham 35:11

Also, you'd mentioned like it's hard to get started or you know, you may make mistakes. In our software. We actually built a feature years ago called the Fresh Start acknowledging that you'll be like, ah, this has been three weeks. I don't like this anymore. It's like, okay, go fresh start. Everything stays the same clean slate go again. It happens so often. We like one of our teachers. Yeah, it's one of our teachers Dave, he fresh starts every year. Nobody knows budgeting better than this guy. He teaches it every day all day long. And he still is like, I'm gonna change it a little bit. Mix it up some so you don't you're not admitting failure, you're actually succeeding in that instance. You know, starting fresh again.

Okay, the final rule we call it age, your money. And it's the idea that we want you to spend that dollar today that was earned 30 days ago. Said another way. If you earn money today, we wouldn't want you spending that money until at least 30 days from now, we're trying to walk people back from living right on that edge of the paycheck to paycheck cycle. Most of the time to follow this rule, you just have to do the other three really well, or pretty well. And rule four kind of is reached almost independently, you just follow those first three rules, you'll notice that you have more and more money in your bank account. And that it's taking you longer and longer more and more days to spend $1 that you've earned. And it's not that you're saying, oh, I'm going to go on this spending fast for a week or I'm not going to spend any money. I mean, those are all interesting for other reasons. But it really just breaking away from wait, you know, you've got this pile of bills waiting for money. And we want it we just flip it around. We want a pile of money, just waiting for a bill and then take it up another level and just auto pay the bills. And the budget will catch any mysteries that come through that way. So in that sense you're just sleeping better when you're step you know, you step back from that edge, in light of all the unemployment and layoffs and and shakiness of like structurally of this of our current economic situation, people that are living a good distance from that paycheck to paycheck cycle they had had and have a little more time to be like, oh man, this is new. What are we going to do here? If you're living, right and I and when I say you, I mean like 80% of people are living paycheck to paycheck, I'm not talking about some unfortunate minority. And that same thing also is readily apparent across income levels. So you have someone that's living below the poverty line, they actually know well more how to manage their money than someone that's can't hold two pennies together and they're making 200 grand and they are there are those examples all over the place. So I would be remiss to say oh, I'll teach that person that is getting by on 14 grand a year. No, they know how to get by on 14 grand a year. It's these other people that are just like, I gotta calm down like flippantly just you're like, come get it together and they're still living with the same stress, the same marital strife, the same mental overhead, that's totally unnecessary. So we just walk people back from that paycheck to paycheck cycle. Get rid of that stress, you'll always have stress, like you mentioned, like things go wrong. Life is stressful. If you have kids, welcome to stress, you know, but you should not be carrying this unnecessary stress just because you're living right on the paycheck to paycheck edge.

Jamila Souffrant 38:40

I think you bring up a good point about the current situation what so many people who are maybe unemployed or their their income has changed a bit. It's important now than ever to start if you have not already start budgeting, you know, it's not necessarily waiting until you have all the money and have all the clarity. It's it's now you know, I know and I always like to speak to I know there are different people that listen. And some people, their jobs have not changed, their income has not changed, they're fine. But for some people like this is a whole new world, maybe a spouse has been laid off, maybe it's just them. It's a lot, right? Like the working parents that don't have the luxury of go, like being able to stay home and then now have to be with their kids who need like, obviously, attention and care and teaching. That's a lot. And so, you know, I know that there's a lot going on in the world. It's not to say like, if you have not been thinking of this as a priority that something's wrong with you. It's more about I would love for this episode. And anything that I do here to help encourage people that despite the current situation, even even making one small step, even the awareness of it and saying, well, now I know about this thing I know about YNAB, you know, now, now I know about this, let me let me let me maybe go check it out something I wouldn't have done before. And try it. And even though maybe I'm not rolling in the dough because of things that are happening. Right now one day I will be because I have that outlook. And so how can I prepare myself? How can I at least survive the current situation so that I can thrive?

Jesse Mecham 40:09

Yeah. And there are a few common objections to the idea of budgeting. And one of them is someone just says, Well, I just don't make enough for it to be worth it. I mean, I hear that regularly, and think about who has who has the most money. So like, traditionally, I would think, oh, Bill Gates, like when I was a kid, Bill Gates was the guy that like Microsoft was growing, and he would remember someone saying, like, oh, if Bill Gates stopped making money, in order to stoop down and pick up $100, he would lose money. Like there was some weird, like, as a fifth grader or eighth grader, I remember where I was like, oh, my gosh, how is that possible? Yeah, like, so you think about someone that has, let's call it infinite money or darn close. If you were running the Gates Foundation, and you weren't running with some kind of a budget, and I mean, like, we will spend money to combat malaria. We will spend money to bring clean water I don't know all their, you know, their their mission. But if they weren't purposeful and intentional with all of that money, what a waste. So you might say, well they have so much money, why would they need to worry about exactly where things are going. But if you really want to maximize the Gates Foundation impact as my example, you would make sure you're very intention about this goes here and you can have lots of zeros tacked on the end. But this goes here, this goes here. This is our mission, if it were just scatterbrained and reactive where everyone that sent in a letter needing some money for some very worthy cause, and they're just like oh write a check or write a check, write a check. Think about the loss of impact that they could have if it without focused efforts. Now you bring that all the way down to someone that's maybe their you know, spouse was just laid off or they've been furloughed or work hours or cut. You still are using the budget to proactively I do want to say budget, you are basically saying I need to be proactive and maximize in my situation. I need to make some most of this. That's what a budget allows you to do just make the most of whatever situation you're in. And whether you're running the largest foundation in the world, or you're just running your own meager household. Same principle applies.

Jamila Souffrant 42:14

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I want to talk a little bit more about how you grew YNAB to when you talked about you just put the one in front $19.95 or $19.99. And then to now where it is today, so that was 2004. You first started and now how many like employees how big can you share that the company is and what you've been able to do?

Jesse Mecham 42:36

I think we're at 122 employees or around there. I used to make a joke like, I would say well we're at 40 employees but I really wish we were five or you know, it's about for about 35 more than I would be comfortable with. There's some discomfort for me and just thinking wow, this is a lot of people. You know a lot of lot of food being purchased, put on table In front of families that are using are depending on this business and its profitability to support them, but you do get used to it. You acclimate? And it's like, when you have one kid, you're like, oh my gosh, this is the craziest thing ever. This is insane. And then you have to and and it's definitely, I mean, anyone that says like they're scaling and having kids, I can speak to that because there is not there's no scaling, but you do acclimate. It's still hard, but you get used to it. And that's what happened with the business. I've been toying around with this idea of grow, you grow best at the rate that your profits allow. And so we we've never taken an investor. That's not true. I did. I did put money on a credit card back at the end of 2009 for a month, never to do that, again, that was scary. Beyond that little foray. We've never borrowed any money. And so we've always just had to reinvest profits in order to grow this thing. And it's It's strange, but I feel like my mental ability, I don't know, whatever it may be inherent natural ability or what I can learn by finding good sources of knowledge, all of that. It's nicely paced to be about the rate at which our profits can be reinvested anyway. So, if you were to say, hey, Jesse, I've got a $200 million for you to use to grow this thing. I wouldn't know where to start. But if you'd asked me 14 years ago, hey, Jesse, you'll need to spend, you know, I don't know what on marketing that would have also mortified me. So the numbers I'm comfortable with now would have scared me 10 years ago, and maybe the numbers 10 years from now, will not be as scary as they would be to me now. And I think it's all because profits and growing at that rate, allows you to just kind of slowly get used to things I'll bet you've experienced that even in your own endeavor what would have scared you three years ago is not nearly as scary.

Jamila Souffrant 45:02

Yeah, and the concept to of being so financially aware. So when I started this business, I actually didn't think this would be a business it was more just to share my journey. And then I was like, oh, well, I can do this as a business and kind of replace or do it instead of my corporate job. So starting, I was so super focused on saving and investing because we have the income to do that. Switching to this entrepreneurship mode, my husband's a teacher. So it's a big change and how we handle money are it changed our trajectory to financial independence. We're still working towards it, but it's totally different now as entrepreneur because now money that I'm bringing into the business it's how do I reinvest it back into brought back my time because as you know, busy mom, that's important, but then also, how do I consciously I don't want to sell myself short to like, I want to eventually get paid well, for what I'm doing, at what points do you pay yourself so you know, you could I can reach and my family can reach our own personal financial goals or invest back into the business because that dollar, I could have took the dollar or I sent it to the business to take the dollar. But that dollar in the business can grow way faster, possibly. So I think that, um, decision comes in for a lot of people with what to do, like take the money or reinvest.

Jesse Mecham 46:17

I had I have I mean, my personal experience was 2004. We start 2006 we had launched our standalone version. So back in 2005, it was housing, right like everyone was buying houses, you got it. You had to buy a house. It's like, oh my gosh, we'll never be able to buy a house again. If we don't buy a house now. And Julie and I were going to graduate and I was at an internship. And we were down in Phoenix, Arizona, and we were thinking maybe we buy a house and just let it sit for a year. That was the frenzied feeling of the home situation back then. Thank goodness we didn't we bought high later but whatever. So at least we live there. But the the instance where we I told you I said we're going to be setting aside money. For a house down payment because everybody's doing houses, then I meet Taylor, who's my business partner and CTO. And this was early 2006. And he said, hey, I can build this spreadsheet to make it even better and I said, no, let's just build separate software for it, forget the spreadsheet, and they said I can do that. So I go to Julie and I say hey, Julie, you know that house downpayment that we've been funneling YNAB money profits, purely just into that downpayment category getting ready to buy the house, I'll become a CPA. We're good to go. And I said that we're not going to use it for the house down payment, maybe what do you think about this idea? And she she said, what do you feel good about this guy Taylor. I'd only ever talked to him on the phone. You know, they didn't have video calling back then or anything. He was down in Texas. And I said I feel good about it. So Taylor agreed to the project and we we kind of rated our our house fund for that. Then end of 2006 that software launches, and within days, I had gone payback on the entire amount. It's like 20, something 30 or 22 grand, something like that. And so I thought, oh, this is, you know, there's the payback. That's the allure of the business, always being able to be far more productive 20 grand into a house in 2005, I would have been awful, right? But 20 grand in my business was really, really good. But I just kept feeding the business. So 2009 we actually fed the business more than it had made. I took from our emergency fund. We were pushing to the very end of the year, we needed to get our third version out. That was where I borrowed about 20 grand on a credit card that we launched at the end of 2009. I paid back the credit card. And again, it was a good move. I was like, man, all that stress, it was worth it. The business was able to take $1 and make three or whatever it was. I finally took a salary and YNAB. I think it was 2010.

So we're six years in where it was like oh, I think I can steadily pay us from this, because the business, and you'd said it possibly can. And that's good to note, the business could possibly be far more productive with that dollar than you could. I mean, do you really want to go to Disneyland for 1600 dollars, if that could become 3000 pretty easily. And you keep doing that math and it becomes pretty, pretty attractive. So we did the same thing again. 2012 we launched another version. And then 2016 we launched the version we're at now, release the the be one of that. And the whole time. I you know, Julie's like how's the business doing? She's so busy with running every other part of our life. That, you know, when I talk to her about the business, it's pretty high level, I need her feedback on stuff. She'll get to the essence of things very quickly. She's a good, she's such a good advisor, but she said one thing one time that really struck me, I said the business is doing great. And she goes well, that'd be news to me. And I'm like, what do you what do you mean by that? She's like it doesn't affect us at all if whether the business does a lot or a little we live on this amount and in 2015 I cut our salary in half so that we could start saving money for this business transition. So all she had ever seen from the business was okay let me get this straight business is doing great but we rated the down the down payment for the house. Okay businesses doing great we cut our salary in half like when when's this gonna pay off and finally, I I read Mike Michalowicz's book Profit First. And he makes a good case for pay yourself a little bit off the top. So we started doing that a few years ago and that has been great. I had Mike on the podcast a while ago and he's a great guy to have on and we chat. I think we're in new in. I was out in Manhattan for a bit and we met up there and chatted and it's very YNAB. So what he's what he talks about, but it's just like pay yourself a little so when you do really well enjoy it. And that was a long that was kind of our whole thing like six years until a salary continually Just reinvesting all the chips back on the table. And I don't know if I would do it the same way again. Totally. I think it's been nice these last few years to recognize if sales go up, I'll be able to take a little off the table. But everyone's got to kind of fill that out on their own. I'm not a big I'm not a gunslinger. I'm not like a swashbuckling entrepreneur type, like I'm, I'm the farmer, you know, it's like you just kind of work slowly work the field, plant another row, that kind of thing.

Jamila Souffrant 51:26

And I think I love that you said that it's like depends on your personality. I this is like my second full time year of entrepreneurship. And I did pay myself the first time from my like owners, because I also used to profit versus them so I have the money.

Jesse Mecham 51:42

Yeah, like distribution.

Jamila Souffrant 51:44

Yeah, so I first time, July, July's I, when I paid myself since about a year and a half of actually almost two years jumping into this. And even still, I'm so cautious about it because my biggest thing is when I took on this responsibility to because my income was more than half of our household income, so when I took on the risk of I'm going to, like, leave my job and my job had the most potential, right for the highest to earn the highest in our household. So when I did that, my biggest thing was, you know, I don't want to or lifestyle change too much. And I don't want Journey to Launch to ever take away from our savings. I mean, we saved up for me to do this. So I just don't want it to be a drag where now it's like the cost of running it and being here is like taking away from like, the money we already kind of don't have. So I think it's interesting because it depends on your personality. I'm definitely a cautious person, for anyone listening as an entrepreneur or thinking about it cuz that's the other thing that we talked about financial independence here on Journey to Launch. And part of that includes potentially being an entrepreneur, for everyone. I always say that listen, if you have a job you love, continue to continue to collect those checks. And you know that health care, but if you have a desire, something burning inside of you, you want to build a create something change the world or maybe just change your circle, whatever that means. For you, it's important to also not only think about your personal budget, but I found that transitioning into managing a business budget, like profit first system that was like a whole new realm even though it's similar. So I want people to also pay attention to that. It's like there's a personal budget, but there's also a way you run your business budget. That's important.

Jesse Mecham 53:18

Yeah, yeah, running your business on YNAB. I started doing that in 2009, where I was very intentional about the business money, the business checking account was far bigger than my personal account, obviously. And I was so risk averse that it was like we should hire an engineer, we really should hire an engineer. And I would just look at the pile of money and be like, I don't know if I feel good about it, you know. And when I finally started giving every dollar a job with the business money, it started to look like Jesse you fool. You would be insane not to hire someone and, and that helped get me out of my risk aversion. And recognize that it was almost flipped around. I was almost, I mean, I was being almost stupid with how tight fists I was with those dollars, instead of saying we could get more done, and this is good ROI. So that, yeah, it there's very little different about running a business budget, but for some reason people, they think like, oh, I can run my personal household, but I can't run my business will just run the business, like your personal household be stingy a little bit. But also, there's a level of strategicness that you can adapt to your business budget where personally you're like, well, we'll spend this much on groceries and story. Business it's like, we'll spend this much on marketing, what will that bring? And so that's the business aspect. But having a business with finite resources, that's a real thing. Household finite resources. That's a real thing. I also would say like, I feel like entrepreneurial stuff for entrepreneurs gets a little bit romanticized. Like, it's not, you know, it's not that you just you're doing a job, it's, it's so much grind, it's so much just grind grind, grind, you know? That's it's work. It's just work. So it's another form of work. If you got a little bit of ADD, I think it suits people well in that way, because there's lots of different hats to wear. I lose interest in things pretty quickly. So the the entrepreneurial stuff is suited me. But you can find that in lots of different jobs too. I don't want people to walk away like, Oh, I can't believe I've never wanted to be an entrepreneur Should I want to? It's like, No, no, don't worry about it.

Jamila Souffrant 55:25

No, no, I think that's great. I love this quote, where it's like entrepreneurship is the only place where you'll give up maybe the 40-50 Hour Workweek for the hundred hour workweek because it's like, non stop.

Jesse Mecham 55:36

Yeah, and even if like my work hours are pretty reasonable now, they have not always been that way. But might you know, mentally though, you're never you never check out. It's just it's always there. It's just kind of a low hum. So yeah, if you love what you do, keep doing it. And leave it at that, you know, just be content, just practice. That's what I want to learn. I want to learn how to just be content content, just, just know I'm happy, happy the way things are.

Jamila Souffrant 56:03

Right. Because always something else on the other side that seems more appealing, but you can get there and say, oh, wait, there's the other side to that, too. Okay, so Jesse, I would probably just wrap up and say like for anyone right now listening who's like, okay, they may already be a YNAB user, because I've been yapping about it all month and previously, but if they're not, and they're just like, what, you know, why should I give this a try? What's your last kind of thing for people to be like? Okay, I'll do this. Like, what? What's your last charge to people about trying YNAB?

Jesse Mecham 56:31

Yeah, so everyone's used to like video conferencing now and all this weird stuff with zoom and everything. So we've been we were doing remote well, before it was mandated. So the best thing someone could do is they could say, I'm going to give Jesse 25 minutes of my time, we'll actually we'll give one of our teachers 25 minutes of your time and take one of the workshops. It's free. And you'll just see, you'll see the four rules, how we think about money, and then you'll see it applied in the software and there isn't three seconds in those workshops that isn't just time well spent, they're dialed in, we do them probably do 150 a week. So they're live, you can ask questions of the teacher. But that to me is even before you do like the 34 day free trial or whatever, take the workshop first and kind of see how we're coming at this. Because if you do decide to give the trial a shot, it will make your experience far more it'll things will make more sense otherwise. So I'd say go with the free workshop. And then one, they'll ask us to this pitch, if you're hitting your financial goals, and like, you just listen to your podcast because you like to get a good little pat on the back then you just go like don't don't change things for the sake of change. That would be that'd be a step backward.

Jamila Souffrant 57:47

I actually love that you said that like if it's working and you truly know what's working fine, but if you know something's off, something's missing then give it a try. So check it out. Jesse, thank you so much. I will say I'm so if you want to do the 34 day free day trial you can go to youneedabudget.com/journey. And this was amazing. Thanks for basically educating us on budgeting, but then also business. I'm running a business. I thought that was amazing. Hopefully you guys got a lot from that.

Jesse Mecham 58:14

Thanks, Jamila.

Jamila Souffrant 58:19

Okay, I really hope you enjoyed that conversation. You know, it's one of the first times I believe I've had a sponsor slash company, on the podcast, like a person representing a company. And I really wanted to make sure that this wasn't just like a big pitch, you know, like a big, all about this company, right? Like, I really wanted to make it an interview, where you could learn something from it no matter what you chose, right? Whether you choose to use YNAB or not. I think the basis of this is about getting to your financial goals and dreams and making the journey really all about you. It's going to be something that only you can travel. So what are the tools that you need and I love that YNAB and what Jesse has done like he really breaks down in the interview the four rules as a basis for wanting to get to your goals using a budget and then the entrepreneurship journey, which you know, by now I'm just I love hearing stories like that. I can relate to it so much. And it's people like that, who are able to create something from nothing and have a vision to like, follow through, like, super inspiring. So I really hope you got a lot from that.

Again, if you want to try out YNAB go to youneedabudget.com/journey to give it a try. Free 34 day trial, no credit card required.

Don't forget if you want the episode show notes to get any of the links mentioned in this episode, go to journeytolaunch.com or click the description wherever you're listening to this to get the link to the show notes. And if you want that free jumpstart guide to help you on your financial freedom journey text launch to 33777 text launch to 33777 to get your free guide today or go to journeytolaunch.com/jumpstart.

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