Jesse Mecham - YNAB Founder & WSJ Bestselling Author | The Man Who Made Millions Teaching People to Love Budgeting

0:00 You named your company, You Need a Budget, and your new book never says the word budget once. So what changed? You realize that we were carrying around this baggage that people have with the word budget. Most people, when they say budget, they think like it's gonna restrict, like fun is over. Why is budget such a bad word for people? Budgeting in people's minds means less spending. We don't teach more spending. We just teach spending that you love. Today's guest is Jesse Meckham, founder of YNAB, bestselling author and personal finance expert. He created YNAB to help people gain control of their money and rethink the way they spend. In this conversation, he explains why budgeting isn't about spending less, but about spending intentionally on what matters most.

0:44 How do you spend the right way? You can have anything, but not everything. Why do we feel bad about spending it? When people are spending here and their values are here, that is the gap. All we're trying to do is just close that, where when you spend that precious resource you sacrifice for on things you care about, you are golden. My fitness pal is a success story partner. Now, everybody wants more energy. Everybody wants better sleep. Everybody wants to feel sharper during the day, to not hit that wall in the afternoon where your brain just checks out. And people try a lot of things to get there. So new routines, new supplements, better sleep habits, more coffee, less coffee, all of the above. And some of that stuff works, but the single biggest lever you have for how you feel on any given day is what you eat.

1:30 It's not the most exciting answer, Nobody's making a viral reel about eating lunch, but food is the foundation, right? Your energy, your sleep, your weight, your recovery, how you perform at work, how you feel when you get home. It's the one input that touches everything else. Now, the problem is that most people have no idea what they're actually eating. They have a general sense. They can say, I eat pretty healthy, okay, but, How much protein are you getting? And how does that break down across your day? Are you eating enough in the morning? Are you stacking everything at night? Those details matter a lot. And you can't answer those questions without logging what you eat and looking at the data. And that's why I use the MyFitnessPal app because you log what you eat. and it shows you exactly what's going on.

2:10 Your macros, for example, that's just your proteins, your carbs, your fats, those are broken down by grams. And on premium, it breaks those numbers down by meals. So you're not just seeing one number for the day, you're seeing what breakfast looks like versus lunch versus dinner, and that changes things. Because your body doesn't run on daily averages, it runs on what you give it right now. The food analysis, another great feature, it shows you patterns across the week too. where things are consistent, where they start to drift. And you're going to notice how what you eat impacts your energy and why you want to stay consistent. And when you don't, why you start to feel like you're hitting walls in the afternoon. Now the food logging. This is where a lot of people think it's going to be a whole thing. It's not. For example... I can say what I ate out loud.

2:51 There's a voice logging feature and it's done. Or I can scan a barcode of something I ate two seconds. There's also a meal scan where I just point my camera at a plate and the app captures exactly what I ate and all the macronutrients. And my fitness pal has the largest food database out there. So whatever I'm eating is already in it. And it remembers what I eat regularly. Also, it connects with over 40 fitness apps and wearables. So everything goes into one spot. All of my health, wellness and nutrition. So if you have been trying to figure out why your energy dips in the afternoon or why you're not sleeping as well as you used to or why you just feel off and you can't put a finger on it, look at your food first before you buy another supplement or you try some other hack.

3:32 The answer is usually in nutrition. And this is the easiest way that I found to actually see what's going into your body and track it and pay attention to it and improve it. Do yourself a favor. Go to podcast.myfitnesspal.com and use code Scott. That's S-C-O-T-T, all uppercase. That gives you 15% off MyFitnessPal Premium. One more time, that is podcast.myfitnesspal.com. Code Scott. That's giving you 15% off MyFitnessPal Premium. Jesse, so you named your company, You Need a Budget, and your new book never says the word budget once.

4:13 That is right. So what changed? What happened? We, well, when we named the company, I was sitting at a card table, and I think my wife was probably nursing our first baby, and we were shopping for domains, right? And I said, hey, Julie, you're a... What, you know, what should we name this spreadsheet that we're going to sell? And she thought for probably five seconds. I was just like, what about you need a budget? You know, we called it the budget, you know, between the two of us. And so I looked it up. Lo and behold, it was available. And that was that. And we bought it. And then quickly, our fans turned that into just YNAB. And they never would say the whole long name. And so we were known as YNAB for a long time.

4:55 And as we got smarter and learn more about our customer and learned about what kind of problem we were solving, you realize that we were carrying around this baggage that people have with the word budget. I don't agree with what I'm about to say, but most people, when they say budget, and when they think it, they think like, it's gonna restrict, I'm gonna be on this diet, like I can't have any fun, like fun is over, you know? And we, we realized we just, I had to get people thinking about money entirely differently. And the word budget is so the old way of thinking that I tried very hard not to put that in that book. If there is one, we need to print it again.

5:36 You know? Why is, why is budget such a bad word for people? Like, so, you know, When I think about it, it just the first thought is, OK, I'm financially responsible if if I have some sort of budget. But then again, I don't I've never like written out a budget in my life. Yeah. You're like, that seems like a reasonable thing to do. But then I don't responsible person would do that. I think reasonable, responsible. Those are all great words. But when people are in the moment of feeling like. Why do I feel stressed? Why do I feel out of control? Why do I have this worry? They're motivated. And then someone might say, well, listen, you just need to budget. And what they interpret that as, as you just need to like ratchet down and just really get serious.

6:18 And like, let's look at everything you're doing. That's fun. And eliminate that. It just, it means I'll say this simply budgeting in people's minds means less spending and the book is, That's just not what we teach. You know, we, we teach, we don't teach more spending. We just teach spending that you love. Right. But a budget means less spending and that, that's, couldn't be further from the truth. When somebody is struggling financially and they're trying to figure out, you know, how do I stop stressing about like next month's rent, mortgage, putting food on the table. is like the common nomenclature in society, clamp down, budget, spend less.

7:00 Like I'm thinking, and now I'm just thinking about, I'm not going to name any other names, but there's a lot of people that promote budgeting and just spending less is like the number one way to make sure that you're not stressed about money next month. But it feels like, even though budget has been a common word for a long time, that I don't think people are thriving, even though they've been told to budget again and again and again and again. So there's a disconnect there, right? We keep telling people to budget, save money, spend less, and people are still struggling more than ever, and they're still more stressed out, and I don't think the average American is thinking, oh, my money situation is great right now, even though they've heard that message. What's going on? Yeah, I mean, it's a behavior issue.

7:41 Our sweet spot where we land is people that are making enough money. Enough is a risky word. They're making good money, some of them would say. The event that a lot of them experience where they are like, okay, enough is enough. I need to get things figured out. They realize that they're making more than they ever have. and they still feel worried. They still feel stressed. And so you have this bit where, I don't know, a 35-year-old looks at their W-2 that they get for tax purposes, and they're like, HR's made a mistake. There's no way I made this much money because I'm just where I started. Maybe even a little worse off, maybe a little more credit card debt or whatever. And then they remember their 25-year-old self that probably said something like, if I ever make this little bit more, it'll all be solved.

8:28 So yeah, we tell ourselves that this behavior problem will be solved with more money without ever looking at the behavior itself, the thinking itself. What is it? What causes lifestyle inflation? Because that's what's happening, right? You're making more money. And because I've experienced that before. Oh, yeah. You and I both. I've experienced that. Like, you know, hopefully not today, but a couple of years ago, I was making significantly more than I ever thought that I'd ever make. I was like, this is more money than I ever planned on making in my entire life. And I was 30 years old at the time.

9:09 And I'm like, we don't have any money left at the end of the month. And it's not like we're hurting financially. And this happens at every level. I see this happen at levels way beyond where I'm at. I don't know your financial situation, but probably where you're at. I see people that have had huge exits that are now frugal because they've overspent. And lifestyle inflation has caught up. I don't know if it's an easy question, but why do we succumb? Is it peer pressure? But the real question is, I think the real question is like, how do we fight against it? Like how do we, you know, to your thesis is, how do you spend the right way? Because I think that sometimes you just spend on everything.

9:50 We don't realize that what's like the most important things to spend on. You can have anything, but not everything is a common phrase that I've heard better, that I like quite a bit. Yeah, the, you know, who you're around, what you think is normal, all of that comes into play. But what you use the word fight against, and I think that's critical. If you aren't asserting your agency, if you aren't just really adding your intention to this thing you call money, to be like, listen, I work hard for this money, I'm smart, I'm educated, I've used my network, my parents raised me well, who knows what is all of this led up to Scott then being like, This is Scott in the marketplace making money.

10:33 Like it's only you. Like you are the only thing doing it. And people can be like, Scott got lucky. Scott's a hustler. It's probably some interesting equation that we would never be able to decipher. But you're there and you are producing that. And the only way to view that money, in my opinion, is for you to say that money is a representation of me. It is not you like your value, but it is you. And when we can elevate money in people's mind as not just a tool, not just a chore, not just something where it's like, oh, I'm not a money person or I like numbers, so I kind of am. But if you can elevate money to be this meaningful thing to people, like I sacrificed for that, right?

11:15 I earned that. Then with that higher elevation, I hope they can say it matters to me how I spend. And I'll never say, oh, Scott, I can't believe you bought that blazer or bought, you know, Because that's actually, I want to hear more from you. Like, what, where do you want to spend? Like, what does light you up? That uniqueness that we have, we need more of that in the world. We'll overlap on rent and utilities and health insurance, but the uniqueness gets fun. But if we can elevate money, just to kind of wrap that up, if we can elevate it to be a precious resource for people because of what they gave to get it. then maybe it can be, okay, this matters. I'm going to throw my intention behind it.

11:55 So do you think the bigger issue is that we don't respect money? Respect's maybe a good word. Yeah. I don't want to respect it like a parent telling me what to do. Yeah. But like... Think about like self-care. Self-care is big. You know, like the meme where like the guy throws cold water on his face or whatever. And like, you know, that's how you start your day. It's this idea of like this. I don't know, like a level of self-care where you're like that, that is appropriate and right. Like to care for yourself in this or that way. You clearly work out. Right. So it's like, I care for myself. I know this is good for me. And we couldn't, we also have money just be, be that. It's like, yeah, I, of course I care about my money. It's, it's me, you know, I miss my kid.

12:36 I'm missing my kids right now doing this, you know, like I give up things for this. So it's almost like we work hard, we make money, we spend it a little bit frivolously. We don't really understand where it's going. But this is actually, what you're talking about is actually less about money at the end of the day, more about knowing yourselves. There's some actual work. You stole the book already. You walked past like six chapters. No, but I can see where this is going. And we'll walk it back too. But I can see. Listen, at the end of the day, most life problems. There's edge cases for sure, but money is a big life problem.

13:18 And if people look inside and understand their own value system and really pay attention to what they want out of life, I feel like the money problems don't go away, but everything you do is more intentional and purposeful. with worries back. I'll say this. You, you probably won't have money problems. You'll still have problems because you're alive and life's happening, you know, but money, like, what do I do with my money? Why is money always so stressful? Why do I not have enough money when bills come? Why, why are emergencies just knock me off my feet? All of that. It can, we can literally eliminate that. You'll still have life and all kinds of struggle and, and hardship might come your way.

14:00 but money specific worry that people carry that paycheck to paycheck song and dance that we can get rid of. We'll get to the value system is up. Cause yeah, where you went is that's what lights me up. There's a stat. that you drop, that 85% of Americans are worried about money, which is a wild number to me. How big is your community? Your community is wild. I realize that people get tattoos of Juan Abid. I'm a tattoo guy, but apparently they are. That's insane. Good for them. But how big is your community? Because you get a lot of data from your community. We have... We don't say specific numbers, but I mean, millions of people, we have we have that kind of those touch points.

14:44 So you're looking at, you know, you're looking at first party data from from millions of people. And then you just on average, 85 percent of all Americans are worried about money. So the standard advice is not working, talking about saving, talking about, you know, building a budget, even the, you know, the Dave Ramsey don't take on debt, which is probably, you know, great advice for a certain group of people. But if 85% of Americans are worried about money, I'm sure a significant amount of people in your community are still worried about money, probably less, probably a little bit healthier than the average cohort because of what you teach. But why is this standard advice not working?

15:25 What is the advice that does work? Yeah. You mentioned when you were throwing out kind of the standard advice, save more, avoid debt. Yeah. Avoid debt. Great idea. Really positive idea. We can dive into savings for a second. When someone says save more, it's a full-on trap. So let's say that I was like, Scott, you need to make sure you save more. 10 grand for emergencies, right? And you're like, okay, okay. You save the 10 grand. You kind of, maybe you even scrape and kind of sacrifice. You gather together that 10 grand. We're in a good spot. Then something happens and you have to spend the 10 grand of savings. Medical thing, totally valid expense, right? You will not feel good.

16:06 When you spend that 10, and I don't mean because you just lost 10 grand. I mean, the fact that you will say to yourself things like, and I know people listening will resonate with this. They'll say things like, well, I didn't want to spend my savings. You will hear that. Now you probably won't unhear it, but people, I don't want to spend my savings. And savings is literally money earmarked for spending later. Yeah. But when we talk about savings, we elevate it as if it's like this extra special case of money, like money saved, money spent. Good money person, bad money person. Right. And if we can just give people be like, oh, I'm just it's all spending. We're just going to spend that money later. Then when you and I like save up and go on some like bougie vacation, we're only spending.

16:50 Did we save to get there? Yeah. But now we're spending and like, let's do this, you know, like, let's enjoy this instead of. Not being able to enjoy the very thing that money is meant to do, the only thing it's meant to do. Why is that? Yeah, it's literally just meant to be spent. So why? So when we say... It's meant to be spent, but why do we feel bad about spending it? Because our spending, you mentioned values, and I'll spring word off that. When people are spending here and their values are here, that is the gap. And that is the consternation. All we're trying to do is just close that, where when you spend that precious resource you sacrificed for on things you care about, you are golden. You know, like there's resonance there.

17:31 And I mean, you're just hitting it perfectly. It's so crazy to me. that people could have a medical expense that's going to cost $10,000, and in their mind, that's not aligned with their personal value system. Now, that one is a special case, Now, that one, they're going to be like, I'm glad I have the money. They'll say that. I'm glad I had the money. But then they'll be like, I'm so upset that I had to spend my savings. So I'm giving that example as a way of making sure that people recognize they will tee up savings as this money never to be spent. And that's where the friction is. Yeah, no one's going to be like, oh, my kid broke his arm, but... That's not in my value system to pay for the ER.

18:11 No, not about the medical event. No, I didn't mean it like that. I meant that like you want to hold like your relationship with money is so unhealthy that you're holding on to it so tight, even when there's like an obvious reason. You should have such a healthy relationship with money, which I don't think is a norm for most people, that when you say you do have savings and a medical event happens, you should be like so happy. that you say for not like, Oh my God, I worked so hard and I pushed so much effort. And now my, cause you know what the, you know what the thought is thought is I wasted so much time saving for this. And I was all for not all when, no, that's the whole point.

18:53 That's the whole point. Yeah. It like, we'll take some of like an HVAC going out, you know, it'll, it'll go out. Like if it has a 10 year warranty, it'll go out like 10 years plus a day. And, That's like nobody wants to have that happen, especially this time of year. No one wants to be sitting there with that broken AC unit. But at the end of the day, they will say like, oh, I'm glad I had the money. You know, what happens though is people don't think that the AC unit ever goes out. They just think that that's an abnormal expense and like, woe is me. And oh, man, this always happens to me at just the wrong time. And it's just part of life. So when you can start to kind of name your savings, that's what we teach in the community. Like that savings pile you have, name the things it is for.

19:34 This is for a new iPhone. This is for a new computer. This is for the Bahamas. Name your thing. And then that money, like that's its reason for existing. And people spend it. Happily. You're a little bit of a therapist. There's a little bit of that. At the end of the day. I need my own, but yeah. Everybody does. But I feel like a lot of your work is healing that relationship with money. You talk about... Well, this entire book comes down to one main question. And you say there's only five answers to this one particular question. So what is the most important question that people can ask themselves? And then what are the answers that they get from that question?

20:16 So the only question is easy to ask and work to answer. But you ask yourself, what is this money for? What's it for? That's it. And if you and if I were to say, Scott, like, just open the kimono for me. What's in your checking account? And we would do it privately. And, you know, you're like, OK. And I'd be like, tell me what's what's this money for? And you just start listing stuff. You're like, well, I got rent to do that. You know, just normal seven. I know that one. I know that one. I know that one. And so we would handle like maybe bills that are due, a mortgage that's due or whatever. We would handle these things that are for now. That's the first answer. Most people, that was 85%, they're living paycheck to paycheck. And they know what their money's next for because it's probably already arrived.

20:58 That bill's already arrived. Like they're kind of have the bill waiting for money. So we handle the for now. And this is, it's a simple exercise, but it's important because this is the first time a lot of people, have started to act like they're in control and take control where they're saying, well, I decide that this $300 in my checking account, I decide what it's for. And if there's some debt collector calling and harassing and using all kinds of awful tactics, it's just like, hey, on my terms, you'll get your money, but I'm in control, right? So they say, this is for groceries. This is for whatever bill that's now, that's the first answer. The next one is for later.

21:39 And so when we have, when we've covered now, what we've done is eliminated from this present moment, worry. And you can only feel worry in the moment. You can't, we're not in the future. We're not in the past. It's only in the moment. So we've eliminated the present moment worry. Then when we're thinking about for later, after you and I've worked through your checking account money, I'd be like, okay, well, there's still a good bit here. What about for later? Tell me, what do you have coming up? And you'd be like, oh, well next week I'm doing it. I'm like, no, no, no. Further out. Like. holidays, what do you do for the holidays? And you're like, oh, we're going to go here for Christmas. We're going to go do this. We're going to have people come in. We're going to start hosting. You know, name your, like, okay, how much do you want to spend there? I don't know. Well, let's pick a number. All right, we'll pick a number. We start working toward that number.

22:20 Or you would say like, well, I always go here in the fall. We do this fun thing. Okay, we're going to do that. When are property taxes due? Oh, shoot. Yeah, those are due also. Okay, let's set aside money for that. You're probably dealing with quarterly taxes and things like that. It's like, we're going to start doing that. So we're thinking about And what this person's now doing is they're not just saying this stuff's due now, but they're also thinking about their future person. And they're like, they're weighing the trade-offs of if I use my money now or later. And what we do is we just always think like, this is as much as in the checking account. Okay, I can do it. And you're like, oh man, but in two weeks, that would have happened. Your future self would have loved that. So we've walked them through the first two weeks.

23:02 And now they are not only not worrying about the present moment, but they're also protecting that future moment from worry. And we're on our way. So I'll let you interject there because we can go in pretty deep. No, I was just, I'm just thinking about how powerful it is when somebody is thoughtful and intentionable about how they... spend their money. Like when I think this exercise you're describing is probably the first time in somebody's life when they haven't spent reactively. Yes, yes, yes. So a lot of this, again, it's coming back to it's it's way beyond money. It's about it's about you feeling like you're in control of your life. I'm assuming that's the reaction that people get when they first go through this exercise.

23:45 Yeah, they will have not made more money and the bill pile is still just as high. Nothing has changed except they are taking control and they're not reacting, they are acting. We often internally will talk about people becoming agents and we're restoring agency to that person where they're like, I have choice. They don't feel like they have choice. And when they get all these numbers spattered around, inflation, this, this and this, all these numbers, they have no control over that are that are they're bombarded with of like, and now what are you going to do? And now what are you? And they just feel like everything comes at them. I mean, OK, so we're literally sitting in the New York Stock Exchange and people are going to be looking at a whole bunch of these stocks on a ticker on the news and they're going to be stressing out and they're going to be wondering, how does this impact me and my financial situation?

24:32 I'll tell you this. All this that's here, everyone that we're talking about has already reacted. I know. This is all lag, right? I know it is. And so everyone has already been like, okay, gas is a little expensive. We're adjusting. Food's a little expensive. We're going to adjust. Like people are already making those. They're still deciding what is my money for because regardless of economic circumstances, you must know what it's for. There isn't a circumstance where I would say like, oh, you know what, Scott? This question no longer matters, right? It's going to matter because it's a precious resource over which you have control. But the average person sitting at home who is not part of this institution is seeing the numbers, which are like these of...

25:13 There's going to be fear. There's going to be fear. There's going to be uncertainty. There's going to be stress. And to be quite honest, more often than not, What the stock market's doing, it's not really impacting your day to day. Who's in office, it's not really impacting your day. In fact, I mean, I approach this problem that you're solving for in a different way. I usually say, like, take agency in your own life and try and build a business, try and become an entrepreneur and try and create your own wealth because no one else is coming to save you. So it's a different, I'm talking about creating wealth and sort of moving outside the system and not being stressed about geopolitics and what's happening in the stock exchange. I'm saying, take control of your own life, make your own money.

25:55 You're going to be happy. No one else is coming to save you, but that's okay. You complete agency over your own. You're saying that, okay, so once you made the money, now not just be reactive about spending it, but be purposeful and be mindful of it. And again, still cut out all the noise that's stressing you out, distracting, because I think this is... When somebody turns on the news, they're going to see what's happening in the world. And that actually, they are now reactive to things that aren't even affecting them in terms of how they spend money. Yeah, I mean, there's a big, I mean, who knows what it's like. Like, the world is so big and we are not wired to handle a world that big. Like, straight up, when I do my news fasts and I just kind of kick out of it.

26:35 I am amazed at how much better I feel just looking out my window and being like, you know, and we actually had some, my little 10-year-old girl, she worries about fires for some reason. Like, I'm not going to say obnoxiously, she's 10, right? But more than my other kids have, right? And there was a forest fire. I mean, it's dry in Utah where we live and she could see the smoke. And it was interesting that that was her cue of like, dad, do I need to worry? Like, how close is that? It was far away, you know? How close is that? And I had to kind of explain like, oh, it's very far and we would know well in advance. But it was so interesting to have a 10-year-old get her news about, looking out the window and legitimately being like, oh, this one is, this really should affect us.

27:19 Versus, I mean, all kinds of things are happening all over the world that we just, I don't even know if we're meant to absorb that much. And we have this constant stream of noise and information and a lot of it's negative. Oh, so much. And it really hurts your mental health. So, I mean, this, again, not to derail the conversation from money and finance, but... A lot of these a lot of these global events that we think are going to be the end of the world are not. And then not only are we are we reactive to global events and that impacts how we make decisions about our life, about our money, about where we spend. And you think about how many people like stockpile toilet paper during COVID, like the stupid shit like that.

28:01 Or it's the debt collector who's calling, who's stressing us out and. Yeah, eventually you want to get rid of that debt, but you choose to pay that off at the expense of something that's actually important in your life. So we have so much noise coming at us from everywhere. Every debt collector wants their money. Bills are due. News is so negative that we are just reactive and the life that we're living is not even our own. And I think that's where people now get stressed out because I'm like, OK, so now I don't actually have the money for the things that I actually want. And here I am slaving away, working 60 hours a week, trying to earn this money. It's maybe not, you know, maybe the wage isn't even keeping up with with costs as they're going up.

28:45 And they're and they're saying, God, what is this even? What am I doing? I think that that's actually where a lot of burnout comes from. I thought about this. It's when the perceived effort that you put in to the work to get the money doesn't equal the output. Oh, that's actually. Yeah. So you feel like you're working so hard. Yeah. Exactly. Right. If you feel like, okay, so I'm working hard and my life is good. Then you don't feel as burnt out. But if you feel like you're working 80 hours a week and your life sucks and you're stressed out and you can't pay bills, you're like, what is this all for? Yeah. I like that. So burnout is, is, is an out. It's, it's a question of not just what you're putting in, but what you're getting out. I think it is. I can guarantee you if people were working a hundred hours a week and they could, you know.

29:29 afford the chef, afford the gardener, afford a $20 million home. I don't think a lot of people would be as stressed about that hundred hour week. Yeah. The food's taken care of, the garden's thriving. Especially if you like what you're doing. But yeah. So I think that, I think that a lot of people are feeling like they can't put any more in and whatever they're getting is just not enough. Well, let me, let me tell you, I'll walk back into those answers because we had those five. And the book's sole focus is eliminating money worry, right? So when we have the money worry eliminated from the future because we're taking care of those future expenses, whether it's a fun one like a vacation or something like the car breaking down, both are going to cost money in the future. So we've handled that.

30:10 The next answer that we tell people that money is for is it's for ease, but not the chef, not the gardener. We're this category is something pretty unique to our community where actually I would shouldn't say pretty. I think it is solely unique to our community where. We tell people, we want you, what you're earning in August, to be spending in September. What you earn in September, you spend in October. And they get into this system, where like that is money for ease. Where the system itself, the money system is easy. not martinis ease, right? So this idea then is these people that are living paycheck to paycheck, we break them out of that where first they're like, oh man, I have all of my rent for next month saved.

30:54 And then pretty soon they're like, oh my gosh, I have all of my rent saved for next month and my groceries would be covered and my utility. And it takes people on average, this is somewhat old data, it probably still stands though, it's about four months, four to five months, where they live a month ahead. And what happens is it would be like all of their bills. Now, remember these, like, this probably doesn't happen to you, but when bills come in, people will get a little, little stress hit. Right. They see a bill. I mean, it has happened to me in my life. Yeah. And you can resonate with it. It resonates with you. You're like, I recall. And you're like, wait, what, why is it so much higher? And, you know, like the bill comes stress, bill comes stress. So. Imagine someone has that bill always coming in and they're always like, okay, that bill, this paycheck, okay, that bill's gonna wait.

31:42 And then next Friday, oh, then my spouse, she's paid. And they're doing this whole big song and dance. Imagine if instead, hypothetically, all the bills were just paid on the first. And then you're like, we're good, we're done. All your money chores and tasks, they're taken care of. That's how YNABers, that's how they get. They get to a point where... I mean, you could ask me, like, when's your electricity bill due? I know it's monthly. I know it's monthly. But I couldn't tell you. How much was it? I don't know, right? It's on auto pay. We get people to where things are on auto pay. Bills come in. They're paid. They're paid. And their plan is intentional.

32:22 So now not only are they thinking about now and later and eliminating worry from the now and in the future, but now the system itself is not contributing to the worry unnecessarily. Like the system is quieter and it's just like money in, money out. We're good on that. And they have this plan where... I mean, there's this valueless activity people do where they're timing their paycheck to their bills and the utility company doesn't care how much of a song and dance you did to pay them. You know, it's like you're just getting paid. So that for ease category is... uniquely set up to break the paycheck to paycheck cycle entirely and have the person's system just humming you're now a month ahead from any catastrophe yeah you know it it is full it is it's like uh we were talking about maxing all these blah maxing blah maxing trends in on social and the sleep maxing is one and i was like well there's my sleep maxing contribution people literally tell us I'm sleeping better and it's because they're, they've got that buffer or they'll tell we're, we're a relationship maxing.

33:25 It's like, well, my relationships better because now when I ask, you know, when I asked my partner, like, Hey, you know, some nothing money question, Hey, what was this for? It does. It's not this just like carrying all this emotion and stress. No, it's a genuine question. It's not like a charge, you know, you're just like, Hey, I'm like, you know, I get the knives out. It's like, no, no, like that. It's, it's just, it's nothing. And that's that whole system where we eliminate that side, the system stress. It is huge. Plot is a success story partner. Now, I spoke about plot a few episodes back. This is the AI power device that captures your conversations, turns them into transcripts, summaries, action items. And I wanted to come back to it because I keep finding new ways that this thing is incredibly useful.

34:08 Last week, I sat down with a potential sponsor at a coffee shop. And we were going back and forth on deliverables, timelines, pricing, a lot of details and a lot of numbers. And normally after a conversation like that, I'd open my notes app on my phone. I try to write everything down. I remembered and I'd probably get about 70% of it, but the other 30% would be gone. Usually the small details that end up mattering a lot later. But this time with their permission, I had the note pin S on my shirt and I honestly forgot it was even there. So after the meeting, I opened up my plot app and everything was already laid out the full transcript, a clear summary, the key numbers we discussed and the follow-ups I'd agree to. And I could even ask Plod, what pricing did we discuss or what were my next steps?

34:49 And it pulls up the answer right away. I didn't have to reconstruct the conversation from memory. And that's the part that I keep coming back to. I'm not splitting my attention in meetings between being present in the conversation and trying to document and remember everything. I can just focus on the person in front of me, knowing that the important details will be there afterwards. And remember, they do have two products. So the Note Pro magnetically attaches at the back of your phone. It's great for calls and the Note Pin has clips or magnetically attaches to your shirt, making it ideal for in-person conversations. And you can choose between them depending on the situation. So if you spend a lot of your day in conversations and you're tired of losing important details, go check it out. Go to plod.ai slash success and use code success for 15% off.

35:29 That's plod.ai slash success and use code success for 15% off. Odoo is a success story partner. And remember that is pronounced Oh do. Now I want to tell you something that happened to me recently that I think a lot of you will relate to. I was trying to send a quote to a client and this should be simple, right? Except the pricing was in one tool and the contact info was in another tool. And the last conversation that we had was in a third tool. And then I spent something like 20 minutes pulling it all together for one quote. And that's the thing. Each tool works fine on its own. The problem is that they don't talk to each other. So you become the person connecting everything. You become the integration. You're the one copying numbers between tabs and making sure everything matches.

36:10 But that's what Odoo fixes. It puts everything on one platform. So I'm talking accounting, invoicing, CRM, inventory, HR, project management, your website, e-commerce, e-signatures, over 45 apps, all connected. When something happens in one place, every other place already knows about it. So you're not updating three systems every time you close a deal. And the pricing is the part that surprised me. The first app is free for life. Unlimited users, hosting included. One subscription after that unlocks everything else. So if you're spending your time connecting tools instead of actually doing the work you have to do, go check it out. Links in the show notes. My fitness pal is a success story partner. People always ask me how I have time to track what I eat, pay attention to my nutrition when I have a daily podcast.

36:52 I have a weekly podcast. I have a newsletter. I run a marketing agency. My days are super full. But honestly, that's exactly why I have to do it. See, when you're running that many things, when you are a high-performing person, you cannot afford to have your energy be inconsistent. Food is a foundation for everything, for energy, for sleep, for weight, for recovery, for performance. And the days when I'm not paying attention to what I'm eating, I feel it. The MyFitnessPal app makes tracking a non-issue. I can say what I ate, it has voice logging, or I can point my camera at a plate with meal scan and it figures out what's there. See, I'm not sitting around entering all my ingredients. The app does the work for me. It also connects to over 40 fitness apps and wearables, so my training, my steps, my nutrition, it all goes to one place.

37:34 One picture of what's happening instead of having to piece everything together myself. The whole thing is frictionless. It takes seconds, not minutes. So do yourself a favor, start tracking what you eat. You are going to feel way better. Go to podcast.myfitnesspal.com and use code SCOTT, all uppercase, for 15% off MyFitnessPal premium. That's podcast.myfitnesspal.com, code SCOTT. When you figure out your money problems, I'm just thinking of all these different ideas that are playing the psychology of it, like... First of all, the number one cause of divorce is financial problems. It's not infidelity. It's financial problems and stress. You know, people will call it financial infidelity sometimes. When people are spending without telling their story? Yeah, when they're spending in a way that's like really dishonest, essentially.

38:16 I heard that like two years ago. Financial infidelity. How do you spend your money from? Anyway, but it's tying it to that, this responsibility, this honesty in this relationship. And money is... And even if they aren't hiding it, they can't effectively communicate about it. And if both of them would sit down together and be like, okay, in a moment of quiet, right? In a moment where it's feeling calm, where you're feeling good, be like, okay, like literally, like what is our money for? Like we're both, I mean, they're both probably killing it, doing what they need to do. And they probably are sending their kids off to a daycare to make sure they can make this money. It's like, what is this money for? And what's cool about that is you'll see couples not talk about money very quickly.

38:59 And there's, they start talking about life goals and... aspirations, what they want, and then you're like, that is an interesting couples conversation. Money is like this facade. Which is silly because that's what drives everything. Everything. I keep thinking about how when you live a month ahead, how a lot of like wineabbers, is that the... Wineabbers do it. It's almost... You know Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? You have to make sure that you have shelter and food. And you have to take care of all of these things before you feel safe, before your nervous system is regulated and relaxed, right?

39:40 So what you're actually doing is you're taking care of all these psychological things that would stress people out by living a month in advance because they're no longer worried about, well, can I not pay for my rent? Can I not pay for utilities? So everything you do is from a calmer place because you're not thinking about these very stressful things that people, I think, who are living the paycheck to paycheck are always thinking about. And not just money, but like you're at work and you're more creative. You're more strategic. You're more clear headed. That's why when you fix the money, when you get rid of that money worry, you are removing noise from every part of your life. It's not just the money part. It's the whole part. I want to go through the rest of the questions.

40:21 You bet. Um, but I just want to, I just want to understand the moment in your life when you understood that traditional money advice was not correct. Like what was the personal thing for you? There was an inflection point at some point where you realized this is not working for anybody, myself included. Yeah. I mean, I, I wrote about probably the most poignant one, you know. One point is tough because things are going to be an evolution, right? But the point where I felt like, okay, I was in accounting. I was going to be a master's student. I think I was still bachelor's at the time, but worked on my bachelor's degree in accounting. And my wife's Julie. So Julie and I were just married young in school.

41:06 Julie was going to graduate with a social work degree where her full-time gig was going to be, I think, 12 bucks an hour. And it was 20 years ago, but it still wasn't a lot. Right. So 12 bucks. So she has that prospect and I'm making a little bit of money part time. And my school had just told me you aren't supposed to work while you're doing school. And I was just kind of like, well, I'm still working. Like they can, you know, they can do whatever. Yeah. So we're doing that and things were so tight. And I built this literally just a spreadsheet for the two of us. And we were just married and we had no we had no money baggage. We had no money, but we also had no money baggage. And so I had gone to Julie and been like, let's just use this spreadsheet that I built. And, you know, we're newlyweds.

41:46 So she's like, oh, that sounds great. You're wonderful. Everything you do is perfect. And this is awesome, you know? So we just got started with it. And that was that. And a year, not a year, a month into it, We're doing everything we're supposed to do. We're saving our money. We're avoiding student loan debt. That was a big thing for me. We're setting aside. We needed to be able to buy a car in a little bit. We didn't own a computer yet, and we needed one of those for my schooling. You're probably like, what did you own? And we did not own a lot, but, you know, we had love, and we had some textbooks. That's all you have at the beginning. That's fine. So we, it was so tight. And I remember walking to class and we walked through the student center at the university at Brigham Young University.

42:26 And they sold these donuts in this little bakery thing. And I'm a sucker for a donut, right? And they're these old fashioned donuts and they had a microwave in the back. And I would, I wanted to tell them like microwave it for 10 seconds and it'll be flawless. And I'll have this donut. It was 50 cents, right? And I'm looking at it and I realized like, I can't, I can't buy that. It's just not, it's not in the plan. And I had this moment of just like, okay, what amount of money – would I need to earn where I would think 50 cents was okay to 50 cents. Right. And I was like, I can't. And it was like this weight on me.

43:08 I mean, I felt so restricted and I'm like, I'm supposed to be good at this. Like I'm, I'm doing accounting. I'm studying this. I've always enjoyed the personal finance stuff. space. And I'm like, I'm supposed to be good at this. Anyway, I go home to Julia. I was probably whining to her and I'm like, I, we need some breathing room. And she was like, okay, well, let's just kind of think it through. And that was the first time where we kind of were like, some of this money gets to be for what we decide. I was reading the personal finance books and being like, they say this, they say, I was probably even thinking about maxing, maximizing my Roth at that point, when am I gonna do that? When am I gonna do that? Yeah, but I couldn't. And you're like, when are you gonna, when does living start, you know?

43:52 And that was the start of me being like, this is wrong, you know? We gotta figure this out. there was more. No, it's just interesting how you can be... Like extremes are never good in either direction, right? You can be overly frugal and never live. And I know people like that. And I always wonder, like you're going to die one day with money in the bank and it's not even... Some of it's invested okay, but it's not all invested. There's some money sitting in the checking account and you just need it there to feel safe. And I don't think that's the right attitude at all. But then there's people that... dollar in, dollar out. It's like you can't spend that money fast enough.

44:33 And both of those personalities are, I'll say, incorrect. Like both of those are incorrect. I think that it's the balance that is where you live a good life. Like you should be able to afford the 50 cent donut, but you shouldn't also get a paycheck for 200 bucks when you're in college and then go to the bar and spend 200 bucks at the bar. So there is a little bit of a balance to it. I would say instead of balance, I would just say they both need to figure out what their intention is. The person's overly frugal. They're probably scared. And oftentimes the person that spends their money as fast as they can is also scared. A lot of time what they, and this isn't for everybody, I'm speaking in broad strokes now, but people that spend as quickly as they can often have grown up in environments where money was very scarce and, And what they had demonstrated was when you have money, you better spend it because we don't have money.

45:31 So when you have it, use it. And it's totally counterintuitive. It's not rational. Well, it makes sense why they think that. It's not rational, but it does make sense. And so what you, I mean, but it's interesting how we label things. Like if you're, if you don't really get a lot of joy out of spending money, people will be like, oh, you're a miser, you're frugal, you know, you don't. Or if you spend too much, you're a spendthrift. If you save too much, you're a hoarder. You know, if you invest too much, you're greedy. It's like, hey, guys, can we? Why do we do this? Come on. When can we just have it be? Hey, you know, you see that money is valuable to you because of what you put into it. And I love seeing you express yourself in how you spend it.

46:13 And investing is, to be honest, investing is just a form of spending where they're like, I'll just, I'm going to spend that later. It's going to be, it's going to grow and I'm going to spend it. Right. I mean, there may be some that are like, I'm investing this for my kids. I won't spend a dime. But that now you're hearing their intention of like, this is for my kids. Like Jesse, don't, don't you dare question that that's for my kids. I'm changing my family tree. okay, I hear it, right? But when they're doing it out of fear, like just no, no, no, then you guys, you gotta start peeling that onion. Why do we have such a negative view of money? Because all of those labels are coming from our own negative perception of money. When I, when, when, even when I'm, even when I have like a comment on somebody who's too frugal, I'm like that you're too frugal.

46:57 Like, why is that my business at all? Like, why do I have an opinion of you? Why is my opinion of you based on how you spend your money? Because that happens more often than not. I don't, I mean. It shouldn't, but I think that it does happen sometimes. Next time you ask yourself, you want to probe and be like, hey, why are you so frugal? Instead, ask them where they love spending money. And really don't give up until they'll, it might not be a high amount to you or me, or they could be like, well, I honestly, I love getting popcorn when I go to the movies. And you could, in your mind, be like, I wanted a big swing. I wanted, you know, I wanted a couple of zeros, but you could be like, well, tell me why. Maybe they never got popcorn as a kid. Maybe they always got popcorn as a kid.

47:39 Maybe they're reliving their childhood when they do that. And then you're like, Good. You know, like you love hearing it. So I would just that would be a tack to just be like to take it from a different angle. And I feel like there's also shame around money, too. So much. I don't know how many times I've seen this this joke online. Like you will never tell your parents how much you pay for rent or how much you spend on that vacation because you feel embarrassed about it. Why do people feel embarrassed and shame around how they spend their own money? I think when they aren't confident that they know, like if they aren't confident in the answer of what the money's for, then that could be the beginning of it.

48:24 I mean, but if you're confident, like I know that's for my kid's inheritance or I know I look good in this jacket or whatever it may be, when you're confident in your choice, You're you don't really care. And and I don't think you'll feel the shame. You know what the craziest one was for me? I grew up with a, you know, middle class, maybe a little upper middle, but you can be upper middle and then have crazy frugal parents. And then you feel like you're not upper middle. The upper. is gone. They lowered it, right? And I remember literally my dad sweeping out the garage with this broom, but the broom had broken. The handle was this long, and he's bent way over. I mean, he's 30, so he has a good back and everything, but he's bent way over just sweeping it out.

49:06 And they had bought this house, and I know they had... really gone for it on that. And my, I was raised with this frugal, like if you're, if you don't spend money, good period frugal, morally good, the end. And then in 2015, I wanted to get a Tesla and I was talking to my dad about it. And it was interesting. I literally had to have a therapist tell me like, dude, you're They didn't say dude. You know, they're much more proper. But hey, but the vibe was there, right? And they're just like, you're talking about this car in this way that's really interesting. And I had this 02 Honda Civic. And she pointed out, her name was Flory.

49:47 She's like, you're a... you're proud of how frugal you are. You love driving around in that beat up car as if the joke's on everybody else because you could afford something. And she called me out for like serious pride. And, I felt totally, she was dead on. I was like, oh yeah, I feel this reverse pride for how frugal I am. And it was like, oh, look at me. I know I could afford this and all these other suckers. It was distasteful. Like, I'm like, oh, I don't want to be that, you know? And she's like, just get the car, get the car. And I did it, and then I became the guy that was taking people in, because it was early when no one had them, you know?

50:29 Taking people in the neighborhood and showing them electric acceleration. But I'll close the loop. My dad had the hardest time when I got this fancy car, and it took him a while to be like, oh, okay, I like this, this is fun, you know? But isn't it interesting the stories we carry? Well, it's interesting because that story that you told yourself, probably came from your parents being super frugal. And then that was like a, well, you look up to your dad. Yeah, absolutely. You're like, I want to emulate who he was. And now I'm frugal and it's a, it's a piece of like, you know, my personality, even though it's not helping anybody at all. And you, you know, you're not putting this Tesla payment and can't afford to live your life.

51:09 Yeah. How did you, how did you heal your own relationship with money then? You bought the car. I bought the car by spending it. Yeah. I really started to say this money is meant to be spent. And it was like, Jesse, what do you want to spend money on? And they're like, honestly, there aren't a lot for the Mechams. Like travel. We love Julie. I'll be a home. I'd stay a homebody and I'd do the gardening myself and be totally content. But she loves to travel with the kids and give the kids these things. experiences that just open them up. Do the kids appreciate it completely? Probably not, you know, but we're doing it and she loves it. So that's the one. And then I'm way into woodworking.

51:50 I'm totally an amateur, but I can't get enough of that. And I just, it kind of loosened me up just like, Yeah, it's only meant to be spent. So like, it's a hard job to figure out. At the end of the day, it's a finite resource. It always is. We're told that it's not. We're conditioned to feel like it isn't, but it's a finite resource. And it's meaningful to figure out what to do with this Finite thing. What's the next question that people have to ask? This is a good one. The next answer. Yeah, the next answer is for you. And we're there right now. I mean, when you had said on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you're like, oh, you're taking care of, you know, the fear is abating. We're getting rid of this.

52:32 We know we're surviving. I don't remember what they are exactly surviving and all those needs. But you get to like this self-actualization. That's the last one. That's the last one. And, and, and I think there are relationships in there as well. Somewhere, yeah. Yeah. So we're like, we're butchering. Maslow's like, guys, throw me a bone here. But, but we, we have this situation where you've covered, like you've eliminated worry from the present moment and you've kept it out of the future. And then your system is humming. Yeah. You can still feel worry when your money isn't doing what you really want it to do for you. And this is where it gets fun because you can start to be like, I can be like, Scott, like, well, let me ask you honestly, like, where do you love?

53:15 Like, let's do boggle. Okay. It's a boggle style. So I, you have to say somewhere where you spend money, where you're pretty darn confident. I, I'm not going to be into it. Okay. What's something pretty unique? I could probably say I just bought some really nice chisels. Odds are you did not buy chisels pretty recently. No, I did not buy chisels recently. That's a good one. I feel like you have to... I put you on the spot now. Well, I mean... Okay, so the obvious... This is a cop-out answer, and I'll give you another answer too, but I mean, I put a lot of money into my business. Like, I love what I do. I genuinely love what I do. But that's not any different than you. Um... Well, you might be in a stage where you're putting more in.

53:58 You might be like, I am, Jesse, like I'm pedal to the metal right now, where I'm in a phase of more like pulling back some. So right now, so we don't have kids yet, you know, hopefully soon, but we don't have kids yet. So I would say my money goes into regular life stuff. Yeah. business. And then, uh, uh, gee, my fiance, she's been really good at like helping me understand travel and experiences have been huge for like my mental health and wellbeing. So I'd say those are the three buckets really. Tell me one recently, like an experienced travel in Japan for two weeks for my birthday, which was way outside my comfort zone, way more expensive than it was like time. It was money, but it was the best experience. Were you just towering over people? Did you stick out like a sore throat in Japan?

54:38 Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. So yeah. And what was your favorite part about Japan? Oh, the food. The food, okay. And I'm not even a foodie. But they made you one. Yes. Yeah. That's the best. What was the food? It was Wagyu, A5, everything. All that? Yeah. Where it's like this tiny bite and you... But it's not even tiny bites in Japan. Yeah, it's the whole thing. It's everything. It's just Wagyu. Oh, it's amazing. Okay. And as you were in Tokyo, I've heard Tokyo, Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka. We did it was two weeks. So we went around two weeks. Yeah. So plenty of time to like really kind of get absorbed. So, so, so this is also another thing too. I think that it's important to have people around you that show you how to spend money so you can enjoy it.

55:18 Like I wouldn't have done that trip on my own. Yeah. I'm a homebody like you, but then I do it and I have the best experience and it de-stresses me and it takes my mind away from work for a bit and you realize the world doesn't end. So I think that also you sometimes, I mean, this is just a life wisdom, not just money wisdom, but having people around you that push you to do new things, push you to be better, push you to try stuff and take you outside your comfort zone, whether or not it's your friends or your fiancee. Like it's a it's a it's a huge benefit. And find those people. You don't have them. But that to me was that to me was big because I didn't plan on spending two weeks in Japan for my birthday. In my mind, I'm like, that's taking me away from work. I'm I'm losing money over here.

55:59 I'm not making money over there. It's like a net negative. It's like one of the best trips I've ever been on in my life. And she's my she's like, he needs this so bad. Yeah, she knows me. She needs it too, but she knows that I need it. Yes. See, this is money well spent. Exactly. You know, like what if I, like if the trip cost 20 grand, like here's 20 grand, all memories are erased. No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't do that. You don't make the sale, you know? And that's the thing that I find is so fun when people get to that for you. Now, I will say, because we've talked about this really cool two week vacation to Japan. Some people, both, both of them, if they're in a, in a relationship, they're just like, I just, I want to get my coffee.

56:43 I wanna be at home. I wanna putz around in my garden. And they're lit up in that way. And so it's very important that you recognize that these moments where it's like money is for you, it doesn't have to be big. It can be something like, Every year we, you know, we drive here to remember this or meet up with family or what it can be the tiniest of things, but it is for you and only you. And money is meant to be spent for you. It's when you're spending, you are expressing yourself. And with G helping you, she's like this couple is now expressing themselves like we want this in the world and therefore we will give our energy this in the form of money to this and see it.

57:25 And I think that that's I mean, for me, at least she she's really good at helping me enjoy life. And that's important because I am, if I was, if I was single, I would be at my computer 24, 7, 3, 6. And that's not healthy. You probably wouldn't be nice to be around either after a while. No, you know, like you'd be a version of yourself. That's just not quite it. So, so that would be like, you know, you mentioned you, you get your, what are your chisels? And yes, yeah. Chisels. Chisels and whatnots. Yes. Chisels and whatnots. Obviously I don't spend money on that, but that would be, you know, that wasn't. It's interesting because when I'm looking at your work, I also have some of these issues because I wouldn't have chosen that trip. But when somebody around you exposed you to something, then you realize that is money well spent.

58:08 And now I'm growing as a person. I mean, it sounds it's a lot of people are going to listen to this pretentious asshole who says that like going to Japan is growing as a person. But for me, that's a distraction. Like I would have not chosen that trip on my own. And I think that a lot of like really, you know, focused people can. Honestly, the genuine people hearing your energy and hearing you talk about it, how much you liked it. A genuine person hears that, sees it in your body language, hears it in your voice and gives it to you completely. Well, I appreciate that. But so I think that that's the point. So whether or not. Whether or not you have somebody close to you who can help you understand how to live a good life or you do the work yourself, the end result is still in that positive. All the same. Yeah. I mean, it is when you're being introspective, you're also looking outward for input.

58:53 Right. But this for you question or this for you answer to the question of what's it for? This is you being introspective like, man, I work hard for this. What is it really for? And I think that actually, you know, the entrepreneur type, that's who I am. I think that some people fall into that trap where they work so hard and they're scared to spend it on anything outside of the business. Because their business is their entire identity. So, I mean, that's me sometimes. I'm like, this isn't going into ads or payroll. But that's not how you live your life either. Yeah. I remember distinctly coming home, telling Julie, it was when we're going to do, we're going to launch a new version of our software 15 years ago.

59:34 And I needed all the money. Like we were at this point, we were able to take a salary. So that was, it took us about five years to get a regular salary, but we got that. So we were taking the salary for maybe two years or so. And I remember coming home and telling her, the business is doing better than ever. She's like, this is great. And I was like, but we're gonna have to take a pay cut. And she asked, will groceries be cut? At this point, I think we had five kids. And she's just like, tell me groceries are intact. But, I was like, no, groceries stays, but like the travel that we love, that's, we're gonna have to shrink that for a little while. And it was about a year of us refocusing some of that money and she was for it.

1:00:17 Um, but it was an interesting moment where I was being really intentional saying this money is for the business and it felt right and good. And then other times later on, I was like, hallelujah, that it's not all for the business. I'm so tired of putting it all on black And continually spinning this thing, you know, like every once in a while you want to take a little off. I mean, this is like the cliche line, right? You got to enjoy the journey. We forget that. You forget that. What is the last answer? For change. Yeah. And this one, this is right up your alley. But we were talking about being an agent, you know, and restoring agency to people with their money. Money is now, like the worry of it, we've now really taken care of.

1:01:00 The now, the later, the system itself. They're even spending money for themselves in ways that surprise them and bring them joy. I have this killer story about this guy that's a record collector that now spends more on records than he ever has and has less stress. And like, that's what he wants vinyls. That's it. Like that was his use. So like his worry of like, Oh, should I have bought that vinyl? I mean, I'm like, I'm, I'm, this is so irresponsible. That voice is now totally quiet and he spends more than he was. I, I, I'd love that. But, you're not quite done because what will happen is life will come at you and throw a curveball. It can be something as benign as suddenly you have guests coming into town and the food budget's going to be different than you thought.

1:01:47 Or it could be something like I've got to get a plane ticket to a funeral. You know, it can be bad or good and change comes at you and money is for that. You're just like, we're going to move things around in our plan and we're going to buy the plane ticket. But also, money is for change that you want to see. And this is where it's not just money being for you, our fourth answer, but it's now like money is also for me to start a business, for me to, heck, just... be able to change a job from one where you're like, I feel stuck. Maybe money is, maybe it's to take a pay cut so you can get out of a horrible job. Maybe you could find a job that pays less to give you extra time to be able to start working something on the side.

1:02:32 I mean, it is, but it is you saying, I want to see a change in my life, in me, in my family, in my community, whatever it may be. I think pretty small, like when people are like, oh, philanthropically, what excites you? I you know, four blocks in either direction. That's where I like to see it. But other people thankfully think like, oh, this money is for, well, we mentioned electric cars or Mars for, you know, two of them are trying to do Mars pretty heavily, right? And it's like, hey, like this is a win, right? However this goes, this is a win, you know? And thankfully you have people that were just like, I'm gonna spend a good bit of my money, my treasure, my time to see change in the world they wanna see.

1:03:16 And when people are that intentional, that focused, it is so common that they just choose things that are so good for not just themselves, but everyone around them. You say that money can't buy happiness, but it can steal it. Oh, it steals it all the time. Yeah. Yeah. So first of all, first of all, why can money not buy happiness? Because money definitely makes life easier. It makes life easier. It can make life harder also. You can, you, and you know, everyone wants to hear like, remember the old $70,000 thing? That was a, that was a Harvard deal for a while. Yes, I remember this study. I think it's old now. I think 70 is now we're probably, it's probably 110.

1:03:56 I don't know what the number is now. And the context is if you make $70,000, there's no amount above that that makes you more happy or makes your life better. I take issue with that because I don't know if those people that make, were making above 70 were being intentional. They could have just been kind of autopiloting where you're like, yeah, what am I doing? Like, I just, I don't know. I get more guac on my Chipotle. Like I, and I go, what is the meaning of this here? You know, that was for my 22 year old son. He's, on the leaderboard for Chipotle. So he was doing traveling sales. Get this. He's doing traveling sales. He's all over. And so he's on the company. He's eating out everywhere. And he just chooses Chipotle all the time? And so he's just doing Chipotle because he's like, Dad, it's pretty healthy. And I'm like, well, good on you for not just eating gas station food.

1:04:39 Yeah, I mean, it's a step, I guess. But he got up to number 12 on their leaderboard. So this is a real thing. It's a real thing. Yeah. How many Chipotles do you got to eat? Multiple times a day. He's going to the gym, doing sales, eating Chipotle. That was basically it. You know what, though? Like, good for him for not abusing that company expense account. Yeah, he's keeping it pretty tame. You know, I mean, Chipotle, come on. Very tame. Yeah. How did I get on that? I totally tangent it off of that. No, because it was about why money can't buy happiness. And then you said that people make over $70,000 are adding extra guac. Yeah. As opposed to actually spending it intentionally. Yes, maybe if they were more intentional, they'd be like, I went from $70,000 to $200,000. And you're like, well, what did that $100,000 get you? Yes. Yes.

1:05:19 It might've gotten used some pretty amazing stuff. Now, happiness in the way that study or the way people use that phrase, like, am I more or less happy than I was 10 years ago? I don't know, man. I was pretty happy 10 years ago, you know? And I was pretty happy 10 years before that too. So I think happiness is a bit of a trap there, which is why I said that it can steal it. Because however people talk about money can't buy happiness, there may be right, where it's just like, you're happy, you know? you're healthy, family's good, right? But it can steal happiness, absolutely. Because you have this worry constantly over your shoulder of like, can you buy that? Can you afford that?

1:06:00 Should you have bought that? Shouldn't you have bought that? I mean, when you're literally sitting there Christmas morning, you said you wanna have kids. At some point, you're gonna have this Christmas morning, kids, holidays, whatever. And you better hope that there's some joy there. And not just you being like, man, January credit card bill. Yeah, it's gonna hit. Seth, we can't define happiness for everybody, but I can tell you that money will steal whatever they think it is. HubSpot is a success story partner. Now, every entrepreneur, founder, CEOs listening right now needs to pay attention. I have a question for you. When a buyer asks AI for a solution or a product that your business sells, does your business come up? The answer is that most companies have no idea.

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1:09:32 Yeah. And security even be. Yeah, you got to put some caveats there. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's so what we're trying to do and maybe we can get into this for just a second. But money. Even this idea of being, you know, knowing what it's for and then having these five answers, what we're doing is just exposing people to trade-offs. And we're like, if you do it here, you can't do it here. And so you're talking about options, same idea. It's just like, if you do this, you don't have this option over here anymore. And I've found that as we expose people to the trade-offs that they are making, right, they are always making trade-offs. They're like, no, I'm, yes, yes, you are, because you're alive, right?

1:10:12 So you're making trade-offs. If you expose people to what they're trading, they start to make really good decisions. And I mean, like, objectively good, where you're like, you know, you mentioned blowing $200 at the bar. You'll see people be like, I'm going to do less of that. You'll see them eating out less. You'll see them noticing like, I'm not getting what I thought I was out of that. You'll see them spending in ways where someone that's coming in from the frugal angle, they'll be like, listen, extra guac on the—don't do that. What you do is you make your own guac at home and you just pack it around in a little Tupperware. And they're showing you how they save all this money. You're like, okay, that's not really it either. But what you want to do is expose people to what they're trading.

1:10:54 And they make— good decisions, they'll start investing, they'll start paying off debt. You don't even have to tell them to. No, it's like the answer is always education. It's just so strange that the most, not the most important, but a thing that derives, it's one of the most important things. It is one of them. I was going to say it isn't, but it's not important in the way that you should worship it, but it's important in the way that if you don't understand it and you don't use it intentionally. Again, you're living a reactive life and it's really hard. It's really hard to live a life properly if you don't understand how money flows. You're going to spend your life earning that thing. You're going to spend so much of your life obtaining money.

1:11:36 And then imagine you have no idea how to spend it joyfully. That's crazy because high school doesn't teach you how to spend money. University doesn't really teach you how to spend money. They'll get you accredited. credit card, but yeah. They'll get you a credit card on campus when you're, you know, in your first week, they'll have a little booth, but that's pretty much it. Yeah. They'll let you sign up for big student loans. Yeah. Yeah. And then our parents, I mean, like growing up, I was always told we don't talk about money. In the workplace, we don't talk about other people's salaries. So everyone is, you know, signing us up for bad money decisions, not educating us or shaming us for thinking and talking about it, yet is the most important thing. Yeah. We're having this fan fest. We call them, you know, YNAB Fan Fest.

1:12:16 We're having one tomorrow and here in New York and they, people all get together. And the reason we do it is not so they can meet me. It's not so they can like have this fan moment. It's so they can meet each other and... talk and it is cathartic and there needs to be more of it. And we're hoping that we can promote more and more of that community. It, maybe it's not with your mom or dad and that's totally fine. You know, I mean, you want to talk about sex and politics too. Like, let's just do it all. You know, it's like, maybe we're just kind of like, ah, we'll not do that. But there are times and places where you totally want to be able to and where it's, it's so helpful. And so this event here, it's it's mainly us bringing people together to just have them chat with each other.

1:12:58 Yeah. Not realize they're not like the only, you know, the only one doing this, which should not be rare. Yeah, but it is. It's rare. You write that your money is you. Everything you traded to earn it. Two thoughts on this. First of all. Is it dangerous when somebody thinks that their money is them? I'm talking about their identity. Yes. That's the first question. But the second question is what changes in a person when this idea lands that their money is them? Yeah. So people are inherently innately of value. infinite, you might say. So that value is never in question.

1:13:40 It is not a value question. Saying money as you is hopefully a shorthand where people can say, I have given so much to get that. The best way I could think of it is that's a little bit of me, you know? And I mean, you could imagine the I mean, we see this, the disaster of people being like, well, I'm not worth that much, or they use it as some kind of scorekeeping system or whatever, and it's just, that's not it. That's not it at all. But when you examine what you give to get it, I do think the best definition of money is, that's just a little bit of Scott right there. And then you'd be like, and you know what Scott loves to do? Build his business. Well, no surprise. Look what those little Scots are doing. They're running off to build the business, you know?

1:14:21 So it's totally okay. Yeah, you have to make sure that someone's not like, attaching their own value. Well, I think some people do. And that would be, yes, we would want to make sure we steer very clear of that. Yes. I want them to understand because it's, it's tough because for example, when, I mean, it's a measuring system for an individual. That's what it seems like, even though you're worth this much money. You're worth 70 grand. You as a person. And then, you know, you get fired and like, well, now I'm not, what am I worth anymore? And that, that's what really causes people. Hey, the, that is particularly jarring for people, but when, when they do see it as like, what I give is like, I get money in return and what I want them to see is.

1:15:14 wait a minute, so you're saying that here at work today, like this is meaningful, right? There's maybe, if you can understand that what you're giving for money, the trade is all this activity and effort and brain and creativity, all this good stuff is traded for the money. And so you're like, well, look what you're giving for it. And then you do the swap and you get money for it. Nothing's changed, we're just, the medium is different, right? And so then someone can be like, man, I am, what I do here at work, like this is, I'm giving my life to this. And that starts to elevate. Maybe it'll elevate work for them in a way that says, I'm going to double down and kill it here.

1:15:55 Or I do not like this place. I got to start figuring things out. And those are both totally valid things. conclusions to come to when you're like, man, this matters. If money matters, then how you earn it matters. And if that matters, then you can look around and be like, is this, is this what I want to do? A lot of what you speak about is, is looking inside, understanding where you want to put your money and what's meaningful to you. Do you ever have any advice for somebody who's thinking about how to make more money? Yeah. So, you know, you probably get questions about, should I quit my job? Should I go for the promotion? Should I start my own business?

1:16:35 And probably a lot of those answers have to do with... What's important to you too. So what's your advice to somebody? Because it's not just about spending it intentionally. I'm sure that's not the only question you get. No, no. That's, it's very, what happens is people will, they'll realize they get their money under control. It's no longer a source of stress, but it's, it's a source of opportunity. And then they will come to me and they'll say, hey, I started YNAB. I started doing this. Money's no longer stressing me out. And so I started this side thing. And then I just want to hear, well, what it is? What are you doing? You know, like when someone's like, hey, should I start this? Though there are two things I do. One is I'm always like, could you start it cheaper, right? I have people come to me with software ideas.

1:17:16 And the whole landscape's changed with AI where I used to be like, hey, listen, it's expensive to build software. And now I'm like, It's not expensive to build a prototype. You could get something out there. So I'm so for people going for it. I think being employed is very entrepreneurial as well. I don't want people to think it's not. You can be so entrepreneurial inside a huge organization and be killing it, right? Right. But also, and I also want to say that entrepreneurial stuff, it's not this, it's so romanticized. And a lot of it's just like grinding and getting up and working long and doing.

1:17:57 And they say, yeah, they're like, oh, you make your own schedule. You're like, yeah, I do. It's all day. 24-7, 365. Yeah, I never think about it, you know. And so... It's not all it's cracked up to be either, but I mean, coming from where I came from, I'd be hard pressed to not want to tell the person, go for it. Okay. So I also want to talk a little bit about your entrepreneur story because I didn't realize that you are a hundred percent bootstrapped and you've been building this for over 20 years. So- By the way, I'm a big fan of bootstrapping because then you don't have to have all these, you know, stakeholders and bosses and, and you can build at your own pace. And, and I actually, when I speak to entrepreneurs, I, I forget how many people feel like they have to raise money.

1:18:46 Like it blows my mind. I just invested in this company and this great founder out of SF. And she's asking like, should we raise the next round? And I'm like, well, to be honest, I would recommend if you don't need it, you should just grow through sales and not raise money. And she said, that is such a novel, she's very smart, which is what sort of threw me. That's such a novel idea. for anybody coming out of San Francisco and Silicon Valley. And because venture capital is marketed to entrepreneurs. So backing up, I was just, I saw that you had bootstrapped for 20 years and I'm just curious, sort of your founder origin story, why you chose to bootstrap.

1:19:28 You did it successfully, obviously. So walk us back because a lot of entrepreneurs listen to the show. Yeah, I didn't know that I even should think about raising money at the time. I mean, I literally built a spreadsheet and sold that for $20. That was the first version of the, that was the MVP. Yeah, and it only lasted... six months until, and it made me sold very little, but it was just enough for me to be like, Oh, this is fun. And you're like learning stuff, you know, you're learning how the internet works. This thing called Google AdWords came out and I was like, Oh, okay. Like I can, and you could pay like five cents a click to get a visitor. Like it was glory days, you know? And so easy anymore. I remember this conversation with Julie where I was like, hey, I've got like $63 carved out to do this Google AdWords experiment.

1:20:16 And she's just like, okay. And I'm like, I think it'll do this. That was our seed money. It was like $63. But it was just enough for people to buy it and be like, oh, there's a little bit of traction. And then I met who now is essentially my co-founder, Taylor. six months later and he writes me and he's like, I like your spreadsheet, but I could improve it. And I was like, well, let's just do real software. So back then real software was like, you download it, you paste in a license key and you could get all that. So he built that when he was down in Texas, I was in Utah, still finishing up school. And he built that all on his own. And we would like talk on the landline phone and he would email me attachments of the build that I would beta test.

1:21:01 And so that took us, I don't know, I said that incorrectly. That was a year and a half into it, not six months. And I skipped a year of doing an internship with an accounting firm and things like that. So I was learning sales in that time and I'm still trying to sell the spreadsheet. And I was learning the like, I was selling people a method of like how to think about their money, not like adding things up, you know? So I got going with that. And then Taylor contacted me and I did the CPA exam that summer and I got my CPA license, started working for a big accounting firm down in Dallas. But the whole time, I've got this little side gig. So the peak of it, I'm making 45 grand as a staff accountant, working 80 hours a week for those guys.

1:21:47 And then I've got two little kids, and I would leave for work at 6. And I would get up at 4. I would work on YNAB until 5.15. I would run to the gym, crank through like half hour, get home. Julie would run to the gym, come back, and then I would have sort of had the kids like... not dead. And then she comes in and I'm like, now I'm out of here. And we did that for 10 months. And I would get home at 10 o'clock at night, but I would do a little bit of YNAB on the side. We launched the version that Taylor had built about six months into my accounting career. And by the end of that year, I had made like 90 grand, 95 grand off of YNAB.

1:22:30 So it would have been the second full year. And I'd made 45 from my accounting. And yeah, so I ended up talking to a business, like, you know, pretty successful business guy. And I was like, hey, what are my risks? Like, I've got this thing. And he asked me three pretty interesting questions. I was like, I wanna maybe do this full time. he's like, do you have any debt? I said, no. Do you have any kids? And I said, yeah, I've got two, which is a form of like, how are your obligations still? Like you got a family, you know, that kind of thing. And then would your wife be on board if you did this?

1:23:10 And I said, yeah. And so he's like, you got nothing to lose, man. Like he's like, worst case, you go back and get a job. That's good. Powerful, good advice. I feel like a couple of things to unpack. First of all, you know, there's, There's this saying about burning the boats and going all in. And I feel like for most people, that's bad advice because I think that the business will always take a little bit longer than you expect. It'll cost you a little bit more to get off the ground. So I think unless you are raising venture money and moving at the speed of light and blitz scaling some... Like why not figure out if the business works before you put your job?

1:23:50 And it's even easier to do now with AI than ever before. I'm like, I'm like, I mean, we're all novices now in that regard. But you can test stuff so cheaply. So that's the first idea. The second part of your story that I really appreciate is, well, the advice that he gave you is good. But I think so many people underestimate how important their partner is or their spouse is. You got to have it. on whether or not they're going to be successful because I, I mean, I've mentioned G a couple of times, like she's huge in, in, in my success. I mean, every time things go wrong, which they inevitably do when you're an entrepreneur and, and, We talked about identity being attached to money.

1:24:32 Well, for me, a lot of my identity is attached to my business. And when things don't go right, you kind of spiral a little bit. Having a good partner that can pull you out of that and help you zoom out and see the world's not ending. We had. You get it. We had. So we were gone about two years. Taylor wasn't full time. He was working for a video game company. And he was just moonlighting for me. You know, there's no way I could afford him. And, and then he, he needed to take some time off. He's like, I'm taking a little personal time off. And so I was like, okay, I got to find another developer. So I find this other developer. I rush the hire because I'm so antsy. And ended up hiring the wrong guy. But it takes me a year.

1:25:14 He's building this new version of our software. And I'm getting these spidey senses, but they're not very well honed yet. I'm like new at this, right? And Taylor was a diamond in the rough. that I didn't know I had at the time of like high bar quality, not just deliver a milestone, you know? And so this other guy was just like, here's your milestone. This is it. And I was like, Oh, this bug, he's like, Oh, that'd be extra. Anyway, long story short, I spent a year and 80 grand, which at that time, It was so much money. And I remember going home to Julie. We had just bought this house. It was at the height of the real estate crazy back in 08. I swear if we were about six months later, it would have been so much better. But we like peak peak, we bought that house.

1:25:55 So we buy that, whatever. And we hadn't furnished it, though, because... we didn't have money for furniture, you know? So we had brought this house from, or this couch from Dallas that's like a two-seater into this larger gray room. It looks so ridiculous. It looks like a doll's little couch. And then I have to go into Julie. And when Taylor, when I finally hired him full-time, he takes a look at the code that I thought we would maybe still be able to ship. And he's just like, in his first two weeks with me, he has to tell me like, We're, this is junk, we're pulling it off. So then I have to go home to, I mean, props to him for giving me the hard news, but I had to go back to Julie and she knew we had been, I'd been working on it forever and be like, we're, it's all scrapped, you know?

1:26:40 And I literally remember my voice echoing in the like we had some wood floor, like my voice echoing because the house is so empty because we had enough to get the house and we're just going to slowly furnish it and live in it and get there. And instead, I'm like, yeah, that 80, you know how well you could have furnished a simple starter home for 80 grand? Very well. Could have done it very well. And to her credit, she was just like, oh, that's tough. The end. Yeah. I never once was she like, well, it'd have been nice to have even 10 of that 80, you know? I mean, it was, it was on me. Like she didn't interview the guy. Like she's, I mean, you know, we're doing our own things and cheering for each other. And she, she just kept, she just still cheered, which so important.

1:27:24 So you talk about the right partner. Yeah. It's everything. I think that also that person has to know what they're signing up for because they're Being with an entrepreneur, we're fortunate because we both have our own businesses. So we both kind of get each other. But when you don't, it causes so much friction. It's tough. It's so tough. I mean, that is something that I don't think is spoken about enough. If you're... Dude, regardless of whether or not it's money or entrepreneurship, if you don't have the right person in your corner, everything we're talking about and teaching and trying to, it all goes to shit. So there was another funny thing. You probably relate to this, but we were killing it in the business. It was early days.

1:28:05 And I was like, we're this much in sales, this much in sales. We just hit a record in sales. And Julie, we were having dinner. We had little kids. And so she's just like, well, you know, like, you could have told me, like, no idea. Like, the sales translation, you know, basically was like, we're killing it in sales, and she's just like... we don't see any of that. Like, it's just, because you're doing this thing where, like, it's all going in and then you just take it and you put it all back in. And she was just, she was so content to just be like, we're good. We're built. We're in building phase, you know? And now we're not in a building, you know, we're building, but we're not in, like, you know, betting everything phase.

1:28:47 And that's also a fun phase to be in. They're both fun, you know? They're both fun. They're both fun for different reasons. For different reasons, yeah. But I do know that, you know, The person who's exited out of the building phase and then is in like the maintenance, whatever you want to call it phase, if you did ever sell. 9.9 out of 10 entrepreneurs would just go right back into a building phase because it's a personality. I already know what I would do. Really? Yeah. I would build toasters that last 50 years. Literally, that's what I want to do. I would call it Heirloom Toaster Company. And if anyone's listening and wants to take it, just tell me where to buy a toaster that lasts 50 years for crying out loud, man.

1:29:27 Yeah. Appliances are getting more expensive. They're cheaper built. Don't put Wi-Fi on my toaster. Just make it last. That's all I want, you know? You see a... You can start it. You start it, Scott. Maybe I will. Yeah, maybe you should start it. I'll have enough free time. I'll start a toaster, an heirloom toaster company. How did you make a budgeting app have fandom around it? Okay, so people get YNAB tattoos. People include YNAB in their wedding vows. Yeah. Which is probably actually not a bad idea, to be honest. Yeah. The tattoo, whatever. You do you. But the wedding vows. But the point is, there's fandom around this. I don't think many brands achieve fandom around their product. That's rare.

1:30:08 They have a profitable business. Yeah. But I'm not getting... I'll pick it and I can't, I'm not getting Coke tattooed on me or right. Harley's pulled it off. Yes. Harley Davidson, their one. Um, and you know, even spoke about Dave Ramsey. I like his financial advice too. He's great, but I'm not getting Dave Ramsey tattooed on his face. And I liked the guy a lot, but the point is, how do you get, how do you get fandom around a product? Oh man. So I, I can only tell you what I guess it is. One is we are very genuine.

1:30:48 Like we hire people that are in this space to see people transform. Like you're taking someone that makes good money, but they are objectively bad at it. And sometimes they don't like me to hear me say that, but like, it's like swimming. You're bad at swimming. You learn how to swim. You're good at swimming, you know, acquirable skill. So people are bad at money. They worry about it. We get them good at money. And this transformation that takes place, like we talked about earlier, it affects every part of their lives. And so you just can't help but kind of have the person feel like this life change they've made is... so substantial. And then our team is full of people that are there for that transformation so hard that we just can't get enough of it.

1:31:36 And a lot of the team that works for me, I mean, they've been through it. We've hired... so many customers that are like, I got to work for these guys. So you're, you're kind of feeding the machine a little bit in that way. But fans are also hard. Like sometimes they're like, why did you do that horrible thing to that product? Yeah. And you're like, that's, that's tough. But I would much rather have people screaming because it means they care than just crickets. What's now not every, not every entrepreneur is building a financial product that touches every single part of someone's life, but just the general advice that you're giving to somebody who is starting a company is, It may not be as intimate as money, but is it helping your customers through a transformation?

1:32:22 Like what's the thought about how you build a good business that can at least get a fraction of the fandom that you get? We're talking to founders, right? I would make sure that you, like the founder, your DNA is the seed of the brand. So you, like you, like I, with you and I were doing this interview, like this is the same me you'd get if we were just at dinner. Like I, you know, I'd maybe dial it down slightly to be quieter for people. Right. But it's, that's just how I am. And so the, our brand has become that way. It's like, we just say what we mean. We, we're not Louis Vuitton. We're not, you know, no, those are also killer brands.

1:33:03 But the, what I'm saying is that the people behind that have to, be it right and you just so as a founder like you are at that first starting point you are the dna of that and you just have to make sure that that's threaded all the way through through every little detail of execution jesse i appreciate you coming on i want i want everybody to to pick up this book so never worry about money again um where can they get it i'm assuming amazon and Yeah. Never worry about money again.com. Yeah. Do you have enough time to type that you can get there? It's yeah. If people would just remembered one, one takeaway when you're managing your money, it's, it's just self care.

1:33:48 Right. And that money's only purpose is to be spent, even if you give it away. you better see that money spent, right? A good charity puts the money to work, right? So even giving it away is spending it. And then you just have to know, it's one of those five answers. It's either for now, it's for later, it's for ease in the system to make the system hum, it's for you, whether it's for my chisels or your awesome trip to Japan, right? Or it's for change where you're like, I'm ready to take some of this precious resource and make something happen in my world. So if people read this book, what's the one thing you want to change in their life? I want them to see money as the spending of money as a source of joy.

1:34:37 I love that. The source of joy. Also, where can people connect with you? I'm going to put all this in the show notes. So social website, you said. I mean, we're at YNAB everywhere. Me personally. Yeah. Not really on the socials. They can email me like old school, you know, jesse at YNAB.com and I'll respond. But yeah, you won't find me on anywhere else. So, but yeah, find this community. And I would just ask after everything that you've learned and everything you've taught about money, say you could only pass on one bit of money advice to your kids. Like the most important thing. What would that be in line?

1:35:17 I would tell him, be faithful, be honest, and work hard. And I think the money bit would follow.