Never Worry About Money Again w/ Jesse Mecham #1178

This is an I Heart Podcast, guaranteed human. - We talk a lot about investing for your future, and so it's worth mentioning that higher education is an investment in your future that could pay dividends for a lifetime. So how do you fit going back to school into a life already complicated by parenting or work responsibilities, national university? - That's right, national university figured it out with flexible career-relevant programs designed to fit your life. Along with the personalized support to help you achieve your goals, check out how they do it at inu.edu. - Today's episode is brought to you by ChatGPT for Business. As a listener of this podcast, you're looking for ways to help teams move faster, make sharper decisions, and turn scattered contexts into work they can use. ChatGPT for Business can help. ChatGPT for Business gives teams a shared workspace with admin controls, permissions, and access to work and codex in ChatGPT. This means your business can move from question to answer and code to roll out quicker. Join over 10 million Business and Enterprise users worldwide already using ChatGPT for work. Download the ChatGPT desktop app or contact sales to learn more. - Say you've always wanted to take a spontaneous trip to the Caribbean. Here's the thing, if you get smart with your money, you can do things like that. With Empower, you can start making the most of your money so you can go out and live a little. Isn't that why we work so hard to have some fun with our money, like treating yourself to something special or spontaneously doing something extra for a loved one, use Empower and get good at money. So you can be a little bad. Join their 20 million customers today at Empower.com, not an Empower client paid or sponsored. - Welcome to How To Money, I'm Joel. Today I'm gonna talk about how you can never worry about money again with Jesse Meacum. (upbeat music) - Okay, so frugality is a cornerstone of personal finance advice. Cut back, spend less, reduce waste. And for the average American drowning in debt, that's often solid money advice. But money isn't just meant to sit there untouched. It's also meant to be spent, to be experienced and to be enjoyed. And in fact, even the money you're saving now, well, it's really just a ferd spending when you think about it. And let's face it, money is not easy to come by. We work hard for every dollar we earn. So maybe the answer isn't simply just spending less, right? Maybe that's not the answer to all of our money questions. Maybe just maybe it's spending with more intention. And my guest today, he wants you to worry less about money. He argues that the path there is not endless deprivation like you might have heard about on some personal finance shows in the past. It's about changing the way you think about spending altogether. Jesse Meacum is the best selling author of many books. He's a founder of YNAB, you need a budget. The beloved budgeting app that's helped millions take control of their finances. Jesse, glad to have you back on the show, man. - I'm glad to be here. I feel like your intro did all the work like you nailed it. - Let's end it. Let's end this now. We learned everything we need to learn. This is a quick one. No, there's a ton, man, I really enjoyed reading your book. And there's a lot I want to get into with you. And also just there's some interesting things I want to touch on based on our conversation for many years ago. Just gonna follow up with you, see how things are going. But the first question we ask everybody who comes on the show is what they like to splurge on. Like what's your, we call it the craft beer equivalent here on How to Money. 'Cause it's like, hey, you're living in the here and now. Well also saving money for your future self. What's that thing you splurge on that people might think is a little insane? For just me personally, it is anything to do with woodworking, any tool that I think I might potentially perhaps use at some future point. I cannot get it, even like a little jig to help with a certain little task. I can't get enough of family wise. I would say where the family splurges, where Julian and I are kind of tactical and combined is with travel. We, that's where we pull out all the stops. You won't, you won't see us eating out around where we live. But once we're traveling, we're like, where are the spots? What are we gonna hit? So that's a big one for us, making those memories. And I think woodworking was your answer last time. So this has been a hobby passion for a long time. And I tend to kind of balance from one thing to another. But woodworking is kind of settling and it's totally opposite of computer work. It's slow when normally I'm kind of wired to make decisions quickly and move quickly and see progress quickly. And woodworking demands that you don't do that. And so I enjoy it as kind of a counterbalance to my natural state, you might say. I know I'm not really good at it. I'm getting better, but I just enjoy the novice phase of it. I feel like you can always take some new angle of woodworking and be a complete novice again. And I enjoy that. - I think there's, I was literally just talking about this with a friend this morning. There's something about in middle age life, being feeling like you're starting over at something. If you feel a little inept, but then you cross over and you're like, "Oh, I'm not like a complete bozo at this thing anymore." And there's something really good for our brains. And oftentimes I think in middle age, we stick to the things that we're good at. And there's something really good for our brains about kind of starting over and feeling like an idiot. As we're beginning a new endeavor. - I absolutely get out of friend of mine that said he wasn't afraid anymore. He was this very successful real turn. He's just like, "I don't feel any fear." Like you would maybe in high school with something new or heck in grade school for sure or right out of college. And so he started doing improv classes. And he was full of fear. But he was searching for something where he was just inept. And then kind of feeling these feelings again that he hadn't felt for a while. Interesting idea. - Okay, so now you're making me think about the book and what I wanted to give to you and I specifically wanted to start off by talking about worry. And I think we live in a culture where worry abounds, right? It feels almost like an American pastime. - It's a worry, it says American is apple pie baseball. I think, I guess, why are you trying to take away something that's near and near to Americans dressing, near and near to our hearts is to worry about stuff? And if we didn't worry about money, would money even exist? - Yeah, yeah, oh, there we go. That's absolutely. Money's an interesting thing 'cause it tends to pop up. We don't want to invent it, it's just a thing. I've studied money the thing quite a bit. And it's interesting how it'll just appear, you know? Like a thing to hold value and tell you need the other thing. That's what money is essentially. But the worry bit, we've thought about worry and different framing of that for literally 20 years at YNAB. Like, what is it we're trying to do? And sometimes we would say we're trying to eliminate stress. We're trying to help people gain control. You know, we're trying to help them to, you know, like achieve their financial goals. But at the end of the day, the worry captures kind of both ends and everything in the middle where they're worried about maybe sending their kid to college or they're worried about just finishing college. These big things, they're worried about their job situation. They're worried about paying a mortgage, big worry. But then also, they're worried about like, they literally, you know, buy a coffee and they're worried like, "Ah, should I be, "can I afford that, can I?" And so it's this ever-present, low-grade hum. Like, you know when the power goes out, Joel, and you realize your house is actually quite noisy. Like all the humming is gone. The fridge is shut down. You know, you're maybe worried about the meat or whatever in the fridge, but it's kind of easy enough to figure out. Yeah, no AC, like, there's just no hum. And I feel like worry for a lot of people. It's just this low-grade, taxing, subtly taxing hum, that they aren't even aware as there until it's gone. Mm-hmm, yeah. I do wanna rid of it. Whether or not it's very American. I say we try a different way, you know? Okay, yeah. (laughing) Yeah, no, I'm with you, I'm with you. And I think there is something. It's interesting, like, worry seems to be a part of how people interact with money at all income levels. Yes, yes, absolutely. Net worth levels, like, it doesn't discriminate. I think lots of people assume, well, once I hit this certain number on my net worth or man of my income, if my income were to double tomorrow, I wouldn't worry about money again. Yeah. And that's just not true. It's not true. I know too many, I've been on both ends. I've been, like, scraping by, Julian, I just scraping by. And we were, you know, trying to figure things out. And we were able to eliminate worry with very little income. And I make far more income than I did then. And I still am tasked with the same overarching goal, which is I need to decide what my money's for. And I'm sure we'll get to that. But whether or not you make a lot or a little, I would only argue when someone says, hey, if you make a lot, you don't have to worry about money. And you won't feel it at all. I would say, no, you're tasked with something around, with the more money you have, the more responsibility you bear to decide what it's for and to deploy it in a way that's aligned with what you really care about, with who you really are. It would be a tragedy if someone thought, oh, I have enough. So let's just let it be frittered away by every marketer with a new tagline. You know, we don't want that. Yeah, we still want to be intentional with every dollar. Absolutely. Even if it just means, yeah, we were able to be more generous, right, with what we've been given. Whatever it may be. More and more working tools. Yeah. Yeah. We started Winav a long time ago and people often associate budgeting with saving, but you wrote a book about spending, which is interesting. Like, why did the budget guy? And I know you can even talk about, I guess, you don't seem to like the term budget, right? Yeah, let's just call it as, yeah. Okay. You hate to watch too much baggage. It has too much baggage. If people understood the word budget, the way I do, and the way many, many other people do that have been with us for a long time, I'm cool with the word, but we want to find people [BLANK_AUDIO] want to decide what their money is for and live intentionally and eliminate worry and get really good at money. And so they come with preconceived notions around the word budget that I just don't want to deal with anymore. So budget is what how what's a better way to think of it? Budgeting is knowing deeply what your money is for and then watching it do that thing. In my in my mind, budgeting is spending well. In my mind, budgeting and you it's like you and your money are perfectly lined up. But I just, you know, we tried for about five years to redefine the word for the English language. And I don't know if you've tried that Joe, but it's not easy to just change the definition of a word. So you won't see us mention the word budget very often unless we're just someone saying, I got hate budgeting and we might say we hate it too, you know, come see what we're doing over here. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, trying to change the dictionary definition is that's a big goal. It's hard to do. Yeah. Okay. The and then when it comes to some of the standard personal finance advice that gets uttered to like you you mentioned this in the book that you hate the spend less than you earn. It's been uttered millions of times, right? It's it's kind of seen as like a benchmark of if you can do that, like you can start to make progress with your money. And and there's a lot of Americans who aren't even cresting that hurdle. But yes, why do you hate that advice though? Yeah, I mean, you know, here we are like money can only be spent. That's the only purpose. So when someone's like, no, I'm saving it's like, well, no, you're just going to spend it later. Like if you have a dollar in your pocket, are you spending that money? You're saving that money and you're like, well, I'm going to buy groceries tomorrow. Well, are you saving it until tomorrow? Is it savings right now? Like with this weird thing where if we aren't going to spend it right now, it's savings, but not like three days from now, three days from now, it's still spending. It's such a weird thing. So what you're really saying is no money is just spending and someone's like, no, no, no, I'm investing. And you're like, well, yeah, you're buying something at you're buying a stock or whatever. And you're hoping that you get money back for it. And then what do you do with that money? Or what are your kids going to do with that money? Because you're long gone, they're going to spend it. Right? Or someone's like, no, I don't spend. I'm going to give and imagine like just trace that for a second. You, you give money to a charity. We're not going to call it spending for a second. You give money to a charity. And what does that charity do with the money? You better hope they don't just sit on it. They're supposed to spend it. They're actually by law required to spend, I think some percentage of their assets or they aren't a bona fide charity per the IRS. So even the IRS is like, listen, if you want to be a charity, you better be spending your money at, you know, a 5% drawdown rate or whatever it is. So you would be mad if you found out that charity was just sitting on your money because they're supposed to be spending it because that is how money, that's what money does. That's the only thing money can do is be spent, be exchanged. So when you go back to this idea of spend less than you earn, if you know that the only thing money can do is be spent, then what you're saying is, do the thing, do, do less of the thing that is the thing's only purpose. And that's where it starts to break down. Now, when, when we're talking about like, hey, we want to set aside some money for the future, of course, we're all in on that. Like, why not is built around that idea? This book is pushing a yellow philosophy. Yeah, no, not at all. But the idea that you, you just save and save and never get to enjoy the fruits of that, I think is just totally off this. Yeah. Yeah. I think if you're, yeah, if you're thinking about it like that, and then it's, it's perpetually pushing the joy that money can bring out into this far off future that you can't even imagine. And that's why I think, like when you're talking about investing, there was that fidelity study way back in the day that if people took a picture and morphed it into an older version of themselves, they were more likely to invest money for their future selves, because they could identify with what they were going to look like. There was a purpose, you know, attention to the money was made real. Yeah. Yeah. And so there's something important about that so that we can be thoughtful about having money to spend later down the road for ourselves. But I think there's also this hyperfugal mentality that can sit in where you're like, I'm just kicking the can and I, yeah, maybe I'll, but if you're not thinking about it as future spending, it can almost feel like this, this legalistic rule that you have to, to live by. Yeah. And you haven't really connected it to something tangible and real that you're going to experience in the future. I mean, that's important, right? It is important. I mean, we're just trying to get people from bad at money to good at money and it's a skill. I mean, you're talking about how to money. Like we're talking about doing it well. And you are not doing money well if you are just frugal because you're afraid. Like, and there are a lot of people that are frugal out of fear. Now, if someone comes to me, they're like, Jesse, I am frugal because a game is a foot and I want to win at this game and they describe this game where you can see them just lighting up inside. And I'm like, okay, that person, they're just, they're like loving the game. Let them play the game. Yeah. But a lot of people are out of fear just saying, I can't spend, I can't spend. And what we get them to do is answer the question of what their money is for and really start to press on that. What is it really for? And when they really start to press, they learn more about themselves. They learn more about money's true purpose. And they start to spend without the worry, without the fear. They aren't making more money, but they're, they have more clarity. And then they're putting their newfound intention right against that clarity and they're spending well, they're feeling like they're getting good at money finally. And like they're spending without guilt, you will have people that will save up money, go on a vacation and feel guilty that they are spending the money. I just feel like that's an absolute tragedy. And I've been there, man. I've been there. I remember like some of the biggest, bigger expenses that were just, I knew it was the right thing for our family, but I just had this, I mean, I remember almost having a panic attack one time, making signing a contract to add on to our house. And we knew it was the right thing for our family. And we knew that we had saved. And like we were able to pay for it in cash, which is American. But even still, I was like, I remember being like, this is the right thing, signing the documents, and then freaking out. And then I just had like, it took conversation between my wife and I to kind of like, oh, let's, where are these emotions coming from? And there it, but there is something about that, that low grade hum and worry. And then sometimes it can even reach a fever pitch. One of the things you talk about in the book too is, you say that like a lack of respect for money has made us worry about it more. I'm curious, like what, what you mean by that? Yeah, a lot of times in order to get rid of this worry that we think money is causing, we will kind of relegate money to a corner. One of my favorite books, your money or your life, it, it, it bifurcates money and life. It's like it's either this or this. And that book has a great message. Don't, don't let me steer anyone away from reading that. But it's the bifurcation of money or life where you'll have people say like my financial life. I mean, I got books upon books where it's just like, you know, how to build a financial life or whatever. And that, the premise of it to me is, is wrong. The idea that money is somehow separate from us, that it's just a chore, it's just a tool. It's this thing we just have to learn to manage. Now we're adulting or whatever phrase we're going to use. If we can start to see money, truly for what it is, which is that it is us. Like when you, when, like you, Joe, when you are getting an education raised by parents, learn all these things as a kid, start to network, start to gain skills and expertise, start to exchange that in the market. You are getting money back. I mean, what else could we say you are offering except like you're entire raising your entire childhood, everything you know, all your blood sweat tears, caloricly, what you ate this morning to make the brain go. Everything is feeding up to you, adding value in a market and someone giving you money. So it's like all you're really offering is here is Joel. Here's everything he knows. Everything he is. Here's what Joel can do. Here's how Joel thinks. And then the person's like, I like all of this that Joel is bringing. I will give Joel money or if it's a one star review on the podcast app. Absolutely. And we will not have that everyone. We will not have that. So what you get is money for that thing. And that's why I feel like the best thing you can say that money is is you. You know, it's like this, the listener writing on the podcast like what you give and then what you get, it's just you back and it's stored in this thing we called money. And it just will sit there for a bit stored up like your economic energy. And I hope everyone understands. I don't mean like we value people based on money. Not even we have inherent value. But what I'm talking about is how we think of money itself is you. Then I were starting to elevate money in someone's eyes. Like that's not just a chore. That's not just a task. That's not something evil. That's not something that's wrong to want. That's me. And when it's you, then money management that boring phrase we use is really more about self care and really about taking care of self. And I hope I level of self respect because that is you. And then when we've elevated money up there, we can start to be like, okay, this really important thing that you're feeling where you feel like it's important. It has value. What is this for? We've kind of raised the stakes. And then we ask the core key question to get people to start to think. So basically it's not just a quadrant of your life. Money is touching every element of your life. And so you have to realize that and think of money in that way. Or you're going to be like your thoughts about money are going to be degraded. They're not going to be high enough. They're not going to be, you're not going to treat money as intentionally as you should. Exactly. And people right now might think like I don't want money in my entire life. I don't like it. It's It stresses me out. But I'm telling you, if you can learn to love money and I'm talking about this really healthy, great way where it's a, it's self-respect. If you learn to see money as just you, then it's not wrong to have money in every part of your life. It just is. But now you have this thing, you have a little bit of you in every part of your life, in the health, in the relationships, in those things we all can agree are extremely valuable. Money isn't those things, but it does affect all of those super important things in our life. And when we can see it for what it is, it's just us. Then we can start to treat it the way we should, which is just as you said, intentionally. What are some of the hurdles to that? Because I'm thinking of like even just maybe growing up and you heard some money maxims, right? That made you think, well, that if you thought about money too much, or if you were to love with money, right, or there's greed is good, Gordon Gecko from the movie Wall Street. There's all of these things that have made us we either respond to that in the affirmative way, or we respond to it in the negative way. So maybe we've subtly let a lot of these influences as we've grown up, color the way we think about money in a way that's maybe we're too attached to it, sadly, or we're not attached enough. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. It's just an extreme. Someone might try and like they might feel like they're going to try and land in the middle. They're like, I don't love it. I don't hate it. And then they'll say something like it's just a tool. They'll say that. It's just a tool. And they're trying to land in the middle. It's neither good nor bad. It's agnostic. And it is not neither good nor bad because people aren't either good or bad. People are people. They're complex. They're dynamic. And money is people. So however you use the money, we hope if you're getting really good at money, it's just more and more an expression of you, of you, whether you're the woodworker or the runner, name your thing. It's more of you. But these maxims that we, these stories we've been told and the stories we tell ourselves, I would want to just have people recognize that they can tell their own story. Like they can, isn't it funny, Joe? Let me just like a little aside. It's so funny how we're all, we'll all be like, well, I'm not greedy. I don't want money. Like I don't love money. I've been told I shouldn't love money. And yet look at the amount of time we all spend trying to get a little, you know? Yeah. And so we're at least all hypocrites. But I don't want to call it hypocrites. I think we're doing the right thing. We're trying to figure out how to add value in the world. And money is a place where we can kind of intermittently hold that value. So we're just, we're just doing our thing. We're all just out of your surviving, hopefully thriving. And we spend a lot of time trying to get this thing that worries us. And I think we don't, we don't need that second part. Keep getting the thing, let's keep getting money, let's keep figuring out how to earn more, how to add more value in the world, how to do what we love, all those things. But let's not then have this amazing professional who is at the top of their craft, adding value left and right and just killing it. And then when all of their value is transformed into money through the market, then they say things like, oh, money's just a tool. Isn't that interesting? You talk about that. And it's so true that we spend so much time. We give over a lot of our lives, something like what? 80,000 hours of our lives to a career as I think the projection. And you're, we're talking about offering so little time on the back end, once we've turned those hours into money to think about, or even to think about whether or not we want to work 80,000 dollars to get that money, or we want to live a different life that is simpler, that means we don't have to work quite that much. Or dedicate as much of our lives to our career. What is it about us putting so much effort into the effort to bring money into our lives, and so little effort about how to use and funnel those dollars intelligently? Yeah. I mean, I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist. My tinfoil had a somewhere around here I should probably throw it on. But I mean, the system is built to get you to consume. The system is built for growth. Growth almost for its own sake. I think growth is good, but growth at any cost is unhealthy. That starts to fill and sound like cancer, if you think about it in that way. So where the system is built for consumption, it's built for not delayed gratification, but instant gratification. It's built for having something now and worrying about it later. And all of that tends to just make something actually quite simple, apparently complex. And when you have, you know, you can put genes on a payment plan. You can put a burrito on a payment plan. I mean, I just bought something the other day from Amazon. I noticed now they're doing the four payments or whatever. And what I was buying was $22. You know, so you don't want to pay for that in four simple installments, Jesse? Four easy installments. As the late comedian Mitch Hedberg said, I've always loved this. He's like, it'll be four easy payments. And he's like, and then one hard. We don't know which one that one is. So it's an interesting thing where they make it complex. They meaning this system that we've built for growth at any cost, promoting consumption. And it is a treadmill. And if you don't actively, or maybe it's a stream, if you don't actively kind of notice, I'm being pushed this way, you will be moved. If you stand still, you're actually moving. And so they're, they're taking some intention. And I hope that the book teaches people you can be intentional. You can answer that question. That's so important question of what your money is for and start to kind of walk against that stream. It doesn't take a ton of effort. Like we spend 80,000 hours a year earning money. We don't have to spend a commenser amount figuring out what our money is for. It's a fraction of that, but it's a high leverage activity. Absolutely. All right, got more I want to get to with you, Jesse. I'm going to ask Jesse, we'll keep some up at night. We'll get to that. And more right after this. Okay, Joel, I am excited about this one here on the show. We are all about comparing prices to save money on so many things in life. So why wouldn't we compare prices for our next rideshare? Taking a few seconds to check lift can save you real money on your next ride. I did this last time I caught a ride home from the airport after some travel. And guess who came out on top? It was lift. Don't just price check with your flights and phone plans and groceries. 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And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for indeed sponsor jobs. We talk a lot about investing for your future and so it's worth mentioning that higher education is an investment in your future that could pay dividends for a lifetime. So how do you fit going back to school into a life already complicated by parenting or work responsibilities? National University. That's right. National University figured it out with flexible career relevant programs designed to fit your life along with the personalized support to help you achieve your goals. Check out how they do it at inu.edu. Talking with Jesse Meakin, we're talking about reducing maybe eliminating how much we worry about money eliminating. Okay, so then tell me, all right, we'll just get personal here. Do you worry about money now? When's the last time you worried about money? And what would you say what it was? Is the key for you that helped make money worries go away? And then how has that changed your life? Yeah, my first, the first bit I talk about in the book where Julie and I had these goals and we were we were making $10, $12 an hour newly married 21, 22 years old young like almost kids, right? And we were worried about money, so I built this little spreadsheet that eventually became software and eventually is the thing that pays the bills for us and all the other people that work here at YNAB. But at that point, it was just for me and Julie and we had these just these rid like these goals that were so aggressive, we got to save for a car. We didn't own a car. We had to save for a computer. We needed a computer. I was going to be in the accounting program. You need a computer. So we're sitting there just grinding away and I'm I'm on the way to class one day. I walked past this little bakery and they have these old fashioned donuts. This is the best kind. You could ask them to microwave your for 15 seconds, which is a little hack. It becomes perfect. And it was a 50 cent donut. It's probably that $10 now. Who knows what inflation is under that donut, but it was 50 cents back then. And I remember walking by there and being like wanting it, you know, just a little car boost. I'm away to class and I was 22 so I was immune to sugar. You know, at that time of the day. So I'm sitting there and I'm just like, I want that and I felt like I couldn't buy it 50 cents. I had enough money for it, but I didn't feel like I could. I just felt all of this constraint, this restraint. I don't know what it was, but this bearing down on me. And I'm like, man, this is there's something off here and I came home to Jewel and I was like something's off and we we re looked at our plan and we kind of re answered what is. our money for. And we made it more for us. We had just been kind of taking the advice, live on less, how much less, less, right? It's just always less. And it's just like less, less, less, save, save, save, invest, compound interest. And it's just like, what do we want our money to do? And it was like, we finally asked ourselves that question for the first time. And it didn't, it wasn't a radical thing. Like we weren't like, oh, now we just spent everything. It was more like, okay, we're going to do a date every week. And it's going to probably look like a $5 little Caesar's pizza, but it'll be a date every week. And that, that to us was actually substantive. If you, if you know, and you can believe it, but people, people know that a lot of people have been in that spot. Or we would say things like, we're going to do a gym membership. We know it's expensive to us, but we're going to do it. That's important. And we just carved out a few things that made it more ours. And I did carve out money literally for donuts. And we carved out money for jewelry where she could just spend without worrying about, it's like, we have money here for you, just a little bit of spending money. It made all the difference. And we realized that we were just having money. Be what we thought it should be for. Instead of asking ourselves really, like, what is it for for us? And even while meeting people, reading, you know, the best advice, that you still need to ask yourself the hard question of like, for me, what is this precious resource for? And they're great rules of thumb. And there's great advice out there. But if you can't connect it to how you're living your life and you feel like you're living somebody else's system, like that is, that gets demoralizing after a while. You can only keep it up for so long. And it has to be yours to those real life outcomes. Yeah. I love this line from the book. You wrote, money does its best work when it enables experiences and disappears. Can you unpack that? Yeah. So people are like, geez, Jesse's obsessed with money. You know, like, I must be all he thinks about, right? And when I'm here on the podcast, Mike, you bet I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about it on behalf of all your great listeners. But what you want is when your money is planned, when you when you know what it's for with clarity, when you've introspected and then you've said, okay, this is what my money is for. As you do that, you know more and more about yourself, which then informs what the money is for. So it's this beautiful little cycle of introspection and then and then more accurate expression of you. When you get there, you'll realize that money is doing your bidding. And then Christmas day, when you're sitting there watching your nine-year-old, I'm channeling a little bit from last year, watching your nine-year-old open a gift. I'm not thinking about the credit card bill coming in January because I've known that some of my money is for Christmas all year long, right? And so we've set aside a little bit for Christmas every single month, a 12th of Christmas, every single month. So in the moment, money is not there to cloud it and mess it up. It's it has disappeared. And in that moment, I'm just watching the nine-year-old open this massive Lego set, but I know we're going to build together later later for hours. And that's all part of it without me being like, okay, when's that bill? Man, I hope we didn't go too crazy. You know, that's the bit where we when you're when you're going on vacation, a lot of wineappers are Disney goers. A lot of, or maybe a lot of Disney goers become wine. I'm not sure how it works. That's interesting, causality correlation thing. But a lot of them they they want to have this magical experience that Disney tries to create. And they want to go in and keep making it magical. And you will find this big Venn diagram where people are they save up. They're using wine if they know some of their money is for this Disney trip. And then when they get there, they want the magic. They clearly want it, right? They don't want money to be there. Like, are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you? It's got to disappear so it can just be the moment. And do you think that produces more joy for those experiences for people? Absolutely. Absolutely. I got to imagine, yeah, if it's hanging over you like the sort of damacles, right? You're just like, oh, but how how is this bill going to get paid? And for a lot of people, if you're the average person, whether it's a Disney trip or whether it's Christmas, you're you're you're freaking out about paying the bill later on. Sometimes it's one spouse, the other spouse is, you know, they call them the spender and that one's the saver and they have these little labels. But sometimes just one spouse is freaking out and the other is kind of somehow pushing it, pushing it out of the way. They probably learned it from parents or something like that. And so that can be that's kind of a double whammy. Now the relationship is strained and the present moment isn't quite as great as it could be. So how do you think then about prioritizing now the donuts right versus later, which is like at some point, maybe you don't want to work anymore, Jesse, right? And so you're or you want to spend more time in the woodworking shop and fewer hours like running this business. So that that has real impacts on the way we live in the here and now and also in the far off future. How do you know which dollars to allocate to which spending bucket essentially? Yeah. If I were to tell everyone mine, they'd be like, I don't like it. And that is appropriate because it's mine, not yours. And it's like DNA. It's a lot that's related, but there's this last little bit that makes everyone unique. And that's the part that makes it interesting. So like if you and I were to sit over dinner, I'd be like, so Joel, like what lights you up? What's your money for? I wouldn't want to know that it's for the electricity bill. Although that is a miracle if people pause and think about it for a second. But I'd want to hear like, okay, yeah, we both we both like electricity. Cool. But like, what do you love that I would never spend money on? That's where I would get to know like the last little bit of Joel DNA that would make for a fun dinner conversation. That's why I love our first question of the podcast every time because it gives me an answer every day into everyone who comes on, right? Yeah, you get to a little a little bit about them. Most of the DNA is the same, but there are only five answers to the question of what money is for. It's either for now, for later, for ease of the system itself, for you, or for change. Now inside those five are an infinite number of possibilities. And you would you questioned what's now versus later. And I would say it's versus is an interesting framing. They all what we need is to make sure that the person deciding what their money is for sees all five regularly. So if we're only ever living in like just the now we are missing out on the fact that Christmas is coming or that car tires need repairing or that retirement might need to happen at some point. So they we can't just be thinking about now even though when we're first starting now is the most important because it's the moment. But what you're doing is you're removing worry from the present moment by deciding what is literally for now right now an urgent bill, right? Something over overdraft situation, something like that. So now is handled, the worry is gone. But then everyone knows like well hold on Jesse like the car is making a weird noise. The the HVAC is making a unbecoming of HVAC noise. And that's what that's what I meant right now. Yes, it always right after the warrant. Yeah, always just right after. But what you're you're just like that. So that starts to bring worry back into the present moment. You're worried about those strange noises, the car wearing out or whatever it is. So you start to address that in the moment and you say, well, I'm going to set aside money for new car tires. I'm going to set aside some money for Christmas and for this HVAC unit. And you know, you're you're looking you like, Oh, and the kids do summer camp. Oh, yeah, I'll set aside a little money for summer camp too. So when those moments that are at the moment in the future, when they arrive, your present moment is still worry free. Summer camp comes. The big bill comes. You just pay the bill. It feels like every other day. So that present moment is protected. Then when you start looking at ease, what we're wanting to do is get people to earn money this month that they then spend next month. We're trying to break the paycheck to paycheck cycle that causes so much worry and stress and anxiety on its own, where people are having the time build a paycheck. And all that bill goes with this paycheck. And then you know, a partner is also earning money and they're like this. And it's just this valueless activity where people have to do this dance of bills and timing of paychecks. If you can get and wine ebbers do, if they can get to a point where they're spending money, that this month that they earned last month, the whole system it runs smoother. And that's where we're protecting the present moment because the system itself is pretty optimal. Then this was where it gets fun. When you're starting to say, some of my money is for you or for me in this instance, then what we're doing now is saying, the present moment is worry free. We handled now. We know that those later things that come, they will be handled too. Our system is operating well. I want more of me in this present moment. I want more of my money to be an expression of me in the moment. That also starts to eliminate worry because you start to feel this congruence between who you are and what you, your money is doing. And then finally, this money that's for change. It can be like, change comes out to you like, I don't know, maybe you text me this morning, you're like, hey, I got to move the podcast. And so I'm, you know, we're changing schedules, things that come out to you, you just change it around. But it can also be changed like, how do I want my life to look? What do I want? What kind of intention am I going to put here? And it can be like changing careers, changing locations, having a kid, getting married, getting divorced, these big changes. You can start to recognize that money can enable those changes too. So now, not only have we protected our present moment from the future, not only have we optimized the system for the present moment, not only have we added more of ourselves in the present moment, but we are now changing the very moment itself by saying, what do I really want? All of it is built to have you trade off between those five possible answers of what your money is for to have that present moment. The only place where we can worry is in the present. And we eliminate it in that moment. And then you just keep working working that system. Keep asking yourself, what's the money for? And it's one of those five just introspecting and then expressing. So I'm on kind of a Larry McMurtry kick if you've ever had loans from Dove. It's like one of the best books. I have not. Okay. I will read it. I recommend. But I was reading another one of Larry McMurtry's novels because that's where I'm at right now. And your chapter on E is kind of overlap with this money conversation in the book that was happening about like who's actually rich? And they were talking about this guy who's always got like a water bills, right? And then you can go spend at the pool hall or whatever. First is the other guy who's got his money tied up in investments. And they everybody seemed to agree that the guy with a thousand dollars in cash was richer than the guy who actually had like more more assets. So like talk about ease and what how does ease get in the way of investing or both of those things like because like it's true, right? There is something about more money we have on hand, whether that's an emergency fund, whether that's just more free cash to spend in the ways that light us up. That can create this sort of like ease effect that you're talking about. But then there's also the reality of like building up assets for future ease. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And when we when I say ease in the book, I mean literally the ease of your money system itself, not like sitting on the beach with a Martina. Okay. That's a different kind of ease. So this ease is like the system itself is easy. Your money system is easy. And it becomes easier when you have that water cash. So when we walk people through it, we're like, okay, right now when you earn money on Friday, there are already bills waiting for that money. And then you pay those bills. The the water of money goes down and you just are kind of hoping and waiting for the next paycheck in the meantime bills accumulate and you're kind of hanging on for dear life, something happens. It's it is a it is not an easy situation to live in. There's a lot of just valueless timing of things. What you know, you see a bill that notice you can't pay it. Then it just kind of pings you, but you can't do anything about it. And then later on you have this little pile of bills again. You're like, please, please pay the income. It comes. You handle it. We want to just flip it around. You should have a pile of money just waiting. And then a bill arrives and you just pay it. And ideally, it's even on autopay. Like, you know, if you're using a system where you're aware of what your money is doing, you'll know you'll see bills come through. You won't get, you know, hoodwink to anything. So it's on autopay. It just goes out and you're not doing this dance of timing bills and paychecks and waiting with like white knuckles on, you know, when the next pay day is it. It's funny because a lot of people once they've been doing the system for a while and their system really is easy, they forget when pay day is like the money just lands. And it's just like, it's nothing. I guess that's what I want. I want pay day to just feel like any other day. Or you're just like, yeah, okay, money's there. Money wasn't there. It doesn't matter. And so we are talking about easing the system itself to where it gets out of the way of decision making basically because we want people to focus on what their money is for. And that's that's a decision situation. So one of the things you mentioned personally, I saw you that you you paid off your mortgage early. But I think you said that you regretted paying off your mortgage early. And why is that? And how does this and how does this intersect with kind of what you're talking about here? Is it because you missed out on spending money in the here and now that would have no? No. Okay. It was just a math thing. Okay. It was like, yeah, rates are now at a supposedly high. They're like, well, it's 6%. Like they're so low. But we've like you and I, we all grew up adult, you know, adult wise, we all grew up with rates at like two and five eights or three and a quarter. I mean, insanely low. It's essentially like better than free money. Yeah. If you, you know, you argue that inflation probably eats more of that. So if you have a, you know, if you've bought money at two and five eights, you're essentially being paid. And so it was just for me a math thing. But that's Jesse now saying it. Like people like you need to recognize like I, I stand by what I said. Like, oh, yeah, if Jesse now was back then, I would make that decision. But Jesse now is the different person than Jesse back then. And I have to respect that. Like like back then, I, I wanted just the roof over my head to be free and clear. Period. Roof over my head and six other people, you know, at that time, we had it one more later. But what, what happened or what happened now is I looked and I'm like, I have assets like I just have more headroom. And for, for me, to hold a mortgage now, I don't, but to hold one now would be like, Oh, okay, I do. Like there's assets that counteract that and it wouldn't be a big deal. You know, like the rate was so insanely low. And I'm like, I should have just kept paying my tiny little mortgage. So was it more of an emotional decision? Like you said, it's a math like your math. Yeah, it was emotional. Okay. Yeah. Back then it was a motion. It was like, I want to do this. And I, I think we're allowed to say what I do now and respect what we did then. And people forget that. Like, but I was different than than I am now. I hope that I've improved in ways, right? I hope I'm better dad than I was back then too. Like that's all allowed. That's all fair game. But I sometimes bothers people where they're like, well, wait a minute. You know, you would change. It's like, well, yeah, because I'm different. I've had different experiences. Like literally my net worth is different than that guy that made that decision back then. So that's all okay. That's I mean, in just a micro version of that, I remember paying off a student loan that had like a 2.675 rate or something like that money. And I was like, I should have maxed out my Roth that year. Like, what was I thinking? And that's, you can, with retrospect, say, I would have done something differently and also be like, it wasn't that big of a deal though either. You got to respect the guy that was in the room. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I've got a few more questions I want to get to get a little more personal here. We'll get to a few more questions with Jesse right after this break. Okay, Joel. I am excited about this one here on the show. And I did this the last time I caught a ride home from the airport after some travel. And guess who came at on top? It was lift. That's right. Indeed, sponsor jobs get you quality candidates when you need them the most. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit to help get your job. The premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Need to hire? We talk a lot about investing for your future. And so it's worth mentioning that higher education is an investment in your future that could pay dividends for a lifetime. National University. That's right. National University figured it out with flexible career-relevant programs designed to fit your life along with the personalized support to help you achieve your goals. I went back to the break, still talking with Jessie Meekam, talking about never worrying about money again, not even sometimes, hopefully. And I think we've laid out, Jessie's laid out some really good advice for how to do that. And so much of it really does come down to a lot of personal realities and being thoughtful about money. And I think, okay, Jessie, I'm curious, my wife is a therapist and I feel like the more I've gone through this journey with her, I've done more introspective kind of looking and it's changed how I think about money. Do you think maybe there's something, and I wasn't kind of planning on asking you about this, but there's something about just our lack of looking into our interior, the interior parts of our lives that prevents us from having a deeper, more congruent relationship with our finances. Yeah, absolutely. It's work. And I think we're wired to not want to do, I think we're wired to be a little lazy. And that's probably like optimization of caloric expenditure, maybe. But yeah, we're wired for it. And it is hard work to figure out what your money's for. Sometimes it's easy, you're like, yeah, it's for groceries, it's for gas. I know those things. But it gets harder as you kind of answer the easy questions. It's a little bit like one of those proctored tests where at first you kind of get warmed up. You're like, man, I'm cruising. I know all these accounting questions, you know, and I'm having flashbacks now. But and then you get to like the disease. And you're like, oh, I better slow down. I got to think about this. This is some real work. And knowing what your money is for, it takes real introspection. And I mean, bless your therapist's wife's heart. When you're dealing with a relationship, it takes both, you know, to really be introspective, honest, sharing, open, curious. My therapist favorite word is curious. And I think that's a great way for people to approach their money to be like, well, I'm just curious. What do I think, Bye. money is for no right or wrong answer but let's just be curious about it and see what that opens up. I think that's that's a great way to think about it to get curious about your money. Okay last time we spoke you had ditched credit cards you were sticking with debit cards how did that experiment go or you still doing it? It went really well it went so well that I still have just the debit card in my wallet. I have a credit card that I use for business expenses but it's just but that's just like stuff on autopilot it's kind of boring. The debit card still just doing really well. I use Chase I probably shouldn't disclose that I don't know but Chase is like the biggest bank so that's probably pretty safe. They've flagged a few things and been like hey did you mean to buy that thing over in that other country and I'm like yes I did that was me and then they're like oh okay good so like they're on top of it because people will say what about fraud that's their biggest worry but man the best thing about it was it just made it made our system talk about ease it just made the system easier one account one card Julie uses it I use it and it makes the management just kind of fall out of the way yeah yeah we haven't gone back I can I think I started maybe 22 or 23 okay maybe it's hard for me to remember but yeah I do one year experiments like one year I experimented with not knowing what my money was for at all for an entire year because I thought I just built up good habits as a total disaster but that experiment just no credit card it made our system so easy I was just like oh we're good to go and you know you're giving up some rewards but you're like yeah who cares it's it's not enough to move the needle and that's how I felt about the just the super you can go super intense on the credit card reward systems right oh yeah and and some people do and some people do really really well with it and more power to them but I just like for like for the ease of my system I'm like two cards you know and and and I can keep it basic yeah and that's that's like the person that's being like hyperfugal because you see him light up when they talk about it you have credit card point optimizing people like it's a game and it's like yeah let them play the game that's that's great the credit the banks are winning on the hold the banks win and you have a few people a few people that game it really well and take trips and whatever for free that's fine but it's being their trips are being paid for by all the people who are being taken to task by the banks so like the banks aren't coming out of pocket being like you've earned that trip dear sir here you go enjoy Malibu like not at all there it's like a collective group of people that all paid late fees and interest that are pulling their money together and saying enjoy your trip good sir yeah and some people are and that's enough for them to be like oh I don't want to do that anymore that doesn't feel good and other people are like I love playing this game like like let's do it again so for each his own for me it's just a simplicity play yeah you know that's it okay I'm curious so you have seven kids right now yeah yeah the actually opposite of it right in our culture there is kind of this belief that that's the ultimate status symbol that you can have that many children okay this is a real thing it's like no wait having kids like that's sweet in this economy you know so you should be strutting more I didn't realize I should be strutting you're the you're not been walking normally you're the Warren Buffett of like the current economic culture so is that true or not like I guess there's there's some people who would who would say I mean you see the headline number about each child costing 300 plus thousand dollars or something over the the lifetime of raising them is is that true is is having kids is that expensive is that much of a status symbol or it have you found a way to to book that trend or people just overblown it in their minds oh man I'm like I'm not even ready for this question this has got to be so out of left field um I never even thought of about it being a status symbol but they are my most treasured possessions if you if I'm allowed to possess my kids right so I feel like it's yeah they are the they are treasures for me they're a ton of work they're more work than than work right um you worry about a more I've never I'm not written a book called never worry about kids again right um that's coming you can't write that I don't think I cannot write that but I don't know how I don't know how to do that um yeah you worry about them because you love them so so so much um I there as expensive as you would like to make them um and I don't I guess we haven't made them that expensive because I've never felt like it was finite I mean we were we do well financially but I've even when we were younger I mean we had our first kid and Julie exited the workforce she was the breadwinner making twelve bucks an hour so like I've we had kids before man if I would have known it was a status symbol that would have been an easier decision but I was just worried about paying for things um there's something about that ignorance is bliss starting younger and then just like yeah I think of if the it's almost like the the later the more you hold off the later you wait the more you have it built up in your mind how much it's going to cost and the sacrifice is going to entail it's a maybe it's a little bit of a leap of faith um yeah but you will figure it out you after we figured it out and I'm not the smartest you know smartest kid and you you figured out um gosh I can't imagine life without that dynamic um but it's such a personal decision and it's so meaningful that for me to be able to say oh let's make it about it's the expense side it's terrifying because it's so meaningful so I would I would then just say if you can get a lot of clarity on what your money is for you might see the kid fits in just fine and I have very close friends and YNAB team members that have followed the method figured out what their money is for and what their money is for and they've gotten good at money and they aren't worrying about it and suddenly they decide to have a kid or another one or a third one because they they recognize like oh I this money thing was apparently the hold up but it actually isn't when when that money worry goes away um yeah maybe other other prop you know possibilities open up for people so we'll I'll stay in my line and say figure out what your money is for and then be open to quite quite a ride in life if that ends up being your choice yeah no I like it I like it um yeah I that I hate to think that money is something that's terrifying to me yeah yeah because but I understand that concern but I think a lot of kind of what you talk about in your book can alleviate kind of some of those worries even to the point of feeling more comfortable expanding your family um yeah Jesse this is one more thing one more thing you'll you can also just be what I call a wreck league family and that removes a lot of cost of kids what does that what does that mean because you're not doing the travel sports and all the things like getting your kids private tutors and and you know deciding that they're going to be a lacrosse phenom when they're for and then they need like you know I'm being I'm being a little little facetious but people can spend a lot of money not being a wreck league family and if you're a wreck league family it stays pretty affordable so that's that is one choice that you and I've made it's not just the money it's also the time and we're just like I we're wreck league and you know seasons and you don't play all year round you don't play indoor outdoor you just let your kids kind of dabble and that that's one choice you made that is if people were like looking for a specific thing man that's uh that's a money that's a money pit right there it is so right and also a time suck like so much I have friends and and their kids are it's it's three practices a week and two or three games on the weekends and I'm like yeah uh it's in the more kids you have the the less you can actually commit to that it's it's just impossible and it's ridiculous maybe that's why I'm gonna chose it yeah yeah we're like we can't we couldn't if we tried we yeah that's you know we'd have to hire I don't know a bunch of nanny's be like okay you two take those people and yeah that's not the way we're gonna roll so right maybe consider wreck league I'm with you on that I like that that last piece of advice all right we're this has been a joy I've enjoyed having you on where can how do money listeners find out more about your new book man so never worry about money again dot com that's that's the book site if they're curious what this weird acronyms you know wine app wine ab dot com wine ab dot com I'm not on socials so there's nowhere to follow me but they're they're welcome to write in like they can not just write to me at Jesse at wine ab dot com and if they have questions that were spurred from from listening to how to money then happy to answer and we can just have a little one-on-one you know conversation back and forth so love old school you know sounds good sounds good thanks Jesse appreciate it man thanks for having me oh man it's been way too long since I've talked with Jesse so glad to have him back on to talk today and just man I love the idea the concept of his new book and I think he's pointing out something that is so ridiculously true that that money is something that we perpetually worry about and I love the way he's talking about eliminating the worry that we that low grade hum as he put it in the beginning that we have towards money and he was even just talking about yeah be be frugal that's fine but don't be frugal out of fear and I think that's just so wise and I think many of us have at least or probably still live in that sort of frugal out of fear like I can't buy that 50 cent donut because then I you just think about all these ways it's going to derail you and then if you if you stop just for a second snap your fingers and think about it rashly you're like oh wait a 50 cent donut it's not it's not going to derail everything I've built um and so yeah I think he he talked about knowing deeply what your money is for and watching it do that thing that's intentionality and then that last at the last little bit we talked about getting curious about your money and I think that is at the heart that's that's playful that's really fun you can do that by yourself you can do that with a partner And that sort of curiosity about what your money can do for you, instead of just saying, "Oh, I'm saving it for when I'm 65 and older." That's part of it, right? And you can be playful with the funds you've been able to save kind of in those retirement years. But it's also like, what's possible now? Like what is possible now with the money that's coming in? How can I change my lifestyle in ways that like Woody said was, it's more congruent with who I am, right? So that the money, how it gets spent, how it gets used is more congruent with the person we say we are or who we are desirous of being. And I think that is something that comes later on down the line as we do more of that introspection and digging and we get a little bit curious. So how can you get curious with your money this week? How can you ask some of those questions so that your money, so that you're not just upping your savings, right, which is a fine and dandy thing. But so that you are using the money that's coming in in a way that's effective and because this money, the money that you make, it touches every aspect of your life. And that's what Jesse was getting at with the fact that like your money is you, is kind of one of the things that he's talking about in this book. It's such a reflection of who you are. It's almost like show me your calendar and I'll show you what you care about. Show me the way your money gets spent and I'll show you what you care about. And so if you think about your money in those terms, like, hey, it's a reflection of who I am. This says something about me, not just to the people around me, but to myself. And that's impacting how I think about me. Get a little curious about your money this week. Put some pen to paper, start new to lend out. If you want the how to money, money mission statement, we'll put that in the show notes. I think that can be helpful to provoke some of these questions so that you can use your money in a way that is just a more accurate representation of who you are, who you want to be and you can continue to grow in that. And hopefully never worry about money again. Thank you so much as always for listening. I appreciate your time and attention. We'll put links in the show notes up on the website at howtomoney.com. Until next time, best friend out. Before you sign off, you tuned in for ways to help teams move faster, make sharper decisions, and turn scattered contexts into work they can use. ChatGPT for business gives teams a shared workspace with admin controls, permissions, and access to work and codex and chatGPT. Even over 10 million business and enterprise users worldwide already using chatGPT for work. Say you've always wanted to take a spontaneous trip to the Caribbean. Here's the thing. If you get smart with your money, you can do things like that. Isn't that why we work so hard to have some fun with our money, like treating yourself to something special or spontaneously doing something extra for a loved one. Use Empower and get good at money so you can be a little bad. 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