Why You Need a Budget with Jesse Mecham

some lightning round statements. You'll find, especially Jills to be entertaining. But the bulk of it is our interview with the creator of You Need a Budget Software or why nap for short, Jesse Meekum. Let's get back into it. Well, but first you know a sponsor. Here you go more sponsors. This one's brought to us by Mice and Men, just a small, tiny collection of mice. It's kind of like a few paired with a grouping of average men have

joined their money's together to sponsor today's episode. They had highly organized goals and objectives for sponsoring other more successful podcasts, but you know what they say about the best laid plans of Mice and Men, So here they are to support our message about our free e book, check it out at Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash e book to get your free copy with over two hundred money saving tips. You're gonna love it because your plans are

going to be better than mice and men's plans. And if you're wondering if the sponsors have gotten better since we first aired this episode, yes, you'll be sorely disappointed they have. We are reaching and stretching for creativity, but you know right, we are still bringing you some solid resources in the you'll love the episode much more. Yeah, But if you want to queue up a few other episodes that we have released since we first aired this

episode about budgeting, this is a great one. But we also have episode two eight which is budgeting Basics one eight six how to budget without Deprivation. That one's a very popular one that will probably make it into the replaylist. And then episode one seventy five psychological tricks for sticking to a budget. So those are some of our favorite and most popular budgeting episodes. So two oh eight cum up to play next. But first let's revisit this really

good episode with with Jesse. We've got four rules for successful budgeting that you are going to that we still apply to this day. Let's get into it. Jesse, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. Yeah, we're so thrilled to talk with you and here just all of your wisdom and insight about budgeting. As we said when we weren't recording yet, you have quite a

cult following and I cannot tell you. We're about two years into this Frugal Friends podcasts, and I have had so many people when I tell them about my podcast immediately jumped to have you heard of winehap? Okay, so I have, So I've heard of it, and so now I'm so thrilled to have you on. We are really excited about getting into what you call the four rules for successful Budgeting. I think that we can't talk enough about budgeting. When we think we've moved beyond it, we've

got to come back and revisit it. So we want to hear from you how you approach it, what your ideas are on this, and just kind of give us a general layout with what budgeting looks like, how to do it successfully. So your first one is give every dollar a job. Can you tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah, the first the first rule is well, the other three rules that will get to are all kind of derivatives of that rule. So this is the

rule if there were just one. Um. And essentially, what we're trying to do is just introduce the idea of trade offs for people right away out of the gate. It's something that people are less familiar with doing once they become an adult. So kids are really good at trade offs. They're really good at saying like, I don't have money for this, so I can't buy it, but I do want this, so I won't buy that other thing. But adults we tend to just kind of think we

can buy everything. Um, we don't confront the idea of if I do this, I maybe can't do that. And so a zero based budget, which is exactly what rule one is. It's just the idea of, you know, only money you have on hand, how much do you want to give towards rent, towards you know, bills, towards a vacation, whatever it may be. But you want to make sure that you recognize that there's a finite amount of money

and that you're just prioritizing. We we want to be proactive with what our money should do and not reactive and kind of lamenting about what it did. Um, that's that's pretty fruitless. So that's that's the idea is introducing trade offs and with that that scarcity, we actually want you to feel like money has run out, because it really has, and we want you to get used to the idea of your priorities kind of being fleshed out

in an environment where the money is finite. So part of rule one is just giving every dollar job, just straight up on a piece of paper. You don't have to use fancy software. Just here all the jobs I want my gonue to do. And then here's how much money I have on hand right now, Not here's how much I'll earn, not only in a couple of days, not even in tomorrow I'm going to be paying it,

but money on hand only. And then when new money comes in, you just repeat that step again and you you know, you start giving that money jobs, but don't fall into the trap of projecting what the money will be, because then you're not dealing with finite resources anymore. You can you can forecast yourself right out of a scarcity situation. So, um, that's kind of rule one. You know, we've talked about it for about fifteen years, but that's it in too much.

It's funny that you say like scarcity and like physical scarcity, because I feel like we think, like scarcity mindset causes us to want to spend everything because we think that, you know, we won't have enough or we won't get more, And so that's how people start living in this paycheck to paycheck cycle. Is this scarcity mindset. But then when you kind of flip it and you're like causing physical scarcity,

then it can cause the opposite effect. Yeah. Yeah, and they're not not to be confused with like fixed and growth mindsets or like what doctors what came up with a while back. We're we're talking about addressing finite resources. So a lot of people that are living pycheck to pycheck, they they're used to not having money, but in a weird kind of counterproductive way where when they do have money, they want to use it. So they so they because it's going to run out anyway, and so we might

as well kind of make hay while the sunshines. And that's that's the issue that we're addressing. We want people to say Okay, I have this money, what do I want it to do? The end? If it means that you are you spend it all that day because you have a pressing bill and it's the only thing you can possibly afford them, that is what you do. But we we take thousands and thousands, thousands of people that have on average, about three hundred dollars in their checking

account when they start. And we're not talking about people that are living below the poverty line are out. I'm talking about people that make good money that carry around three in the checking count on average. It goes really high when their paycheck lands, and then it just precipitously drops, and it's because there they have this pile of bills that's just waiting for money, and then as soon as that money comes in, the bills just suck it all the way. And so we try and start to flip

that around. Instead of being reactive, we're proactive. The amazing thing is someone with just three dollars in their checking account. If you tell them, okay, only deal with that three hulls, what do you want your money to do, They'll immediately say, well, I'm getting I'm actually gonna get paid in five days so and you're like, no, don't do that. Well, in five days, we'll do it, but we're not talking about that today. So what do you want your money to

do that? Three and again again, without fail, they'll try and bring up the paycheck that's coming because they're so used to thinking about when money does come then this problem will go away. So we ran them back in again and then we just say, okay, thank you for telling me again for the third time about your future. We really want you just to focus on the three dollar and so you get them there and it's just it's just the mind just habitually goes there for them.

It's they're not like not able to, it's just they're in this kind of ingrained process. So you get them there with that three hundred bucks, you see, what does it need to do? They'll say, well, my guests tank is a little low, um, the fridge is a little empty, and there's this one bill that's actually kind of late already. I really need to pay it or I'll start getting late fees. You say a boom boom boom, Okay, we're done.

It's amazing how many people with that still only in their checking account will then say, wow, that feels really good for once they're actually taking control and they're dictating like a good dictator. They're dictating what their money would do instead of just kind of waiting for something to explode on them where they're in panic mode. And so it's all about just orienting forward and dealing with that finite pile of cash when the new check comes in.

Same exercise. Yes, we've talked about this concept before of being the CEO of your personal fine An says, and this kind of falls in line with that of you are giving your dollar bills a job and you need to delegate that and in a lot of ways that does put power and control, rightfully so back into our hands rather than being victim to whatever might be happening

with my finances. Yeah, people are familiar with that. I mean, if you're if you ever tried to lose weight or you know, dialing your fitness or finance, not finances, but food a little bit. It's the same thing. Everyone knows if you plan your meals, you do better if you try and be a little more productive during the day. Everyone knows that if you plan your day. It's it's that same principle that we see all over the place.

I mean, heck, plan your career. Like people that really rise in their career, they have a plan, they have an idea. They aren't just waiting to see what happens with their boss or waiting to see with some job opening that comes up. There proactively strategizing and figuring out, Okay, this is what I'm gonna do this, and there's this, and I should be on this project because it's big. They're planning and we're doing. We want to do the

same thing with our money. We spend all of this time and effort and energy to make money, and then for some reason, once all that effort is converted into dollars, we suddenly just for like, oh well whatever, I'm just bad with money. It's it's horrible, oh gosh, louder for the people in the back. Yes, oh my gosh, a plan and a strategy for all that time and effort, and like most people don't even like their jobs anyway, So you're gonna do all this stuff and then the

fruits of your labor come in and then you're not whatever. Yeah, it's like, let me get this straight. You went to school to get an education, to get this job. You went into debt to get an education to get that job. You work around people that maybe you don't like. If you work at wine and you lack our people, but

you work around people that you don't like. Um, you're doing a job that maybe isn't that fulfilling all of that pain and suffering, and then when it's converted into money you're like, oh whatever, I mean, it's just bizarre, like, oh, I have so much debt and job I don't like I have to treat myself at TJ Max. Yeah, I do like that treat yourself thing and parks and wreck. I can't put enough for that. I say that a lot.

You know, it happens one day. I mean, if you plan for it, have a treat yourself category and you just fill that up absolutely the budgeting like that. The job is to do that, and then that's perfectly okay. We actually tried really really hard, really hard not to try and tell people what their money should do. We just say decide, and we just repeat that over and over. Just decide, well, I wanted this, should I do that? I think I spent too much on these shoes or

this golf club or name. You're a tool, whatever, name your thing, Like we have somebody stereotypical like, oh my gosh, they wasted money. It's like, it doesn't matter as long as you're being intentional about what you love. I mean,

go for it. I'll never step into a hobby lobby and buy anything, but it doesn't or target for target actually is a really popular one because in our Facebook group, it's you mentioned target and people are like, oh, yeah, you know, like throw pillows like you meant and throw pillows and people are like, yeah, you have to throw

pillow situation. But even then you have to just be like, hey, if you're doing some kind of retail therapy, like name the category retail therapy, like call it out and be like, yeah, therapy, I do therapy with shopping. Okay, at least you're calling it out and you know, not not hiding from it,

but just be intentional with it. It's it works. Be aware of what you're doing with your spending, that's that's first, and then you budget, and if you don't like what you're doing with your spending, then you can refine your budget to be how you want it to be. Yeah. I mean just the other day, I was sitting there eating ice cream from like a Ben and Jerry's and Julie's like, what are you doing. I'm like, I'm just eating my feelings. She's like, yeah, okay, I mean that's

basically what it is. You know, I had a long day work, I'm stressed. I'm just gonna eat my feelings. At least at least you're calling it what it is, you know, let's not pretend. Yes, yeah, oh my gosh, I ate a spoonful of cookie dough last night, you know, in case we're confessing, well, I think that's the latter part of the podcast. Us Confessions not there yet. Okay, thanks Jesse, keeping us on trail. Then let's let's move on speaking about expenses. The second rule is to embrace

your true expenses. What's all about about? So if rule one is to take a finite pile of money and give every dollar a job, kind of like we're in the present moment only and we're just dealing with like current fires, even rule two is to look ahead to less frequent expenses that are coming up and break those up into manageable monthly amounts. So we talked about embracing your true expenses kind of means like, get real about the idea that all of your expenses aren't these nice

little tidy paycheck cycle timed things that land. So if you have, um, I don't know, Christmas coming up, like Christmas does land every year like same day, like it's never changed, and people are like, oh my gosh, I just really stuck up on me. Well, use that as an example. So we're at the time of this recording

a couple of months out right. If you said you wanted to spend six dollars on Christmas and we have October November December to get there, I would say, well, you need to set aside two hundred dollars for this month, two for the next, two for the next. You're just making little sinking funds for all kinds of large, less

frequent expenses that normally surprise you. A lot of people make good money, make plenty of money, and they look at only their monthly bills that come in nice, tidy little envelopes, and they say, I don't know why I'm not getting ahead. I clearly make more than my monthly bills. But then they don't think about the car tires they're gonna blow out in four months. The h v a cun that will die three days after the warranty expires. The roof will need repairs, the dishwasher doesn't work that well,

like it just goes on and on. Like. There's this in accounting they call it depreciation, where you know, the asset value declines over time. And that is how life works. That is how cars work, that's how houses work, that's how so many things work. Things just wear out. And so all we're saying is, we recognize that car tires do not last forever, and so we're gonna set aside a little bit of money for the car. If you drive a two thousand two Honda Civic, I can tell

you it's like a hundred bucks a month. That'll keep you pretty steady, right, and you're just paying those bills as you go every month. Now you're not actually paying them because those piles of money are building up over time. But the really cool thing about this is then you have a person that's going back to rule one and

they're saying, I'm gonna give every dollar a job. And now they're debating like should I go to sushi or should I go to Little Caesar's in light of the fact that their car tire will blow out and they don't know when it will go, but they do know that they don't last forever. So they're like, should I go to sushi or Little Caesar's. I'm also paying for car tires for the future, and then they may be elect to go to Little Caesar's or it might be better just not to go anywhere, you know, it might

be better eat it is gross. I mean, like I don't want to say anything bad about it, but you could eat the box and you'd be like, am I is this the pizza? And then so that's that's the call, right that you're they're they're saying like it's kind of like future version of Jen walks back and it's like, hey, current Jen, Like just so you know, like I'm gonna be on the side of the road and I'm gonna have to call a tow truck and you better not leave me high and dry. And Jen's like, Okay, I'll

have the Little Caesars. That's cool. Like that's the negotiation that you're doing with yourself. You know, if you're sharing finances, you're doing it with each other. There's like four people at the table. If you're with your partner. It's like current you guys and then future you guys, and future you guys are like, we're going to go on an anniversary trip and you're like you are, Yes, we are, and you better fund that thing because we don't want to go there. We don't want to put it on

a card. We don't want to live chinsey. We want to live high for a couple of days, and we want to do it without having to worry about our money. And so the current versions of you are like, Okay, yeah, that sounds pretty good, so we'll we'll make a few adjustments here. You know, that's the future. The future jan is uh intending side of the road. But I think though, Jesse, you're identifying what can cause so many people to feel like they cannot get ahead in their budget or in

their finances. You know, we we might even know how to create a budget, but it only includes my my food, my shelter, and my bills and not thinking about those other unexpected expenses that that are what can keep us at a certain level and not able to move beyond. So whether or not we do make a decent amount of money, and I would say this is especially an issue for those who don't make a lot of money, and we've we've got a lot of listeners like that.

I've been there at various points in life. So I think even having our sites on this when we don't bring in a lot of cash every month, is a really helpful muscle to begin building of Okay, I know that there's going to be some sort of emergence the situation where future me is really mad at the current

me for not thinking about this. UM and being able to be more intentional and planful for those things can help us cross that barrier from UM saying being stuck really where we don't want to be absolutely and most people, UM, most people they've run out of real money and they have an emergency and they have to go to a card and and put it on a bill. And it's always like when then, when the month is normal, I'll be able to pay that bill off, when things kind

of normalize, when things settle down. I mean here I am talking about that, like what a joke, But the the idea of things kind of settling down and normalizing, there is no such thing as a normal month. You could go back to your credit card statement that you may be paying full and you're super responsible about it

or whatever. Or you go to your bank account and you just can scan down the column really old school like and just look for a digit to pop out that makes the number a little bigger and find those and be like, was that normal? And without fail, every month he'll be like, oh, yeah, we had that so and so's birthday. I had to grab him a gift

that I'd forgotten about her. Oh it was this. Every month is abnormal, and people just slowly tack on the debt because they have that little emergency, that little one time thing. It's very rarely a massive medical emergence here something where you're like, this, this is clear. It's it's these deaths by a thousand cuts. What's really cool about it is people will make the right, smart financial decision

when they're presented with those trade offs. To go back to a one, it's like, do you want to be ready for car repair or do you want to I'll say blow it, or do you want to blow it on this or that impulse thing. Nobody says I'm gonna blow it. Once presented correctly with that information in context, people are smart with their money when they're given that decision at the right time, with the right context and the right implications tagged along with it. Yeah, I love

I love that. And I know if I used to get really overwhelmed with the idea of multi full sinking funds, like for saving for multiple things. So if somebody listening is like me, this is what I did to kind of help me wrap my brain around it. I needed to go with just one single sinking fund in a separate account. So I have like three checking accounts. I have the regular one I spend out of, I have my emergency fund, and then I have my sinking fund account. And it's like I have a list of things that

I'm gonna need in the future. So, like, we know our a c and our water heater is going to blow in the next few years, um. And we just replaced some windows that we're really like bringing down raising our electricity costs. So we just we calculated the cost of each of those and saved that amount um for each in the sinking fund. And so when it came time, we chose, you know, we chose to do the windows, you know, before the other things broken. So we just

took that money out of one account. But like say, my tires blow and I didn't pay for those, I'd already have that money in the sinking fund. I can still just take out of there and then just fund it with that cost later. I still have the money. It's it's like allocated, and it just makes more sense for me because it's not like I don't feel like I'm taking from the water heater fund to pay for the tires. I'm just taking for the future protection fund as it would be UM And so I don't feel

as like overwhelmed by having a lot of different sinking funds. Yeah, I mean that. We I mean people use spreadsheets to track that. In our software. We that's the software is built to basically have all of your money in one account and you never look at the account balance. It's not even a thing for you. So you just are looking at your h v A C category and you can be more or less granular depending on how much

you care about these things. So I don't, you know, I don't think you should save up for the next tube of toothpaste, but I but there are like large material things where you could say, okay, this makes sense. So in your instance, if you had all these different sinking funds, and why not. It would look like a long list of categories, each with a goal amount attached, like I'm gonna fund it sixty seven dollars and twenty

eight cents every month. Well, you just set up that up one time, and then you're kind of just clicking and on autopilot. If you do ever have to move money around, which happens, that's our third rule, to roll with the punches. When new information comes up. Then you're you're just still planning. You're just still going back to rule one and you're saying, you know what, the car tire went out a lott quicker than we thought, So we're gonna move it from here. We'll catch up. You know,

we'll be fine. And so it is kind of this overall future protection fund. I don't like the idea of just a savings fund like no labels, because it tends to be a little bit of a revolving door. So

people like I gotta save. I just actually heard on a podcast I've got to say, so I'm gonna save, and they're feeling really good, and then they raid the savings account six weeks later, and then they're feeling really bad, and and so you want to put a job to that money to make sure that you're clear what it is. Four that way, when you do go in and grab it, you don't feel guilty because you did need to buy

a new computer or whatever. But you can also be clear, like all right here, here's why I like we have we have some intention attached to this, and you can keep it all on one account like you do. You can keep it. I mean, heck, we keep everything in one checking account. It's just like it's the most boring. I mean every time you go to the bank, well, I mean not that we go to the bank very often, but they would be so alarmed by the size of

our account bounce. It's because because we're saving for a car in there, we're saving for house repairs, we're saving for Christmas. And after a while, thousands and thousands of dollars start to pile up and the person at the bank's like, what are you what are you doing? And You're like, I'm what are you doing? That's so don't give me that dirty look. I know I don't want bill or overdraft protection. So this is why I do

everything online. But that I like the idea of assigning that uh, those savings accounts real jobs, so that there's some there's some specificity there. What's weird is most wine abbers start to not need that third thing you mentioned, that emergency fund that kind of just general just in case they find that they use it. Not that I advised against it, but like a three month deal is

probably fine. They find that they've started to anticipate what used to be emergencies, like a car tible announce not an emergency because they're not infinitely useful, so it's just part of living, you know, Like someone said I had to go to the doctor. That was an emergency. It's like, well, no, you're alive, so come on, you know, yeah, we knew that was coming. But then there are the catastrophic massive you know, this meets our insurance deductible type emergencies. Yeah,

that's that's where they come into play. I totally agree with you. A lot of people are saying things that are emergencies, but it's like you could have anticipated that for at least a few months ago, like oh my gosh, like other baby came and you're like, I don't know, I'm no O B g U I N, but I think I know. Forty weeks is usually standard. Yeah, you week, something's happening down there. Yeah, yeah, we know. It was months was never a thing for us, it was weeks.

It was like, and I was I wasn't allowed to be like, hey, Julie, aren't you like week twenty two. She's like, no, I'm week twenty one in three days. And I'm like, I'm sorry. I was not allowed to round up. I'm not allowed to round up on that. And I'm not allowed to run up on the baby's age. So if Brooks are new one, if he's you know, like five months in twenty five days, I can't do like, oh, he's six months old. She's like, no, he's not. He's

five months old. It's so important. They're those mom want to age them too quick. Their developmental milestones are so diverse. Yeah, she's like, no, he's not. He's developing just fine. People think he's behind. What a good example of you rolling with the context. I'm bringing us back. Don't worry. It's like I didn't know so many things about all these things. So I'm learning. I'm learning to Number three on on your rules is to roll with the punches. Can you

can you tell us about that? Who's punching you. Yeah, yeah, if you're alive. If you're alive, you know, like we we're getting a little bit of sport. I don't know how sports oriented your group is, but I think everyone can understand this. Like you if you were to watch, um, let's do let's do basketball, you have like the coach reviews game film, becomes a master at that opponent does all of this legwork. The team is like like they're

pretending to be the other opponent. They're mimicking it, they're scrimmaging, they're doing all this prep work, and that's like your budget. You're thinking about it. You're like, okay, what will you hear? What's here? And it's this perfectly laid plan. As soon as the game starts. If if they're a good coach, then they're like, oh well, let's change that a little bit. We thought they would use this guy. I don't even know, you know, we thought they do. You're deep in it now,

keep going it's or chess, let's do chess. That's probably this is probably more they're like they they make a play, Like everyone goes in with a plan and then you see how your opponent reaction. You're like, all right, I'll do it a little different that that's budgeting. So for some reason people they'll set their budget and then they're like, oh, also, I've started budgeting and I predict the future. Like that's kind of what they've decided is their thing, and they're

like they're clairvoyant. There's a really horrible movie with with Sandra Bullock called Premonition. I think, horrible movie, but it's his idea. She look like, see the future and then okay, now you've got it, or even worse Nicolas Cage with another horrible movie called Next Horrible Good let's talk about although I recommend that one because it is so bad it's actually enjoyable. But the idea that you could see into the future and then you have this firm plan.

Nobody can do that, and so you have a beginning budget or that's never gotten there. They're head wrapped around any of this, and suddenly their conditioned for for saying like, good job you is so astronomically high. This level of perfection is so high it blows my mind. And so what I'm trying to say is, Okay, you'll set your plan for the next three days and then as soon as something new pops up. We're just going to change

the plan. And so all rule three is and I can't even believe we have to make it a rule, but the rule is change your plan as needed. Okay, Like, if you're going on vacation soon, if you're so lucky, right and you've planned to go to some sunny place and then it rains, does that mean you you say, now, vacations don't work. I mean that was like, but that's what people do with budgeting. They're like, oh, budgeting doesn't work.

I knew this wouldn't work, you know. I listened to that one dumb guy on that one podcast, and he was wrong. And it's unfortunate because what we're really trying to do is say, hey, you made a plan, just adjust as you go. Budgeting is not a thing, it is a process. So rule three is just going back to rule one and saying, hey, given the new information you have, you want to maybe give every dollar a

job slightly differently than you did before, and you're still winning. Like, this is you being successful, This is you doing it perfectly. If you need me to say that, recognizing that the future is not static, how often would you say or how much of a pulse. Would you recommend somebody have

on their by daily when they're first starting daily. Yeah, as as your skill level is low, meaning you don't have this habit, you haven't done like the whole atomic habits James Cleared thing or whatever, and so you're like, okay, I have no skill or low skill here. That means you need a high frequency of interaction with the budget. The other side of it is if you don't make a lot where you don't have a lot of that wiggle room. Some people can, like they just make more

money so things just don't affect them as much. If you are one of those people that make a lot less, that also means you should be in the budget more because there's there's just less wiggle room, less room for air. The other one is if you're on a highly volatile income, you should be looking at it more often because there's more room for here and there. So those three things.

This is brand new to you. Being it daily, make it like a part of your coffee thing right, sip your coffee, swipe through your budget, stare at it, see what happens. That works if you're tight, If money is tight, look at it more often and if money is really volatile, you know, like your I don't know, your commission based something or other, look at it more often. Yeah, unemployed, the last rule that you have is age your money.

And I feel like this is the most unique and interesting role and I would love to hear the story behind it. So it's not a good story. I mean, it's not interesting, That's what I mean to say. So I I when Julie and I were first married, we were students, were super young and super poor, and we're

watching the money really closely. And I built this little spreadsheet that eventually became the wine app software and all that, But at the time it was just she and I just doing our thing, and we were on hourly pay working as students, and our hours would fluctuate, and I didn't like going back to rule one and knowing how hich we had to budget. I didn't like not knowing because my hours could be twenty five or thirty five and hers would be varied. And so I just had

this idea. I took some money from our wedding money that we had actually been given. I took some money from there. I said, let's live off of this money and then we'll work for a month and we'll have money in our hands now for the next month. And Julia, because we were in our honeymoon phase, she was just like cool, like and I could do anything wrong at that point. She's like, yeah, that's fine. You are brilliant and good looking and that is a good idea. So

so that's that's where we landed on. So it was really just for me. I was a little bit of a money hack to be like, I don't want to be waiting to see what I will earn in order to be able to budget. I just want to know what I already have and budget money I had earned a while ago. And so that turned into about thirty days. And then as we taught people, people are like this, instead of having a pile of bills waiting for money

to arrive, it was flipped around. They had this pile of money, and then when a bill would come, people are like, this is awesome, I'll just pay it. And then you start putting stuff on auto pay and it's

and then you've gotten out of that game. There's like there's a total game that everyone plays, this huge game with all kinds of rules and orchestrations where timing their bills to their paychecks and doing this like song and dance and like sticky notes in places and and just like what about this, And then you're sharing money with a partner, it's like, well did you spend that there? Oh that was for this bill, this this weird song

and dance, and it adds no value. I mean, if you think about the value of paying your electricity bill, it's just that the electricity stays on. But anything extra beyond the payment of the bill is just wasted effort. And so you think about all the effort people put into that song and dance. So we get rid of all of that, and then when a bill comes, it's just paid. And then suddenly people are like, my finances The best thing they ever say is they'll write in

and they'll say, my finances are super boring. Nothing exciting ever happens, Like everything just kind of seems pretty ho hum, and you're like you've arrived, Like you have arrived. Yeah, life is still like coming at you with all kinds of things, but your money kind of like normalizes it and you're not living right on the edge. So when we talk about aging your money, we're really saying if you earned a dollar yesterday. That's like a baby dollar.

And you don't send babies out into the world. You know, you protect them, You keep them closed for a little while. When they're ready, you let them go, and when they're too old, you like you kick them out right to get out. But at first you don't do that. And that's what we want with our dollars. We want to have them like hang out for a while. Thirty is

sixty days. The cool thing about this is you get to a point where you're staring at let's say the beginning of November, and you're like, I have all of the money I would need for November, including funding those sinking funds from Rule two. Like you're fully flushed out.

And then you're like, okay, yeah, that's all here. And then you work in November, you earn that money, it refills, and then you're staring at December and you're like, we're ready to roll, and we have money for Christmas unless you finish Christmas shopping like in October, which makes you kind of weird, but people do that so that the idea of living ahead instead of behind at paycheck to paycheck stress cycle is so bad. We were talking about sleeping I think before we recorded maybe, I mean like

it literally steals sleep from you. Literally, strange relationships where some benign comment from a spouse or partner about money suddenly becomes this big deal only because you're artificially stressed, not because it actually is a big deal. So there's so much there that you can get away from if you just live thirty to sixty days. The dollar you're spending you learned thirty days ago, forty days ago. It's it's wonderful now to get there, just follow the first

three rules. It will happen over time. There's no magic there, there's you just follow them. It takes people on average about six months to get there, um with not doing anything extraordinary beyond just being really intentional and cutting expenses where they realized they didn't like them, and uh, just

work in the system. I like the example that you gave of how you did this when you were young, married, uh, still respected and and because I think that we can often talk about budgeting and how you can have all these different funds and savings and it's just this thing and we can get it to work out so well. And then we have people who are not making a lot of money, and and this can feel really overwhelming or maybe even depleting to be like, that's not my reality.

But to hear your example of how you did this even when you weren't making a lot, even when you were hourly part time. I mean, of course it had something to do with gifts that have been received, But there are other ways of going about that. I mean, input side hustle, uh, living, living in an environment well below what you're bringing in, whether that means needing to move so that you're living expenses are last, right, there's

some ways of getting creative. But I think that I just want to highlight what you mentioned there, that this is possible even if you're not making six figures, and some of these concepts and the framework of it we can put into place regardless of where we may find ourselves currently in our current financial circumstances. Of course, the goal is always how can we bring in more so

that we're not stuck in there. Every one of these rules I came up with at my poorest and I say poor meaning financially, so I had I had all kinds of of family structure and support that I'm I'm blowdy forever grateful for that. You can't even price tag at all. Um, But we we lived in an apartment that costs three a month and we are not. So that was eighty years. That was a long time ago. Yeah, I I age well actually, but it was. Yeah, it was early two thousand and it was a junkie. I mean,

it's a horrible apartment. So we could have spent more. I mean we could have lived somewhere else. It was more expensive. But um, we had respiratory issues while we lived there, Like I think there was stuff in the walls. It was. It was bad. But we lived there for a year. We didn't have cell phones, we didn't um, we didn't own a car for the first little while. We didn't own a computer for the first little while.

I would use computers on campus when we were simple students in the sense that we had like one objective, like we got to get through school. Um, and you know, we were making Julie was making eleven bucks an hour. I was making ten fifty or something. She was full time at the end, working in social work where you don't they don't pay you, so she's full time making eleven dollars an hour. And we we were like, okay, we can make this work. We actually saved money, um

and that, but we lived cheap. Little Caesar's was a big deal back then, you know, and maybe that's why. Yeah, Like like once a month we're like, oh sweet, we get that five dollar hot and ready, and it was awesome. It's so those rules, they aren't just like pick and choose because your situation is tied. I would say, no, no, no no, those rules came about and were used to

great effect in my situation that was the tightest. Now I make more money, thankfully, I feed way more people, not you know, not necessarily thankfully, a lot more bills, all of that, All of that is so much more expensive, but the rules still are working. It's just it's about being super intentional. And like we went back, all that effort you put into earning money, that eleven bucks an hour that Julie was working toward, we're going to waste that when you know she's having to go to this

place she doesn't really like to make a pittance. Were when we're supposed to waste it then, I don't think so no, way, quite the opposite, right, So it it works at every income level. Yeah, well said man, you know what else works, and we never get tired of every income level. The bill of the week. That's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is William.

Maybe you paid off your mortgage, Maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. That's built buffalo bills, Bill Clinton. This is the build of the week, Jesse. Every week we have a listener or guests submit their bill of the week for us to share. Um, it is your turn. Do you have a bill for us? I was going to use watching the trailer of the sequel of Bill and Ted's, I

was like, that could that could work? But I only watched the trailer and I thought that's about enough of that. But my my favorite bill that has just started becoming my favorite, my electricity bill. So I got it a week two weeks ago. It was sixteen dollars and forty two cents and that's not too shabby. Ready, three pizzas. Everything is in pizzas at our house as yeah. Yeah. So it was the first, my first bill that I received after I had paid a whole lot of money

for a fancy solar system. So it was, and it was not for financial reasons like oh this makes sense. I just really liked the idea of the solar and like so many other parts of it appealed to me besides the long payback period, so I didn't finance it or anything. I saved up for it. I got all those panels on, and then I became obsessed with our power consumption at that point, so I can tell you, like our base house rates points six kill lots an hour, like it just does that if the ovens on, I

know that if like it's gotten better. But Julie was like, is this going to be a thing now forever where you're on your phone and being like what what what are you doing over there? Is there? Ah, you're baking bread? I apologize and that is that's totally okay. Yeah, I thought maybe you're a blow drying your Yeah, so it was it was super fun. But yeah, that's my favorite bill. It's been fun to see like this magic. And I'm not like even a big environmentalist right like, but it

was it did feel like magic. It was like, oh my gosh, the sun. You know, this is what you can look forward to when your budget becomes boring you get super into electricity consumption. Yeah wow, Jesse, thank you. If your life has become all about your energy consumption and you want to tell us about it, please visit Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash bill and leave us your bill. Or maybe your life is about something else like water consumption or or air whatever. We'll play your bill. Yeah,

some sort of bill. Yeah, now it's time for round. We tried out to yell someone I want to plug. I want to plug the counselor thing because I went to a councilor for like five years. Um it was awesome. Yes, And like people are like there's a stigma. I think it's going away, but man I I started going to see her and suddenly it was like my back pain went away weird, and I I just I was so nice. I was just like unload on someone who's just kind of like cool, cool, cool cool. Did you know this?

And you're like, no, I didn't you know? It was that's how they do it. Highly recommended. It's for it's I think it makes you. I don't know if if you're like this, like I don't know, go hard like money hungary, performances everything. Even then you're like, you should go see a therapist. Like. They will bring you your like, they will up your game wherever you're at, You'll see you'll see it. Increasing mean to extend it. No, you're good. I'm a counselor, so I can't say enough about it.

Thanks Jesse for sharing. Yeah, it's always good to just continue to chip away at the stigma that can surround seeking help and knowing that there there is help out there that can be affordable and can help us. But were whole people. I mean, I know that we really focus in on finances, but it does affect us physically and relationally and emotionally and financially. So yeah, I can't say enough good things about caring for our whole person. Perfect,

absolutely all right. So in this lightning round, we are going to get into our latest budgeting flubs and how we recovered from them. So Jesse, as guest, will allow you to go first, because your will probably be the shortest. I was I was hoping I could go last to kind of get a read of the room a little bit to figure out what kind of a flub we're

looking for. So that's why you're going first. Yeah, I've I've taken over the Costco run for the family because like the baby came, so he's kind of a priority,

and so I'm like, I'll do the Costco run. So Tuesday's my day and I this is embarrassing, but I didn't know how much we had spent when when I walked out and then came home and Julie was like, what was the She goes, man, you got a lot, and I was like, now to be clear, like I do her list, like she we have a sync up note, you know, on her phone, and I'm like update the note.

She gets it all updated, and then it's just like this line, and it's it's nerve wracking because she might say something like chicken and I'm like organic, boneless, skinless, organic tenderlines, like what are we doing here? You know? So we're working on We're working on like full communication, like how how is this? You know? She's like I really wanted this kind and she's a phenomenal cook, which means her standard of like what she wants is is

up there. So I'm already nervous. And then she's like, well, how much was it? And I had I couldn't even tell her. I'm like I did not notice the cost It's one of those zone out moments. I was like I was, but was I was I there like like guys like, here's your card. I'm like okay, And I didn't even like it's that was that that was yesterday. So I'm giving you a reason, like there's some recency

bias there. But I was pretty bothered by the fact that, like I just dropped and I'm telling you, like our family size, we have seven kids with two like some teenagers in there that eat like three people's worth each, And so we're not talking about like, oh he spent ninety dollars and didn't realize it. And I only wish I can't get out of there for less than two No, no, no, no, no no one can get out of Costco under just going to get some milk. It's like, now you won't

you can. You'll get like a flat screen TV on one shoulder and then like milk on the other side and socks and underwe here like do you guys have throat pillows here? Because no, but we do have swing sets. Yeah. And there were like Christmas full full boer Christmas going on, like I mean full on. I'm like, oh, Okay, Well, if we didn't have a reminder already through our budget and funding it monthly everybody, we would have it if we went to Costco. Yeah anyway, yeh, I didn't even

realize it. So I'm embarrassed by that. I don't know if you'll listen to the cash here a little bit more closely now that is your total comes to so that you can be aware of the spending just a little earlier a little. I mean, you're supposed to put it on your phone. We have the app. You're supposed to put it on your phone recorded in the moment it knows you're at Costco, and it's like, hey, cool, Costco normally groceries, right like it does all this fancy stuff.

I was totally spaced out. I think, yeah, anyway, well Jesse, you're gonna look great next to me. Uh. I was your your number one rule was resonating with me a lot. And when you were talking about children aren't good at this. Children are good at recognizing if you can't have this, then you can have this. Um. Yeah, So I just bought a house. Well not just me, my husband and I we together collectively bought a house. And I have had in my mind. I just haven't really thought about

it a ton. I mean, we did set a lot of money aside. I mean, first of all, I mean just buying a house is expensive beyond the down payment, but then also set some more money aside knowing that we want to do some renovations. But I didn't fully think through how much each renovation that I want to do is going to cost, and the timing of it. And I'm just kind of having my head like I want to do it all. I want to do it all right now, and that's just not the reality I'm

learning when you own a house. We used to live in a camp and I kind of could have it all. It's like, yeah, everything costs ten dollars done, the whole thing's renovated. Um. And so I am slowly coming to grips with the fact that I got new ceiling fans and I will probably not be able to have a kitchen for a couple of years. This kitchen is a

dumpster fire, by the way, it is functional. So how I'm how I'm coping slash recovering with that is really an adjustment in my perspective of Okay, I'm not going to take out a loan for these renovations. We do want to cash flow them, so I recognize that that's like a little bit next level, but it's where we're at as frugal friends over here. So I am learning what I can do to make it a little bit more livable at where we're at right now for very minimal cost until we can get to the point of

actually paying for these bigger renovations out of pocket. So luckily it has not thrown me into debt, but it is one of those kind of wake up calls of oh, I can't do it all at once, and if I do this one thing, then that takes this other thing out of the mix. So we might just have to get many splits instead of a new kitchen next and you know, I'll paint the walls and be happy with it. Yeah. No, no debt on kitchen, Reynolds, no way. Yeah, no, time can tell you. It needs to be set on fire.

We threw out a lot of it already. A lot of it is in the dumpster. The rest of it is on fire. Yeah, it's so ugly it wouldn't light on fire if you tried. So all right, Well that's all we have today. Jen's perfect, I'm fine. Um No. So Travis has been off of work for the last couple of weeks. Um. He's works in the airline industry as a mechanic, and so they gave him a voluntary leave several times this year. He's in literally his third month off this year, and uh, he's taking half pay.

And I am in my slow season in my business. So I have like my income is natural ebbs and flows, and I'm in a natural like I don't know what the ebb and with the flow is, but I'm in the lower one. But I I didn't change our budget to reflect that. I kept it as it was. And then I realized, oh, that's not our income that right, and which we have the money that it's like not affecting us this month, um, but next month month it will. Um. So I didn't. I didn't cut my expenses in half

or you know, cut them like I should have. I just totally went straight over my head. Then how are you recovering? Yeah, what's the first that's going to go on the expenses? Um? I probably Kai Probably he's probably her song Okay, like he's expensive. It's the new type of soy. Yeah, I think so. I mean, we haven't made November's budget yet, but um, I think we're just gonna probably not eat out. Um, probably just you know,

living on bare bones stuff just for one month. I'm in a sugar detox right now, so I can't think about that. I can't think about November right now. My mind is he and not eating out. It's probably a good combo to do it, right. I'm not eating out right now anyway, So it's not that bad. When we ask people how they paid off dead or how they got ahead, and we never prescribed like you shouldn't eat out.

We never say that. But everyone, without fail, without exception, they will say they cut eating out to free up money. So it usually it's a one. Yeah. Yeah, it's not maybe the largest sum of money, but it's it can save you a whole lot more than just cutting out buying coffee. Um, it can eat up a good chunk of that monthly budget. It's not large, but we call it squishy. It's a squishy category. There's some room. I like that, and it makes me like, it kind of

makes me feel weird are eating out. It's like, why you just call it squishy category? And see how appetizing that squishy squish and the follow up spills will turn the lights off for a whole month. Yeah, that goes. It's vendor. Jesse, thanks so much for coming on the show to talk with us about budgets. Where can people find more about you? What's up next for why now? What do you want to say? People can find us that you need a budget dot com so we're there

always the best thing to do. If I were to recommend one thing, uh for people, it would be to take one of our twenty minute workshops. They're they're fast, they're live, you can ask questions, they're not recorded there, there's a real teacher there. You can test them and say, like, say this random word. They'll say it like it's live. We've we've had that happen and um, they just they succinctly tell you, like, okay, Jesse's four rules that you heard on this in kind of a really long winded way.

They'll tell it to you very succinctly, and then they'll show you in the software how that's implemented. And so it's kind of like theory and then practice in twenty minutes and it is just well worth the time. It's a little bit of a different way to think about money, and so we want to get that learning happening fast. But do do the workshop if they're free. You know, you don't have to sign up or do anything like that. You just go in and jump on and they run.

I think we run about a hundred fifty a week, so like there's one that'll hit your schedule. All right, that's great, sweet, Well, thanks so much for coming on, Jesse, and we will hope to see you sometime when people are seeing each other again. But this was this was quite nice. Just this remote video thing is as good as it can get. I didn't have to smell each other's coffee brows, so true. Okay, well, thanks for having me. I appreciate him. Thanks Jesse. Well, Jill tell us about

that kitchen. Oh my, this was so fun and alarming alarming. It's like going back through a journal to listen to these episodes. That was it was literally almost two years ago, and listen, I wasn't wrong. I still don't have a kitchen, and you really don't have a kitchen like it is. It is walled off behind plastic, It is non existent. Right now, still enjoying those ceiling fans that I was

able to acquire early on, and still no kitchen. We have demoed, so it's not so much a dumpster fire kitchen as it is just not a kitchen at all. There is nothing there except for studs. Not the good kind. Well they are the good kind of support the house, but yeah, the kind of wall right now, studs and studs.

I'd go with studs. Jen, It's so I mean, just to have it right in my face, the you know, disappointment that I experienced two years ago of knowing that it was going to take years, and here I am two years later saying, yeah, it's you're you're still not that close to having a kitchen. But we have continued to cash flow. We have not taken out any loans, which might be partially wise. I don't have a kitchen at all, but we have made progress. I have a

makeshift kitchen in my laundry room. The laundry room is completely renovated, and that is pretty beautiful, and it's a pretty functional makeshift kitchen. It's almost to makeshift because then it prolongs the amount of time it takes to get the kitchen done. But oh, nevertheless, stay tuned for two more years from now and hopefully hopefully by then, I'm telling you you're done. It's done. I'm cooking it, cooking with gas, all those at home meals, not eating out

because of the squishy budget. Yeah, what about you, Jen, what's your update? I mean, we are still ebbing and flowing. I guess you're still on your sugar detox. I laughed when I heard that, and I laughed, But no, I mean now, we are also in a renovation, but we had a bulk of savings already to do that with, so we're still dipping into that, and that also could take us several years. I would cry, But you know, at least the rental portion, please please Lord. No. So yeah,

that's um, that's about it. Yeah, I mean take it from me. If you're living in it and your cash flowing, it is going to take triple or quadruple the amount of time you would hope. Yeah, And I still, I mean, my my work income as an entrepreneur still ebbs and flows, and so it is. That is, that's entrepreneur life. It's gotten a lot better with my heart, the partnership there, that has been a big, big weight off my shoulders. So are our updates sound depressing? I am very happy

with so glad I'm got are great. Yeah, things are great. It's just we were I guess we were in like a low point. Well, no, this was this was a low point for everyone when we originally recorded this. So just now the updates seem low. But I mean we're two years happier. But so thank you for listening to our sad updates. But um, but what brings us a lot of joy is our private community where we do monthly challenges UM and a lot of you are in it. UM.

We also offer accountability groups in there. So we want to congratulate one of our members for a big mindset shift they had during last month's mindset challenge, and it's Sam w. She says, I'm not a morning person. I used to beat myself up over my inability to do focused work before noon, but now I just lean into it. I spend my morning's doing tasks and chores that forced me to move around, then settle in for deep work sessions in the afternoon. Learning this about myself has made

me so much more productive. So, Congress, Sam, I loved reading this and I resonated it with it. So much that we do put a hierarchy around who gets up earliest, as if somehow better than those who stay up later and find what works for them. So I'm just so glad for that perspective, mindset shift for you say, I'm well done, absolutely so thank you for listening. If you want to check out our monthly challenge community had to Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash club to see what

challenge we have coming up next. See you next time. Crugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni Jill. So just to like an update. You can't see it on the podcast, but um, last night Jill and Eric and Travis and I installed our new background or new recording background. So we are looking at it right now. Oh yeah, we

have a studio. We are going to get new microphones, and we're going to go to a podcasting conference and hang out with other podcasters, and we have a background, and we're gonna get sign lighting so that we can actually take video so that we can share the joy of the Neon sign and fake boxwood hedge with everybody, and everybody can see who we are and I will always be to the left so that everyone knows. Jen and Jen And first, yeah, we read left to right, so I will always be on the left so that

you can tell us apart and be great. And we'll have the neon sign. We're really you know, you may not have a kitchen, but we have a neon sign, and so what more could you need? And that's our focuses, our priorities are in the right place. And so yeah, I don't need to eat anymore now. I just look at the neon sign and I'm nourished. I'm full of joy, and I live on joy. Yep.