Roll With The Punches [VINYL]

hello ynabers. my name is jesse mecham from ynab. it stands for you need a budget. this is another whiteboard wednesday. welcome to the new year. you need a budget at the beginning of the year but you need that budget to stay for the entire year. and really, it's just a matter of, just trying and trying and trying again. i want to talk more

broadly about new year's resolutions and how to resolve - how to be resolute with those resolutions. what if we thought about the four rules that ynab has - give every dollar a job, embrace your true expenses, you know, roll with the punches, and then age your money. and what if we backed off a second, said could that help us with new year's resolutions? at the end of the day, those

four rules are built around having you be successful in the long term with your money, successful with budgeting. you're prioritizing, you're looking ahead, you're adjusting as needed, and you're giving yourself some breathing room as you age your money. how does that apply the resolutions? think about this way... 1. you just go

with less is more. you're prioritizing, just like rule one. just pick two, one, maybe two, three... i don't know about that. two is great, one might be even better. but you're prioritizing, you saying, "well, i want to do these 10 things." well yeah, and we also want our money to do these 10 things, but you have to decide, at

the end of the day, what is most important. that is what budgeting is. and i feel like that same thinking can apply towards successful resolutions. so, less is more here. you prioritize what you really, really want. 2. in budgeting, we're saying embrace your true expenses. we're meaning look ahead to those larger less frequent expenses, break them up in the

monthly amounts, so that when they happen, the money is just there waiting for the bill, instead of the bill waiting for the money. when these big events happen, not just bad things but vacations, holidays, all that stuff, you're ready for it. so, as you have a resolution, let's say your resolution is to eat 90 grams of sugar a day but no more, right? so, it's

measurable. you can say you're being successful with it or not. you're saying i'm not gonna eat more than 90 grams of sugar. okay, that's our example. you prioritize, that's super important to you, then you look ahead - you look at it, you'd say, "okay. what's coming up to throw me off track?" because aren't [are] those large infrequent expenses really just the

things that kind of derail the best-laid plans with your money? so when we're looking ahead and thinking about those as we plan, we plan more effectively. so you've set this goal of 90 grams of sugar, no more, and you're looking ahead you can then say, "oh, what about this night we're going out with friends. what about this thing

that's already on the calendar. am i going to be okay with that? could i maybe go above? could i maybe lower it the next day or lower the day before or something like that?" how will i handle that? that's really what you're asking and if you, you will come up with a reasonable answer, then you'll know going in that that's not

going to derail you. then when the anniversary night comes and you want to order like that molten chocolate lava cake that is 900 grams of sugar, and you know you want to, you do it because it's all part of the plan. you don't feel bad. you don't feel guilty. and, it doesn't derail your big long-term, more important plan of

sticking to your budget or in this case, sticking your sugar budget. so you're looking ahead. finally, you just build in the thinking that there are adjustments necessary. you could say things like, "okay, i went to 95, so today i'll be down to 85 - five over, i'll be five under," or you could not be so meticulous about those adjustments and just kind of shrug it off and say, you know

what life happened. i forgot about my son's birthday and that chocolate cake looked really, really good. so there are those situations where life will happen and we know this with budgeting, and it'll throw you off. if you can set that resolution just knowing that adjustments are not failures - that missing a day here or there, is not a failure. then your mind can be right and kind of poise for a,

again that longer term success. we don't want you to be perfect for a week, fall off the wagon, and then fail for another 51 weeks. we want you to be imperfect, imperfect, imperfect, imperfect, but still far improved over those last 51 weeks, right. so it's more important to stick with the process than it is to hit perfection. finally, rule four, thinking about aging your money,

with the idea of a new year's resolution, you could also think about building in breathing room. you might say, it's 90 grams of sugar or you might give yourself a range to work with. maybe you said 80 to 100 that way you don't feel so uptight, so stressed about that just being right on the line, right. and with our money, we do the same

thing. when we have a scenario where we're just right on the edge financially, it stresses us out. we think about it way too much. we think about it even when it doesn't add any value to be thinking about it. it just, it's all-consuming and if you give yourself zero wiggle room, then you do set yourself up for just stressing. so we're saying here, just like

with your money, give yourself some breathing room. think about ranges, instead of exact measurements, and i think you can be pretty successful in that way. when we're talking about aging your money, we're saying don't spend money that's any less than 30 days old, 60 might even be better. but we certainly aren't being so prescriptive to say like,

it's got to be 37. no, that wouldn't work. everyone would feel like they're failing except that one weird person that nails 37 days age of money. anyway, thought we'd talk about that because i know a lot of you are setting new year's resolutions. for ynab here, i want to give a quick, well one, just a shout out to our support team. it's awesome. last year when we launched the

new ynab, our average response time, and i remember giving a whiteboard wednesday about this where i was sorry for how we were basically stumbling all over ourselves trying to offer support. we learned a ton over the last year, we staffed up. so, last year at this time, our average response time was like one day and several hours. and the last time i looked, our response time

was hovering right around five hours. i haven't looked, i didn't look yesterday but i looked monday when we were getting like peak, peak demand because of all these new year's resolutions where people want to master their money. and what better way to do it than with the ynab method. anyway, i just wanted to give a shout out to our support team, that is killing it,

and also let you know, hey that big apology i had to give last year because of our stumbling on support, now i can brag a little bit. i feel like we're doing well. five hours is good, very good, but i think we can do even better. so we're going to keep trying to be there for you on the support side, one-on-one, getting great

help. if you have any questions at all, if you're feeling like you need someone just to send you a little smiley, we can do that too. stick with it. you're in this for the long term, right? don't worry about little hiccups here and there. just stick with the process. it's great to have you guys with us here in 2017. it's going to be a great year.

i will see you next week.

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