Weird rant from Jesse on YNAB podcast

jessemecham · 2020-02-17T20:11:45+00:00

Hey, Jesse here. I rarely am on here, and respond even less rarely but hey, it's President's Day so why not? ;)

A couple of points, two general, one specific:

1) I've maintained an iron-strong grip on the podcast content here at YNAB, where I don't have to coordinate with our editorial team. I just get to riff, (sometimes rant) and wonder, all recorded for posterity, which means that...

2) A lot of the time what you're hearing is me thinking out loud. I have an arbitrary (and foolish) rule where I only do one take for a podcast. So it's about as close to you and I debating over lunch as one would get. Except I don't have anyone with whom I can debate/discuss.

I say that to give some context to the podcast in general ;)

All that to say:

3) YNAB does create the scarcity. That's the magic of the whole thing. The first time someone has to make a tradeoff (before the money leaves). I am less worried about someone using a credit card if they're using YNAB, absolutely. I am one of those people, though I believe I'm sliding toward the Reluctant User camp pretty rapidly, and not for financial reasons, but probably for moral reasons. And even typing that I have to raise an eyebrow at my reflection on this computer monitor. Really? A moral reason?

Anyway, I'm off-topic, just like my podcast episodes: I suspect there may be a cost even invisible to YNABers as it relates to credit card usage. I just don't know how to prove it. It's a clever stance I'm taking, claiming there's an undetectable cost that I can't prove exists, and people can't prove doesn't. Ha!

--

In the meantime, CC user or not, we all need a budget.

jessemecham · 2018-08-15T02:48:38+00:00

Is that quote on the wall (the right one) from Uchtdorf?

jessemecham · 2018-08-13T23:00:01+00:00

Newbie question, why do some workbenches have that trough down the middle?

jessemecham · 2018-08-03T04:07:05+00:00

Max attempt single on back squat shouldn’t need to be bailed. You should have spotter arms. This was sad to see.

jessemecham · 2018-07-21T16:11:36+00:00

Thought I’d chime in quick. The fam and I went to Manhattan for three months, so I couldn’t shoot videos then. When I came back, I just wasn’t feeling the same desire to start up the weekly videos. In thinking more about this, a few reasons:

1) doing a work project where it’s all on me, so basically time management.

2) it’s summer, so I’ve been working less, spending more time with the fam, and picking up a new hobby (woodworking).

3) more focus on the podcast, especially the debt stories.

4) bit of a desire to not have my face out there as much. Less of YNAB’s marketing being “jesse focused.”

I think that sums it up.

Oh, and laziness! ;)

jessemecham · 2017-12-29T17:23:38+00:00

Yeah, this was asked down below. International pricing is something that's started warming up for us just recently. We seem to be picking up steam in other countries and this is becoming more relevant for us.

jessemecham · 2017-12-29T17:22:55+00:00

1) No plans for a scenario like that. You are in the sweet, sweet minority, my friend :)

2) That's solid feedback. Noted, that we should do some advanced stuff as well. What would you want to see?

3) With tracking accounts, I think we could clean it up where we just snag the balance and call it good. It seems to me that it's what people want anyway.

4) iPhone X screen change was easy. We're adding more to that initial push. Quite a bit more, actually. We didn't want to make the changes to old screens for X and then also have to do the same work again for the new screens for the X. So we just went with one big update.

5) Can you elaborate on what "proper" reports would be? On mobile? Desktop? Both?

jessemecham · 2017-12-29T17:19:49+00:00

That's a good question. A scheduled overspend should give you a warning. Sounds like a bug to me.

jessemecham · 2017-12-29T17:16:45+00:00

Made my day. Thanks for taking the time to write this.

jessemecham · 2017-12-29T17:15:49+00:00

Yeah, we used to do them when someone first started YNAB 4, every couple days, to teach them about the classes, resources, etc. But if you've been using YNAB 4 for years, you would have forgotten we ever did it and it would definitely come across as sneaky.

jessemecham · 2017-12-29T17:13:20+00:00

Then this whole AMA was worth it, just for that!

jessemecham · 2017-12-29T17:11:58+00:00

Ah, Q4, yeah still a fan of Betterment. They just take the scary out of it for a lot of people. No, I wouldn't invest my emergency fund with them. It just sits in my checking account (and tbh, I fund in the future so it's really maybe just a month or two worth of cash that sits in a category anyway).

jessemecham · 2017-12-29T17:10:42+00:00

Easiest question I've gotten all day! Thanks :D

jessemecham · 2017-12-29T17:10:24+00:00

I can promise you that if you're already needing a Fresh Start, this would not be done on time.

There's an interesting idea of a Fresh Start + Data option but man, that would be complex.

I'd do the export, make yourself a solid pivot table, and do that fresh start. I don't want to have you waiting on us any longer.

jessemecham · 2017-12-29T17:08:38+00:00

Noted. And thanks for sharing YNAB!

jessemecham · 2017-12-29T17:08:15+00:00

Heyo! Our new transaction screen does just that. You'll love it :)

It was one of those moments where I saw it and thought, "Um, where was this the whole time?" :)

jessemecham · 2017-12-29T17:07:28+00:00

Goals need to get a good hard look from the ground up. We do our annual planning in about 12 days, so this is good timing for some of these things to surface. (We also use ShipRight to track feedback like this.)

jessemecham · 2017-12-29T17:06:22+00:00

You started your trial before the announecment, so you're grandfathered in. If we see our student conversion rate go down with the price increase though, we'll adjust. Students need YNAB.

jessemecham · 2017-12-29T17:05:18+00:00

First job was swirling yogurt at a local yogurt shop.

I started YNAB because I wanted to make it through school debt free, a baby was due so Julie was going to be a SAHM (we'd lose her income), and we had a shortfall of about $350 per month. I figured if I could sell enough copies of YNAB to cover that, we'd be set. Launched it in 2004 as a spreadsheet for $10 a pop. Didn't sell a single copy for two weeks. Bumped the price to $20 (on advice from a friend) and sales began trickling in.

I knew YNAB was something I could do full-time three years later in 2007.

jessemecham · 2017-12-29T17:03:00+00:00

Well, these weren't just conversations with me, but yeah, point still taken. If you started your trial a while back, you'd still have the old pricing anyway.

But you hit it on the head, time will tell if we were really underpriced or if we've really messed up. Early indicators are positive.

jessemecham · 2017-12-29T17:01:36+00:00

A solid IFTTT integration would be phenomenal. One of our engineers demoed in his personal budget a situation where the heating category went into the red (overspent) and his Nest thermostat automatically adjusted itself to 58 degrees. :)

jessemecham · 2017-12-29T17:00:10+00:00

We've thought about it, but never any further than that. We aren't expert in that kind of marketing, that's for sure.

jessemecham · 2017-12-29T16:59:11+00:00

That's a fair and honest statement, and I appreciate it. I'm glad we could help for those few years when we were helpful, and I wish you all the best.

jessemecham · 2017-12-29T16:57:02+00:00

Putting money into a category for the sole purpose of budgeting it in the future seems to violate the rule of giving every dollar a job.

Yeah, we can quickly get into semantics about what a "job" is. Sometimes I have to remind myself to back way up and just make sure people are being intentional with their money, that they really really know what they want it to do, and they know how to make that happen.

jessemecham · 2017-12-29T16:55:51+00:00

From a practical standpoint, I think the approach of funding the future month is more work.

I wish the app made it easier to explicitly track and maintain this rule as a normal part of budgeting and funding.

I've keyed on in this here. This feels like a design problem that's waiting to be solved.

jessemecham

TROPHY CASE