#108 - Spendfulness: The Word We've Been Looking For All Along with YNAB Dave
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Ben. And I'm Ernie. And you're listening to Budget Nerds.
You are not alone.
No, you are not. Friends, we had the absolute best episode going. About 10 minutes in, though, we realized we weren't recording. Whoopsies. So... This is a week later and take number two. We have YNAB Dave on the show. Dave is an educator here at YNAB. I'm sure you all know of him in some sort of capacity, but we wanted to bring him on and talk more spendfulness, talk more five questions. So before we get into that, Dave, how about you introduce yourself to the folks that don't know, and then we'll get to hear a little bit of your YNAB story.
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Ernie. Cheers, Ben. Delighted to be here with Bert and Ernie, as I know I'm going to call them at some point during this session. But yeah, hi, everybody. I'm Dave. And it's very difficult not to go into the next line that I do every time I teach, which is, hi, I'm Dave. Welcome. And I'm hosting from Northeastern Ontario in Canada. Welcome to Get Started with YNAB. So yeah, that gives you a clue. Yeah, teaching is a lot of what started me off here at YNAB all those years ago.
you've been doing it a long time. When, when did you start at YNAB as an employee, I guess?
Good question. Um, I'm trying to think of the last anniversary. Is there any way of knowing? Yeah, I'm kind of surreptitiously glanced at the coins on my shelf that wind up there. Employee coins. Yeah, somewhere around about 11 or 12, I think it might be.
Yeah, I was going to say, it's probably 11 or 12 years, right? Yeah. Yeah, you've been teaching workshops all the time, but you're doing a lot of coaching stuff now too, right?
Yeah, that's been a part of the... part of the role now for what about three years i think a ben something like that i think you were instrumentally and setting that coaching program up yeah if you don't know we're talking about the wine up certified coaches program where we bring in uh we bring in aspiring want to be wine up coaches and make sure they're up to the name there you go for them to go on to help people yeah yeah and then you've also been doing some work on the product side of things as as well right And that's been the last couple of years now, but I'm still finding my feet in that work, Ernie. It's fascinating working with the people who are doing a lot of thinking. I always thought, you know, design and development, it's about cold pizza and a light bulb and hacking out lines of code.
But there is so much goes into it that is nothing like that, you know. The amount of thinking or generally maybe thoughtfulness, I will say, that goes into design as to what YNAB is going to be like going forward is tremendous. It's been a real privilege to get to work with that side of YNAB. Just trying to get more education in there is what we're trying to do, right? We're trying to make sure that there is a...
Who is YNAB Dave and how did he first discover YNAB?
You don't need to come to a workshop to find out how to use the app on day one, that kind of thing.
Absolutely. And I feel like, okay, I feel like your two biggest claims to fame, I mean, there's so many little phrases that we say that came from your brain, Dave, but I think the two biggest ones are probably the Wish Farm. You wrote that first blog about the Wish Farm, right?
Yeah, that was 2016, yeah.
And you actually have a farm, so I guess that's where the idea came from, right?
That's it. The metaphors have all got... I'm a one-trick pony with this, right? The metaphors are nearly always... What about aging your money? No, what about aging your compost? You'd never use new compost, right? What about aging your money? No, no, no, not bubblegum machines. No, no, grain silos.
Dave is an analogy machine. That's the way I think of you, Dave, is you're always thinking of a new way to teach something. Your other claim to fame is find the money first. I think that's my favorite by far, I think, is the idea of checking your plan before you spend and instead of covering overspending after the fact, actually check it before and move the money ahead of time. That way you don't eat a motorcycle like you wrote in your blog, right?
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:07
2
Who is YNAB Dave and how did he first discover YNAB?
3:07–11:53
3
What are Dave’s memorable YNAB metaphors like the Wish Farm and aging your money?
11:53–29:21
4
What personal financial crisis led Dave to seek a budgeting solution?
29:21–48:34
5
How did 'giving every dollar a job' change Dave's spending behavior?
48:34–53:33
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Budget Nerds
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