#142 - Tag, You're It! Ben and Ernie Answer 12 Questions About Their YNAB Journey
episodePreviously titled “#142 - Tag, You're It!” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 31, 2026
Transcript
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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. Tag, we're it. That's right. We have been tagged. So there's this YNAB tag game going on over on YouTube and it started with Neve. Budget with Neve. You got to check out her channel. And she basically answered 13 questions regarding YNAB, tagged three or four people, and now it's kind of just rippling out. So I thought it'd be fun, Ben, if we answered those questions and then tagged three other YNABers.
Yeah, I think this is a really fun challenge. We got 13 questions? 13!
Well, actually 12. The last one is where we kind of tag.
We pass it along. So stay tuned, guys, because you'll see who we tag at the end.
What is the YNAB YouTube tag challenge that kicked off this episode?
And then you can check out their channels.
I think what I'm so excited about is these questions are really going to get deep into our own personal YNAB stories, which we've shared a lot of stories throughout the years. but they've been kind of been surface level. I feel like we really have a chance here to go deep and I'm excited for that.
Yeah. Now we've thought about like eventually just doing like we interview each other kind of a, I think I like really get into our stories, but this will, this will ask some specific questions that kind of get into it. So that's fun.
Maybe a primer for that full in-depth interview later on. Who knows? All right. So should we just start it off? I think so. Yeah. All right. Question number one, how did you discover YNAB? Okay. You want to go first? Sure. It was an internet search.
Oh, yeah? Yeah. So it was totally called that organic, right? In the marketing world, that's an organic acquisition.
Well, hold on.
Because you didn't get me with the organic search. Okay.
Oh, interesting.
I've always been... Basically, since I graduated college, a personal finance nerd. I just, I like that material. So I would, you know, read the books, read the blogs. Podcasts weren't a thing back then, but if there was, I would have listened to all of them. And so I just was always dabbling with personal finance software.
Deep in that world.
Yeah, deep in that world. And I just liked experimenting with new software. So just, all right, throw in a Google search and see what comes up. And I kept seeing this, you need a budget software. But you know what? I was cheesed out by the name.
You were.
Dead serious.
Have you told this story before? I don't think I knew this.
I have mentioned it. Okay. It's been brief. But yeah, I don't know.
I was just like... So living proof, guys, the move to just call ourselves YNAB. Yes. There's a reason. Yes. Ernie might not have done it. I just thought it was cheesy. Yeah. Well, that's because it is cheesy.
And I didn't give it a fair shake. I wish I would have. But yeah, it was just kind of like... whatever. And I just moved on to other software, but, um, so yeah, when we made that switch years ago from you need a budget to YNAB, I was like, yes, perfect move. Thank you.
Interesting. Interesting. Okay. But you, so you were just searching that Google search was just like, just budgeting software or something like that yeah yeah okay okay that's cool um so that's when you first heard about it i guess the next question is like what made you actually sign up so we'll hold on that and we'll go to me uh i heard about ynav on steam which is a video game store okay it's like a a place it's like a lot of things if you don't know what steam is don't worry about it it's But if you know, you know, right? It's just a place where you buy video games and there's like a social element and like it keeps, it's like a launcher. So like it launches games on PCs, right? And it was so funny.
Like it was a big joke in the whole community on Steam because this is like the only piece of software I've ever seen that is not a game that showed up on Steam. Like this is a gaming platform, right?
Weird.
Yeah, and I actually wish I'd looked into this more because there's a story here. I want to say Kyle, one of our developers, I might be wrong on this, suggested that we put it on Steam, just as a suggestion.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:06–1:13
2
What is the YNAB YouTube tag challenge that kicked off this episode?
1:13–6:19
3
How did Ben and Ernie each first discover YNAB and what surprised them?
6:19–25:56
4
What convinced Ben and Ernie to commit to using YNAB long-term?
25:56–57:07
5
How has YNAB changed Ben and Ernie's relationship with money?
57:07–1:02:22
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