#143 - What Does "Getting Good at Money" Really Mean?
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What do Ben and Ernie mean by “getting good at money”?
I'm Ben. And I'm Ernie. And you're listening to Budget Nerds. You are not alone. No, you are not. Well, Ernie, welcome back. Today, we're talking about what do we mean when we say get good at money? What does it mean to get good at money? And this is something we've been saying a lot. If you pay attention to Budget Nerds and any of our content, we talk about this a lot. If you get wind up, you're going to get good at money. So that you're never going to worry about money again. And we just wanted to define that a little bit more. And I think we're a little off the cuff here. And I think we're working on this ourselves.
Well, we absolutely are. So we are framing this more as a thinking out loud brainstorming session. You and I just having a conversation about what this getting good at money thing actually is.
Yeah, I think it'll be good to just kind of figure it out because this is the goal of YNAB. Like this is why I use YNAB is to get good at money. So the outcome, the ultimate outcome is that you don't worry about money anymore. Right. But in order to do that, you got to get good at it. So what does it mean? What does it mean? Let's talk about that.
Well, it's a skill to start with. And we started saying that from the very beginning. And it makes sense. But also, I think I should back up here, too, is, you know, Growing up, and actually, I shouldn't say growing up, you know, starting like maybe college years when you started thinking about adult kind of stuff, I never thought of money as a skill. I guess I just thought it was something that just kind of happens around you, to you. I don't know. It's just, it's there and it is what it is.
Yeah, I think a lot of people think of it as like a character thing. It's just something you grow into, getting good at money. But it's not something you need to take a class on or sit down and learn or practice.
Yeah. And almost like, you know, good getting good at it was making a lot of money. Like if you made a lot of money, well, you were just you were good at it. If you didn't make a lot of money. And again, this is just like young, immature Ernie, like thinking through what this could possibly mean, you know? Yeah. Yeah. But I really do think it is a skill. Like it is something that every single person can learn. And I think it's something that we all need to learn because there aren't other people generally who are teaching us this. You know, we don't learn it in high school. I think most of us would say we grew up, you know, amongst adults that maybe didn't teach us this or show us this. So it's something that we have to kind of seek out on our own.
Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's hard because it's, it's also like something that you learn experientially too. Like, I think one reason that people talk about all the time, like, why don't we teach money skills in school? And like, I do think we need more financial education, but yeah, It's kind of one of those things you don't really learn it until you experientially learn it. So if you're like a 13-year-old sitting in a middle school class learning personal finance, yeah, you might learn some facts about credit cards. But you don't care. You know what I mean? It doesn't actually apply to your real life. until you're actually needing to use money in real life. And so I think one reason why it's hard, like I think one reason why
like parents have a hard time teaching it to their kids and schools don't teach it very much is because it's something that you need to, to come into learning when you need it. You know, um, we could do more education, but I think sometimes like, like you said, in that the early adulthood is when it starts to really feel like, Oh, I need to get good at this. I need to figure this out. Right. Um,
Yeah, and I think at that moment, when you realize, oh, this is something that I need, I think, at least for me, and I see this a lot in the personal finance community, people kind of gravitate towards, okay, getting good at money is about discipline. hunkering down, saving lots of money, not spending, or it's about math.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What do Ben and Ernie mean by “getting good at money”?
0:06–6:05
2
Why is money management a learnable skill rather than a character trait?
6:05–24:39
3
How does focusing on spending well instead of just saving change results?
24:39–35:48
4
What does prioritizing money look like in everyday budgeting practice?
35:48–56:21
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Budget Nerds
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