EP09 Money Stories: Carol Kissinger Was "Bad At Money," Until She Found YNAB

In today's money story, Carol Kissinger tells her story of discovering YNAB after moving from America to Berlin. She had never been good with money, was indebted to her parents for years, and frequently argued with her husband about money. Moving to Berlin put new stress on her bank account, until she discovered YNAB. The Four Rules helped her put a simple framework around money and clarify what it was she was spending on.

As it turns out, impulse purchasing was a recurring theme in Carol's budget. She and her husband would see money in the bank account after pay day and start buying things... without first reserving money for rent, utilities, and the various unplanned expenses that inevitably come up during the year. With an ADHD diagnosis, Carol found it particularly difficult to stop impulse purchasing without having a solid plan of what to do with her money after pay day. YNAB provided a framework for her to budget her dollars and give them jobs before they got spent. She found initially she had to "roll with the punches" frequently as she would forget about irregular expenses, but as she made it through the first several months of budgeting it became easier to predict those and her budget became more stable.

Most importantly, Carol discovered in the process of budgeting with YNAB that some of her long-held preconceptions were really just not true. She believed for a long time she was simply bad at money, and nothing would change that -- it was just a part of who she was. After paying off every dollar of debt to her parents and building an emergency fund, she could no longer say that about herself, and her personal narrative changed. She wasn't just not bad at money anymore, she was good with money. This transformation has extended outside her budget too. Carol and her husband were always very messy housekeepers, she says, to the point where they didn't want to have company over. After going through the budgeting transformation with YNAB, they now have a much cleaner home!

Sign up for a free 34-day trial of YNAB at www.youneedabudget.com