Breaking the Fear of ADHD Budgeting with YNAB Founder Jesse Mecham

Ok, let's get this out of the way: We're big fans of You Need a Budget. Like, huge fans. Massive, life-changing kind of product fans. So you can imagine that we're a bit beside ourselves this week.

See, for someone who has had struggles with money in the past, discovering a tool that has the capacity to rewire your brain around budgeting and spending is a pretty big deal™. That's YNAB, a budgeting tool like no other. Even better, while the team had not intention to make a budgeting tool that can work for folks with ADHD brains, for a lot of us, they did just that.

Jesse Mecham is the Founder of YNAB and personal finance expert. He hosts the You Need A Budget Podcast, the Beginning Balance Podcast and is the Wall Street Journal best-selling author of the book of the same name, You Need A Budget. The Smart Money Mama herself, Chelsea Brennan, introduced us to YNAB in 2020 and the tool quickly landed at the top of our list of favorite, life-changing services, so Jesse is here not only as a budgeting guy we think you might like to meet, but because we are legit fans.

YNAB isn't a sponsor of this show, but we encourage you to visit right away and sign up for their 34-day free trial and see how it works for you.

• (00:00) - Welcome to The ADHD Podcast
• (01:38) - Support the Show: Become a Patron at Patreon.com/TheADHDPodcast
• (04:39) - Introducing Jesse Mecham
• (11:55) - The Tenses of Money
• (14:55) - The Four Rules
• (15:53) - 1. Giving Every Dollar a Job
• (18:57) - 2. Embrace your True Expenses
• (24:03) - 3. Role with the Punches
• (25:15) - 4. Aging Your Money
• (28:25) - The Elusive Emergency Fund
• (31:45) - What if you hate "Budgeting"
• (33:15) - Your Credit Card and You
• (37:41) - What if you're overwhelmed?
• (41:29) - YNAB as a Couple
• (44:44) - Kids