YNAB is all about giving dollars a job, but what about your time? Ben and Ernie poke at the edges of common budgeting practices in YNAB to determine what is really necessary, and what can be thrown out in the name of efficiency and time management. It's a fun exercise -- and often insightful -- to take practices or "rules" that you take for granted and tear them down to see how essential they are to the task of budgeting.   Share your YNAB wins with Ben and Ernie! budgetnerds@ynab.com   Follow Budget Nerds on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuIUGmbCDklkDCDm-cQqv2g

Erin Lowell, Lead Educator at YNAB, shares her journey of paying off her mortgage using YNAB principles. They discuss budgeting for additional expenses, making lowball offers in the housing market, and the factors that contributed to paying off the mortgage. They also explore the history and significance of mortgages and highlight the power of budgeting in achieving financial freedom.

Ben and Ernie interview fellow budget nerd and YNAB power user Gabi Bradley. Gabi is a busy mom balancing work, family, and changing financial obligations (including daycare!). She shares her unique category structure, which she assembled using various strategies outlined on Heard It from Hannah and Budget Nerds, and how her family uses the budget to handle their ever-changing financial needs.     Share your YNAB wins with Ben and Ernie! budgetnerds@ynab.com   Follow Budget Nerds on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuIUGmbCDklkDCDm-cQqv2g

Ben and Ernie discuss the exciting possibilities of a powerful new feature in YNAB called "Focused Views." Focused Views allow you to see a subset of your categories depending on what you want to learn, analyze, or review. Sometimes you just want to drill down on a particular  piece of your budget to understand what's going on with your money -- like consistently underfunded or overfunded categories. Or maybe you want to share the most important parts of the budget with your parnter without bogging them down with too many category details. Perhaps you have wish farm with a variety of wants.   Whatever the case may be, you can create a focused view to help you (and your partner!) better understand your money. And you can use emojis!   Share your YNAB wins with Ben and Ernie! budgetnerds@ynab.com   Follow Budget Nerds on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuIUGmbCDklkDCDm-cQqv2g

Ben and Ernie share their different strategies for applying Rule Four -- aging your money -- and specifically budgeting for the month ahead. Ben budgets for the next month in real time, allocating paychecks to categories in the next month on the calendar. Ernie, on the other hand, uses a holding category to park dollars that will be applied to the next month, and waits until the beginning of the month to actually allocate thoses dollars. They debate the pros and cons to each approach, and discuss some hybrid approaches that might be the best of both worlds!   Share your YNAB wins with Ben and Ernie! budgetnerds@ynab.com   Follow Budget Nerds on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuIUGmbCDklkDCDm-cQqv2g

Ben and Ernie discuss YNAB's Four Rules, and whether they can be applied to other areas of life outside the budget. As it turns out, yes they can! Whether it's Ernie's favorite pasttime (lawncare) or Ben's devotion to good systems, the Four Rules tap into some universal principles of effective resource management that can be applied to a wide range of things in life.   Share your YNAB wins with Ben and Ernie! budgetnerds@ynab.com   Follow Budget Nerds on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuIUGmbCDklkDCDm-cQqv2g

Ben and Ernie return to their nerdy roots and talk memos today, all about that little field in the transactions next to the category and balance. Turns out, the memo field can be used in many clever and creative ways to add more utility and depth to your budget, whether it's tracking important purchase information such as serial numbers, or tracking how many times you bought gifts or spent time with friends and family. Using memos can help your budget tell a more complete story of how you spend your money and whether that aligns with your priorities.   Share your YNAB wins with Ben and Ernie! budgetnerds@ynab.com   Follow Budget Nerds on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuIUGmbCDklkDCDm-cQqv2g

YNAB is not like other budgeting methods. Rule Four is "age your money" and it encourages folks to spend last month's earnings on this month's expenses, thereby breaking the paycheck to paycheck cycle in which so many find themselves stuck. Many YNAB'ers work diligently toward getting a month ahead of their expenses, budgeting the dollars they currently have in the bank account for expenses due in the next calendar month. But what about emergency funds?   Many budgeting methods encourage the idea of an emergency fund, a pile of money that is only touched to handle unexpected expenses not accounted for in the budget. A wise (or as Ben would say, prudent) thing to have! In a perfect world, however, YNAB'ers would not need emergency funds -- they would have saved enough money for future expenses via Rule Two to handle anything that could come their way. Alas, the world is not perfect, however, and many YNAB'ers choose to incorporate an emergency fund category in their budget.   Do you have to choose between having an emergency fund or living a month ahead? Of course not! Ben reminds us that even if you choose to setup your budget for month-ahead, you can always undo it and go back to an emergency fund. Or vice versa. The dollars are still there, however you decide to allocate them.   Ernie recommends that you should take your emotions into account too. For many folks, including himself, it just feels better to have a big pile of money that you can see in one category. It offers a greater sense of security than seeing mulitple categories funded in the next month.   So, really, you can't lose. If you've been thinking about going month-ahead, go for it! There's always the undo button.   Share your YNAB wins with Ben and Ernie! budgetnerds@ynab.com   Follow Budget Nerds on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuIUGmbCDklkDCDm-cQqv2g

Budgeting is pretty fun already... if you're a budget nerd. But what's even more fun than reconciling your account, or assigning that fresh pay check that just hit your account? Making a game out of it! Ben and Ernie discuss the various ways they have "gamified" YNAB, to have some fun with the process, to hit stretch goals, and to improve their spending decisions and willpower when funds in a certain category get tight.   Share your YNAB wins with Ben and Ernie! budgetnerds@ynab.com   Follow Budget Nerds on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuIUGmbCDklkDCDm-cQqv2g

Ben and Ernie tackle the topic of paying off debt, with a different bent than the typical personal finance podcast or blog. Where many sources focus on paying debt off at all costs, using extreme measures or simply throwing every dollar at debt, Ben and Ernie prefer a paydown approach which focuses on your priorities. What is most important in your life? Find a way to continue doing those things, while cutting back on non-essential aspects of your life to free up money for debt pay down.   Often this means deliberately paying off your debt slower than you could with a more extreme approach. And that's OK! Paying off large amounts of debt in a short time makes for great stories, but most of the time it leads to burnout and accumulating more debt. Throwing every dollar at debt can also leave you financially vulnerable, as you have no cash cushion available to handle unexpected expenses.   To that end, Ben and Ernie share their own stories about paying off debt, what they were willing to give up to pay it off faster, and what they were NOT willing to give up. Their stories demonstrate that life can still go on, even when you're paying off debt!   Share your YNAB wins with Ben and Ernie! budgetnerds@ynab.com   Follow Budget Nerds on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuIUGmbCDklkDCDm-cQqv2g