It's Not About The Money

What if you could put all your bills on autopay, treat your credit card like cash, and step back from the stress of worrying about when your transactions happen? 

That's the peace of mind available when you get to YNAB Rule 4: Age your money. 

When the money you're spending today was earned long ago, you can suddenly let go of a whole category of money stress that you might not even realize you have. 

Tyler and Steve demystify the "credit card float" and illustrate with cafeteria-style cereal dispensers. 

If after all this you'd like one-on-one guidance through your money journey, Tyler is the coach for you. 

  • (00:00) - Girl Scout cookies
  • (03:18) - Rule Four: Age your money
  • (06:16) - The magic of getting to 30 days old
  • (09:05) - Demystifying the trap of the "credit card float"
  • (17:08) - What is an age of zero?
  • (18:21) - How to increase the age of your money
  • (19:57) - How old should your money be?
  • (23:59) - Aging your money isn't out of reach
  • (26:23) - You can hire Tyler as your YNAB coach
 

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Steve Nay: 

Tyler Smith: 

Creators & Guests

Host
Steve Nay
Strategic tax advisor for solopreneurs. Enrolled Agent; Owner of Daybreak Tax LLC
Host
Tyler Smith
Financial coach for working professionals

What is It's Not About The Money?

Solopreneurs and small business owners: learn about leadership, operations, entrepreneurship, productivity, taxes, client creation, marketing, bookkeeping, and more.

YNAB Rule 4: Age your money
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[00:00:00]

Girl Scout cookies
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[00:00:00] Steve: I have a friend here whose daughter is selling Girl Scout cookies, because it's the season for those, and it always surprises me, uh, when, when they come up, but it's apparently every year, around the same time. Anyway, uh, so I bought a few boxes.

[00:00:21] Tyler: As one should.

[00:00:22] Steve: Mm hmm. Good, you know, support, support, uh, a budding entrepreneur. also, they're delicious cookies.

[00:00:30] Tyler: What kind did you get?

[00:00:32] Steve: I got, what were they, Lemonades, uh, Thin Mints, of course. I tried the, the peanut butter sandwich cookies, they were, uh, those ones weren't my favorite. They're fine. Thin Mints, though. Thin Mints and Lemonades, I think, are my favorites.

Mmm. Hehe.

[00:00:53] Tyler: with thin mints. You know, I should probably do a side by side taste test with thin mints and like [00:01:00] whatever the grocery store has that are basically thin mint cookies because in my brain there's nothing better than a Girl Scout cookie thin mint. But maybe they're just normal cookies.

I don't know. That I could have all year round if I wanted.

[00:01:16] Steve: The, uh, the appeal of the Girl Scout cookies is their, uh Limited time.

[00:01:23] Tyler: That's true.

[00:01:23] Steve: Well, and also they're, they're, they're just good cookies, but,

[00:01:27] Tyler: Yes.

So what you're saying is if I were to glut on them, maybe I wouldn't enjoy them as much. Yeah.

[00:01:34] Steve: they were, if you could just pick them up at Walmart any time of day, all year long, then, so actually, um, we ended up with a box of, like, the Walmart version of the lemonades, and they were not quite as good. I had those first, and then I had the Girl Scout Cookie version, and the Girl Scout Cookie ones were better, so.

[00:01:55] Tyler: Okay.

[00:01:56] Steve: there's one, uh, anikdata point [00:02:00] for you.

[00:02:00] Tyler: Yeah. Anecdata. I've never heard that before. I love that.

[00:02:04] Steve: It's like a, like a, an anecdote, but it's, you're treating it like data. And maybe you should be, maybe you shouldn't, I don't know, but

[00:02:12] Tyler: Well, let's face it. You shouldn't be, but we do all the time.

[00:02:15] Steve: Right. Mm hmm.

[00:02:16] Tyler: I love that. I love that.

[00:02:19] Steve: Yeah, I don't remember if I got that from, uh, from Amazon, or if, if that's a more general term that people use.

[00:02:27] Tyler: I'm going to adopt that immediately at work because that's a place where this occurs. Yes. Cool. Love it. Thanks for the new vocabulary word.

[00:02:41] Steve: Hello there, dear listener, I am Steve.

[00:02:50] Tyler: And I'm Tyler. And welcome to another episode of It's Not About The Money, the podcast where we help you gain the clarity you need to run a successful small business.[00:03:00]

[00:03:00] Steve: Tyler has a financial coaching practice. I run a tax business. We are both small business owners like you, and this podcast is our exponer exp bleh. And this podcast is our exploration of entrepreneurship, one episode at a time.

Rule Four: Age your money
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[00:03:18] Tyler: All right, we made it to the final rule in the YNAB four rules series. Rule four, aid your money. Yes,

[00:03:30] Steve: that goes on forever.

[00:03:32] Tyler: that's right. Always learning, always improving.

[00:03:34] Steve: Age your money. What does that mean?

[00:03:37] Tyler: Well, I would say basically this rule is YNAB's take on helping you break the paycheck to paycheck cycle.

[00:03:46] Steve: Okay.

[00:03:47] Tyler: And it's kind of a weird way of thinking about it, aging your money. I remember when I was first introduced to YNAB many years ago, I didn't understand what this term meant at all, and I was like looking at YouTube videos from YNAB of how to explain it, [00:04:00] and they used the analogy of a cereal dispenser. I don't know if you ever saw that video or videos like, like, uh, at a restaurant or like a diner or something where, you know, you've got a big bin of cereal with a spout at the bottom and you open the spout and the cereal falls into your bowl

[00:04:15] Steve: that brings back memories of, uh, like freshman year at college in the, in the cafeteria.

[00:04:21] Tyler: exactly. And then you refill these big containers from the top, right? So you're dumping certain new cereal into the top, you're dispensing cereal into your bowl from the bottom. And basically, they compared that to money, where you are restocking your supply of money through income into the top of your bank account, and when you're spending money, it's coming out the bottom.

And the amount of time that each individual piece of cereal is in the bin is the age of the cereal. Or, the amount of time that each individual dollar is in your bank account is the age of your money. So it's the time between when you earn the money and when you spend the money.

[00:04:57] Steve: I like that analogy. That makes it very easy to [00:05:00] visualize. I don't think I've seen that video. So

[00:05:02] Tyler: It's pretty old.

[00:05:03] Steve: sharing.

[00:05:04] Tyler: Yeah, I

[00:05:04] Steve: I like that. Okay.

[00:05:05] Tyler: sure, but

[00:05:06] Steve: When I. When I first started using YNAB, they, uh, this, the version of this rule, I think, was, um, like, you, uh, spend last month's paycheck, I don't even remember what it was called, but it, the, the idea

[00:05:20] Tyler: Get a month ahead.

[00:05:21] Steve: get a month ahead, yeah, maybe that's it, the paychecks that you earn this month should be allocated towards next month's expenses, was the basic way it worked in, in YNAB 4,

[00:05:35] Tyler: Or also, uh, you could say it, um, Pay for this month's expenses with money that you earned last month.

[00:05:42] Steve: yes,

[00:05:43] Tyler: Another way of saying the same thing.

[00:05:45] Steve: Yeah. And so this seems like the more general version of that rule, like maybe that's, that was the old rule was 30 to the age of your money should be 30 days where the new rule is, uh, maybe it's 30 days, maybe it's 60 days, maybe it's [00:06:00] just two weeks. Uh, maybe it's five days because you're just getting started, whatever it might be like the, the, but the goal is to get the age larger as you go on.

[00:06:09] Tyler: Yeah, it's more of a principle than a rule of how old your money should be. It's just older is better. The older your money is, the

The magic of getting to 30 days old
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[00:06:16] Steve: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It seems to me there's something kind of magical about, uh, hitting that month old, the money being one month old.

[00:06:27] Tyler: Yes.

[00:06:28] Steve: And I think maybe why that is, is because. Most of my bills are, the monthly ones at least, they all happen sort of scattered throughout the month. They happen on predictable days. Like I could, I could schedule them out and see when they all are, but they're.

They're not all like on the first of the month, they're sort of all throughout the month. And so there's something magical about, uh, at the beginning of the month, the budget is done. All the money for the bills that will hit is [00:07:00] already available. So it doesn't matter to me now when the bill will be. I can put them all on autopay.

I don't have to worry about overdrafts for any of them. They're just, they can run automatically. And I don't have to think about them or worry about them anymore. I think that's the kind of the threshold that you cross when your money's 30 days old. You can kind of let go of all of that stress for at that level.

Does that make sense to you?

[00:07:23] Tyler: Yeah, yeah. Totally. Yes. So just like when we talked about rule two, which is embrace your true expenses, how that's when you start to get ahead financially by starting to build little buffers and little piles of money in your budget categories. that are for future expenses and not just expenses that are immediate, right?

That's where this starts. And the longer you follow rule two, the older your money gets because the bigger those pools of money you get. And eventually you will switch from being on the paycheck to paycheck cycle, which is where you're waiting for your next paycheck to pay your bills [00:08:00] with, right? You don't even have the money yet, but it's owed.

[00:08:02] Steve: yeah, right.

[00:08:04] Tyler: Like, that's where, uh, you know, depending on which article you read and which study they're quoting, right? Somewhere between, I don't know, 46, and I just saw earlier today, as high as 78 percent of Americans are living in that paycheck to paycheck cycle. That's a huge

[00:08:19] Steve: That's a very large number. Yeah.

[00:08:21] Tyler: who knows what it really is, right?

But the point is, a lot, probably most, of Americans that they survey, are still waiting, you know, they're in that paycheck to paycheck cycle. They need that next paycheck to pay for their current expenses. But, as your money gets to be 30 days old and older, that means that you don't need your next paycheck to pay for your entire, you know, current month of expenses.

And then, like you're saying, that's when the magic happens, it's like you are fully a month ahead, you've got a full month of buffer, you have enough money on the first of the month to pay for everything for the entire month, so you can put everything on autopay [00:09:00] if you want, and basically just, yeah, it's a breakthrough moment for a lot of people.

[00:09:04] Steve: Yeah.

Demystifying the trap of the "credit card float"
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[00:09:05] Tyler: And it was a breakthrough moment for me, I'll be honest, so I've told this story before, this was one of the things that converted me to YNAB in the beginning. I don't even remember when it was, it was at least seven or eight years ago.

[00:09:17] Steve: Mm

[00:09:17] Tyler: But at the time I was, I was living paycheck to paycheck in the sense that I was on the credit card float, so I needed my next paycheck to pay off my current credit card statement.

[00:09:27] Steve: Oh, yeah.

[00:09:28] Tyler: Like, I was still paying it off in full every month, but I couldn't pay it down to zero every month. Or, you know, at any given time.

[00:09:36] Steve: Right.

[00:09:37] Tyler: it was very frustrating. And I know a lot of people can relate to this because they're like, I don't get it. I'm paying off my credit card in full, the statement balance, at least every month.

I'm not accruing interest, which is great, but I still feel broke. And it's because. I was, and they are. I mean, that's not just a feeling, like it's true, right? Like you're, you're just barely keeping up. And, [00:10:00] uh, man, the first time I was a month ahead, it was like the best feeling financially I think I've ever had.

[00:10:07] Steve: That's lovely.

[00:10:09] Tyler: Yeah.

I love when the available money to pay off the credit card is the same as the balance of the credit card.

[00:10:17] Steve: At any point, those match up, you know. It's on autopay, so it's gonna pay the, I think, the statement balance or something, whatever I set it up as.

So it's, it, it doesn't ever really go down to zero, but I could, if I wanted, right now, go pay them all down to zero, and I would still have plenty of money in, in the checking account for all the stuff going forward.

[00:10:38] Tyler: So, I mean, based on the statistics. and I used the word statistics loosely here that we that we just vaguely cited. You're in the minority of people in America apparently, right? So anyone whose whose age of money is 30 days or older, actually the guideline is it should be 30 days or older if you're spending [00:11:00] But if you're using credit cards for most of your expenses, you really want it to be more in the 45 day range to experience the same thing.

Uh, just because there's a grace period on some credit cards and the billing cycle is longer than a month sometimes. Anyway,

[00:11:16] Steve: Mm. Right.

[00:11:16] Tyler: just, that's just kind of a rule of thumb, but anyway, so that's awesome.

[00:11:20] Steve: Uh, I, I realized the other day, well, I was thinking the other day, If I made a purchase like today on the credit card, the bill for it would come due, uh, about four weeks from now. What was it? But if I waited until next Friday, which is after the statement period closes, then it wouldn't be due for another like six or eight weeks.

I don't remember

[00:11:46] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:11:47] Steve: So that's where the, that's where the 45 days comes from. I

[00:11:52] Tyler: Yeah, that's right.

[00:11:53] Steve: kind of in that area where depending on when the purchase has happened and when the statement closes, then [00:12:00] you might have more or less time before it actually gets paid off.

[00:12:05] Tyler: Isn't that wild? I, this is something that I find surprises people constantly when I have, uh, these conversations with people. In fact, I went to lunch the other day with someone who was interested in becoming a financial coach. Like I am, and she asked me like, what, what are the most common problems faced by people that you work with?

And this is what I said. I said credit card float. And I kind of surprised her. She hadn't even heard of the term before. I don't think a lot of people outside of YNAB world have heard of it before because as far as the credit card companies are concerned, they don't want you to know about it or realize it, but, but essentially they create a dependence on on them, right?

So, uh, between that statement closing period and the next time you pay off that statement, you need the credit card because you don't have the cash.

[00:12:57] Steve: right.

[00:12:58] Tyler: It's kind of sneaky and [00:13:00] insidious, actually, which is why this YNAB Rule 4, Aid Your Money, it's kind of the antidote to the credit card trap. I just, it blows my mind.

I, I promise this is the last time I'll say it, at least on this episode, but it blows my mind that we live in a world where you can be a responsible person and pay your credit card balance off in full every month on the due date, never carry a balance, and yet you're still trapped.

[00:13:23] Steve: Uh huh.

[00:13:24] Tyler: It's like infuriating to me. And I'm not anti credit card. I use credit cards. I'm not like, you know, going to tell you to cut them up, unless you need to because you really can't control yourself. But anyway, this is YNAB rule four is the answer to that. It's like, you're like, no, no, no. I'm going to live on less than I make for a long enough period of time that I am out of that trap.

I could quit my credit card today if I wanted to and not need it to purchase things this month. No.

[00:13:55] Steve: on that, which this episode is not about credit cards per se, but I love the way [00:14:00] YNAB handles them, where you can treat it either as you're spending as if it were a debit card and all the money, like, is available now, it gets moved into the credit card row. You could pay it off right now if you needed to.

You're pretending like it's a debit card, uh, but if you're carrying a balance, you can also work on paying it down without letting the balance grow during that transition period. So it, it can work both ways for you. And I really love the way they've managed to get it to work.

[00:14:32] Tyler: That's, I'm so glad you pointed that out since I was on a credit card rant. Thank you for, for, uh, a lot of people do carry a balance, right? And they don't pay it off every month. And, and you're right. YNAB is very elegant in the way that it allows you to manage that process of not accruing additional credit card debt while you're working on paying it off.

Which would be counterproductive.

[00:14:55] Steve: Mm hmm.

[00:14:56] Tyler: So, anyway. Um, and I know this isn't a [00:15:00] credit card episode, but, but, but rule four is like, without credit cards, this wouldn't, this rule, like, wouldn't be necessary. Because, or without loans and debt, I should say, right? Because if there was no such thing as credit or debt, you would have a physical inability to spend more money than you make.

You would spend your cash until it was gone, and then it's gone and you are not buying anything else until you get more cash. Right? But we don't live in that world. We live in a world where we have credit available to us. And so, uh, we are, it's possible to spend money that we don't. It's possible to spend more than we make, which goes to a negative age of money, right?

Where you're spending money before you even receive it.

[00:15:45] Steve: Mm hmm.

[00:15:47] Tyler: Um. So the, I guess the topics are interconnected.

[00:15:52] Steve: Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. I think, I think even if you don't look at it through the lens of debt, it's still useful to [00:16:00] have a high age of money.

[00:16:02] Tyler: Oh, that's

[00:16:02] Steve: Would you agree with that?

[00:16:03] Tyler: Yes, yes, yes.

[00:16:04] Steve: So that's, that's not the sole

[00:16:06] Tyler: would still

[00:16:06] Steve: but it does. It is extremely useful if you are in that situation for figuring out how to get out of it.

True.

[00:16:13] Tyler: that's fair. That's fair. Because, um, basically, uh, basically if there were no credit or debt, you just couldn't have a negative age of money. So as low as you could go is, is zero,

[00:16:25] Steve: Well, will

YNAB do a negative age of money? I've never seen that personally,

[00:16:29] Tyler: I don't know.

[00:16:30] Steve: is it possible?

[00:16:32] Tyler: I don't know if they, uh, display in the user interface. I guess I'm fortunate not to have been in that situation, but I do know.

Yeah, we

[00:16:40] Steve: a mock budget and try it.

[00:16:42] Tyler: we should actually, whether or not it displays it in the interface, it's definitely possible though. Yeah,

[00:16:50] Steve: uh, framing it that way is very useful. But the paycheck to paycheck cycle sounds like you, uh, the money will come in and then you'll pay the bills, but actually you're [00:17:00] like, you've pre committed the money that is not here yet.

[00:17:03] Tyler: exactly. Exactly. And that's, yep.

What is an age of zero?
---

[00:17:08] Tyler: And so to having a, having, let's, so forget the negative question for a second, just having a, an age of money. That's like. One day or zero days. What would that look like? That means you are sitting at your desk with a pile of bills and you have zero dollars in your checking account, but you've got bills that are due.

And so when your paycheck hits the bank, it's there for one day or less before it goes right back out the door, right? Gone.

[00:17:37] Steve: mm hmm.

[00:17:38] Tyler: just goes to pay all those outstanding bills, right? So that's what zero. Uh, days worth of age of money looks like, you know, seven days would look like, well, you get some money and the bills aren't due until seven days later.

So you're still not a month ahead or anything like that, but you've got a little bit of wiggle room and so on and so forth until you get to [00:18:00] 30 days where it's like, I got the paycheck and I don't even need to spend it for, for a whole month.

[00:18:04] Steve: Mm hmm.

[00:18:06] Tyler: I think that was all very self evident and I did not need to say it, but I did. So. There you go.

[00:18:12] Steve: No, I, the zero in one day thing was very useful. I hadn't thought of that example. So,

How to increase the age of your money
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[00:18:21] Tyler: So can we talk about, there's, there's kind of two ways to increase the age of your money.

[00:18:27] Steve: yeah.

[00:18:27] Tyler: Is that true? Sorry. There's one way to increase the age of your money and it's very simple. It's very simple. Just spend less money than you make in a month

[00:18:41] Steve: This seems like the answer to all, all of the questions.

[00:18:46] Tyler: it's how to get rich too.

Yeah. It's not anything positive net

[00:18:51] Steve: out of debt, how to just spend less than you make.

[00:18:55] Tyler: Yep. And then practically speaking now, here's what's kind of crazy. Like, [00:19:00] um. There are some counterintuitive things you can do to break the cycle. We don't need to get too into the details here, but like that might involve temporarily switching to making minimum payments on one of your credit cards, for example, and actually carrying a balance, paying interest, which sounds, feels bad, sounds bad, you know, it's not the best option, uh, but it's a way to cut monthly obligations in order to start boosting up the age of money until you get rid of that debt and then can move on.

[00:19:27] Steve: Yeah.

[00:19:28] Tyler: Um. A better way, because it involves not paying interest, would be to be, you know, and I don't know why I'm saying this one second, because it's really the first place you should go, but it would be just to be cutting expenses or increasing your income to create some margin, right?

[00:19:43] Steve: Mm hmm.

[00:19:44] Tyler: Um, but there are some cases I've seen where you actually, you know, it would benefit, you know, for a short period of time, it's worth making minimum pay.

It's kind of like back to the debt snowball idea, right? Or you're just kind of tackling things in an intense way, but yeah.

How old should your money be?
---

[00:19:58] Tyler: Have you ever, uh, noticed your age of money [00:20:00] go down and kind of felt sad?

[00:20:02] Steve: Haha. Um, yes. Well, and, and, uh, actually, let me pull up the graph because I wonder if this actually shows up. I talked in the last episode about, um, property taxes. That's a very large bill that hits once a year. In December. And so the, the age of money while I'm accumulating that 10, 000 is going up and up and up and up.

And then in December, I pay that large bill and the age of money goes down.

[00:20:36] Tyler: Mm hmm.

[00:20:37] Steve: Which is how I'm expecting it to work, but it's unfortunate when it happens, you know.

[00:20:43] Tyler: Yeah, like, uh, and, you know, how much you want your age of money to be is going to be different for everybody, right? I mean, um, in general, higher is better, but there are, you know, plenty of good reasons not to. Worry about maximizing it. Like once you've [00:21:00] achieved 30 to 45 days, there's no,

uh. There's no reason. There's not really urgency around increasing it past that, right? Unless you have specific goals, like you want to have a six month emergency fund. That would obviously increase it quite a bit, up to six months, right? Um, but it's totally normal. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's totally normal for your age of money to fluctuate and go up and down as you make big purchases that you've been saving up for.

[00:21:27] Steve: Mm

[00:21:27] Tyler: Um, so don't panic. That's totally fine. As long as you're keeping it in a range that you're comfortable with for the kind of cushion that you want. You're fine.

[00:21:36] Steve: Okay, yeah, that's a good point. So I do see that dip on the graph, but it's in December, but it stays above the 30, 45 days. I can't tell exactly from this because it doesn't have numbers on it, but it's, it stayed above the level where I'm still comfortable month to month.

[00:21:54] Tyler: Right. Yeah.

[00:21:55] Steve: But I do, but I do get that twinge of sadness of like, Oh, that number was really great [00:22:00] last month and now it's like, just okay.

[00:22:03] Tyler: Totally. Yeah. I think the biggest one for me was when I was saving up for a down payment for a house. And my age of money was like 180 or something ridiculous like that. And I was like, I am a personal finance god. But of course it was arbitrary. I mean, you know, there was a reason that it was that high.

And then I purchased the home and it like dropped, just plummeted. And I, yeah, like I, Which isn't bad, it's what you would expect to happen, but yeah, it's just a little like, oh man. Back to real life, I guess. Back to regular age of money. Anyway, so I think we've covered the, you know, the gist of this one.

It's pretty simple. Spend less than you make consistently over time, and the age of your money will increase until you are a month ahead, instead of paycheck to paycheck. And you will experience. A transformation in the way you feel about money. The anxiety and stress goes [00:23:00] down. You're able to, I make that transition to auto paying all your bills.

If you want. That is so awesome. I, I love seeing people get to that point. Yeah. Cause it also helps, you know, for people who are consciously working on their credit score too. I mean, you know, paying your bills on time is a big deal deal. Whoa. My, my Utah accent just slipped out there for a second. That was embarrassing.

[00:23:24] Steve: Do you want to say that again?

[00:23:26] Tyler: No, it's fine. Um, we can leave it in. I am from Utah after all. Um, but it totally made me forget what I was saying. Let's see.

[00:23:40] Steve: Credit score is a

[00:23:40] Tyler: All I can remember is that it's a big dill. Big dill.

[00:23:45] Steve: Jar of

[00:23:45] Tyler: Oh, yeah.

[00:23:47] Steve: Uh, paying, paying on time, credit score.

[00:23:51] Tyler: Oh yeah, it just helps, I mean, it totally eliminates the, uh, cognitive load of trying to keep up on all that.

[00:23:58] Steve: Mm hmm.

Aging your money isn't out of reach
---

[00:23:59] Tyler: And I guess, sorry, [00:24:00] I know, again, I said this last episode too, you and I have been living the YNAB rules for long enough that we are like fully realizing all these great benefits from doing them. I don't want people to feel hopeless if they are in a situation where they're on credit card float, or maybe they are paycheck to paycheck, because we know, most people, Most households are in that situation, right?

So we're kind of in the minority here. It's okay because you can start working the YNAB rules today if you wanted to and So, you know, within a certain period of time, you could be experiencing these things too. I don't want this to seem like out of reach. Like, I was a poor college student, I had student loans, I had a car payment.

I had, you know, I've been there, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. And I am where I am today because of following these rules consistently over time. And anybody can do that at their level that they're at.

[00:24:52] Steve: Yeah. I'm glad you said that, because it does seem like a big threshold to cross to get there. And like, how, how do you [00:25:00] possibly get from here to there when you're still paycheck to paycheck? But it's, it's just the little, little steps compounding over time that'll get you there.

[00:25:12] Tyler: And I can say it can take some months to get a month ahead, depending on your income, depending on your circumstances and your, and your expenses and how much debt you have, it can take a while. But what I'm saying is when you get there, it is awesome and it's very possible.

[00:25:29] Steve: Agreed.

[00:25:31] Tyler: So if you are listening to this and be like, Oh yeah, easy for you guys to say like, yeah, it is, but only because of 10 years of doing this or whatever, right?

[00:25:37] Steve: that's true, yeah.

[00:25:39] Tyler: yeah. Um. And, uh, yeah, it's pretty priceless. I think I, I have a really hard time imagining going back to the way I was living before I was budgeting and before I was living these rules, because it's just such a night and day difference.

It's truly a miracle and like a blessing. I feel to be able to not worry about money in the ways [00:26:00] that I used to worry about it, um, through the clarity and through like, you know, that we get from rule one, little stockpiles of money from rule two. The flexibility of rule three and then, you know, ultimately just like getting a month ahead with rule four.

I don't know. It's, it's the best. Highly recommend. Yes. 10 out of 10 would recommend.

You can hire Tyler as your YNAB coach
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[00:26:23] Steve: Yeah. Well, great. Thanks for walking us through these four rules in this month long series.

[00:26:32] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:26:33] Steve: been good.

[00:26:35] Tyler: It's been a lot of fun. I mean, this is, this is the good stuff. I, um, you and I, YNAB was one of the things we initially connected on,

[00:26:42] Steve: It was,

[00:26:43] Tyler: other nerdy, nerdy topics, like, and, you know, if you talk to other people who've used YNAB before, it's kind of like you either, you either don't get it or you really love it.

[00:26:54] Steve: Mm

[00:26:55] Tyler: obviously the solution from getting from point A to point B of not getting it to loving it is listening to [00:27:00] this podcast. So. Oh,

[00:27:05] Steve: one coaching to do this, I'll plug you, Tyler. I don't know if you want to,

[00:27:09] Tyler: sure.

[00:27:10] Steve: uh, Tyler, Tyler does this for, for his job. This is what he does. And, uh, you At least as of the time we're recording this, you offer a free one hour session of, of going through this kind of stuff.

[00:27:26] Tyler: that's right.

[00:27:27] Steve: Uh, and then if it makes sense, you can, you can hire him, continue on.

[00:27:32] Tyler: Yeah. And that, that session is open to anybody. I, I love talking with people one on one about these rules and how they can be applied to their specific situation. Cause I know it can be a lot kind of overwhelming. Where do I start? Where am I today? You know, but.

[00:27:47] Steve: Yeah, that's really the value of having a coach is that, that one on one, like, what does it actually look like in your circumstances? We're living paycheck to paycheck right now. How do we get to there? Like, we gave you some kind of general advice here, but [00:28:00] Tyler can walk you through specifically what that might mean.

[00:28:03] Tyler: And I, I will say it's just fascinating. I've worked with clients from many, many different income ranges. And they, the rules work regardless.

[00:28:14] Steve: Yeah,

[00:28:14] Tyler: it doesn't matter where you're at. It's, it's definitely possible.

[00:28:17] Steve: just a matter of how long it takes and what your level of motivation is and that, that kind of thing. But it still,

[00:28:27] Tyler: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:28] Steve: still works.

[00:28:30] Tyler: So anyway, thanks for the plug, Steve. If you couldn't tell just by listening to Steve and I, we just love this stuff. And so if you want, uh, To love it with us, can send us an email, hello at notaboutmoney. com, or reach out otherwise, say hello, um, or book a free session with me, all of the above, or any of the above, I should say.

[00:28:53] Steve: All of the above. Yeah.

[00:28:55] Tyler: Yeah, all of the

above.

[00:28:56] Steve: too. Yeah.

[00:28:57] Tyler: Okay. All right. [00:29:00] Cool.

[00:29:01] Steve: the ride. We'll see you again on another episode of It's Not About The Money.