Bogleheads University 101 2024 Budgeting and Learning to Save with Jesse Mecham

00:00:00.000 | [ Applause ]

00:00:05.040 | Our next speaker, Jesse Mecham, is a personal finance expert seen

00:00:10.020 | on Forbes, Wired, New York Times.

00:00:12.600 | He is the founder of YNAB, which means you need a budget.

00:00:18.020 | He is the founder of the YNAB app and money method

00:00:25.880 | that has inspired millions to spend, save and live joyfully.

00:00:30.380 | He's also the host of the YNAB podcast and author

00:00:34.600 | of the best-selling book, You Need a Budget.

00:00:37.360 | Jesse started YNAB in 2004 with just a spreadsheet.

00:00:43.980 | Back then he was cash-strapped, newly married, college student trying to cover the cost

00:00:48.360 | of tuition without going into debt.

00:00:50.660 | So you're going to -- and by the way, you'd be amazed at the amount of people I speak

00:00:55.820 | with that have no idea how much they're spending.

00:00:58.620 | And it doesn't matter whether you're young or old, especially if you're going

00:01:03.180 | into retirement, you really need to know what your budget is.

00:01:05.520 | So here's Jesse.

00:01:07.240 | >> Thank you.

00:01:09.440 | [ Applause ]

00:01:13.640 | We could have saved Rick some time and told him that it's called YNAB.

00:01:17.160 | So we lost about five minutes with him saying every letter, but I think we'll be okay.

00:01:23.080 | Yeah, we actually don't -- we don't swear up here either.

00:01:27.240 | So I don't say the word budget anymore.

00:01:29.320 | It was a huge mistake, the biggest mistake of my life.

00:01:32.860 | There was a while ago, I was driving north on Interstate 15 in Utah and we were on a road trip.

00:01:42.200 | And I drive and my wife, she watches the road or naps.

00:01:47.580 | And then I've got a bunch of kids in the back and they were all either asleep

00:01:52.560 | or if they were like in the angsty teen age, they probably had headphones on.

00:01:56.160 | They were just kind of doing their thing, you know.

00:01:58.740 | So it was super quiet in the car.

00:02:01.700 | And I distinctly remember seeing mile marker 318 go by.

00:02:05.840 | And I was, of course, thinking about money because it's kind of all I think about.

00:02:13.180 | And I don't know why, I'm just -- I'm wired that way.

00:02:17.540 | And about mile marker 320, I had this epiphany that's the most obvious epiphany of all time,

00:02:25.740 | not worth a story, where I realized that money, it's sole purpose, there is no other purpose.

00:02:33.220 | The sole purpose of money is to be spent.

00:02:36.940 | And you could say, "No, it's to be saved."

00:02:39.900 | And I would just say, "You're just talking about future spending."

00:02:41.880 | And then you would say, "Oh, yeah, you're right."

00:02:44.100 | You could say, "Well, what about when I give it away?"

00:02:46.760 | And I could say two things, the next person spends it, the charity spends it, you know,

00:02:51.920 | your neighbor spends it, whoever you gave the money to.

00:02:53.940 | Or I could say, "You just spent it on the feeling of giving."

00:02:57.840 | Right? That might also work.

00:02:59.680 | But either way, we just spend money.

00:03:01.620 | All we do is spend money.

00:03:03.920 | And when you start to think about money as only being, like the sole purpose of it is to be spent,

00:03:13.560 | it -- all of the other cruft starts to kind of fade away.

00:03:18.100 | And I think we get some clarity.

00:03:21.860 | So where this session was supposed to be about budgeting and learning to save,

00:03:30.160 | it's -- I don't say budgeting anymore.

00:03:33.960 | And I'm offended that that's on the slide.

00:03:35.560 | And we'll be the -- I'm just kidding.

00:03:37.180 | I'm totally kidding, Rick.

00:03:38.300 | Kidding. We just met, so I'm going to tease him, you know,

00:03:43.540 | a lot and -- yeah, I'll blame Alan.

00:03:46.440 | I don't know who Alan is.

00:03:47.560 | Are you Alan?

00:03:48.280 | Well, Alan, come on now, you know.

00:03:50.040 | Thank you.

00:03:50.840 | So we -- here's this next 25 minutes is me basically telling you my story of moving

00:04:01.320 | from a company that taught people how to budget to a company that teaches people how to spend.

00:04:07.920 | And we've done it for millions of people.

00:04:11.840 | It's so far so good.

00:04:13.940 | So the interesting thing about spending, and if we talk about meant to be spent,

00:04:20.180 | I want to add one little bit to meant to be spent.

00:04:23.260 | Meant to be spent well, okay?

00:04:27.080 | I mean, it's meant to be spent well.

00:04:29.260 | And we'll get to why.

00:04:30.900 | Actually, no, let's do it right now.

00:04:33.040 | The main -- I'm curious sometimes when we think about money,

00:04:39.300 | we have pretty fancy definitions for it.

00:04:42.340 | We talk about how money is a dollar.

00:04:45.740 | And I'll say, oh, that's not -- you didn't define money there.

00:04:48.200 | You just told me, you know, what a government-sanctioned money is,

00:04:51.980 | is called a dollar or a currency or something like that.

00:04:54.620 | And so then an economist might come at us with a smarter definition that I quite like

00:04:59.440 | where they would say, well, money is a medium of exchange.

00:05:03.520 | And I like that.

00:05:04.700 | I actually like that quite a bit.

00:05:08.100 | Lately, I've been thinking that money is both nothing and -- I was going to say everything,

00:05:14.080 | but maybe it's better to say anything.

00:05:15.960 | Money is nothing because until you spend it, you just don't know.

00:05:23.460 | So if you could say, well, Jesse, I don't know what that is, then I would say, well,

00:05:26.520 | then we can probably call it nothing for now.

00:05:28.400 | And you say, no, it's definitely something.

00:05:29.900 | And I would say, well, what is it?

00:05:31.300 | And then you could maybe start to name it a little bit.

00:05:35.480 | And so when people save, when they're told to save -- now, S.C., she taught us this saving is

00:05:41.500 | for a very specific purpose.

00:05:43.080 | She's doing it right.

00:05:43.960 | Many times when people first come and we're working with them, they'll say, well,

00:05:48.860 | I was told I need to save money.

00:05:50.280 | And they're just told I need to save.

00:05:53.020 | That's it.

00:05:53.520 | And so when they set up a savings account, and they're feeling really good

00:05:57.000 | about this savings account, and they put money in the savings account,

00:06:00.060 | and they're maybe even smart, and they auto-deduct it so that it can do the smart thing

00:06:04.500 | where they don't have to re-decide every time.

00:06:06.200 | I thought two weeks was the right answer also on how long motivation lasts.

00:06:10.740 | And so they're feeling good about their savings, and then someone smashes in the back window

00:06:17.480 | of their Civic and steals their radio, or their cat spills a lot of water

00:06:23.260 | on their laptop, or whatever it may be.

00:06:25.520 | And so they have to -- and this is a word they use.

00:06:29.420 | They say they have to raid their savings like they're Vikings attacking it.

00:06:34.880 | It's theirs, but they act like they don't even own it.

00:06:38.920 | So they use very negative words to describe accessing, using their money.

00:06:45.500 | And we found that interesting.

00:06:48.080 | We call it the revolving door of savings and shame, where they put the money in,

00:06:53.080 | and then for whatever reason, they have to pull the money out.

00:06:55.960 | It's like the cat broke your laptop.

00:06:57.720 | You work from home.

00:06:58.440 | You need the laptop.

00:06:59.480 | This is a justifiable thing to spend money on, and yet they're like, "I just can't save.

00:07:04.220 | I'm not a good saver."

00:07:05.800 | And what they're missing here is a little bit of what Essie taught us already.

00:07:10.660 | Their savings needs to have a name.

00:07:13.600 | Otherwise, money is just nothing.

00:07:16.900 | But when we label the money, it starts to give the money purpose and starts

00:07:23.100 | to maybe bestow a little bit of resolve for that person.

00:07:28.360 | So if I have lots of different names for my pile of money, let's just put it all

00:07:33.460 | in my checking account, and I say I've got 10 grand in there and $1,000 in each

00:07:39.580 | of these 10 places, and one of them is for the laptop, a Chromebook.

00:07:43.400 | You can't get a nice laptop.

00:07:44.500 | You get a Chromebook, especially with inflation.

00:07:47.220 | My numbers are pre-inflation, so just go with it.

00:07:49.800 | But when you need that new laptop and you see that this money is labeled new laptop,

00:07:56.540 | there's no rating of a fortress.

00:07:58.360 | There's no shame.

00:07:59.520 | It's just, honestly, you feel a little bit like a rock star.

00:08:04.840 | You're just like, "Look at me.

00:08:06.440 | Am I a fortune teller?

00:08:08.720 | Am I a little prescient?

00:08:09.800 | Should I play the market just a little?"

00:08:12.020 | No, no, of course not.

00:08:14.520 | But you kind of feel like, "Man, I'm handling things."

00:08:18.000 | The only difference was two people with $10,000 of savings, one person that's

00:08:23.240 | named them and one person that hasn't.

00:08:26.000 | Now, you might be a little more dialed in, and you'll say, "Well, it's my emergency

00:08:31.880 | fund," but then you know what happens?

00:08:33.480 | You don't really know what an emergency is, and so the laptop thing happens or

00:08:40.240 | whatever, and you're still like, "Oh, my emergency fund.

00:08:43.240 | That was for emergencies."

00:08:44.920 | You just haven't given yourself the permission.

00:08:48.160 | You haven't labeled the money with its purpose, and so until you label it, I

00:08:52.520 | would say that money is nothing.

00:08:55.040 | That's perhaps a good definition.

00:08:56.600 | The reason it's anything, though, is why.

00:08:58.720 | Why is money anything?

00:09:00.140 | Because I can pull money out and just literally have it be anything, a villa in

00:09:05.920 | Italy or a coffee, it's anything.

00:09:09.000 | But to go back to the medium of exchange bit, I was playing with my son, my

00:09:17.880 | littlest, I have seven, so I have to kind of count on my hand and figure out the

00:09:22.160 | name, and his name is Brooks, if I recall.

00:09:24.640 | Now, he's a fantastic little four-year-old learning to swim.

00:09:29.720 | We're in the pool, and I was showing Brooks how if we both go underwater, kind

00:09:33.840 | of trying to teach him not to be afraid to go underwater, right?

00:09:36.880 | So I wanted to have a really good reason to go underwater, and the reason was I was

00:09:40.120 | teaching him that snapping, you could hear it really well, and I'm no physicist or

00:09:46.840 | whatever a person would be that knows about water and sound, but he thought that

00:09:52.400 | was pretty neat, and I realized later, I was like, "Oh, water's a great medium for

00:09:56.760 | sound."

00:09:57.160 | We were way across the pool.

00:09:58.640 | He's in that shallow end.

00:09:59.720 | I say, "Brooks, stick your head underwater," snap.

00:10:02.080 | He hears it.

00:10:02.800 | He pops up.

00:10:03.360 | He's like, "I could hear it, Dad.

00:10:04.280 | I could totally hear it."

00:10:05.040 | And if water is a good medium for sound, then money is a great medium for what?

00:10:15.640 | Well, we say, "Oh, it's a medium of exchange," right?

00:10:17.800 | Exchange?

00:10:18.800 | That sounds boring.

00:10:19.680 | It's a medium for what, really?

00:10:22.040 | The important part of that definition isn't medium.

00:10:24.880 | It actually is the exchange part, and I mean, we don't barter anymore, right?

00:10:31.480 | I mean, maybe we barter a little bit.

00:10:32.840 | Maybe to optimize taxes, you might do a little trade here and there or whatever.

00:10:37.000 | Maybe we barter slightly, but I didn't buy my house for 65 table saws, and a few

00:10:42.400 | of you could figure out what brand, and I'd say SawStop, and you're like, "Oh,

00:10:45.080 | that was smart," you know?

00:10:46.600 | That one's smart.

00:10:48.000 | And then a few of you would be like, "65?

00:10:50.360 | Okay.

00:10:51.120 | I know how much that house costs in terms of dollars," right?

00:10:54.640 | That's what you get to.

00:10:55.520 | And if we were really to work hard, we could all get together and we could make

00:10:58.800 | these massive lists, this item exchange for this item, this item exchange for this

00:11:03.320 | item, and we're trying to figure out the denominator for all of these different

00:11:06.320 | things, so a house is 65 table saws or whatever else it may be, but it becomes

00:11:11.000 | unwieldy, obviously, and so all humans forever have always just gotten rid of

00:11:16.800 | the bartering quickly, and they've recognized we've got to figure out a

00:11:20.000 | medium of exchange, but the denominator is such an interesting question.

00:11:25.400 | So when I exchange, like I've got a burrito numerator and then $10 or 20 in

00:11:34.320 | this day for the burrito, right, and it's like, "You better have guac on that for

00:11:38.120 | 20 bucks," but the $20 is the denominator, and so we're doing the exchange, right?

00:11:45.080 | Now, to kind of loop it back to money well spent, the spending exchange, 20

00:11:54.080 | bucks, burrito, that works pretty well.

00:11:56.000 | On the earning bit of the exchange, what's the denominator?

00:12:02.000 | The $10 or the paycheck, right?

00:12:04.400 | That's our numerator.

00:12:05.400 | And what are we exchanging for it?

00:12:08.360 | And you all, you know this, like we know this, I'm here exchanging right now,

00:12:13.680 | right, all of our money, not money, our effort, our time, our energy, calories,

00:12:22.480 | worries, stressors, all of our, "Hey, get good grades," the entire time we're

00:12:29.800 | told, "You start school, get good grades."

00:12:32.000 | Why?

00:12:32.280 | "So you can get a good job."

00:12:33.240 | Why?

00:12:33.600 | "So you can make more money."

00:12:35.040 | "Study this in school."

00:12:37.040 | "No, no, don't study that, study this."

00:12:38.840 | No one gets paid doing that.

00:12:40.160 | "Study this instead."

00:12:40.960 | "Why, dad?"

00:12:41.600 | "I have two boys that started college."

00:12:43.720 | "You make more money."

00:12:44.840 | "Okay, so this is all for money."

00:12:46.360 | "Right, it's all for money."

00:12:47.520 | "Oh, have a good network, talk to lots of people, meet people that are further

00:12:52.040 | along, have them help you move along in your career, you know, so go to these

00:12:56.840 | networking events."

00:12:57.560 | So you're like, "Okay, so networking is important."

00:12:59.040 | Yes, that network is important, all for money, right?

00:13:02.720 | "Get good sleep so you can be more creative."

00:13:05.160 | So, you know, "Don't be financially stressed at work so you can be more

00:13:08.480 | valuable, so you can earn more money."

00:13:10.680 | This exchange we do, blood, sweat, money, tears, calories, it's all for money.

00:13:19.040 | That's that earn side of the equation.

00:13:21.640 | It's money at the top, numerator, and all those things I listed as the denominator.

00:13:27.840 | And for shorthand, I would maybe say, instead of me having to, for the rest of

00:13:33.960 | this presentation, I have to say blood, sweat, money, tears, it starts to sound

00:13:38.160 | kind of gross anyway, I think we should just say you, I mean, you think about this

00:13:43.160 | for a moment, like you all are here and all of your experience, this entire room,

00:13:46.520 | all experience, whether you remember it or not, everything that formed you, formed

00:13:50.840 | every thought, I don't know how well that works, not a psychiatrist, psychologist,

00:13:54.480 | therapist, none of that, but all of it kind of rolls up into that moment.

00:13:59.320 | And then we go off and we earn money.

00:14:01.520 | So what else could we say besides you are the exchange?

00:14:06.880 | You are exchanging you for money.

00:14:08.840 | And as uncomfortable as it might be, because not in this room so much, I don't

00:14:15.520 | think, but in many others, money is a little bit taboo, as SC said, it's a

00:14:21.360 | little bit dirty, it's, I mean, we were told like, even in the Bible, like, "Hey,

00:14:25.600 | the love of money is the root of all evil."

00:14:27.200 | And we have to kind of make sure we tell people, "Hey, hey, it's the love.

00:14:30.080 | It's the love of money.

00:14:31.280 | It's not money itself."

00:14:32.240 | We have to actually caveat even like, "Yeah, I like money.

00:14:35.960 | I like to earn money.

00:14:36.960 | I find money useful.

00:14:38.160 | It gets me anything."

00:14:39.560 | Right?

00:14:40.040 | But we, we distance ourselves from it.

00:14:42.600 | So we, we make it at best a chore, right?

00:14:46.720 | For you, an obsession, but you guys are so rare, you know, compared to the norm.

00:14:53.200 | Like you, you may be, you're wired a little bit different to, to enjoy the

00:14:56.960 | pursuit, to enjoy the investing, the challenge, and it's, it's lovely.

00:15:00.960 | But on the spending side, there's still just this little bit of, well, money's

00:15:04.800 | just a little bit dirty.

00:15:06.440 | And if pressed, you'll, you'll yield.

00:15:08.760 | You'll say, "Well, no, I appreciate the fact that I can buy a house with it and I

00:15:11.720 | can provide for my kids.

00:15:12.760 | And yeah, I do have to drive around in a van and it could be a Porsche, but my

00:15:16.160 | friends would be lousy.

00:15:17.000 | I appreciated that quite a bit.

00:15:18.240 | Um, I haven't tested it either.

00:15:20.440 | I think we both should and just see what happens.

00:15:22.440 | Um, Honda Odyssey for the win.

00:15:25.800 | Um, but this distancing from money, I, what we try and teach people is the

00:15:33.120 | opposite.

00:15:33.720 | We try and teach them that money that you're trying to push away.

00:15:37.280 | That is just, and only you, all of your effort, energy, expertise, network,

00:15:45.640 | blood, sweat, tears, calories.

00:15:47.040 | It's all you.

00:15:48.280 | Why, why would you push it away?

00:15:50.760 | Why would you make it less than, why would you not treat it with, I

00:15:55.640 | guess, self-respect almost.

00:15:57.600 | Couldn't I say that?

00:15:58.840 | Let's treat it with respect.

00:16:01.040 | Let, with, yeah, self-respect.

00:16:03.600 | I'm going to run with that.

00:16:04.480 | So when we're talking about money being spent well, and we have this, it is

00:16:13.720 | dangerous to do public math, but if I recall, if you have two fractions, you

00:16:19.240 | have numerator, denominator, numerator, denominator.

00:16:22.400 | And I said, numerator over here on the earning was the money.

00:16:25.800 | And then you, all of you are the denominator, the exchange.

00:16:29.640 | And then over here, we put the burrito, right?

00:16:33.400 | And then we had the money also.

00:16:34.920 | And if you have a numerator, denominator, the same, they're both

00:16:37.880 | money, we can just cancel that out.

00:16:40.720 | So now we have you and the burrito, which feels kind of weird, you know?

00:16:45.440 | So I probably should use a different example besides a burrito, but I guess

00:16:49.800 | what I'm getting to is the money kind of does cancel out and what you end up

00:16:55.080 | with is you doing everything you can to earn this thing, and then you, not you

00:17:03.200 | guys in this room, but most people telling me I'm just not good with money.

00:17:09.760 | And the effort on the earning side, and then the disconnect on the

00:17:14.960 | spending side drives me absolutely crazy.

00:17:17.760 | You have the brain surgeon that literally does surgery on brains.

00:17:25.040 | Who's tells me I'm just not good with money and I'm just like, fix your brain.

00:17:30.000 | I guess I, what else should I tell him?

00:17:31.560 | You know?

00:17:32.120 | Um, it just, it gets me because you see all of the sacrifice all

00:17:37.920 | of the time, not with family.

00:17:39.440 | All of those things were perhaps trying to get back as we look to retire, maybe

00:17:45.080 | a little bit quicker than the next guy.

00:17:46.720 | We have these things we want.

00:17:48.800 | Those very things are what we're giving up in order to get this money.

00:17:52.720 | So what I say here is not anything to do with budgeting or saving, but when you

00:17:58.640 | recognize all that you offer for the earning, all I want is for everyone to

00:18:05.280 | also recognize that they need to put effort into the spending side of it.

00:18:11.200 | And what's great about this is if that equation really is just canceling

00:18:16.360 | down to be, you know, simplifying down to be you, the work necessary for you.

00:18:21.880 | Is to figure out what you want to spend your money on truly.

00:18:28.000 | And one fun thing that we do at YNAB is we never, ever tell people

00:18:34.440 | what to buy, how to spend at all.

00:18:38.240 | How dare I, I'd be telling them to buy clamps for their woodworking shop.

00:18:43.360 | It just doesn't land.

00:18:44.440 | Well, you know, but what moves me doesn't move you.

00:18:48.920 | And my favorite thing is to hear people tell me the crazy.

00:18:52.440 | And those that's Jesse saying crazy, the crazy things that

00:18:56.480 | they spend their money on.

00:18:57.640 | Now, do they end up spending less?

00:19:00.760 | No, they spend differently.

00:19:04.080 | There's no such thing as a spending cut, a spending fast.

00:19:09.040 | I'm going to cut back.

00:19:10.640 | You're just going to spend differently.

00:19:12.640 | You're going to spend money on some stocks and bonds.

00:19:16.280 | Yes, because you know, you're going to spend it on something even better later.

00:19:20.520 | Right.

00:19:21.160 | And it might be a little bit of healthcare.

00:19:23.320 | It might be, we were just on an Alaskan cruise in July and this lovely

00:19:29.040 | couple won the event of how many cruises have you been on?

00:19:33.000 | They had been on 61.

00:19:34.960 | I did the math thinking five nights.

00:19:37.880 | That's that's I did the math back then.

00:19:40.480 | I'm not doing it in front of you now.

00:19:41.920 | Three, I mean a year, it's a year of cruising, like on a boat.

00:19:45.560 | I lasted five days.

00:19:47.160 | That was enough for me.

00:19:48.120 | But, um, but I, I was watching them.

00:19:51.080 | They love it.

00:19:51.640 | They love something about cruising.

00:19:53.280 | They just love not for me once every 10 years.

00:19:56.440 | Cool.

00:19:56.800 | I'll go not for me at all, but I could, I'm looking at their faces

00:20:01.240 | realizing they thoroughly enjoy this.

00:20:03.840 | They really, really do.

00:20:05.760 | And how dare I question at all their value placement on this is what we love.

00:20:12.520 | How dare I, they spent all of that time, effort, and energy to earn that money.

00:20:17.040 | They have every right to spend it.

00:20:19.800 | They're spending of themselves.

00:20:21.280 | And so what we teach people isn't how to save.

00:20:26.560 | It's not how to budget.

00:20:27.760 | It's how to spend.

00:20:29.080 | We just teach four very simple rules.

00:20:31.960 | We want people to feel the trade-off of if I do this here, I can't do this over here.

00:20:40.880 | Um, as you mentioned, buy now, pay dearly later.

00:20:43.680 | That's what I call them.

00:20:44.600 | I never will just say pay later.

00:20:46.280 | You always have to say, buy now, pay dearly later.

00:20:48.520 | And, um, we did a little funny April fool's video a while ago.

00:20:53.680 | You know, there's one called after pay.

00:20:55.240 | And so we, we launched a fake product called, uh, well, there it was called

00:21:00.680 | before pay, you know, like, Hey, uh, save up for it and then buy it kind of a thing.

00:21:05.240 | Um, and that it just look up the video.

00:21:08.320 | I thought it was funny, but, um.

00:21:11.040 | We have all of these things, all the FinTech, like people will

00:21:14.240 | sometimes place my company in FinTech.

00:21:16.160 | They'll say, well, you're a FinTech app because we use a computer basically.

00:21:20.840 | Um, but we're, we're really an education company that sells

00:21:26.920 | software to keep teaching people.

00:21:28.680 | That's what keeps us afloat, but we're teaching people a way

00:21:31.560 | of thinking about their money.

00:21:33.040 | And a lot of FinTech, if I can throw them all with a large, you

00:21:37.840 | know, broad brush under the bus, a lot of FinTech is built for speed

00:21:42.040 | because technology gives us speed out of the gate and it is built to.

00:21:46.040 | Um, Distance people from their money quickly to have them not

00:21:51.680 | understand what after pay does to have them, to have things be a little more

00:21:56.800 | obfuscated, to have them not feel, to have them hear the Bing of Apple pay.

00:22:01.680 | That's been heavily engineered to be.

00:22:03.720 | Oh, so delightful and to be fast and just to not feel it.

00:22:08.240 | Now, should you spend money at Chick-fil-A?

00:22:11.360 | Oh, I forgot.

00:22:11.960 | You mentioned Chick-fil-A.

00:22:12.840 | I see.

00:22:13.040 | So that wasn't, that wasn't for you.

00:22:14.360 | That was for me, but should you spend money at Chick-fil-A and should it be

00:22:17.920 | fast and convenient if that's what you want to do, but if all of FinTech is

00:22:23.000 | trying to have you be unaware, unintentional, thoughtless about

00:22:28.480 | where your precious money goes, what we try and teach people is to have them

00:22:34.720 | be intentional and aware and thoughtful about where their precious resource goes.

00:22:41.520 | It deserves that respect.

00:22:44.040 | It deserves that little bit of intensity.

00:22:46.760 | It deserves the neurosurgeon sitting down and saying, I spent 12 years learning that.

00:22:52.800 | I think I can spend, you know, two or three hours learning this.

00:22:58.120 | It really is helping people do the self work of figuring out how you will spend.

00:23:04.320 | So while this is a beginner track where you're kind of saying, Hey, I'm just

00:23:08.480 | getting started and I have no idea where you're all at on this bogleheads journey,

00:23:12.320 | but make sure, you know, at the end of the day, as you accumulate this wealth,

00:23:18.120 | and that is a fantastic thing.

00:23:20.120 | As you accumulate this wealth, be very thoughtful, do the work necessary to

00:23:24.920 | know exactly how you want to spend that wealth also, it could be for inheritance.

00:23:30.720 | That's lovely.

00:23:31.600 | It could be for some charity.

00:23:33.040 | That's lovely.

00:23:33.680 | It could be for 50 cruises.

00:23:35.120 | That's lovely.

00:23:36.720 | All of it is right.

00:23:38.120 | If it's resonant with you, you did all of the work to earn it.

00:23:42.800 | You did all of the work to spend it on investing.

00:23:46.120 | I'm going to say, and you need to do some work, important work to figure

00:23:51.920 | out to make sure that resonance carries through where that money that

00:23:56.480 | you earned is also spent well.

00:23:59.920 | Thank you.

00:24:02.200 | [Applause]

00:24:04.200 | you

00:24:06.260 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Bogleheads University 101 2024 Budgeting and Learning to Save with Jesse Mecham

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