January Burndown 2020
The Jesse Mecham Show
YNAB
4.7 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 6 January 2020
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's time to blow it all up! Every January, Jesse takes time with his family to "blow up" his budget and all the assumptions that drive it. He takes a fresh look at the dollars in the budget, and starts to question everything.
Need to set aside $400 for a new set of tires in March? That's a responsible Rule #2 line of thinking. But the burndown is your chance to think deeper... do we even need a car? Could we sell it and ride our bikes to work instead?
This is your time to think big, re-evaluate your priorities and life goals, and then question everything about your money. Nothing should be off the table at this point, because you're just talking. In the process, you may discover that your priorities have shifted, and it's time to take some new steps with your budget.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Oh, Winebbers, my name is Jesse Meekham and this is podcast number 410 for Wineab, where we teach |
| 0:09.4 | you four rules to help you stop living paycheck to paycheck, get out of debt and save more money. |
| 0:14.6 | I want to talk today because we are in the new year, talk about the, it's something I've |
| 0:19.8 | been doing for several years now, it's called the January Burn Down. And I would encourage |
| 0:24.8 | you to adopt this as well. I don't yet have this totally fine-tuned. It's just |
| 0:32.0 | something Julie and I do every single year in January |
| 0:35.6 | because we do all kinds of new things in January and this is one of them that works |
| 0:39.8 | out really really well. The burn down is as follows. You take your budget and you burn it down. |
| 0:45.7 | It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to do a fresh start, although that's totally |
| 0:50.3 | fine if you do. What you're really burning down is every single assumption. Every |
| 0:56.6 | single thing in your budget that you don't normally question because you're just |
| 1:01.0 | on somewhat of a budget autopilot things are |
| 1:03.4 | flowing everything's going just fine and you aren't really questioning anything |
| 1:07.8 | you're just managing your money managing your money is I't know, step one of this process, |
| 1:15.0 | really starting to define your life priorities. |
| 1:19.6 | Maybe we could call that step two, |
| 1:21.3 | but maybe there's like this Jedi level step three. call that |
| 1:25.0 | step two, but maybe there's like this Jedi level, step three, |
| 1:26.0 | where you start questioning assumptions |
| 1:28.0 | that even your priorities have tried to fit into. |
| 1:32.0 | Maybe, I don't know. But this is licensed to be a little |
| 1:35.9 | bit crazy and that is where the fun starts. So in the burn down you simply take your budget top to bottom and eliminate it. |
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