Spendfulness: An Origin Story

The YNAB Podcast

YNAB

Consolidation, Total, Budget, Dave, Peace, Money, A, Education, Ynab, Finance, Bankruptcy, Makeover, Fpu, Software, Management, Personal, Need, Ramsey, Financial, University, Debt, Kids & Family, You

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Spendfulness is the new word around YNAB, but the concept goes back to the beginning of the company... and even before the company itself. In today's episode, Jesse recounts the very early days of YNAB, when the budgeting method was just a spreadsheet. Jesse realized that the spreadsheet was enforcing a set of behaviors, or "rules," around money and that those rules were the foundation of what is now referred to as the YNAB method. YNAB is more than a spreadsheet, and more than a software tool, it is a set of principles for managing money and, more importantly, learning about yourself. Knowing thyself is at the heart of spendfulness, and as it turns out, living spendfulness is what YNAB was about the whole time!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, my name is Jesse Meekam with another episode of the Jesse Meekam show,
0:16.2	and I'm here each week to obsess out loud about spending purposefully, aspirationally, joyfully, spendfully.
0:23.6	It all comes down.
0:24.9	It all comes down to just giving every dollar a job.
0:28.6	I have spent the last 20 plus years figuring this out.
0:33.2	And actually, it started before I even started the business.
0:37.2	The original rules weren't even rules.
0:39.8	It was just a little spreadsheet that I built.
0:41.6	And I wanted to kind of give you a bit of a behind the scenes today, a bit of a journey
0:46.0	story.
0:47.0	And if you find it interesting, great.
0:49.1	But I'm going to drive home kind of the main point.
0:51.5	And that is what I start the show and end the show with every time, the importance of giving every dollar a job. And that's, this little story,
0:59.5	hopefully kept fairly tight, will highlight why that is so important. Julie and I got married
1:06.9	super young, just starting college for me, and I was just turned 22. And we were, you know,
1:14.3	poor college students, but totally loving life, loving each other, but not really doing great
1:20.5	on the money front. And I thought it would be a good idea to build a little spreadsheet to help us
1:24.8	track our meager finances. And that's exactly what I did. And you could
1:29.6	probably go online and find it in like the wayback machine and things. It was a site to be seen.
1:36.0	And about a year went by and we were doing well. We were actually able to save some money,
1:40.4	kind of scratch together some stuff. Julie was working full time in the highly lucrative field of social work.
1:46.5	That is said with sarcasm.
	...

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