Episode Transcript
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0:05
Hello, Wine Abbers. My name is Jesse Meekum
0:07
with another episode of the Wine Ab Podcast, and
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I'm here each week to obsess out loud about
0:11
spending purposefully, saving aspirationally,
0:13
and even giving joyfully. It all comes
0:16
down to just these four simple habits.
0:19
We give every dollar a job and start to feel
0:21
what it means to trade off, or maybe just to
0:23
trade. Mark and
0:25
I just recorded a beginning balance episode where we talked
0:27
a lot about trade and what that does, and the
0:29
fact that we do it all the time and we
0:31
don't even realize we're doing it. And
0:33
when we learn to do it well, it
0:36
feels better. It feels the way you feel when
0:38
you're running Wine Ab. And to compare
0:40
that, it feels a lot better than the
0:42
way you were doing things
0:44
beforehand, perhaps. The
0:48
second rule is to embrace your true expenses,
0:50
which just kind of means some
0:52
of these trades are going to happen further out into
0:54
the future. Staying with the
0:56
punches means new information may
0:59
come about, and that will mean
1:01
that you're going to trade a little differently than you
1:04
originally thought. And the fourth habit, we
1:07
call it, we've called it rules for years.
1:09
So I'm going to say that sometimes. I'm
1:12
going to say rule sometimes, and you are
1:14
just going to be like, yep, it's a
1:16
rule also, a principle, a guideline, a good
1:18
thing to do. And that
1:20
is to age your money. And
1:22
what we're really trying to do there is
1:24
just give you time to think about the
1:26
next trade. When we
1:29
say trade, we just mean I've got this
1:31
dollar. What do I want to
1:33
trade it for? And we as
1:35
humans are always in the pursuit
1:38
of trade. Always. We
1:41
can't help it. And it's
1:43
how wealth is created. And that's
1:45
that. So there's
1:48
this bit that I've come
1:50
across in my studying, and
1:53
I use that term very loosely. But
1:56
a lot of times people will talk about things
1:58
not having inherent value. And
2:01
at YNAB, we are kind of
2:04
known for not caring how
2:06
you spend your money. Well,
2:08
I shouldn't say that. We do care. We
2:10
care that you spend it purposefully. However,
2:14
we really don't care what your purpose is,
2:17
what my purpose is. I mean,
2:19
I just got this thing from
2:21
my wood shop and you couldn't care
2:23
less about it. And you just
2:25
got this thing for your candle making and I
2:27
couldn't care less. But can
2:30
we both really enjoy the fact that
2:33
our money, our hard-earned money, was
2:36
perfectly deployed to maximize
2:38
enjoyment for each of us individually
2:40
without worrying about the other person?
2:43
I love that. I love
2:45
it. No knock on your candles and you can't knock on my
2:47
tool. So when
2:49
we're thinking about this idea of inherent
2:52
value or intrinsic value, people
2:54
will use those both interchangeably. They'll say,
2:56
well, that, you know, I want
2:58
to spend my money on things that
3:01
I know have value. It's got to have
3:03
intrinsic value. And
3:05
Mark and I did talk quite a bit about the
3:07
history of gold as money and
3:09
the intrinsic value there. But I've been
3:11
thinking about this quite a bit. And after honestly
3:14
getting comfortable from 20 years
3:16
of me telling people, I do not
3:19
care what you spend your money on,
3:21
as long as it's purposeful, you
3:24
would be hard-pressed to convince me that
3:27
value is not completely
3:29
and totally, absolutely subjective.
3:34
Totally. And the reason I say this, and
3:36
there's probably writing about this
3:38
that people have thought long and hard about
3:40
this and I'm not even aware of them.
3:42
And if you are aware, send me the
3:45
book. Send me, I don't want a
3:47
podcast, I want a book, send me a heady
3:49
book and say, Jesse, read this.
3:51
This is a philosopher trying to figure
3:53
out value and why we value things.
3:56
Anyway, the reason I say that
3:58
is because And value
4:01
is, it is totally subjective in
4:03
the sense that it's all around the context.
4:06
If I have no food
4:08
and I need
4:10
some food, I'm going to value that
4:13
very high. If I have gobs of food and
4:15
you're like, hey, do you want another gob, like
4:17
half a gob? I won't. I
4:20
won't even care about it. I will value that half a
4:22
gob of food very, very little. And
4:25
I will value a chisel very high and
4:27
you will value some kind of
4:29
wick thing for your candles very high and
4:31
we both won't value, if we
4:33
were to swap, I wouldn't value the wick thing.
4:36
I don't even know what you're talking about. So value
4:39
is subjective. And when you
4:41
can kind of just get comfortable with that,
4:44
like truly someone that needs water, they
4:46
value water more than anything. Someone
4:49
that needs some food more than anything. Someone that needs
4:51
a vision pro, that's
4:53
what it's called, Apple Vision Pro. I don't feel
4:55
like that name really rolls off the tongue. I
4:58
need to memorize it because I keep stumbling on it.
5:01
But someone might value that
5:03
and someone else that, I
5:05
don't know, is scraping together some money to
5:07
replace their laptop. They're like, I don't like,
5:09
I've got three grand here. I'm not doing
5:11
that. I'm doing the laptop
5:13
thing. It's always changing. It's
5:16
so dynamic. Honestly, maybe that's why our third
5:18
habit of rolling with the punches fits pretty
5:20
nicely. You've literally seen
5:23
value be subjective regularly
5:25
as you've worked that third habit, that
5:27
third principle. You've been able to say,
5:30
you know what? Oh, I just found
5:32
out some new friends are coming to town. Suddenly,
5:35
I value a full fridge of groceries
5:37
more than when it was just going to be me. And
5:40
I was totally comfortable warming up random
5:42
things, mashing them all together and,
5:44
you know, pretending it's
5:46
dinner. I hear a
5:48
pitter-patter of feet running toward my office. So I
5:51
think that might be my way
5:53
of saying it's time to sign off. But
5:55
I just want you to get comfortable with
5:57
the idea that value is subjective because then...
6:00
Because then no one gets to say like hey,
6:02
man, why aren't you doing this? Hey, why aren't
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you doing that value is subjective? It's on you
6:07
and you get to do the work the
6:09
necessary and joyful and valuable
6:12
work of figuring out What
6:15
you value so there's
6:17
no inherent value. There really isn't not even
6:19
in food Not even
6:21
in water because you might have just
6:23
had a sip and you know, there's more later now
6:29
There the pitter-patter stopped another knocking
6:31
has started so Until
6:33
next time remember it's just four
6:36
simple
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