Get to Know YNAB’s Four Rules
Article 3 in the Financial Fitness Article Series
In the second article in this series, I introduced you how to take a Financial Inventory. If you haven’t started that yet, don’t forget to begin that process. Today, I have one more foundational read before we dive into the how to’s of achieving Financial Fitness and using You Need a Budget (YNAB). That foundational read is about YNAB’s Four Rules.
These four rules work well with any budgeting tool — whether it be paper and pencil, an excel spreadsheet, or YNAB. However, YNAB is purpose-built to help you apply these four rules. They are worth reading and considering in your overall philosophy of money even if you aren’t going to use YNAB.
Rule One: Give Every Dollar A Job
In essence, all four rules boil down to Rule 1 and that is you give every dollar that you currently have a specific job. You assign each dollar you have now a specific role in your budget. More importantly, according to Jesse Mecham, founder of YNAB and author of You Need a Budget: The Proven System for Breaking the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle, Getting Out of Debt, and Living the Life You Want, “with every “job” you assign you’re answering the question: What do I want my money to do for me?”
