MyBudgetCoach and Zero Based Budgeting - Expert Edition Episode 67
Today, I'm super excited to chat with my friend Zach Whelchel about something I absolutely nerd out on—budgeting! We dive into how budgeting helped me pay off a million dollars in debt and explore the awesome method of zero-based budgeting, where every dollar gets a job. Zach and I also introduce you to MyBudgetCoach, an amazing app he created that pairs you with a coach to make budgeting simple and fun. Zach shares his personal journey and insights on how budgeting can totally transform your financial life.
About our guest:
Zach is a software developer, entrepreneur, husband, and father to two young boys. Zach has always been different when it comes to money. In elementary school his friends built their own economic system in the backyard called Nutopia. In college he made over $1,000 recycling beer cups at a music festival to fund his study abroad. As an entrepreneur his passion is to help others be intentional with their finances so they can build a life that aligns with their values. Recently, he founded MyBudgetCoach to help the world fall in love with budgeting.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Naseema McElroy: [00:00:00] What's up, my financially intentional people? This is an exciting time because I have been working on a venture behind the scenes for something that I love to do, that I love to nerd out about. Budgeting. Budgeting the dreaded B word, but what I have sworn by, which has helped me get out of a million dollars in debt.
Budgeting is one of those things that could be a challenge. If you don't necessarily know how to budget if you, think that, on a budget, you get started and then you you lose a little bit of that fuel because you're not sure. What to do. My friend Zach here has created a solution in the form of MyBudgetCoach.
So I'm super excited that I have Zach here, but also I've been working with him on the backend creating a tool to make budgeting simple for you. Hey, Zach,
Zach Whelchel: Hello,
Naseema McElroy: how are you?
Zach Whelchel: doing doing good. Good to be [00:01:00] here.
Naseema McElroy: I'm so happy to have you because you are a software genius and you have created this application called MyBudgetCoach. And could you share with the people like what exactly MyBudgetCoach is and why you felt the need to create it?
Zach Whelchel: For sure, yeah. So I'm like you, I'm a budget nerd, fell in love with budgeting a couple of years ago I quit my job maybe four years ago and my wife and I were at a point where we were having our first kid, trying to decide who's staying home, taking care of the kid, who's working, all those things, and it was like a stressful time in our lives.
And we found budgeting in a new way at that point to me before in the past budgeting and never worked because I always thought of budgeting is like a one and done thing, right? You like, write down some numbers in a spreadsheet and then you're like I hope that that'll equal zero when I'm done in the month.
And then no month is ever going to be like that, right? No month is the same. Every month is different. And so it throws you off and then you're frustrated. Then you give up on the whole [00:02:00] concept of the budget. So anyway, four years ago, we found this kind of new way of budgeting, which is called like zero based budgeting or like the envelope method.
And that was the first time that like really clicked for us. We're like, huh, this really makes sense. It helped us feel like we. Could have control of our finances felt like we could like align kind of our priorities. Like we sat down together and said, what do you value? What do I value? Okay. Let's hash out those numbers and make sure they come to a shared understanding.
So fell in love with budgeting. Started teaching like our friends and family, like where those people that were like so into it that we had to tell everybody. Great. We actually started teaching like a class at our church. So we taught like younger couples, older couples, like people just getting started, everybody in between.
And what we found was budgeting is awesome. When people do it and stick to it, it changes their life. But a lot of people struggle to get there. It's a skill. It's a life habit. It's something that takes time and that the learning curve is just so steep that unless you have somebody that's in your life that's willing to hold your hand or be You know, intentional about connecting with you and [00:03:00] seeing how you're doing you're just probably not going to make it.
So that all that to say, that's where the idea for MyBudgetCoach came from. It's we want to build a budgeting app that includes coaches inside of it, because we think that connection to a coach is really what you need in order to actually stick to it and get that kind of life change.
Naseema McElroy: Yeah, I definitely remember stumbling through budgeting, like when I was trying to learn it. The only thing that kept me going was that I. Just had the will and determination to stick to it. But I know a lot of people don't, and I was in a different stage in life back then, like I didn't have three kids, I didn't have all this stuff going on.
And I know that if I was at this point in my life, I probably wouldn't have had the gusto to stick through it and actually learn it. And so that's why I think it's super important to have a coach that's available To you and let's talk about first, what zero based budgeting is. And then we'll talk about who these coaches are [00:04:00] and how the coaches work with you.
Let's talk about zero based
Zach Whelchel: Yeah. Yeah. I love zero based budgeting. Anytime somebody tells me just to talk about zero based budgeting, I'm like, yes, okay, let's do this. Yeah. So zero based budgeting is a form of budgeting in which you take every dollar you own and give it a job. So a lot of people, when they think about, can I afford this?
Can I buy this? Like they see something on Amazon or they run across something they want to buy. The way they think about that question of, can I afford this? As they look at their bank account. They look at their bank balance, and it says some number, and they say, huh. Yeah, I think I can afford it because my bank has enough money, right?
Or maybe they'll do a little bit of math. They'll be like, huh? Okay. I've got, $ 600 in my bank and I know I've got this one bill coming up for $ 200. So I think I have 400, right? There's a lot of like stuff that you got to keep in your mind constantly of what's going on and what can and can I not afford.
Zero based budgeting is a different approach to this, to where you don't have to look at your bank account and make a bunch of guesses. You already have a job for every single one of your dollars and you have a [00:05:00] plan. So the best way to describe this is to pretend. So just bear with me for a minute.
We're going to pretend that we're going to zero based budget in real life. So this is like what your grandparents used to do. I don't know if any of your grandparents ever taught you like the envelope budgeting method, where they actually gave you an envelope as a kid and said Here's your allowance.
But 10 percent needs to go in giving and 20 percent can go in savings. And this is what you can have fun with. But yeah, let's pretend like we're doing the envelope thing. So pretend like you get your car, you drive to your bank, you go to the teller and say Hey, I need all of my money.
And they'll probably be like, Look at you weird, but they'll be like, okay, whatever. And you're like, oh, and I want it in once. And so they give you all of your money and you put it in your car and you drive across town to your other bank, get all of those ones as well. All the checking, all the savings, basically every dollar you own, you take it home, pretend like you dump it on your kitchen table.
So you've got this mound of money on your kitchen table. Take a selfie with it. Feel cool. Feel like you're rich for a minute. And then what you want to do is you want to give every single one of those dollars a job. So the way we do this is we get out our envelopes and we start writing on all of our envelopes, like groceries.
We [00:06:00] need money for groceries, right? So let's say we need like $700 for groceries this month. So we write 700 on the envelope, take some of that money in the, on the kitchen table, put it in the envelope, right? You also need to pay for your rent or your mortgage. You need to pay for your car. You need to think about all those things that might not happen this month, but what will happen eventually, like Christmas or, for me, like registration for my car or.
Insurance happens every six months. So like envelopes for all of those things that you might forget and you slowly just kind of stuff them all at the rate that you would need to in order to be prepared for those when they come up. And once you get to the point where you've taken all of your dollars on the kitchen table and put them in envelopes, you have 0 left on your kitchen table.
And that's why we call it zero based budgeting is because you've given every single one of your dollars of job. And moving forward, there's no kind of ambiguity. There's no slush fund or discretionary funds. Like all of your money has already been accounted for somewhere. So when it's time to go out and go grocery shopping, you take your grocery envelope with [00:07:00] you and whatever you have in there is how much you can use on groceries.
And some people look at that and initially they're like, Ooh, that sounds really restrictive, really terrible. What if I want to spend more on groceries? Or what if I take my eating out envelope and I want to spend more there. And the cool thing about zero based budgeting is you can do that. You can choose to make trade offs at any point, right?
So if you want to go out to eat and you're out to eat, envelope is running low on money. You can look at a different envelope and be like, you know what? I really want to go out to eat and it's worth it to me. It's worth it to me to take 20 bucks out of my clothing envelope and put them in here so that I can go out to eat.
And what you've done there is you've made a real decision. You've made a real trade off between your money. You've said, yeah, I do want to buy less clothes this month in order to eat out more. And that real trade off that you can make is something that you couldn't do when you just looked at your bank balance.
Because when you look at your bank balance, you're like, I guess I can afford this, but there's a consequence to it. And you don't know what the consequence is because you haven't given every dollar a job already. So that's like the analogy [00:08:00] that I use that's most helpful for me. It helps you realize that like your money should be accounted for.
So that when you want to make changes, you can still do that. You just need to know what your changes are actually, how they're actually going to affect you.
Naseema McElroy: Yeah, I love that. And I love zero based budgeting personally, but when I tell people about zero based budgeting, their initial reaction is wait a minute, so that means I'm not going to have any money left over.
Zach Whelchel: Yeah, it doesn't mean that. It doesn't mean that you need to take your money down to zero. It just means that every dollar that you own has to have a job. And once they all have a job, you have zero dollars left that don't have a job. And that's what zero based budgeting is. You still get to have your money.
Yeah,
Naseema McElroy: Yes, exactly. I tell people, no, like you have your fun money, you have your money that goes into your savings. It just means that you're putting every single 1 of those dollars to work. People already have this deprivation mindset when it comes to budgeting.
So it is just that another level of pushback, oh, I don't want to have 0 dollars
Zach Whelchel: yeah, I guess we should talk about like those envelopes. You should have an [00:09:00] envelope that says I don't know, whatever it is you're looking forward to that you want to save up for, right? Or an envelope that says vacation or an envelope that says, gifts or giving or, all those things that bring you joy, right?
Some people need help saving money and some people need help spending money. And that's the flip side of a budget to give is it gives you permission to spend the money on the things that you enjoy, because that those other things are accounted for and you're going to be fine.
Naseema McElroy: Yeah, I credit Zero Based Budgeting again for helping me pay off my debt. But one of the things that I made sure that I did, and I had never done this before I had budgeted, was be very intentional about taking my daughter to Disneyland. So when I was paying off my debt, I just had my one daughter, and I wanted to take her to Disneyland.
Every other month, and that was a pretty big expense, but it was my reward. So in that included a flight because northern california is far from southern california. Flight, hotel, and cash spending money during that trip and that was always part of my budget and I knew that I would hit my debt [00:10:00] payoff goals, but ultimately then I got to reward myself every other month with these grand trips to Disneyland and memories that my daughter would never forget.
Zach Whelchel: man, that's awesome. Yeah, that is so cool. Yeah. And I love like the theme of your podcast, being intentional with your money, right? Because intentional doesn't just mean saving, saving, saving for the future. It means spending it now as well. And when you do a budget, you can set aside those things, right?
You can say I want to make sure I prioritize this. I want to go to Disney world. And in order to do that, I'm going to need to make sure I'm intentional with the rest of my life.
Naseema McElroy: Very intentional. No,
Zach Whelchel: Yeah,
Naseema McElroy: no, no. There are no shortage of budgeting apps out there. I feel like every time I turn around, there's like a new budgeting app or some app has implemented like a budgeting section. I just saw it on their wallet or something like need a budget. I think people are spoiled for choice when it comes to budgeting apps.
What makes MyBudgetCoach different than the apps that are out there?
Zach Whelchel: for sure. Yeah. [00:11:00] So we touched on a little bit, but you're right. There are thousands like starting this company and I actually just went full time working on this company. So I quit my day job. Like we finally got to the point where we've saved up enough that my wife and I feel comfortable kind of taking this leap, which is super exciting.
Yeah. But as part of this process and this journey, I've been like keeping track of all the other apps out there. And eventually I just gave up because there are thousands of budgeting apps, right? So the thing that makes MyBudgetCoach different is the fact that you get that real life connection to a coach, right?
So every user, when they sign up for the app they choose a coach. So we have a directory of coaches and there's lots of great coaches on there. And the cool thing about coaches is that each of these people, has a specialty or they serve a niche audience, right? There's all types of people in the world and money is a very personal thing and there's all different ways of thinking about it and working with it.
And so we have coaches that kind of have a niche, like maybe a coach specializes in nurses or coach specializes in, people with ADHD or a coach specializes in, somebody who wants to FIRE or try to retire early. [00:12:00] All of these are different mindsets that it's helpful to have somebody on that journey with you.
Holding your hand and walking you through it. So there's a couple of different levels of interaction that you get to have with your coach, and I guess we can talk about that. But the first one is this virtual coach concept where your coach is pre thought out all these conversations they want to have with you in ways they want to walk you around your budget and help you get set up with things.
And that's pretty cool because it allows you to make progress at your own pace. And it also allows us to scale coaching right now. Coaching is expensive, right? Because coaches are, valuable, they have limited time and like for them to spend, one on one calls, like it costs money, right?
So we wanted to find a way to scale the coach so that more people can get exposed to their teaching at a lower cost. So they can help more people budget.
Naseema McElroy: I love that. And can you talk about like how the pricing structure works?
Zach Whelchel: For sure. Yeah, so we have two options. We have a yearly option for $99 a year, or a monthly option for $15 a [00:13:00] month. So obviously you save more with the yearly, but if you just wanna get a first try and see if you like it. The monthly option is cheaper and each of those price points includes the coach.
So you pick whichever coach you want on our directory. You get their virtual coach helping. You can have all those conversations with them. You can talk to support. And then if you want to, you can actually schedule a one on one call with these coaches as well. And each of the coaches has their own kind of hourly rate.
It's all listed on our site. But again, pick the coach that works for you, right? Pick them based on the rate that works for you. Pick them based on their personality or the areas that they work in. We really want to make budget coaching kind of a thing, right? Like right now, everybody's comfortable getting, a fitness coach or a life coach or a health coach.
Like any of those coaches if you think about it, fitness, it's not that hard, I just lift some weights. I run right. But like, why do I need to coach? The truth is people just need that encouragement. They need that guidance and encouragement. And we want budget coaches to be in that same category where people say, you know what, I want to get some guidance from somebody who knows what they're doing.
And so that's what we're going for.
Naseema McElroy: [00:14:00] Along with the different kind of budgeting apps out there, I know that They can work for you depending on your level of comfortability with the budgeting. There's some apps that like is so complicated to get it started. A lot of people, a lot of users fall off in the beginning. What is your target audience for MyBudgetCoach?
Zach Whelchel: Yeah. So we, anybody who's willing to do the zero based budgeting strategy is what we're starting and yeah, zero based budgeting. Like I was on my soapbox earlier explaining what that is. A lot of people, when I get off my soapbox, the first thing they say is Zach, that sounds great, but that's a lot of effort, right?
I don't know if I want to keep track of my money and see all the transactions that come in and choose which envelopes to put them in and transfer envelopes and all that stuff. And. My response is usually like most things in life, you can choose your pain, right? You can choose your suffering.
Some people say to me, like you can either live a life where you are not intentional. You don't know what's happening with your [00:15:00] money. And we all know the consequences of that, right? We've all lived that life. Or you can choose to be intentional and you can choose to say yeah, I'm going to live in my budget.
I'm going to look at my numbers. I'm going to see where I'm spending my money and I'm going to allocate it. Yeah. And if you're willing to take that hard step and be intentional, that's the audience that we're going after. It's not like a set it and forget it thing. It's not just like expense tracking where you can look at the end of the month and be like, Oh, shoot, I guess I went over on groceries again.
Hope I'll do better next time. We really want people that are ready to take that step to put in that effort and to work with a coach to actually change their life and their approach to money
Naseema McElroy: I love that. That's what I tell people being broke is uncomfortable. Not being in control of your finances is uncomfortable. I'd rather be uncomfortable in learning something new that's going to help me improve my finances for just a short period of time than living in a lifetime of discomfort because I'm unwilling to do the thing that's temporarily uncomfortable.[00:16:00]
Zach Whelchel: for sure. Yeah. I love that. That's your mentality. And I love that. That's like the theme of your whole podcast, right? Being intentional is. Yeah, it's the difference between letting life hit you and just reacting or actually saying, you know what? I can do this. It's going to be hard, but I can do it.
And I think that the rewards on the flip side of that are so worth it. So worth it.
Naseema McElroy: yes. So if somebody, like today, if they wanted to get started with MyBudgetCoach, what would be the first step that they take?
Zach Whelchel: Yeah, so we have a website. It's called mybudgetcoach.com. So feel free to check out the website and you'll see a button on there that says find my coach. And you peruse through the directory of coaches. So find a coach that looks good to you. I think there's a coach name Naseema on there. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that one.
But there, there, there are lots of coaches on there. So find one that just like works with you. There's bio. Some of them have videos. So find one that clicks with you and just click the get started button and we'll send you an email with your budget. And once you log in, you'll be [00:17:00] walked through how to get everything going.
So like I talked about earlier, that concept of dumping all of your dollars on the kitchen table, of course, we're not going to ask you to do that. We have apps now that do that digitally. So the app will walk you through that process and say, okay, now that you've connected your accounts, this is how many dollars you have to budget.
And you can put those in digital envelopes and your coach will walk you through all of that. So all you really need to bring. Is the desire to learn and the desire to change and the willingness to make this a priority in your life, because, you've been through the pain of what it's like to not be intentional in this area, if you bring those things we'll bring the coach, we'll bring the tools, we'll bring the other side of it.
And if you put the effort in we really think that you can get to a point where you feel a lot better about your finances.
Naseema McElroy: Have you done a study on how long it typically takes the average user to set up their first budget?
Zach Whelchel: So the first typically, I think, with most apps, what happens is most people will fail and fail again and try again. So we're trying to combat that by connecting you to a coach for me. Personally, it took a couple of [00:18:00] months before it really clicked. Although I will say that. The first time you budget down to zero for me, and maybe this is unique to me, but I felt so much peace at that moment because I knew that we didn't have any more decisions to make all of our decisions that already been made.
Now, we might make a decision in a moment about what to change, but it's really cool to just that piece to say we've already decided where our dollars are going to go. And for those of you budgeting, like with a partner, like my wife and I. Love this concept of sitting down and doing this together.
Like we, we consider this like a date night or something like few things. This is like really nerdy, but I feel really close to my wife, like after we bunched them together, because we're literally saying what do we value? And she'll say something like, man, I wish that we could put more money towards like fun things for our kids right now.
Cause they're three and two, they're in a season of life where we should be getting them these extra fun things or whatever. So we made like a kids plus category. And She said, I want it to be this much. And I'm like, I love it about this much. So we meet in the middle. But [00:19:00] yeah, I think it's an important thing for partners to be willing to do together.
Naseema McElroy: You brought that up and that's super important, like being able to budget with a partner. What does that look like on the platform?
Zach Whelchel: Yeah. So you can share a budget. So you can share a budget and share all of those categories and finances. You can also have your own individual budgets. I know that different, couples do this in a different way. My wife and I personally have a one pot mentality where everything's together.
But different couples do this in different ways. And the app kind of supports kind of those combinations and separations and however you set up your finances.
Naseema McElroy: Awesome. Awesome. My avatar is a little bit different than most people's avatar because I don't necessarily do the budget coaching part. I have partnered with IHTSA to be able to do the coaching part as far as the avatar goes. I said, I can help you set up the initial budget. So my conversation is help you set up your budget initially, but if you have [00:20:00] questions or need any extra support, the way my avatar works is that you would be contacted by, or you can contact it to set up some time to schedule some 1 on 1 coaching.
As far as I know, I'm the only person whose avatar is like that. Correct.
Zach Whelchel: Yeah. So we'll have one more like you, you're the first, but yeah, some people love the space of budgeting and they have a larger audience and the idea of meeting one on one with all of their audience would be hard. So it makes sense to help out some of those other budget coaches who maybe don't have as much of it and influx of users, but they have all this knowledge and wealth and time that they want to share.
So I love that you guys have set up this kind of connection to be able to work together in that way.
Naseema McElroy: Yes, I think it's a great partnership. I'm excited. I'm excited for it. But some of the biggest hangups the biggest stumbling blocks people have when it comes to budgeting.
Zach Whelchel: Yeah, I'd say the number one thing is, it's either getting [00:21:00] started, which is always hard, right? Or it's that they've heard of budgeting and they think of something else, right? So there's a lot of people who think of budget means that, at one point in time they pulled out a piece of paper and they wrote down their expenses, they wrote their income, and it zeroed out and they're like, okay, we're good.
So people who think that budgeting is a one and done thing. To me, that doesn't change your lifestyle. It doesn't change your habits. So I think really leaning into a tool that encourages you to live in your budget is a big deal. Another way that people get tripped up is they'll be way too Optimistic when they get started, I'll be like look at me.
I'm budgeting now. So I'm only going to spend 250 on groceries this month. And I'm not going to Disneyland ever, and I'm not doing these things. So being unkind to yourself or being dishonest about what you're actually probably going to be able to do and then you just get discouraged.
So if you think of your budget as something that's rigid, that's going to hold you to those numbers, or that you're just going to bust through and to get really discouraged. That's not a great place to be. So we encourage people to be really. [00:22:00] Honest with themselves and to treat their budget like a living document, but they can flow and change.
Like my wife and I, we change our budget, every few months we change it based on how our priorities are changing and life is changing. Your budget should change as well. And that's just,
Speaker 7: that's okay. Yeah,
Naseema McElroy: tell people who go in and create their zero based budget but then realize that they're at a deficit, like as far as like they are, Great. Spending a lot more money than they're earning, like budgeting can be completely discouraging when you see those negative balances. Like, how do you like motivate people to stay on track in that situation?
Zach Whelchel: that is hard, right? I'd say that if that's the situation that you're in currently, then it's good to see that, right? It's good to acknowledge it. It's good to, it's good to look, look the dragon in the eye instead of just pretend that it's in the closet and you like acknowledging that is a good first step.
I think it's good to see it. And, so the way MyBudgetCoach works is you can say I'm starting with this debt, right? And you can see how you can roll that debt over and chip [00:23:00] away at it month by month, which is cool. So you get this really cool visual progress that you're making.
And also if you're currently spending more than you make that means that you're just going into a bit more credit card debt each month. And so it's good for your tool to be able to show you like, Hey, you're going into about this much more debt each month. Let's try to change that by changing the way we're spending in some of these categories.
But if you're in a where you need to do that, like Your tool should allow you to do that and keep track of it and just see the implications and to know that you can turn it around eventually too. So I would say that yeah, part of being intentional is facing that and trying to take those first steps towards pulling out of it.
And it's also something our coaches can help you with, our coaches can say let's align your values to your money. Let's see what you want. Let's figure out how to make sure that we're not driving further into debt.
Naseema McElroy: And then I know one hang up that people get confused about when they start zero based budgeting is that they want to dump like All of their money oh in advance, like how much they get paid for [00:24:00] the month and then plan out their budget is that how zero phase budgeting works or
Zach Whelchel: Yeah,
Naseema McElroy: you walk us through, like, how you actually do that?
You want to just budget for the money that you have available, right?
Zach Whelchel: yeah, yeah. So this is another thing that people get tripped up on in zero based budgeting is they're like I know I've got this paycheck coming. I know I'm going to make this paycheck every, a few weeks or every month or so. And one of the things that zero based budgeting does is it encourages you to work with the scarcity of what you own currently.
So that means we don't forecast, we don't plan ahead to money that we'll get down the road. We're always looking at the money that we have currently right now. Yeah. And earlier, when I talked about that real trade off decision making, make when you say, like, how, you know what, I do want to pull somebody from clothes in order to go to eating out that kind of scarcity.
That kind of real trade off only happens if you're limiting yourself to the dollars that you actually currently and there's a couple of benefits there. The 1 is you get to make those real trade offs because you're working with what you actually have. The second is that [00:25:00] life isn't secure, right?
You might think that you're going to be making X amount of dollars in the next few months and you don't know, right? Some people have, differences in income throughout months. Some people lose their jobs or maybe don't get a paycheck at some point. And we would rather work in kind of the reality of what we have instead of always planning for what we think that we'll get down the road.
And that can be a trip up for people at first, but once you switch that mindset, it is really free. Payday to you at that point isn't about Oh, finally, I got my paycheck. I can go buy things. It's payday. Awesome. I can't wait to plan where these dollars are going in my envelopes. And you'll get to the point where. You're not planning for this month's envelopes. You're planning for next month's envelopes because you're ahead of the game now. You've broken the paycheck to paycheck cycle and it feels awesome to get paid and put that money towards next month or two months from now and know that man, you're good for a while.
That feels really good.
Naseema McElroy: No, that really does feel good. that struggle of trying to piece things together paycheck by [00:26:00] paycheck is so real. And yeah, I think that, I think people don't understand that just the activity of planning. through zero based budgeting is a way to break that cycle. And so that's why I tell people like breaking that cycle of living paycheck to paycheck is a huge financial win.
That's one of the biggest financial milestones you can achieve. So yes, we can do this with zero based budgeting by being intentional and telling your dollars where to go in advance.
Zach Whelchel: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And the paycheck to paycheck cycle isn't like some people think Oh, that's only for people who are maybe, not making that much money or, whatever, but like the paycheck to paycheck is everybody, right? You would be so surprised. I don't, I'm sure you probably talk about this on your podcast a lot, but everybody does that, right?
Like people that make tons of money still spend all of that money. And when it comes to building wealth over time, it doesn't really matter how much you make. It's how much you're intentional with setting that money aside. And for me, I really value [00:27:00] saving for the future and getting to the point where, I can quit my job and start a company like this because I want to be able to help people, fall in love with budgeting.
And the way you do that is you're intentional with setting money aside. And for me, investing, all those other goals that come down the road of financial, your financial journey, none of that is possible if cashflow first, right? The budget to me is such a foundational start. Cause once you're doing that, then you can start investing, you, you know that you have that money set aside to do that.
So I just think it's such a strong foundation that you need first.
Naseema McElroy: Yeah, I love it. I love it. But how many coaches currently are on MyBudgetCoach and How many do you project that you want to have? What is your dream number of coaches?
Zach Whelchel: Yeah, for sure. Our mission and MyBudgetCoach is to help the world fall in love with budgeting, right? In order to do that, it's a very lofty goal, but we're going to need a lot of coaches who are passionate about this, right? And we're going to need a lot of users who are willing to pair up with a coach and learn [00:28:00] how to budget, teach their friends and family and all of those things.
So right now we have 14 coaches. We'd did a soft launch at FinCon this past year. This coming FinCon will be a sponsor. So very excited about that. FinCon has been great to us. But we have about, I think six or seven coaches that are currently in kind of the cohort right now, training and getting ready to go live on the platform.
And then we have a discord server with over 65 coaches who are all interested at taking it to the next level. So we've got a lot of interest on the coaching side. And, we're also now starting to find interest on the user side, but it's a, two sides of the market type thing.
We needed to get the coaches there so that users would be able to come and find coaches. So that's what we've been focusing
Speaker 7: on so far.
Naseema McElroy: That's so cool and I know you're moving like into working with employers too How does that part of my budget code work
Zach Whelchel: so if so one of the cool things about having a network of coaches is you can approach an employer and say Hey, like your employees probably are stressed about money, right? Like a lot of people are stressed about money [00:29:00] and I know a lot of employers will help their employees with retirement, which is great. It's awesome to have a retirement plan and all that. But your employees are stressed today, right? They're not stressed about like when they're 65. They're stressed right now. So we think that helping employers connect their people with budgeting is like a huge win.
Another cool thing is like in employees, their company, there's a lot of diversity there. There's a lot of different types of people that have different types of mindsets about money. So the fact that they can each go and pick their coaches is awesome. It's not like a one size fits all. It's everybody gets to pick a coach that works for them. We've also seen like the language barrier can be a thing, right? Like we've worked with a company recently who. Half of their employees speak Spanish and half speak English. And so they were able to partner with two of our coaches, one that speaks English and one that speaks Spanish.
So it's really cool that we can bridge those language divides as well.
Naseema McElroy: Like, how is the money if they're like, I need my employer to pay for this, but for me, how do we start these conversations with employers to start taking on [00:30:00] MyBudgetCoach is part of whatever our employee services are.
Zach Whelchel: Yeah. So if you're interested in this, but you're like, man, I'd rather get my employer to pay for it for me and my employees as well. Yeah. I'd say just reach out and start that conversation, talk to HR and just say Hey. I love the benefits that you give me. Maybe that's true. Maybe it's not, but just start with that.
I love the benefits you give, but something that stresses me out in my day to day is my finances, and I would love to see more solutions in that area. And these people are good at going out and finding solutions and, pulling them our way. We'd love to talk to them, love to share with them how we can help their company do that at scale.
Naseema McElroy: I love that. I love that. So mybudgetcoach.com is now live and you guys can go in there and find a coach. And you might even see my face there as a coach. Hopefully this week we'll start that. But any like final words who you wanted to reach or anything about budgeting that you want to share with the audience?
Zach Whelchel: Yeah. I [00:31:00] guess the final words, I would just say. If you were somebody who is stressed about money, right? If you, if money lives on the top of your head and it's just there constantly. I would encourage you to find a solution to, to work past that, right? Like I used to be that way.
I used to like, always be thinking about money, always be stressed about, where's my money going to go? Am I going to have enough money to do this? Can I afford that? And now I have a plan for it. And that plan helps me. Not stress about it so much. It helps me to feel comfortable spending my money in certain ways that we want to value.
And it helps me free up my mind to live in the now and to, focus on my kids and all of those things. So it's a hard step to take, but if that's you and you're struggling with money, I would encourage you to, use MyBudgetCoach or find another tool that works for you and just get started on it.
Naseema McElroy: Yeah, I love that. And the way I talk, I, my like go to, like when it comes to budgeting is Do the budget that you're going to stick to, but if you've been like struggling with the budget and you just have [00:32:00] tried it and have failed, I really feel like MyBudgetCoach is a really good solution for you that will hold your hand 24 hours a day.
Is there available for you to walk through your budget and then you have extra support if you need it. So I think it's an amazing solution.
Speaker 7: Cool. Thanks.
Naseema McElroy: Thanks, Zach. And again, make sure you check out mybudgetcoach.com. It's live now. Go check out the coaches. Huh.
Zach Whelchel: We had a code for your users as well. I want to make sure, I want to make sure we say that before we get
Naseema McElroy: Oh, yes, yes, yes.
Zach Whelchel: so we have a code. So if you use the code intentional, you'll get 10 percent off your first year with MyBudgetCoach. If this is something you want to try out, I want to make sure that you guys know we've got a code just for you guys.
Naseema McElroy: Yay. So plug in that code intentional, get your 10 percent off, and I'll see you on the platform.
Hey there I’m Naseema
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