Author Archives: jesse

About jesse

Jesse is the founder of YouNeedABudget.com. When he’s not speaking on, writing about, fine-tuning software for, or doing his own budgeting, he enjoys playing the piano, working in the garden, CrossFit, marksmanship, and honing his golf swing. Jesse graduated from Brigham Young University with a Masters of Accountancy degree. Immediately after he obtained his CPA license, he let it lapse so he could work on "You Need A Budget" full-time. Jesse lives in Utah, is married to Julie, and has five children. You can conect with Jesse on Google+ here.

September Podcast Roundup

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Here’s a roundup of August’s podcasts. We’re excited for what we have slated in September!  Some ‘Zen-like’ stuff coming!

If you want to subscribe to the podcast, you can do so over at iTunes, or through this RSS link.

Betterment Review (I’m a Huge Fan)

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I’m not a financial advisor, but I’ve studied investing for a while and recognize that it can be a fairly complex issue. Investing comes across as so complex, that people end up not investing at all.

As I see it, there are three primary reasons people aren’t building a sufficiently-sized retirement nest egg:

  1. They don’t invest (enough).
  2. They don’t diversify their investment.
  3. They don’t allocate their investment appropriately for their specific situation.

Are You Investing (Enough)?

To those of you that are not investing at all, you need to start. Please.

Those of you that are investing, if you’re doing average, need to contribute a lot more, as soon as possible.

The average baby boomer (people between the age of 49 and 66) has a retirement savings of $88,000. If they don’t have a qualified retirement plan, their average retirement savings is $38,000.

People, we need to step to it!

Betterment makes starting and accelerating very easy. This is one of the reasons I really, really like their service.

Are You Properly Diversified?

I don’t want to get into all the ins and outs of diversification. Just follow the old adage, and don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

In Monopoly, would you rather own Boardwalk and Park Place completely, or own a percentage of every other property on the board? No matter what happened, you’d make some money. Instead of having really big peaks and valleys, you’d have much more even, steady growth.

That’s diversification. The SEC.gov website puts it nicely:

By picking the right group of investments, you may be able to limit your losses and reduce the fluctuations of investment returns without sacrificing too much potential gain.

Betterment makes diversification easy. Even if you don’t understand every in and out of diversifying, you can rest assured that they do. They diversify in a very simple, transparent way. More on that later.

Are You Properly Allocated?

Asset allocation, simply stated, is…um…how your assets are allocated. What are assets? Things with value. Different assets behave very differently. Let’s discuss a few briefly:

  • Cash. We all get this one. The more you have, the better. Cash can be stored in a checking or savings account, where it’s virtually risk-free. What’s the risk of your cash losing its value? Essentially zero. (Let’s avoid inflation, and please avoid hyperinflation discussions here… maybe we’ll get into that in another post.) Does your cash earn a lot more cash? No, because you’re not subjecting it to any risk.
  • Stocks. Some of you get this. Others don’t. When you purchase a stock, you become an owner in a company.  If you wake up the next morning, will your stock still have the same value? No. It will go up. It will go down. You don’t know. Stocks are subject to risk, so their potential return is higher.
  • Bonds. This is where you give a company or government your money, and they promise to pay you back. You’re a lender, they’re a borrower. Is your money at risk? Absolutely. Some bonds are riskier than others. US Treasuries are seen as riskless, so their return is low. Junk bonds are seen as risky, so their potential returns are higher.

So regarding asset allocation, would you want to be 100% in cash? Well, probably not, because your return would be really, really low. 100% in stocks? Maybe not, because your risk would be too high. 100% in bonds? No…because your return might still be too low. But what about a mix of all three?

That’s where it gets interesting. And that’s asset allocation.

If you need your money tomorrow, you should be in cash, right? Zero upside, zero downside, and that’s great because you need it for groceries in the morning.

If you need your money in five years? You’re okay with a bit of risk, because you don’t need it for groceries in the morning, but are you okay with it being 100% in stocks? I don’t think so. Too risky. We’ve seen that stocks can be flat, or down, for years. So maybe you’d mix it up and lean more toward a conservative bond set, and some stocks to still catch potential upside.

What if you need the money in 20 years? Let’s take some risk! Over the long haul, stocks have proven to be fantastic investments. With 20 years to go, you can ride out the downs and hope for a larger return than you would have gotten in cash, or bonds.

Whew. So much for making the asset allocation explanation short.

Betterment does the asset allocation bit automatically based on your time horizon. They let you explore different scenarios (based on solid historical data, which is not an indicator of future results, but at least a starting point), adjust your horizon, and even set different goals at different time horizons.

For example, your daughter will be getting married in 20 years. Yes, I know I’ve mentioned this a lot in the podcast. Because it terrifies me.  I could set a target date in the future for when I would allow my daughter to be married, and Betterment would rebalance my porftolio as I approached that target date.

Being 20 years out, we’d invest the funds aggressively. With five years to go, the funds would be invested more conservatively. And of course, six months before the wedding the funds would be in cash. And then the funds would be consumed with vigor until only dollar dust remained.

Conclusion #1

If you’re intrigued by how Betterment solves the starting, accelerating, diversifying and allocating problems associated with investing, but don’t care to see all of the details in my account setup, and associated thought processes, then you can stop here and go check out Betterment yourself.

If you want to get into the nitty-bo-bitty-gritty, please read on.

My Betterment Experience, in Extreme Detail Because I Know No Other Way

I’ll walk you through the sign-up process, highlighting what I love about their interface, especially the clarity of fees, and performance. We’ll cover some under-the-cover stuff re: what they’re investing in, talk about some Betterment alternatives (of which there is no shortage) and then (finally) offer some final thoughts.

The Sign-Up Process

We start with the basics. Name, email, choose a password. I found it surprising that they don’t ask you to confirm your password :)

Standard address and security questions for password recovery.

They need to know your Date of Birth, as any broker would. I’m not certain why they need to know my employment status (happily), annual income and/or net worth. Probably just to better understand their customers (same reason I survey YNABers every few years and ask the same questions). Plus, this gives you an opportunity to brag! ;)

You select the account type, which is where you can set up an IRA (traditional or Roth), or just do a normal investment account. I went the normal route because I already have IRAs set up with Vanguard (Betterment will roll IRAs over, but I doubt I’ll go through the hassle unless I really get the itch to consolidate accounts. I do love simplifying.)

You’ll notice that they have you set up your first goal here. As mentioned above in Part I, Betterment is goal-oriented.  I set up my first goal to retire in five years. Hey, one can dream.

Then we get to the funding details, where we specify which account we’ll use to fund our Betterment investment account:

Favorite part of that is the helpful, plain-language explanation that doesn’t leave you guessing at all as to what’s happening.  And for you high rollers, sorry, but the maximum funding amount at one time is $100,000 USD.

Once the funding section is complete, you get some required-by-the-SEC questions:

And then we’re done!

One thing I like about Betterment is their attention to design. It’s friendly. That won’t help your investments grow any faster, but…it may subconsciously help you feel that investing isn’t as hard as you thought ;)

You’re left with a few steps you can do at your leisure: 1) confirm your email address, and confirm the bank account you’ll use for funding. This is pretty standard stuff if you’ve ever signed up with any other brokerage, online savings account, or Paypal.

Setting Up My First Betterment Goal

I already had the framework of my goal in place, but Betterment needed some more details. As soon as I logged in, I was presented with this:

You’ll notice how I had said that my goal was to retire in five years, right? Since Betterment does our asset allocation based on our goal’s timeline, you can see that it picked a 58% stock market mix—enough to still earn some returns, but not enough that in five years I’ll be wanting to see my principal, and we’ll be in a down year (or five years).

With Betterment knowing my timeline, they still need to know the amount I want to have when I retire. I decided to go with the plain-vanilla million bucks:

I also got to customize my goal a bit:

So Betterment then does some number crunching in their back room, and calculates (based on historical performance, and my given asset allocation of 58% stocks, and the rest in bonds) that I’ll need to save $14,246.45 per month if I’d like to hit my target.

Hrm, a little steep.

So I mess with the slider. Okay…I want to retire when I’m really old.  40.

Much better. I guess ;)

Isn’t the underlying calculation cool though? Even if it is a wee bit unrealistic? Betterment has us focused on the one thing that we can control — What we put in.  I know you can’t put in as much as you want, as you’re restricted by life’s other obligations, but this at least gets you focused on the number you can influence over the long run: your investing efforts.  I really like that the focus is here, and not on the return side of the equation.

Once I accept my changes, I’m ready to implement my savings plan:

That $6k is pre-filled in, and I set it to hit monthly (I adjusted this later to my actual amount, which unfortunately is well below the $6k mark).

With the automatic deposit set, notice how well the text explains what will happen:

I signed up on September 10.  Deposits for account verification hit on September 12, so I logged back in and confirmed the account:

I dug through the couch cushions and found $800 in quarters, so once my account was confirmed, I initiated a transfer to see what would happen:

Again, clear text that manages my expectations on what will happen, and doesn’t leave me fretting:

It would be nice if the transfer were faster, but honestly, we are in it for the long haul. And this prevents you from taking a sip from the highly addictive Fountain of Market Timing. So maybe it’s a good thing.  Major bonus points when I hovered over a question mark to find out more about making a deposit:

I began the transfer on September 13th, and received notice that it was deposited into my Betterment account on September 18th:

Fee & Performance Clarity with Betterment

My absolute favorite part of the whole system has to do with the main dashboard:

My goal, conveniently named ‘Retire at 36′ still needs some work. But notice the first-grade math you need to do in order to understand how your investment is doing:

  • What you’ve invested, and
  • What you’ve earned.

When you expand those, it gets even better:

Okay, this isn’t that exciting since I took these screenshots before my $800 deposit landed, but still…this is fantastic clarity.  Your fees are right there, in one place.

Betterment Fees

The cost of an investment is one of the most significant drivers of your investment results, so it cannot be ignored.

Betterment’s fees are extremely straightforward, and have actually come down significantly from when I originally talked with them a year or two ago.  Their fees, beforehand, were the sole reason I didn’t recommend them to YNABers earlier. Now that they’re extremely competitive, well, here’s my recommendation.

So let’s get to it.

Betterment – No transaction fee. .35% if you deposit $100 per month with no minimum balance requirement. If your balance is at least $10,000 then you don’t need to do an automatic deposit and your fee is .25%. If you’re a high roller with a minimum balance of $100,000 or more, it’s .15%.

So somebody with $8,000 invested, and $100/month deposited would pay $28 per year.  Their pricing table actually makes this clearer than me writing it out :)

Scottrade – $7 per trade. If you’re investing small amounts, say $100 per transaction, then you’re automatically getting a 7% hit to your investment performance.  Pretty much investing suicide at that point.  Scottrade also has a $500 minimum. I’ve used them for years (just closed my account with them last week, and dumped it into Betterment) and really like their service and site. I just like the simplicity of Betterment more. Plus Scottrade made it too tempting to purchase individual stocks :)

Wells Fargo – I have a PMA package with Wells Fargo. I bank almost completely with them — both business and personal.  And it’s a love-hate relationship. I love that it’s all in one place, and I hate that Wells Fargo is a massive bank that doesn’t care one iota about me and my tiny problems.  At any rate, because I’m a PMA customer of their’s, I get 100 free trades per year with their brokerage arm.  There are “potential account maintenance fees” but I think those are waived for me as well.  For the *ahem* little guy, they charge $9 per trade and $35 for no-load mutual funds!  Also, the account maintenance fees really annoyed me. Either get me coming, or get me hanging around, but don’t get me both ways.

Honestly, I should use Wells Fargo, but I just don’t want to because of that PMA status. But I’m not.  The main reason has to do with automatic asset allocation (which you can read all about way down below).

E-Trade is also very popular. I haven’t used them personally but their pricing page was like reading a Tale of Two Cities.  The short of it: $10 per trade, or $8 if you trade over 50 times per month! Please don’t trade that often :) Based on that pricing, I don’t see a reason to use E-Trade over Scottrade.

Sharebuilder is owned by ING, which is owned by CapitalOne, which is why I don’t really recommend ING anymore :(  (I’ve been doing some research into some other online banks, because I used to recommend ING a lot, and it’s promising.  I’ll write more on that later.)  Sharebuilder has great pricing where it’s $4 for stocks and ETFS, and $0 if you auto-invest with certain fund families. I’m not a fan of the restriction on fund families, but that’s not the end of the world. If you don’t do auto-investing, it’s $20 per mutual fund transaction, which is pretty steep.

Vanguard is the leader in low-cost investment options. I like them a LOT, but wish they were less intimidating for new users.  Their pricing is fairly complex, where, based on how much you have invested with them in total, the fees can change substantially. Also, please elect to go paperless if you want to avoid their annual $20 fee. (You should go paperless anyway, people! :))  If you want to recreate what Betterment gets you, it would be $7 per trade with Vanguard.  Again, a per-trade fee would not be ideal if you’re doing low-dollar amounts.

Betterment’s Portfolio

Betterment doesn’t put their portfolio out there to find very easily, but I also didn’t look terribly hard. The Google gave me the following breakdown (the ticker is in parentheses):

Stocks

  • 25% Vanguard Total Stock Market (VTI)
  • 25% iShares S&P 500 Value (IVE)
  • 25% Vanguard Europe Pacific (VEA)
  • 10% Vanguard Emerging Markets (VWO)
  • 8% iShares Russell Midcap Value (IWS)
  • 7% iShares Russell 2000 Value (IWN)

Bonds

  • 50% iShares Barclays TIPS Bond ETF (TIP)
  • 50% iShares Lehman 1-3 Year Treasury Bond ETF (SHY)

Don’t worry too much about digging into the why behind the breakdown. I just want you to see that 1) there’s a very good mix of investments, spread across the globe, and that 2) these investment choices are fairly inexpensive (ETFs, as a rule are).

A quick note on ETFs, they are indexed to a basket of stocks, but trade like a single stock. So when I buy a share of the iShares S&P 500 Value, I’m buying teeny tiny slices of stock of every “Value” company on the S&P 500. What’s that mean? Don’t worry about it. Just know that when you buy an ETF, it’s like a stock of a bunch of pieces of stock.  It’s extremely liquid, and very cheap.

This portfolio handles the problem of investment diversification in one fell swoop. Yes, you can diversify on your own, and yes, that’s more difficult and time-consuming (but I’ll show you how later).

Asset Allocation

The allocation with Betterment was discussed at length above. The gist of it is that as you approach your target goal, your fund is invested more conservatively: less in stocks, more in bonds.  The mix would be fairly easy to alter with some quick spreadsheet work (which we’ll do below).

As a quick example, if I was invested 50/50 in Stocks and Bonds, based on the Betterment portfolio, I would own 12.5% in VTI…12.5% in IVE..and on down to 3.5% in IWN. In the bonds, I’d own 25% TIP, and 25% SHY.  I just multiplied 50% against the weight of each ETF in the allocation.

There are Fees, and then Fees…

Now, when you invest in ETFs, you do pay a fee. As mentioned above, they’re very reasonable. Cheaper than most mutual funds by a long shot.  So in that Betterment screenshot where it was showing Market Changes, your fee is taken from that. You won’t see it outright, but the value of your investment is basically reduced by the fee amount.  Fees are expressed annually when you look them up online.

For instance, the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index ETF (VTI) is .06%.  If you invest $100 in VTI, you’ll pay six cents.

So when you’re determining your investment options, and maybe considering Betterment, you’ll want to be aware of the entire fee structure, which consists of the ETF fees and the Betterment fees.  Bear in mind, those ETF fees are had no matter where you trade (Scottrade, E-Trade, any other brokerage, etc.)

I took the portfolio weights of the Betterment Portfolio, and multiplied them by each ETFs respective fee. The result was that, all-in, the Betterment Portfolio has an “embedded cost” of .158%.  If you invest $100 at Betterment, almost 16 cents will go toward the ETF fees and then, based on your balance (discussed above), you’ll pay another 15 to 35 cents annually, directly to Betterment.

I’m a Cheapskate so…How Could I Do This for Free?

I definitely thought of this.  Though I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a cheapskate ;)  Let’s recognize value here, and see if Betterment’s value proposition makes it worth the extra .15-.35% you’ll pay.

Our three hangups with investing are:

  1. Starting, or increasing.
  2. Diversifying.
  3. Allocating.

On starting, or ramping things up, the starting part is definitely easier with Betterment, but the easier UI certainly isn’t the value proposition here. You can set up any brokerage to do automatic withdrawals. So we’re going to call that a wash.

Second, any cheapskate would simply copy Betterment’s portfolio, so the diversification “service” is had for free. Jon Stein, the CEO, and a Certified Financial Analyst (and a nice guy as well), has done the legwork for you cheapskates!  Just copy him!

Diversification, done.

On the asset allocation, this is where Betterment really starts to deliver value. Now, before you say, “I can just reallocate myself!” Know that talk is cheap. People’s heads are filled with the best of intentions (“This year, I’m not going to EVER eat out!”) that don’t make it past Tuesday.  So regardless of what you say you do, 80% of you won’t do it, and you’ll end up with a portfolio that isn’t balanced appropriately for your time horizon.

This can be solved a few ways:

  • Use Betterment (my choice)
  • Invest in cheap target date funds, (An inexpensive example would be Vanguard’s) (that is not investment advice, it’s jus tan example of target date funds).  Those are titled in fancy ways like “Target Retirement 2025″ and they will rebalance appropriately as you approach that year.  Drawbacks: they’re only in five-year increments, and many of the target date options out there are more expensive, and actively managed (I’m a fan of passive investing).
  • Handle the asset allocation yourself.

So let’s talk about the steps required to do it yourself.  You would do these steps every time you purchased more assets, or at least quarterly.

  1. Know your target asset allocation. What mix should be stocks and bonds? When in doubt, use Betterment’s tools to figure out what they do, and just copy them.
  2. Record your current fund balances across all holdings.
  3. Calculate your current allocation, based on the holdings.
  4. Enter the additional amount you’re investing (if any).
  5. Apply the (new) balance to the target allocation from [1].
  6. Compare the difference in the allocation of each fund [5] to the current fund balances [2].
  7. Buy and sell funds as needed, to re-balance (this step could take you a bit, don’t underestimate it… it’s a tedious nightmare. Trust me, this is coming from a guy that rebalanced his Solo 401k for two years, with each paycheck.)

You’d go through those seven steps every single time you’d invest new money, if you wanted to do it as well as Betterment.

I decided to make a spreadsheet to mimic the Betterment portfolio.  Feel free to use that if you’re keen on rebalancing yourself.

Some of you probably caught on to the problem that’s apparent with rebalancing. You can’t purchase fractional shares. In my spreadsheet example, you’ll see that I should Buy $1,161 of VWO. Well, what if VWO’s price is $32 per share? That means I would need to purchase 36.28 shares. You can’t do that. So you’d round down to 36 shares, leaving you with remaining funds of $10.08. Not the end of the world, by any means, but annoying if you’re a bit OCD like yours truly.  Betterment allows you to purchase fractional shares, so that problem goes away (I’m not certain on the purchasing of fractional mutual fund shares, such as the Target Date funds..if someone knows, please let me know!).

So…asset allocation done. Just an hour later! :)

Conclusion #2, and Automation

If you know YNAB at all, then you know we aren’t huge fans of automating your money so much that you don’t stay involved.  With investing, the opposite approach is the appropriate one. I want you automating the heck out of it. I want it out of sight, out of mind. I want you to make the decision once to invest, and then just focus on bringing home lots of bacon!

The impact you’ll have on your retirement nest egg if you can throw a lot of money at it, while it’s well-diversified and appropriately allocated, is massive.

In the end, what I’m saying is this. If you want something drop. dead. simple, I recommend Betterment. If you want something that won’t confuse or intimidate you, I recommend Betterment. If you want to (pretend to) rebalance your portfolio, and diversify on your own, then I wish you the best of luck.

The key is this: You are not, nor will you ever be, a professional investor. You didn’t build your own home, or build your own car, because you found it economical to pay someone to have the skills necessary to do it for you.  Betterment is that tool for me. It takes the mystery out of investing, keeps things simple and transparent, and saves me a lot of cognitive overhead.

Try ‘em out if you’re so inclined.

P.S. If you have built your own car or home, you are awesome, and my idol.

Affiliation Disclaimer: If you click on any of the above Betterment links AND sign up, YNAB earns a referral fee. I only recommend products I actually use, and feel great recommending this one. If you DON'T want YNAB to earn a referral fee, you can use this link.

12 Steps (?!) for How to Make a Budget — A Rebuttal :)

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Moneycrashers has treated YNAB well over the years, writing some nice reviews of the software and giving us a shout now and again. I appreciate that.

What I want to do is hopefully not burn a bridge, but offer another view on their article re: how to make a budget.

Pat, the author, outlines the 12 steps necessary to make a budget:

  1. Decide to start a budget.
  2. Know how much you have.
  3. Know how much you make.
  4. Know what you owe.
  5. Determine your net worth.
  6. Determine your average recurring monthly expenses.
  7. Enter this information into a database (Pat mentions YNAB as a solution for this. Thanks!)
  8. Look at the bottom line.
  9. Make adjustments accordingly.
  10. Adjust categories based on reality.
  11. Pay yourself first.
  12. Track, monitor, and be disciplined.

I would revise the steps as follows:

  1. Write down what you have on hand (Pat’s Step Two)
  2. Answer one question: “What should I do with this money before I’m paid again?”
  3. Follow your plan.

If we could get people to stop thinking that a budget means they have to suddenly become   an accountant, we might get more people on board!

It really is that simple. Don’t worry about what you owe (that will get flushed out with my second step). Don’t worry about your net worth (follow your plan, and your net worth will climb automatically). Don’t worry about the bottom line (step three takes care of that on the fly!).

I did like Pat’s advice re: making adjustments. You should feel great when you adjust your budget. It means you now have more information than when you first started! You’re like a basketball coach making halftime adjustments so you can win the game. That’s good stuff.

Finally, being “disciplined” just sounds scary. It’s your plan. Just make your money do what you want.

YNAB is Hiring a Quality Assurance Team Member (Part-Time) UPDATE: This position has been filled.

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UPDATE (11/5/12): This position has been filled!  We were flooded with applications (just over 100), so it was a very tough call.  Thanks to all who applied!

We’re on a hiring blitz, of sorts.

As the popularity of YNAB grows, so also grows our need to have a top-notch quality assurance process.  That is where you come in.

You Would be:

  • Writing functional tests for the mobile and desktop platforms.
  • Executing those tests on the various platforms.
  • Doing exploratory testing.

You’re Who We’re Looking for if you:

  • Are detail-oriented, process-driven (slightly OCD?) person who will test, test, and re-test our desktop, iPhone, and Android software.
  • Have formal testing experience.
  • Have access to a variety of platforms (Windows, Mac, iOS and Android)
  • Are available part-time (this is not a full-time position).
  • Work well in a remote environment. YNAB has no central hub. The most people we have in any state is two (Maine, and Utah).  You do not need to be US-based.
  • Thrive on instructions like, “We need to formalize our QA process around each release candidate of our software. Any suggestions?”
  • Have excellent written and spoken English (accents are fine!)
  • Bonus Points: You use and love YNAB.
  • Double Bonus Points: You’ve found a few bugs in YNAB ;)

Details:

  • Compensation would be hourly and based on your experience.
  • This would be a part-time position, as an independent contractor.
  • You would set your own schedule, hours, etc.
  • You would provide your own equipment (some exceptions to this would be if we needed testing on a particular device for some future efforts).

To Apply:

  • Your cover letter can be your email. No need to send something separate.
  • Send your resume in PDF form.
  • Include “QA Superstar” in the subject line of your email. If you don’t, we won’t read your email.
  • Applications should go to: qa092012@youneedabudget.com
  • Also, please complete the following two questions:
  1. Please report on a bug you’ve found in the latest version of YNAB. Write it up the same way you’d write up a bug if you were a member of the team.
  2. What is one of your favorite non-fiction books? What did you learn from it?

YNAB is Hiring a Full-Time Android Contractor

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About Us:

We create beautiful personal finance software that’s changing how people think about their money. Our software is named “You Need a Budget”, but everyone just calls it “YNAB”. For years now, lots of people have been buying YNAB and then telling their friends how awesome it is. (Google us and you’ll see.) We’ve got an Android app that is a complement to our desktop software. It is very highly rated and consistently performs very well on the Android Marketplace, but we want to make it even better. That’s where you come in!

About You:

You’re an experienced Android developer who would like to work with us on a 40 hours/week contract basis.

You would be:

  • Working with an existing, well-architected, codebase
  • Helping us get to feature parity with our iPhone offering and
  • Creating new features as needed

You’re the one we’re looking for if you:

  • Are a top-notch Android developer who will thrive in a small team.
  • Have experience working in version control (Git, Mercurial, etc).
  • Have excellent debugging skills
  • Have great Object Oriented design and architecture skills.
  • Write code that is easy for other programmers to understand and use
  • Use descriptive variable names in your code
  • Have excellent spoken and written English (we’re an international team, so accents are fine!)
  • You’re self motivated and thrive with directions like:
    • “This part of the program is too slow, and these are the places that might be good to start looking.”
    • “This component needs to be rearchitected to allow for X. How do you think we should do it?”

If that sounds like your ideal environment, keep reading.

Major-Triple-Gold-Star Bonus points if:
You already use and love YNAB

Location:

Remote. The YNAB team is located in Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts, Utah, Switzerland, Italy, (sometimes Texas), Australia, the UK, Canada, California, and Kentucky. You’ll do well if you get your best work done without office distractions :)

To apply:

  • Your cover letter can be your email. No need to send something separate.
  • Send your resume in PDF form.
  • Please include links to Android apps you’ve built, and describe your role in building those apps.
  • Include “DROID DEV” in the subject line of your email. If you don’t, we won’t read your email.
  • Applications should go to: droiddev092012@youneedabudget.com
  • Also, please complete the following two questions. This shouldn’t take you very long, and could save us all a great deal of time in the long run.

1) Write a function “count” that returns a string containing every number from 0 to the number passed in.

So, when I call count like so:

count(10);
//It should return the following string:
“0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10”
 public static String count(long toNumber)
 {
   //Your code goes here
 }

Note: There are no tricks here, and I don’t care about efficiency of the code. We estimate this will take you less than 2 minutes. In other words, don’t over think this. If you’re surprised we’re asking such an easy question, good. :)

2) Given the following function “DoStuff”:

public static String DoStuff(int count) {

        String retVal = "";
        
        for(int x=0; x<=count; ++x) {
            retVal += "A";
            if (x == 3) {
                retVal += DoStuff(count);
            }
        }
        return retVal;
}

Describe what the following function call will do:

DoStuff(10);

Hint: Unlike question 1, this is a trick question. ;)

We’re Looking for a Full-Time iPhone Developer

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We build the best budgeting software available.  Our iPhone app consistently ranks in the top 25 paid finance apps on the App Store.  Customers really like it, but we’re far from satisfied.

If you’re interested in helping us improve our iPhone app (eventually revamping it as well), and you’re a great iOS developer, we’d love to have you apply!

About You

You’re an experienced iOS developer who would like to work with us on a 40 hours/week contract (or employee, depending on your locale) basis.  Compensation will be based on experience (contractors obviously set their own rates). We see this position as open-ended, without a project end date.

You would be:

  • Working with an existing, well-architected codebase.
  • Helping us improve performance, fix bugs, etc.
  • Learning an awesome Cloud Sync technology.
  • Creating new features as needed (we have a lot left to do here).

You’re the one we’re looking for if you:

  • Are a top-notch iOS developer.
  • Have experience working in version control (Git, Mercurial, etc.)
  • Have excellent debugging skills.
  • Have great OO design and architecture skills.
  • Write code that is easy for other programmers to understand and use.
  • Use descriptive variable names in your code.
  • Have excellent spoken and written English (we’re an international team, so accents are fine!)
  • You’re self-motivated, and thrive with directions like:
    • “This part of the program is too slow, and these are the places that might be good to start looking.”
    • “This component needs to be rearchitected to allow for X. How do you think we should do it?”

If that sounds like your ideal environment, read on!

Bonus Points

If you already use and love YNAB, you score major bonus points. We love recruiting from within :)

Location

Remote. The YNAB team is located in Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts, Utah, Switzerland, Italy, (sometimes Texas), Australia, the UK, Canada, California, Kentucky, and Washington. You’ll do well if you get your best work done without office distractions :)

To Apply (Every Step Needs to be Completed)

  1. Your cover letter can be your email. No need to send anything separately.
  2. Send your resume in PDF form.
  3. Please include links to iOS apps you’ve built, and describe your role in building those apps.
  4. Include “IPHONE FIVE” in the subject line of your email. If you don’t, we won’t read the email.
  5. Applications should go to: iosdev092012@youneedabudget.com.
  6. Please complete the following two questions. This shouldn’t take you very long, and will save us all a great deal of time in the long run :)

1) Write a function “countTo” that returns a string containing every number from zero to the number passed in.

So, when I call ‘countTo’ like so:

[YourClass countTo:10];

It should return the following string:
“0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10”

+(NSString *)countTo:(NSUInteger) value {
   //Your code goes here
}

Note: There are no tricks here, and I don’t care about efficiency of the code. We estimate this will take you less than 2 minutes. In other words, don’t over think this. If you’re surprised we’re asking such an easy question, good. :)

 2) manually write the setter that would be created by synthesizing:

@property(nonatomic, retain) NSString *title;

We look forward to hearing from you!

A look at YNAB 4.1.127 (Reconciled Transaction Filter, Row Highlighting…)

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If you’re more of the video-loving type:

We made a whole ton of fixes, some small improvements, and managed to get in two fairly cool features.

Budget Row Highlighting

Let’s face it, eyes grow tired of tracking along lines. Now, when you hover over a row on the Budget, we highlight the row.  It makes it easier on the eyes to connect balances to their categories.  It was a nice touch, and I’m glad it’s there.

Filter Out Reconciled Transactions

There’s now a little filter toggle next to the ‘Dates’ filter with each account register.  You can hide your reconciled transactions so that what you see is truly all you need to worry about. This cleans up the register for each of your accounts tremendously. Used it last night with our budgeting and I love it.

(On that note, check out the search feature, where you can type ‘Is:’ and see a whole budget of true/false searches to run, ‘cleared and reconciled, only unreconciled, only reconciled, etc.)

Campaigning for Updates

I’m going to try and do better about making these improvements known. Our standard procedure for the past five years is to release major upgrades every once in a while (for which we charge) and then, in the meantime, issue minor free updates that often have very cool features in them (not just bug fixes!).  So this is one of those free updates.  There are more to come!

Ian’s currently working on squashing a performance bug mainly related to some Windows software called ‘Webroot’ that is making YNAB c.r.a.w.l.  It’s his highest priority.

Taylor (just hopped off the phone with him) is profiling the Budget screen at the moment.  For you non-software cool people, that just means he’s trying to make it faster; faster loading, faster interacting, etc.

Word Of Mouth

Thank you all for spreading the word about YNAB!  We really appreciate the vote of confidence you’ve given us, when telling your friends and family about YNAB.  We’ll continue doing our best to earn your kind words.

August Podcast Roundup

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Here’s a roundup of August’s podcasts. We’re excited for what we have slated in September!  Some ‘Zen-like’ stuff coming!

  • Credit Card Pros and Cons - If you carry a credit card balance from month to month, your credit cards should be destroyed. If you’re operating by YNAB’s 4 Rules, Credit Cards offer some advantages.
  • Interview with Dan Miller on Careers, Goals & Passion - I set out to have Dan talk about pursuing your passion, and it ended up turning a bit into my own personal coaching session! Dan Miller is a best-selling author, speaker, and career coach. We discuss careers, goals, passions, and more.
  • Why Aren’t You Getting Ahead? - You may make “good money”, but you don’t feel like you’re getting ahead. You just don’t think you’re gaining any traction. You may not have a good grasp on your True Expenses.
  • Taking Care of Your Family, No Matter What - As part of the #LifeAware Life Insurance Movement, I bring on special guest, Jeff Rose, Cerftified Financial Planner, founder of Alliance Wealth Management, and blogger at GoodFinancialCents.com.
  • Get Organized with Jill Pollack! - I interivew Jill Pollack, an organization expert, and host of “Consumed”, a one-hour de-cluttering/life-changing TV show for HGTV Canada. She shares some great tips on finding some breathing room with your stuff!
  • You’re Never Really Saving Money… - You’re not really saving money. You’re simply acknowledging future expenses.

If you want to subscribe to the podcast, you can do so over at iTunes, or through this RSS link.

 

#LifeAware – Get Life Insurance TODAY–NOW.

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I spend $70 per month to know that if I die prematurely, Julie’s life without me will not become a financial disaster.

If you can’t say that about your spouse, you need to look at your life insurance needs.

This is a very difficult post to write, because you have to be so matter of fact about things you’d rather not think about at all.

Today is the #LifeAware Life Insurance Movement. More details can be found here. There are a lot of cool prizes being given away for your participation (just tweeting with the hashtag #LifeAware will enter you to win).

What You Could Do TODAY

Everything you need to know is in italics.

I don’t want to debate the merits of term life insurance vs. whole/universal/variable life insurance. I did thorough research into term alternatives and they only make sense if you have a lot of discretionary income and are looking for an additional vehicle to avoid paying taxes.  This post applies to the 99% :) So I’m probably talking to you.

You want TERM life insurance.

When you “lock in” term life insurance, you’re locking in the premium. So if you’re healthy and strapping at age 25, you will pay a pitance for a very large term policy.  If you get a 20-year term, that means you’ll pay the same price, for the same coverage, for 20 years.  As Jeff Rose mentioned on my special podcast today, (he’s the founder of the Life Insurance Movement), who wouldn’t want to lock in their mortgage at today’s rates of 3.75 percent?

The same thinking applies to your term life insurance policy. The older you get, the more expensive it becomes.

Lock in your policy early. How about today?

How much life insurance is needed? That’s a pretty personal question, and one that I can’t answer for each reader of this post. When I first bought a term policy on myself (I believe I was 24), it was 63 times my annual income!  I did this to 1) lock in the rate, and 2) allow us to “grow” into the policy.  We have been able to “grow” into the policy by having four more children, seeing my income rise (with expenses along with it…though always in check by the ever-faithful budget!), purchasing a home, etc.)

You can use 10 times your annual income as a starting point, and then adjust accordingly (up if you have a lot of debt, down if you have less, down if you’re not the sole breadwinner, up if your spouse would maybe need to go back to school, etc.)

Being wired conservatively, I error on the high side of the multiple.

Start with a policy that’s 10 times your annual income, then adjust up or down to suit your individual needs (debt to income ratio, dual income household, number of children, age of children, etc.)

Most life insurance premiums are payable annually. This is a simple Rule Two Rainy Day fund.  At the beginning of this post I mentioned that I “spend” $70 per month for our life insurance policy. I actually don’t spend it, but it sits in our “Fixed Expenses” category and accumulates for the year. The bill comes, and I pay it. Zero stress. Lots of peace of mind.

Break the premium into monthly amounts and set that amount aside in your ‘Life Insurance’ category so you’ll be ready for the bill when it comes due.

The late Stephen Covey talked about To Dos that are Important but Not Urgent.  Life insurance isn’t urgent, until it is. Then suddenly it’s in that other quadrant: Important and URGENT.  Take responsibility. Prepare your family for a future where you may not be there. Don’t make it harder on them that it obviously already would be.

Start today.  Locate an agent. Get some references on said agent. A few have asked who I use. You can email Casey at casey@youandiplan.com. He’s fantastic to work with.