BiggerPockets Money Podcast - Money Dates, Prenups & Combining Finances with Aditi Shekar

Episode Date: July 23, 2019

Talking to your partner about money can be very difficult - especially when you’re bringing up the conversation for the first time. Today, we’ve brought Aditi Shekar back to discuss finances from a couple’s point of view. Yesterday we heard Aditi’s personal money story, and today she shares tips for speaking to your partner about your finances.  How to go on a Money Date, all about her $20 prenup and why she feels everyone should have one, her guide to combining your finances. In fact, Aditi is so passionate about personal finance in general, and couples finance specifically, she created an app to help you share and discuss finances with your partner!  Zeta is a personal finance app designed for couples to help you stay on top of your finances, together.  Looking for a way to talk about money with your partner? This episode was made especially for you. In This Episode We Cover: The first thing that a couple should do once they discover that they are far apart on money The importance of talking about money early and often with your significant other Layers of fights about money Guide to combining finances On prenup and how she approach the subject with significant other On people who didn’t have prenups How to go on a money date Finding out who is the CFO in couple Her relationship advice and tip for listeners The importance of knowing your money personality And SO much more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 82 and a half where we bring back Audity Shaker from AskSeda.com. We found that the more that you talk about money consistently and regularly, the healthier your relationship is. And so what we said is, okay, well, how do we institute money dates and how do we make sure that the money date spends time talking about your present, but also spends time talking about your future so you can connect your present to your future? It's time for a new American dream, one that doesn't involve working in a cubicle for 40 years, barely scraping by. Whether you're looking to get your financial house in order, invest the money you already have, or discover new paths for wealth creation.

You're in the right place. This show is for anyone who has money or wants more. This is the Bigger Pockets Money Podcast. How's good, everybody? I'm Scott Trench, and I'm here with my co-host, Miss Mindy Jensen. How are you doing today, Mindy? Scott, I am having a fantastic day. How are you doing today?

I'm doing great. I'm excited to bring back Audity here and talk about couples and money. I am so excited to talk to Audity today because she has such a great story about couples money, but we couldn't fit it all into yesterday's episode. And she very graciously agreed to come back today and share it with us. Shall we bring her in? Let's do it. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going, and more importantly, where your taxed refund can make the biggest impact. Because the goal isn't just to look backward. It's to actually make progress. Simplify your finances with Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, including budgeting, accounts and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this tax season and get 50% off your Monarch subscription with the code pockets. What I personally like is that Monarch keeps you focus on achieving, not just tracking. You can see your budgets, debt payoff, savings goals, and net worth all in one place. So every decision actually moves the needle. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all in one tool that makes money management simple. Use the code

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Audity Shaker from Zeta. Welcome back to the Monday podcast. How are you today? I'm so excited to talk about couples. I am so excited to talk about couples too. One of the biggest questions that I get from listeners is how do I talk to my partner about money? We're clearly on two different spots and we're in a place where breaking up isn't an option. So from that perspective, what is the first thing that a couple should do once they discover that they are far apart on money? You know, I think people tend to, couples in particular, tend to find out that they feel differently about money in a very tense situation.

They're trying to buy something or somebody overspent or somebody went into debt. And there tends to be a lot of emotion and sometimes anger involved in that moment. And one of the things that I really encourage couples to do is start talking about money long before any of these moments hit. Like, don't wait for Delmar to go to J-Crew and see the $300 expense show up. Rather, have this conversation well before. So my first piece of advice is talk about money early and talk about it often in a relationship. But let's just say that you didn't do that for whatever reason and you're in a situation where you're mad. Stop talking about money.

It's the wrong moment to talk about it because money becomes the tool that then you, to actually fight rather than actually being the thing that is the problem in the relationship. So in that moment, stop and say, you know what? We're both upset. Let's come back to this conversation in a moment where we can agree. And the thing that I always tell couples who don't see eye to eye on money is that we'll never, in your relationship, all the research shows that even if you are the same personality when it comes to money, in a relationship, you'll evolve. One of you will start to move apart from the other from a money point of view. So the value of talking about money in a relationship is not actually being the same personality. It's learning how to communicate about having

different point of views. And so the thing to do in that moment is to actually say, what are the areas of money that we agree on, whether it's we agree on a certain goals that we have, or we agree that we don't want to go into debt, or we agree that we need to live below our means. Whatever it is, you agree on, start there and then move from that moment into some of the things that you don't agree on. What are some of the typical sets of problems that you kind of come across in terms of what couples are fighting over? Yeah. So a lot of it is, there's multiple layers, I think, of fights about money. There's the layer of we just fundamentally have different personalities. And one of us is being passive aggressive about how those personalities are manifesting. So I've heard

stories of one significant other, literally giving the other person an allowance to manage their spending, which is not going to be a healthy dynamic in a relationship. There are people who are hiding accounts from each other because they want to have an emergency fund for those moments where things go bad. And so there's all these like crazies. There's people who find out after they break up that their partner open debt and in their name and they suddenly owe all this money. So those are like the worst stories around this. But what I find is that it's traditionally, a personality mismatch that then manifests into all these really horrible behaviors. The second thing is that there's also the day-to-day management of money. As a team, we always talk

about how they're CFOs in a relationship, the chief financial officer. And that person hates being the chief financial officer. They're like, I became this person because I was a little better at math or a little better at money. And this job is like just the most thankless, unhappy job ever. And so we spend a lot of time as a team and as a company thinking about how to make that person's life easier and happier. And what we find is that that chief financial officer ends up taking a lot of the burden on of like when you overspend. You know, one of my best friends, she said to me, she was like, my husband, we overspent last month and it's his fault. And I was like, why is it his fault? And she said, oh, well, because he handles the money. And I was like, but you spent just as much as he did, didn't you? And she was like,

well, yeah, but. So those are the other things that we tend to find a lot about and making sure that you're not just putting blame on your other person, but actually saying like, hey, this is the thing that we did together. Do you find that when folks come up with these problems initially, that they have a great data system in place around money? Or do you find that there's just a general lack of information about where the money's going? Yeah.

Is that an important step in this? So, you know, one, there's not a lot. When my husband and I, for example, started thinking about money, I remember Googling like crazy, and the number one hit on the internet was Oprah, which was kind of interesting, right? Like, why is Oprah telling me how to handle my finances in the relationship? But there weren't a lot of resources. So we sort of hacked our way through our money system. But one of the things we've learned as we've been building data is that because couples in our

generation are actually choosing not to merge their finances 100%, a little bit of what we were talking about yesterday, they don't have a very good understanding of how. much money they're spending or earning in a month. And so when we went and did the research, a lot of couples were like, yeah, I spend a bunch of money on our shared expenses, and I spend a bunch of my personal expenses. But when I try to sit down at the end of the month and figure out what I spent where, it's impossible to find out. And what we were seeing was that most of them were using spreadsheets, which have a lot of pros, but are really, really crappy when you're trying to have two people try to figure these things out. So that was the first problem that

we actually chose to solve with data was saying, let's give couples a way to understand what their collective pool of finances even are, and then be able to segment that information across their shared and their personal spending. Do you recommend all couples combined finances? Because it sounds like yes and no. So here's what I actually, I thought so much about this. Like is one model better than the other? And there are a lot of people who have very strong opinions on what it should or shouldn't be. And what I've learned is it's actually highly dependent on who you are. So there are couples who just get a lot of value by seeing everything as a team. And they get a lot of value of treating all of their money as one pool.

I will be really honest with you. If my husband and I did that, we would have broken up a long time ago. For us, we just feel a lot happier having a shared pool with shared goals and things that we're gunning for together. But then also having the independence of being able to do whatever it is we want with our individual pools. And the reason that that works in our case is, you know, our generation is typically now earning incomes twice, like both people are earning incomes, whereas our parents' generation, most people were just earning a single income in the household. So it made sense

to combine everything. Whereas now, we're earning dual incomes, we're getting married later, we're living together long before we got married, so the dynamics around money have just fundamentally changed. And then there's another segment of people that we have learned through Zeta and discovered through Zeta, who actually keep their finances completely apart. They trade off what bills they're going to pay, but they want and need a lot more control over their money, and they feel much more comfortable doing it that way. And they're perfectly happy in their relationships navigating it that way.

So my thesis is not actually to promote one model over the other, but to say that we actually support you in whichever model you're going to go after and really figure out which model is the right one for you. And maybe over time, you decide to change that. Like maybe when we have 50 kids, we'll decide, you know what, it's just way to complicate at this point. We're just going to put it all together. What about with, when it comes to these arguments, do you find that they're typically around the spending side of things? Or is it around the management of like investments or income, like whether one couple, one person needs to go back and get a better job?

Or what is the root cause of most of this? Yeah, the most, I would say the majority of the conflict is around. spending and around debt. That is a very complicated thing, especially when you're looking at something like student loan debt that could actually create value for you over time if you get a degree that helps you get a better job. And then credit card debt is complicated because it's hard to get out of credit card debt. It's like literally designed to keep you in debt. And so it creates all these kinds of really unhealthy dynamics around your finances, which then fester into your relationship dynamics. We have not actually seen as much conflict over investments, interestingly, because what we

tend to see is that if they have a pool of money to invest, they can start to invest it across different things. So both people's perspectives get dealt with. But some of the things that we do see conflicts around are things like inheritance. Should we leave inheritance to our kids or not? And how do we want to plan for that? We also actually see a lot of conflict around family help. Like should I give my brother the money he needs to get through this slump he's having or and forego a vacation that we're going to take that causes a lot of resentment in a relationship in really weird ways. Oh, yeah. How do you get over that? I mean, how do you discuss that and how do you, I don't even know. I mean, I'm, I'm so thankful that my husband and I are on the same page financially because I don't

know what I would do if he would be like, yeah, I want to pay for all of these things. No, we don't. how do you compromise, I guess, is the word. Yeah. And what we've seen and what we actually encourage folks to do is to say those are the moments where you can actually choose to divide up some of your finances. So let's say, you're saying, I want to have $5,000 in a year to spend on something that I just think is very important for our family, whether it's a vacation or a new home. You can't really buy a home with $5,000, but let's just magically pretend you could. You know, you can go do that. So what I've seen some couples do is they'll say, like, well, I'm taking my so-called

slush fund and putting it towards helping my brother because I think that's the right thing to do. Whereas the other partner will say, okay, cool, well, I'm going to take my money then and maybe take us to a family vacation in Disney World because I think that's the right thing to do. So you can divide and conquer there a little bit rather than trying to feel like everyone has to be on the same page all the time. But the places where I think you really sort of get messed up is when you're like, no, no, my brother will absolutely definitely pay us back and it will all be okay and things don't happen and it just gets ugly. Just as you, my general rule of thumb is if you lend somebody money, assume you're not getting it back.

You know what? That is the most important thing that I'm going to take away right now is that, yeah, absolutely, because then if you get it back, it's a bonus. But if you're counting on it, it's not going to come. Exactly. And it creates all sorts of horrible dynamics and relationship when it doesn't happen. Okay, the big financial couple question, do you have a pre-up? Do you recommend them? And how do you approach the subject with your significant other in a way that isn't offensive? Because my husband suggested,

we get a pre-up before we got married. And we had no assets and no, like, no huge debt. We kind of started at sort of zero. And I was like, how dare you ask me for a pre-up? You are assuming we're going to get a divorce. You're not, you're not allowed to divorce me and I don't want to divorce you. So this is a stupid thing to have. And I was very offended by it. But it's not an offensive concept. I've been married forever. So, you know, I realize now what he was trying to do. But how do you navigate that? Yeah. So this is actually something I feel very strongly about. I think every couple should have a preemones. And here's why. Do you have a health insurance, Mindy? Yes. Right. You have health insurance. because why, in case something goes wrong, right?

Yes. Do you want to die? Do you want to die? Do you want to get sick? No. Not really? Exactly. But it's the exact same concept.

It's like, yeah, I don't want all of these horrible things to happen. But the reality, the facts around me prove that this is possible. These things will potentially happen to me. And so I think it's just a safe, it's like having a safety net more than anything else. And I think one of the things I hate about free-ups are their, they're seen as these like, oh, you're trying to get me to give you my money or make sure that I don't get any money rather than being seen as a tool to actually help a couple. One, have a really good conversation about money very early in their relationship. And two, be able to have something in place, a system in place, in case it doesn't work out.

So very personal story. My parents got divorced. And when my parents were getting divorced, they had all these assets that they'd accrued in their time together, right? they bought a house, they had cars, they had all these, and they had kids. And they hadn't really thought through how they were going to divide those assets. And it wasn't fun for them or for us to watch them go through that process. And there was a lot of, you know, my mom was in a situation where she was moving across the world to a different country. And so there were all these dynamics that played in there, whereas if there had just been clarity on how all those things would have been sorted out, rather than in a moment of such

emotionalness and sadness and tragicness trying to figure this stuff out and create that pressure, they could have had all of that sort of out. The other thing I will say, my husband and I actually got a $20 pre-up. And I wrote an article about this because it was something where I was trying to explain, like when you talk about a pre-up, it sounds very formal. If you're going to get a lawyer and we're going to sit down and it's going to be really weird and tense, that's actually not what we did. We downloaded a pre-up template from the internet. Definitely the right thing to do, by the way. And we just used it as a way to start talking about what we were going to do in all of our worst-case scenarios. What would happen if one of us died? What would happen if we broke up? What would

happen if one of us actually had went and built a billion-dollar business? How would all those things work out? And what would happen to the assets that we were bringing into the relationship? And it was one of the best conversations of money I have had with my husband to date, without a doubt. And it was only because of that tool. And it's probably, It's probably actually not even legal, but it allowed us. No, really, but what it did for us was less the contract and more the conversation. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing.

And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going, and more importantly, where your taxed refund can make the biggest impact. Because the goal isn't just to look backward. It's to actually make progress. Simplify your finances with Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier.

It brings your entire financial life, including budgeting, accounts and investments, net worth, and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this tax season and get 50% off your Monarch subscription with the code pockets. What I personally like is that Monarch keeps you focused on achieving, not just tracking. You can see your budgets, debt payoff, savings goals, and net worth all in one place. So every decision actually moves in a needle. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all-in-one tool that makes money management simple.

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is their pledge to all customers. Visit northwest registeredagent.com slash money-free and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at Northwest Registeredagent.com slash money-free. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $24.50 an hour. Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields like software development and information technology. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. So we've had two recent guests, you and Aaron Lowry from Broke Millennial, who have

brought up this concept of definitely pre-nup, pre-nup, you know, absolutely for sure. Both of you happen to be women, which, you know, how does it? How does, how would, you know, and so if we're bringing that up from a woman's perspective might be different, maybe even less intimidating in many ways than bring it up from a man's perspective. So I think that's a question before. But they were both the hired income earners. Yes.

That's very true. Absolutely. Yeah. You're absolutely right. Like there's a couple of dynamics. I mean, men do earn more than women do on average on the dollar, right? Like those are facts. So men do tend to be the primary breadwinners.

and so they might be the ones bringing up the conversation. And when they do, the other partner is like, wait, what are you trying to say? So that's why I say, like, this needs to be a conversation that is had with both people. And I would love if more women would bring it up because it actually protects women a lot more often than it protects men. Like, you know, I've heard these stories over and over again of couples who've broken up where the man was the primary breadwinner. And then suddenly the wife has nothing left when they break up. and suddenly she's living on alimony or child support or whatever it may be, and it's not enough to cover expenses. Or suddenly, her lifestyle is fundamentally changed. So ironically, prenauts actually protect women in a relationship just as much as they protect men.

But because men, I think, tend to think about long-term finances more, we've actually seen that in research. They tend to be focused on that more. They tend to be the folks that bring this up. But why I share this message is what I'm trying to tell other women is don't be afraid of this. Don't see this as, him saying to you or her saying to you, like, hey, I want you to control how my money or our money or your money is spread out if we were to ever break up, but rather see this as an opportunity to just worst case scenario plan. And honestly, having that conversation about preempts and having a long-term view conversation also encouraged my husband to get way more interested into this. Like he was like, I'm not really, he really doesn't. He's like, whatever. It'll figure itself out. But being a part of that conversation, like made him realize, like, you're right, we do need to figure out what happens

in these scenarios and how each of us deals with it. And we actually got into estate planning recently, which one day we will talk about that. And it suddenly opened his eyes to like, wow, this is exactly like our pre-up conversation, but just a very different flavor of it. With this, you know, Aaron Lowry mentioned, hey, you know, just because whether or not you have a pre-up, there's a set of rules that govern how this goes. And you're just submitting to those rules. without any say in it without one of these. She's absolutely right. You know, we joke, we romanticize marriage,

which it absolutely is. It's a partnership. It's so many things, but it's also a contract with rules and laws around it. And a lot of people don't understand what that means and how that works. So, for example, in marriage law, a lot of what happens to your assets

if you were to break up are dictated by where you live. And most people don't realize that, because they might have gotten married in New York at one time, but then moved to, California, Colorado, where they have different ways of managing those assets. So what are some examples of folks who have gotten into really big trouble from not having this in place in your experience? Bob Marley. There are a lot of celebrity stories, actually, about celebrities who didn't have prenups or estate plans that have really screwed them over.

And there are stories that we often talk about and hear about because they're very, very public. But what I have seen is, one, I see sometimes that the parent who ends up having custody of the kids doesn't necessarily have the assets to support actually having to pay for those kids. That's a horrible situation. So you're saying that that will be a compromise almost made, like one person gets the assets, one person gets the kids. Yeah. Yeah. And I've even seen things around debt, for example, this has been the worst part is like watching a young couple. I mean, unfortunately, divorce is just as common in our generation. And when you listen to the stories of divorce, a lot of these couples, you know, after getting divorced,

find out that their partner opened up credit cards in their name. And they are now suddenly on the hook for those assets or for those liabilities in this case. And so those are the kinds of things that we want to be able to protect for, where you say, like, if you opened it, it's on you, man, not on me to figure these things out. So what if you're already married and have not talked about, about this stuff. And now the issue is coming up. You know, maybe we're not a divorce or anything like that, but how do you kind of counsel through that situation? Yeah, that's a great question. There are pre-nups and there are actually something called post-nups. So you can get a so-called

agreement in place once you're married as well. And there's a lot of ways that you can think about organizing that. There are some couples who say, everything that we each earned or didn't Byrne spent before we got married is our own chaos to deal with. But everything that we do once we do get married is going to be something that we treat as 50-50. That's actually how my husband and I set up our pre-up, because we thought that that was very fair and equal. But one of the things that you should think about if you're married is like you can very much have that conversation, but just sort of treat it as let's let's figure out what we want to do up until this point. And then let's figure out what we want to do this point moving forward. And getting engaged

is a really natural moment to have that conversation and set that sort of, you know, line in the sand. But you can absolutely do that once you're married as well. I don't hope. I hope my husband is not listening to this and doesn't get any ideas. We're not having a post-nup. But again, it doesn't really change anything. We didn't come into the marriage. And I shouldn't be such a snot about this because I can see that there would be cases that this is very helpful. We didn't come into the marriage in very different spots. We came in pretty even, and I was a stay-at-home mom for 12 years. We're still pretty even.

We've always had our money. But Mindy, you're actually a great example. You were to stay-at-home mom for those 12 years, and you were probably not contributing an income during that time, but you were contributing absolutely to the relationship, right? So you're the perfect example of someone who should get a post-up in that situation and say, like, hey, in that situation where I step back from work, we'll still treat our assets as 50-50.

So your husband, in the worst case scenario, couldn't turn around and say, hey, well, I earned all those assets, so that's actually my money. That would be the worst thing to happen to you. So you're the perfect, perfect example. That would be a really jerky thing for him to do. Lucky for me. Who knows? No, but when people are mad at each other, right?

Like, love is the thing. Yeah. Love is like war when it's angry, is what I say. And so when people are mad each of, somebody screwed up, did something bad and one partner wants to get back at the other. Money is a phenomenal way to do that. That is an excellent point because, yeah, you're not getting a divorce on happy terms. You're getting a divorce on angry terms and one of you is going to be angry at the other.

Most likely some people have amicable divorces, whatever. But when you're talking about this, it is absolutely, I can see wanting to get back at somebody. And that is absolutely the best way to do it. Oh, I'm just going to take all the money. That's very interesting. Yeah, I've seen those situations happen. Okay, so you wrote an article about having money dates. And this concept has come up with multiple guests in the past.

Rosemary Groner on way back on episode four talked about having a money date with her husband. She started it when they were in debt. And now they continue, even though they've gotten themselves out of debt, they continue every month to get together and have a money date. Joel Larsgaard from episode, I think 18, talks about monthly meetings with his wife to discuss finances, and they also go away for a weekend every year to discuss their future goals. So tell me about starting money dates. How would you go about starting that conversation with your partner?

Yeah. So, you know, when I looked back at what my husband and I were doing during date nights, we were like talking about our future together. We were like, oh, what are we going to have kids? What are we going to do about the dogs? What is our dog sanctuary going to look like? And there were all these, like, fun, really fun conversations, but there were always money components to that discussion, where we were like, if we want to go do all these things,

how do we actually plan for that today? And so this idea of money dates is just taking date night, but putting a money layer to it, of saying, like, we're going to talk about our goals and we're going to talk about how to reach those goals. That's just the basic concept of what a money date does. But what we found was that in all of the sort of research that we've done about how couples handle money,

we found that the more that you talk about money consistently and regularly, the healthier your relationship is. And so what we said is, okay, well, how do we institute money dates and how do we make sure that the money date spends time talking about your present, but also spends time talking about your future so you can connect your present to your future? I remember a few weeks ago, I was talking to a couple, and they said to me, oh, we want to buy a house in San Francisco in five years. I said, awesome, what are you doing to do that? And they said, well, every month, each of us puts $50 in the savings account for our down payment. And I just started laughing.

And I was like, there's no way in which you're going to be able to buy a house in San Francisco in five years if that's your goal. And when we have that conversation, they were like, oh, you're right. I guess we have to move. And that was a really important insight for them. And so couples tend not to do that blackboards planning. They don't connect the future with the present. And what the money dates do is create space for you to actually have those long

term conversations. The other thing that money dates do, which I'm a big fan of, is it's very easy for me to see a expense come through. And I'm like, babe, what the hell is this expense? What happened? Why is this? Whereas now my husband, he's so clever, he's like, oh, we'll talk about it on our money date. So it creates a space to have that conversation when you're less emotional, not mad, and not in the heat of the moment, but rather saying, like, let's sit down and look at that in context of everything else we're doing rather than just looking at one off. And so it's a really, really easy thing to institute. We see some couples do it weekly and we see the majority of couples do it monthly. I would say about 60% do it monthly, but about 40% do it weekly.

And you have to figure out the cadence that feels right to you, whereas we see couples who tend to be a little bit healthier with their finances, maybe waits and try to do it even quarterly. Okay. And do you recommend having a like an agenda to talk about or just having it more natural? Yeah, so the CFO should always have the agenda. They're the ones who are happy putting the agenda together, you know, but maybe not sending the agenda to your partner. It's like, these are the 10 things we will discuss. There are definitely some couples we've seen who do that and we love it,

but I would say that's a nerded out version of the money date. In our case, what we tend to see is that the person who typically manages the finances will come forward and say, like, hey, here are the rough topics that we need to talk about. And one of the things that you absolutely should do in that is just review your spending. It doesn't mean that you have to look at line item by line item, but just understand how much you spend. As human beings, we tend to be very good to ourselves and be like, oh, I didn't actually spend as much money as I thought I did, but just having an understanding of what came in and what went out is incredibly important. And then talking, at least even if it's just like a quick two

minutes about your goals and saying like, oh yeah, the dog sanctuary that Dommer and I want to buy one day is so far out in the future. But how are we even thinking about it or staying connected? to that goal in some way. Is there anything else you want to share about couples' money with our listeners? You know, just starting the conversation, I really love how it comes up over and over again, review your spending, spend less than your earning. Pretty much every show has had some aspect of that in it. Are there any other really great tips for our listeners?

Yes, this is a very relationship advice tip. But one of the best things that we've learned is that knowing your money personality is actually incredibly important to understanding your behaviors with money. So we created a quiz. It's like 20 questions and it's meant to be actually very fun. But at the end, it tells you like, hey, you are this kind of money personality. And what you get from that is an ability to sit down with your partner and be like, oh, I'm this personality and you're that personality.

And this is how our money languages intersect. So couples spend a lot of time on therapy and love languages and trying to figure each other out. but one of the things that you should do is think about those things from a money point of view. So I would really encourage you to figure out that personality. And then the other thing that I think is incredibly powerful is ask your significant other about their first memory or their early memories with money. And you will learn so much about your partner because their money history dictates so much of their money behavior today.

It's actually uncanny. Like Freud was spot on. I'm a psych major with a business major. So like my two worlds have so happily collided in this business. That is awesome. Yeah. No, we just did disc assessment at work. And it was unbelievably spot on.

Like everybody was going around saying, this is how I am. This is how I am. I'm like, yep, yep, yep. I don't know how they got the answers with the questions they asked. But everybody was so spot on. That is really important. Find out your money personality. I love that.

Oddity Shaker, thank you so much for coming back. today and sharing these money couple's tips. This is going to be huge. I really appreciate your time. I've had so much fun. You guys are a ton of fun. And you're also really good at this. Scott's really good.

I just sit here and look good. Okay, well, Audity Shaker from AskZeta.com. Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. This was a lot of fun. You guys, I had so much. I had a blast. And the show notes for today's episode can be found

at biggerpockets.com. Money Show 825 because it's 82 and a half. Okay, thank you and we'll talk to you soon. Sounds good. All right, that was Oddity Shaker Round 2. I thought that was fantastic. I thought she had a lot of really good insight into the really tough problems that I think a lot of people have trouble confronting or bringing up or even thinking about.

Right. Not only great insight, but really excellent starter questions, really great tips. for starting the conversation because just because it's a difficult conversation to have doesn't mean you shouldn't have it. ostrich syndrome is not your friend. And if you truly want to be with your partner forever, you have to figure out your money issues. Yep. Ostrich syndrome. I like that term. Don't bury your head in the sand and ignore this because a lot of people do that. And what I think is so important is that as uncomfortable and difficult as this conversation can be around pre-nub and divorce, and all those kinds of things. The fact of the matter is it seems like this protects both sides

in the event that something goes wrong. Yes, having a conversation about money in general will only get you both. I mean, it might not get you on the same page, but it'll definitely bring it out, bring it up, and you can face it head on. I just said ostrich syndrome. You can't just hide your head in the sand

and not worry about, you know, what's going to happen. Just generally. Great stuff today. really learned a lot, really made me think and it seemed to make you think as well. And very privileged to have Audity back here today. Yes, this was fantastic. I love her thoughts on, I love the way she explains the pre-nup, the post-nup, you know, the conversations, the money dates. She truly has a command of this information. And I'm so glad she was able to share with us today. Love it. Joel, should get out of here? We should. From episode 82 and a half of the Bigger

Pockets Money podcast, I am Mindy Jensen. He is. is Scott Trench and he is saying, peace out yo again, which is also something he never says. He certainly doesn't say it twice. Okay. Yeah, what's a dad joke you could say? Oh, we didn't do a joke today

because we didn't have the famous four. Let's do some bonus jokes. All right. Do you have any bonus jokes? I got a joke. I love it. Oh, wait, no, I don't. All right.

Before we get out of here, I do have a joke since we didn't have the famous four segments today I thought everyone could use a little joke. So there's this little town in Italy. And the town is run by a bell tower. And the bell tower rings. They get up in the morning. They go to breakfast. The bell rings again. They go to lunch. Bell rings again. They get dinner. And then finally, it's time to go to bed. And one day, the bell ringer passes away. So the priest, the guy running the bell tower in the church, puts out a job description for a new bell ringer. And nobody wants the job,

because this is a terrible job. You have to get up before everybody else. You don't get to eat with anybody. You have to climb the steps all day. It's kind of hot up there, you know, and you have to go to bed after everybody. So, you know, weeks and weeks go by, and there's no applicants for the bell ringer job.

And so the father puts out, you know, finally, finally a applicant comes in three, four, five weeks later. And the man has no arms, this applicant. And arms are pretty important part of the bell ringing job, you know, as the priest explains. you've got to be able to pull the rope, which fell and rings it and all that kind of stuff. The guy with no, no, no, no, give me a chance. Just give me a chance. I can do this for you.

So, Father says, okay, well, I haven't any applicants, and this year's the only one, so we'll give you a shot. I don't know how you're going to do it, but they walk up to the top of the bell tower, and there's it is. There's the bell's in the middle. So kind of square 10 foot by 10 foot little room at the top of the bell tower. And the guy with no arms, you know, is like looking at it. The priest's just like, there's a bell, there's a rope. I don't, you know, see what she got. So the guy with no arm stands in the corner, runs across the bell tower, smashes his face into the bell.

The bell goes up, dong. The priest is like, what's going on here? And the bellbringer is also surprised at the fact that he was able to do this. Bell goes up and they both look at it. The bell comes back down, smashes the guy in the face, knocks him out of the bell tower, falls 100 feet down to the ground, in the middle of town square, dead as a doornail. priest comes running down. All the townspeople are at a tizzy wondering what's going on.

They're clamoring. And the father comes out a few minutes later after he climbs down the stairs. And they're like, father, father, what's going on? Why is the bell ringing? Why is there this man? Who is he? Why is he dead? And a father just, all I can think to say is,

I have no idea who this guy is, but his face sure rings a bell. Oh my goodness, Scott. All of that for that. And with that, We'll bring you episode 82 and a half of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. Peace out, yo. And you can complain to Scott at Biggerpockets.com. His face sure rings a bell.

Whoever invented the knock-knock joke should get a Nobel Prize.