Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 52 Money and Relationships

Episode Date: February 10, 2021

This week on Couple Things, we're talking about money. Shawn and I tackle a few of your questions and talk about some things that have worked for us in our relationship when it comes to finances. Here are a few of the topics that we cover: how we approached money while dating, habits, and compromises should you have money dealbreakers at it comes to relationships? how early is too early to talk about money? how to talk about money before marriage how to talk about debt before marriage how we made our decision to blend our finances and our thoughts on prenups the importance of discussing your family plan before marriage some money habits that we’ve grown to adopt If you haven’t yet, please rate Couple Things and subscribe to hear more. Follow us on Instagram to keep the conversation going at https://www.instagram.com/couplething...​ And if you have suggestions/recommendations for the show, send us your ideas in a video format – we might just choose yours! Email us at [e-mail]. We're supported by the following companies that we love! Check them out below: Juneshine ▶ Receive 20% off PLUS Free Shipping on their best selling variety pack. This is a great way to try all of their delicious flavors. Go to JUNESHINE.com/EASTFAM or use code EASTFAM at checkout to claim this deal Amp Human ▶ Visit amphuman.com/EASTFAM and use code EASTFAM15 to get 15% off D+ Lotion. FAN MAIL ADDRESS: Shawn and Andrew East 750 N San Vicente Blvd., East Tower, 11th Floor, Los Angles, CA 90069 Follow My Instagram ▶ http://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson​​ Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson​​ Follow My Twitter ▶ http://www.twitter.com/ShawnJohnson​​ Snapchat! ▶ @ShawneyJ Follow AndrewsTwitter ▶ http://www.twitter.com/AndrewDEast​​ Follow My Instagram ▶ http://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast​​ Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/AndrewDEast​​ Snapchat! ▶ @AndrewDEast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It made me fear that finances would hurt Andrew and I, not in like the value of it, but just in the idea. Everybody, welcome back to a couple things. With Sean and Andrew. A podcast all about couples. And the things they go through. Today, we are talking about a much requested topic, which is money and relationships and all of the, I would just say drama that comes with that. So, quick fact for you, in a survey by Ally Bank, 36% of couples reported that money was the

biggest source of stress in their relationship. Okay. And on the other hand, 87% of survey respondents who describe their marriage as great said that they worked with their partner to set long-term financial goals compared with just 41% of respondents who deem their marriage okay or, quote, in crisis, which is not, it's not a great place to be if your marriage is, quote, in crisis. No. But obviously money is an important topic. And how do you approach it as a as a, as a, couple is something that is not often talked about so Sean and I wanted to kind of share some stats with you some things that we found helpful some things that we talked about and then also kind of our approach to it not that we're perfect by any means but um we have put we've had a very

a lot of very unique money situations in a relationship I feel like yeah so I feel like we've kind of gone through a lot of it again not that we're professionals but we just have different viewpoints maybe that could help. Yeah, and we should say starting off here. If you have any type of financial advisor in your life, definitely seek their advice over just our kind of broad stroke advice. But we hope you find this helpful nonetheless. But before we get started, if you haven't yet,

please subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. And give it a rating on whatever platform. So, yeah, let's get into it. Let's do it. So let's start off when we were dating, Sean. Yes. How did we approach money? So one of the hardest things I think for us when we first started dating was understanding and dealing with the fact that we are both in very different phases of life.

So Andrew was in college. living in a dorm room, living college life, right? Yeah, yeah, probably on like a $250 a month budget. Yes, to be honest. I had already completed an entire career. I owned my own home. I traveled by myself. So for us, going straight into dating was this learning curve of how do we balance this out

and make it work. Yeah. And I think, you know, the point of all that is to say it's a pretty common occurrence that people come into a relationship with different backgrounds in all different senses of that word, but financial financially as well, certainly. And that was our case where Sean turned pro when she was 12 years old and had a career that she retired from at age 22 or whatever. And I was just about to start mine. So we were definitely in different faith. of our career as you said but I do think that in dating we didn't we didn't really like look under each other's financial hood if you will like we didn't we didn't necessarily dig into each other's finances we did I think respect each other in realizing that okay Sean's in a different phase of life and I think you were like okay Andrew's in a different phase of life and you were looking at the characteristics that I had that whatever would ideally lead to a career in some field. I'm trying to find the right balance here of saying you need to you need to look for financial

stability right, but it's not everything. 100%. And I will admit too, we have some questions here that I definitely want to answer and get to, but something that I was looking for in a partner back to. then was, quote unquote, that financial stability. I feel like because I had already had my career, because I was already self-sufficient and financially kind of stable, I looked for that as well.

Now with Andrew, it was a different story because he was in college and he was a college, like, kid. I don't want to say kid, but you know what I mean? I was a child. Yeah. And for me, it was just this, understanding from the get-go of okay this guy doesn't like you're not running your own career already you're not the CEO of a business like you're not there yet but something that I learned

about him very very early on was his ambition and his goals and his drive and I knew that he was going to be that someday and again not that money is everything But I had that ambition and I wanted it to be matched in a partner. So I looked for that ambition and I saw it. So the way we kind of worked that out early on was a compromise. He understood that I owned a house. I, you know, had this career. I understood that he was in college.

So what we did was we lived a life in a dating world that worked for him. so you're saying you took the backseat to you fit my lifestyle and didn't expect me to fit your lifestyle yes but i think yes but i think that was really important for our relationship because if someone isn't financially there you can't just like expect him to be like oh i still need you to take me to a michelin star restaurant tonight that's not that's not how it would work right and to me putting money aside i saw that who you were as a person was someone that i loved and i wanted to spend time with and so i didn't care about what that looked like in the monetary way and i think the the underlying message is that it's not necessarily about where you are how much money you have

right now or what your salary is right now it's more about what are the habits that the person you're dating has what are the habits that you have and are they healthy one yes and do they match each other too because I think I think you can be healthy financially and spend a lot of money right yes like people's budgets are different and it's all relative to a certain extent but I think if you are you have the tendency to spend more money than I do and I'm like a prude about some things, then that might be an indication that, wow, this is, you know, as we grow our life together, 10 years down the line, and we have, you know, I think reasonably more, how is this going to pan out? So it's just something to consider. But again, it's not about where you're at

now. It's more about the habits of what you're doing with what you have now. Well, and that leads to the first question that we received. It says, should you have money deal breakers? so not about a salary I don't think it should ever be about oh if this person doesn't make this much then it's a deal breaker for me but like andrew said about their habits and I would say I would say yes yeah no I was I was getting there I just didn't know like how to voice it yes I think you should I don't think it should be like this conversation of hey you spend too much money this isn't going to to work but I like to spend our free time what is our dream vacation how do we see raising children someday

how what's your dream house look like and I feel like through those conversations as well as observing each other's habits you can get the gist of are we going to align financially

do we have the same like levels of ambition and goals or are we on polar opposite spectrums? We also had a lot of conversations with I would come you know to Nashville to visit and I would have a new outfit and it'd be

you would joke and be like you didn't have to get a new outfit just for me like whatever and you'd be wearing the same outfit and I'd be like you could get a new shirt like I don't know. Between us Sean is definitely more of the spender I'm more of the saver but I think I think looking

at a couple deal breakers that I can think of is one if someone values money too much yes whether they have a lot or a little like that that kind of approach of desperation where it's like oh my gosh I need money and that's the one thing that'll make me happy could just you know everybody has different values but if you fast forward that to when you're married and have kids then probably that approach and that that sense of value that they put in money might not change right like so consider that and how that would affect how you envision raising your kids. And then I think also if they're just reckless or careless, they don't put any thought into what they're spending or there's no logic or intention behind it. Again, habits are hard to break and people's backgrounds, how they're

raised are hard to break. So you could look at their parents as well, but those are just a couple potential deal breakers. So another question being, how early is? How early is? is too early to talk about money. Well, people move at different speeds, right? So we've had friends that met and got married within six months. I think there's a certain level of trust that you build, no matter what your timeline is. I would certainly say it's not the first thing to discuss. I think you kind of get to know the person, what their passions are, what they care about.

And then you ease into what's in your wallet. We never talked to, I never, I never said like, how much money do you have, Sean? No. Ever. Not until we got married that I like really say, okay, now it's in my position to understand where we're at financially together. Which leads us into a whole new topic. So dating, dating, I think it's important to talk about habits, your financial goals, like ladies or guys is your dream to be a stay-at-home mom. or a stay-at-home dad.

Yeah, that's important. Like, that should be talked about because that puts more pressure on your spouse to then... It's just different expectations. Yeah, for sure. So those things are very important to talk about as far as expectations,

dreams, realities, and goals. But going into marriage. Now, for us, I think money was kind of, a big slap in the face when we got engaged and we got close to being married because it was the first time for us

I don't know if you remember this but it was the first time we talked about money as money not as a dream not as a goal not as where do we see ourselves but what is mine what is yours what is ours what do we have

and how are we going to like combine that did we wait too long to have that conversation? I would argue that we did. Yeah. I think if you are engaged, it should be talked about, if not before.

Yeah. Because it's awkward. It can be uncomfortable and it's a very vulnerable thing to talk about. But I think it's very important. It's good to know if you have debt. It's good to know what you are taking on as a couple.

Yeah. And for us, when we finally sat down and walked through all of that, we had some differing opinions. We didn't know how to combine things. We didn't know if we should keep separate credit cards. We weren't sure if we should have merged, you know, savings accounts.

And, like, there was a lot to talk through that was very sticky. Here's the thing. I think as far as timing of it, it is one of those topics that is not romantic at all. and it and for you when when the word finances or money is on the table like you you have this visceral negative reaction where it's like whatever you just have a negative connotation to it so I think probably like if you're talking about marriage it would be helpful to sit down with a third party whether it's a parent or like a mentor or a counselor like and sit down and just kind of put it on the table say here this is where we're

at. I think you and I are both an advocate of people making the best decision for them. And so we have on here to talk about pre-ups. And it's like, it could be, depending on the situation, like, okay, Sean is coming to the table with this whole past career. And maybe it does make sense for us to get a pre-nup. We did not do that. But that was just based off the information that we both had and we were I think we were very candid with each other granted probably too late since we had it after marriage but I do think like I think during engagement or like right before as you're discussing marriage yes I think if you are talking like you understood if you're talking about forever with someone if you're talking about marriage then you should

be talking about finances and I also want to put in a little like asterisk here we're going to probably start talking about like our decisions more As we move forward in this podcast, I want you guys to know that like whatever you choose within finances with your spouse, there's no right or wrong. Yeah. So if you guys keep everything separate and that works for you, great. If you do a pre-nup, great. We just, when we start talking about like what we chose and why, that's how it worked for our relationship. I think the big takeaway from this conversation is you need to have the conversation so that.

you can help support each other better and have a better understanding as a couple of where your goals are taking you. And if you're going in the right direction. So when you do have the conversation about money, let's talk about some of the things that might be helpful to discuss. Yes.

I think one major thing you should discuss is debt. What debt do you have? What student loans do you have? What do you need paid off? how much of it, and why is it there? I think that's a great place to start. That is a deep dive straight into the financial conversation. But I've had friends before who had no idea they had like debt and taxes until they were

four years into marriage and the wife like had just found out. And so that's an issue. You have to work through that. And I think if you can be upfront, with mistakes you made have like mistakes you've made financially or not it just it helps each other be better yeah yeah um the discussion of what's yours mine and ours how are you going to arrange bank accounts and credit cards as you as you said the way sean and i have approached it is we both we each had individual bank accounts going into it and then now we both have access to

to each other's and again a lot of people probably disagree with that saying like well how am I going to everything from how am I going to buy my spouse a gift without them knowing to to like out cash to they don't need to see how I'm spending my money but so I think I think we operate off of that one rule of our relationship which is full transparency and so um there is it's not like we're checking each other's bank accounts or transactions every single day, but I think having the door open to potentially do that is a good place for us to start as far as like the foundation of trust. And again, not for everybody. It's not for everybody. And we're curious about how you navigate that and why you made that decision. But

for us, it was just like, we didn't, we didn't really see a downside to be able to just be like, all right, well, I trust you. And that being the case, I'm going to like open up the whole books. Yeah. Well, and to give a little more background as to why we ended up deciding that because I walked into that, like Andrew said, I walked into that very against talking about finances. I didn't want to go near it. I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want Andrew to see it. I didn't. And that wasn't because of like the money I had or what I had done. That was 100% because I was exposed to money and the stresses. it can put on you, your family, and your loved ones at such a young age, it made me fear that finances would hurt Andrew and I, not in like the value of it, but just in the idea. And because we had so, I don't know if you remember this, we had so many conversations that just ended in me bawling

because I was so scared of one giving up control, that it was like the one thing I felt like I had control over in my life, And two, I didn't want it to hurt us. Yeah. Well, there's been plenty of arguments about credit cards. And I'm less of the belief that we should have lots of credit cards, spending habits. I'm definitely like on a tighter budget than you. But I think I think that's where Sean and I, now it took a lot of arguments, but we have made it to a point where it's like, oh, actually, you know, even though I live still,

on my preference is to live on a very small budget I see the appreciation of being able to like spend money on things that you actually do value and appreciate right and you I think because we've had these conversations that started as arguments with now they're conversations you see the value of of whatever like self-denial and not getting everything that you need well and I will say too early on when I was so emotional about finances and I was so scared by them and intimidated by them. And I started opening up to Andrew when we were engaged about my fear that finances would bring to our relationship and just everything,

the history of what I kind of went through with finances. One of the main decisions or one of the main reasons we decided to just blend everything. I was against a pre-nup because I wanted Andrew in my position. I wanted Andrew to feel as though I had nothing to keep from him or to hide from him. And that was, I left that to be your decision. 100%. 100%. And you had no pressure on me to do that.

You had no pressure on me either way. It was out of 100% respect. But again, I think I probably need some sort of therapy from finances as a child. I think one of those was I had felt like finances controlled respect and love within a family. And with a pre-nup, I felt like I was hurting my spouse. It might not yours, but I just felt like it was for us. So we decided not to do that. But in the decision to blend everything, it was me giving a,

up control, unhealthy amounts of control, and trusting Andrew to kind of hold my hand and take me through everything in a way that would heal our relationship with money. Yeah. So the other thing was you were in a position where you had this career, but you didn't necessarily, like you weren't very disciplined in bookkeeping. And I was, I was in a position where when I let you decide whether we were going to get a pre-up or not, right? We should probably do a whole episode on pre-nup. and the benefits and downsides of them. But I was the one who's more financially disciplined or aware, you could say. And so I think that kind of helped you trust me to like come in.

And it's not like you had the money and I was the reckless spender. So I think we were fortunate in that sense. Yeah. Where it was, okay, you like you trusted me not to just ruin everything that you had worked for. Well, and I also don't want to. to be that person on this podcast that's so vague about my background that you're like what is it um i think i i put so because i signed with an agent at such a young age i think i put and learned that respect and value came from how much i made i just felt a pressure as a child that my worth in

society was based off of the number in my bank account so i had a very unhealthy relationship that I was afraid to look at my bank account. I didn't want to know how much I had. If I dropped under a certain number, I felt depressed. It was just a very unhealthy relationship to an identity and a monetary value. Last thing I'll say is I do think by the time we got married, we were ultimately coming to the relationship with kind of equal contributions, which again, not everybody has that.

I would say. And I think it should be mentioned that a pre-up was on the table for you as well. Before marriage thing to discuss would be how much does, like, are you going to be able to pay for a kid? Like if that's on the table and you don't have, if you don't have any money, the average cost of a child these days is $233,610 to raise a child to, age 18. That's according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is wild. It is wild. Right. And so if you want to have 80 kids, that's, granted, not every child is going to cost that much, but that is the average. So it's a number to consider. Yeah. And think about, okay, how does, if there are not a lot of career ambitions or if the, whatever, like the value of money isn't

there how is that going to affect your family planning so so takeaways from what we have learned is it can be stressful to talk about money when you're buying a house when you're moving into an apartment when you're talking about rent or a budget for a groceries each week or gas or how much you pay for a manicure or a pedicure or for a membership to a gym all of it but I think think the healthiest way to go about it within your relationship is to talk about it. Don't hide it. Don't try to like sneak around it.

Don't try to just say oh it's fine. He won't see it or she won't see it. It just doesn't lead down a path that you want. So the more open you can be, even in talking about splurging and being like

I know this is excessive and I know this is unnecessary but I would really love to buy this shirt or go on this vacation like have those conversations the more you can talk about it the more um not taboo it becomes and easier it becomes to talk about yeah so i would say a general rule of thumb is problems uh get worse with time as if they're not discussed yeah right so i think just admitting to any mistakes that you've made in the past or that you're currently making and being on like that is the purpose of a marriage is to like acknowledge

People have bad habits. People make mistakes and they will continue to make mistakes. But how can we continue to support each other and ultimately correct some of those mistakes in the future? Some of the habits that Sean and I have grown to adopt are we have a big kind of financial goal setting every year, which we did a whole podcast on our goal setting. and we mentioned finances in that. We talk about how much we want to give, how much we would like to make, what the sacrifice of making that much money

will do to our family or vice versa. How much we want to save and invest and et cetera. And then also talking about taxes and what last year's looks like, what next year is going to look like, just kind of putting it on the table, seeing where we're at and what this next year is going to look like.

We do have kind of a threshold that we try to respect. as much as possible. Yes. Where if an item costs under that threshold, no approval is needed, right? But I do think it's probably healthy to have whatever your number is, to be like, all right, if you're looking at spending $100,

then it's probably worth like asking your spouse if that's okay and if that can fit in the budget. And again, you're not asking for permission, but you're respecting each other enough to say, hey, this is our life. This is our money. How do you feel about this? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and we each kind of have spending allotments per month built into the budget.

I also think, too, something with that kind of asking and talking about it is it tends to make you realize that you either really want something or you really don't, which has been really good. Yeah. And then we mentioned that we also have separate accounts so that we can each kind of feel as much as we want independent in that sense but we we do have access to each other's that it's rarely it's rarely checked by the other person right like probably never but the fact that I know that you can log into my bank account like holds me accountable to a certain extent so um yeah those are

those are some of our habits we would love to hear any other habits that you guys find helpful Also, we would love to hear things that we might be doing wrong that we could do better on. So let us know. And we are here to just share how we do things in hopes that we could start a conversation and really help couples and families connect on a deeper level. And so finances is definitely an important topic when it comes to that. But do you have anything else to add, babe? I would just say, don't be intimidated by it.

It's in the grand scheme of things. it's like your finances isn't going to shadow your love for each other so just be open and I'll say this you shouldn't let it shadow your love for each other if you approach it correctly and you understand that money is not the end all be all of life which is how we approach it but it it is important to obviously be disciplined with it and consider the decisions you're making it won't overshadow your love so the idea is to not let it. Yeah, so talk about it more, feel of freedom with talking about it more

because I feel like with us, the more we talked, the more liberated I feel and are I felt and being able to just live life and not be controlled by it. Yeah. So yeah. And if you don't feel like you can talk about this with your partner, like it's probably worth, and you want to, it's probably worth seeking a professional help in the form of a counselor. but you know there's little things that can go a long way too is you know shot i think sean felt

nervous about money because she didn't necessarily understand how really it works no offense but i've tried i've tried to do my best to like teach you and coach you and like go through this together any meetings that we have like you're included in them and i think that's made you feel more confident and comfortable talking about it so um that's all we have hope you enjoyed this episode Again, if you made it this far, then we'd appreciate it if you subscribed. And we'll see you next week. This is one of Sean and I's solo episodes. We do interviews.

We do these sit downs with just Sean and I. And then we also do live stream. So all things you can look forward to give the show a rating if you enjoyed it. And we'll see you next week. That's all we got. This is the East fam. Out. Thank you.