Girls Gotta Eat - Money Talks feat. Author & Entrepreneur Ramit Sethi

Episode Date: April 8, 2019

It's another moneeeey episode, but this time with a professional! We are joined by Ramit Sethi, New York Times bestselling author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich, to not only discuss money issues in relationships, but also personal financial success. We cover how to talk to your partner about money (everything from income imbalance to longterm goals to debt), lending money (should you ever do it?), when to splurge and when to save, and how to get a raise at work (complete with role playing). We also share what went down in Florida and reveal one of Rayna's deepest, darkest secrets. We hope you enjoy and get rich, bitches! Check out Ramit's website I Will Teach You To Be Rich for all his info, and follow him on Instagram @Ramit. Follow us @GirlsGottaEatPodcast and check our website for tour dates and merchandise. Thank you to our partners for this episode: Postmates: Get $100 of delivery credit for your first 7 days by downloading the app and using code GGE. ModCloth: For 15% off your purchase of $100 or more, go to modcloth.com and enter code GGE at checkout (one-time use, expires 7/6/19). Buffy: For $20 off your Buffy comforter, visit buffy.co and enter code GGE. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Don't spend money on lattes. Like, I will never tell you... Avocado toast. Yeah. Buy as many lattes as you want. Buy as much avocado toast as you want. There are better ways to get a rich life. Hi.

Hi, guys. Welcome back to another episode of Girls Gotta Eat. We're back. We're literally back from Florida. We got a great episode. We do. We're talking about money. Oh my God.

You're so excited. I am so excited. With our new friend. With our new friend, Rameet, who I'm so excited about. New York Times best telling us, author of I will teach you to be rich. We'll get to it more later. Don't blow your load on the intro. No, no, no, no. It's just, it's an abbreviated version of the intro. Okay. So, more money talk. It's been about a year since we did a money episode. So this is a little bit different

with an actual expert. Shut up. I'm an expert. Because you're almost Jewish. But it's more Jewish. Okay. That should start the episode of my true colors shining in Tampa. We had a show. We just had two shows, Tampa Improv and Miami. me improv. Tampa, that was the most I've ever really shown who I am at my core. That was such a bitch the entire show. Like, in a good way. Okay. The quote from the girl, the good way. The quote from the girl at the meet and greet was, yeah, you're a bitch, but for a good reason. Remember? She said that. I mean, if you're going to be a bitch, make it funny. Yeah. And then I went out afterwards and like dance to like early 2000s rap music and

twerked. I was like Tampa that I've never felt more like myself than in this city. You really, you really let it fly. It was great. You flew your freak flag. fly. I'm pretty high. Freak flag fly in Tampa. I was like, I'm just going to let her do this. I'm not going to jump in, not going to interject. I'm just going to let her, let her be her. It was good. We had a blast. Oh my God. I loved both of those shows. Tampa was great. Husband of the year, Mike, reached out to us, emailed us on the day of his wedding and said that him and his now wife, Christine, pushed their honeymoon to come to her show.

Yeah, so like a week before the show, they got married. So the weekend before the show, we get an email subject line, I'm getting married today. We're like, well, we're going to open that. And he was like, we pushed our honeymoon back. They were going to Italy, pushed it back to come to the show.

It was great. But, yeah, we gave them like a gift on stage. Talk about being Jewish. I actually wanted to get them all this stuff. She wanted to get them plan B, and I refused to spend the money. on plan B. Okay.

The plan for the plan B was that I was going to buy, I just was like, we basically gave him like a honeymoon gift bag. So I was like, this will make it funny. I want every item in it to be funny. Plan B,

a no brainer. So I was like, I'm going to buy the plan B and obviously I was going to save the pill for you. I was never going to give them the plan B. Like I was never going to give a stranger $50 pill.

So I was going to use the box and just not have a pill in it. Just use it for comedic effect and give you the pill. because I knew you were going to need it at some point. I like that you know that I'm going to need it. I like how you really, you're like, you're going to need it. I'm my birth control.

You're the one that's, you always recycle your exes at weddings and you need plan B. That's your vibe. It's really thoughtful of you. You were so excited, by the way, about getting this gift. And I was like walking to the trip, like, how am I going to tell her in a nice way that I'm not going to spend $50 on plan B for these strangers?

And I was like, oh, that was never the plan. So Ashley printed out a copy of the box and wrapped it around a box. And it was perfect. It's, you know, I think that you're, you're more creative than I am. I never would have thought to do this. I couldn't have wrapped that box. It's the most proud I've ever been of you. So we gave them this, thank you, but I'm sorry, I didn't have a plan B for you.

But we gave them this gift on stage. And then at the meeting greet, they did the meeting greet. They were wonderful. Oh, they were so great. I loved him. I loved her. She was super smoke. And then at the meeting greet.

I was like, your husband's so great. She was like, you could fuck him. Like who says that? Whose response isn't just like, thanks or I know. She's just like, here's his dick. Yeah. And I was like, all right. I mean, I don't hate it.

He was so nice. He was so sweet. He was so cute. We loved it. Anyways, lots of fun shows coming up. Philly three nights. It's sold out, but I think Ticketmaster still has some resale tickets. If you guys want to come.

Yeah. New York, San Francisco sold out. And then Seattle and Portland, we sell some tickets left for you guys. Yeah. Super excited. These are really big shows in Seattle and Portland also, so they'll be a little more over the top and fun. Yeah, you know what happens when we have theaters? We really go over the top. So Seattle and Portland. And I really want to give an update, though, of something that happened in Miami. If you guys listen to the podcast, specifically the episode, Can You Be Friends with an ex? We talked about this girl that was having an issue with her fiance because he wanted to have his ex-girlfriend in their wedding as like a grooms woman. and she had been harassing this girl online. It was a whole thing.

And you guys got really invested in that. Tons of DMs and messages. So many DMs and messages about that. And so I'm walking out in the crowd in Miami. We were like, we do a lot of crowd stuff at our shows. And I was walking out. And I hear somebody like, Ashley, Ashley. And I'm like, what?

And it was this girl wearing a girl's got to eat shirt. And she was like, I'm the one from the episode. Remember she said she was from Saskatchewan or whatever? She was like, I'm the girl from the episode. Can you be friends with my husband? And I was like, wait, why? The whole crowd erupted. Freaking out.

I'm in the crowd. I'm like motioning to Raina. Like Raina, this is the girl. I can't believe. I grabbed her hand, dragged her up on stage. And so we have an update for you guys that she kicked her out. Yeah, the ex is no longer in the wedding.

The fiancee, the guy manned up and was like, you're not going to be in my wedding or even at the wedding. She's not even invited anymore. She's having a hard time. You know, also I want to sympathize. I mean, like, you know, Bernie Spears is at a mental health institution. this girl's all fucked up. You got to sympathize to people

that are going through some shit. But bottom line, she was a bully and she was terrible and she's no longer in the wedding. I'm just saying, you know, people would go through, they're going through some shit. Look, I mean,

she was clearly bullying and doing these crazy things because of our own issues. So I hate to just like totally bash her, but we still, you know, we're team bride. I don't think that we bashed. I like that you said that.

I mean, I think everybody's going through stuff in life and that's clearly why people are bullies is because they're going through shit of their own. But yeah, I'm just glad that like this girl's man did the right thing. And Charlene did the right thing. Booted her out of there.

And then when's the wedding? That ring, her ring was beautiful. She's beautiful. Yeah. I forget when the wedding is. But obviously we're going. We're going to officiate. We're going to have a Christian...

No September. A Christian Jewish wedding. We're going to officiate it. So I wanted to update you guys on that. Because people, I think people really, that was a crazy story. Yeah. And it all worked out just for the best so far. I don't know.

This girl could still crash the wedding. I would die to watch that. I can't wait to see it. I think she will. I can't wait to see it happening. She's showing up in a straight jacket. I'm sorry. Maybe one of my security guards from one of the venues

will come to security at the wedding. It'll be a girls got to eat themed wedding. But I do want to... You can put together like a whole security detail with all the guys in all these cities that you've had crushes on. Chicago and Tampa. You have like a full-blown men and black situation.

I could like really evaluate security guards in many, many cities. Chicago and Tampa have been my favorite. But before we get in the episode, I do want to give a shout out to where we stayed in Miami, the Shelburne Hotel. I've stayed there a bunch of times. I think this is your second time staying there? Yes. It's on Collins.

I love it. It's a fantastic hotel. The restaurants there are great. Pools, beautiful. I love the rooms. They've just been like updated and it's just, it's a really, really cool property. So we stayed there for a couple nights. I couldn't love it more.

If you guys are ever in Miami, definitely check it out. Yeah, I've been there. I remember that guy, the date of Miami took me on a date there. Never forget. So in the lobby. They have like a little cafe in the lobby. Okay, this is a funny thing. No, it's not a cafe.

It's root and bone, which is a restaurant that's down the street from this apartment. So I went to visit this guy in Miami and he's like, oh, this new restaurant opened in the Shelbourne and I'm going to bring you to it. I'm like, awesome. I'm thinking Miami Hotel restaurant, going to get some seafood, going to eat some tacos, whatever, going to get anything but southern comfort food. At a restaurant we already have in New York City. And that's what I'm saying.

You brought me to a restaurant that is literally in my neighborhood in New York City. And I want, like, again, Root and Bone is wonderful. They have fried chicken, like delicious southern comfort food. But I was like, this is hysterical. So we walked in. I was like, oh, yeah, I went on a date right there in this hotel lobby. But the restaurant is delicious. I thought we were going to have to check out of the hotel.

Ashley was so triggered. I wasn't triggered because, like, I miss him. I was triggered because, like, worst date ever. Right. Came to Miami. You brought me no place that's in my neighborhood. It's southern food. No, thank you.

Needless to say, that relationship is no longer going on. But, yeah. Obviously not. But yeah, I mean, when we travel all the time, it's really important that we like where we stay. And the Shelbourne is a beautiful hotel. We had a great experience. We did a fun photo shoot with the robes and the pizza. You can see it on our Instagram.

And then in Tampa, we stayed at the Tampa Marriott Waterside, which we just loved. I mean, it was so nice. I got to say, I love a Marriott so hard. You always know what you're getting. Giant room. It was kind of cloudy, like, rainy out. So I just like stayed in bed the day we got there and watched the Nate Bargatsy special on Netflix. I was like, this is my best life.

I ordered room service. I was like, I'm full Raina Greenberg right now. I used to like to get out and do stuff. And now I'm like, I'm living that rain at life. People where I was like, what do you do in all these new cities? I lay in bed. I watch catfish or a lawn order for you. And I order a room service.

Okay. What else is there to do in a hotel? Why is catfish on all day long in hotel rooms? Rana was watching catfish for like three days straight. You love it so hard. We never left the hotel room yesterday. Me, you and Melanie. We never left the hotel room.

We just sat in the bed and watched Catfish. For 12 episodes, it just never ended. But also, just to back up, I cannot recommend Nate Bargatsy's Netflix special enough. This is not an ad. This is just us. You guys clearly like comedy if you're listening to this. And that is one of the best specials I've ever seen. As a comedy special expert, I can't.

It's a documentary. I'm a documentary. I've seen all of them. Like, come at me, okay? I've seen all of them. It's one of my favorites of all times. God, it's so, so good. You guys, please, like Tennessee Kid on Netflix.

And I need to share something that happened that I found out about you right before we get into the topic for the day. Oh, damn. I thought that I was just going to blow right past this. Okay. So when we... Guys, I'm sorry. This guys, this is...

Please strap in for this. When we road trip, basically, like, someone drives and then the other person navigates and controls the music. That's how road trips work. I didn't know if you guys knew. So you drove all of Texas and all... of it. And I did the navigating in the music. Clearly, the music was fire. This time, I drove and we get in the car, like, when we first picked up the rental car in Tampa, and the songs that

you played were good. I'm like, oh, she's got like a really great Spotify playlist on blah, blah, blah, and then the next day she starts playing music. I'm like, the music was a little off. It was all over the place. And I was like, the music's not ideal. And so if you, because all I listen to is Latin rap music. It's great, but I can only take like two songs in a row. And so I go, can you just put on Spotify is today's top hits. That's a really solid playlist. It's great. And she goes, I don't know how to tell you this. I don't have Spotify. And I go, what are you using? iTunes or Pandora. What's going on over there? And she said, I use Rhapsody. And I was like, hold on a second. My brain is shuffling back to, I don't know, what, 2010? Yes. What, like,

what is it? Rhapsody. You guys know what? I just can't even remember. I remember hearing about it. So, long ago. I don't tell anybody. Okay, listen, I don't tell people about this ever. So I'm only telling you about this on this podcast. It's just, even when people like bring up Spotify playlist, I just pretend that I have Spotify, like it's my deepest, darkest secret other than I can't ride a bike. I just, I don't tell it. Look, I downloaded a Rhapsody like nine years ago. I downloaded all the music and made playlist. And I just thought like it's too hard to start over again. I can't start over. You really just been sweeping this under the rug. Like, I've probably said you, Spotify playlist, Spotify songs,

and you just haven't opened them, and you've been like, cool, thanks. I haven't told anybody. Such a secret. I haven't told me, my friend Melanie shares all these amazing Spotify playlist with me because we just both love Latin music so much. And like, I've never told her,

so this is me coming out to her too. I just, I just don't mention it. I just don't tell anybody. It just seems too hard to like restart. How can I start again? Okay, I don't know what to tell you. I feel like nobody's going to listen to this podcast anymore.

They've just turned it off. Like our podcast is on spot. Okay, guys, I'm going to download Spotify right now as we speak. As we speak. And I'm going to get Spotify. And we also should be doing more like girls got to eat playlist and Spotify. I know people really want that masturbation playlist. Anyway, enough about that.

Enough of your secrets out. I'm downloading it as we speak. Oh my God. You really are. She's down on as we speak. Raina has entered 2019. Barely. With a bank.

Stuck here, ride a bike. Okay. All right. Well, I'm really excited to introduce our guest for today in the house studio with us and Dewey. We have New York Times bestselling author of I Will Teach You to Be Rich. He has been featured on ABC News, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and has taught thousands to manage their personal finances and become rich.

He's going to teach us how to become rich. Also, very hot wife. I stalked her on Instagram last night. I'm a big fan of her as well. That's part of his credits. Yes. It's very important credit. Hot wife alert.

She's a stylist. Her name's Cassie. Welcome to the studio. We meet Catee. Thanks for having me. Thank you for being here. Rameit, say tea, right? Yeah, that was awesome.

The intro was great until you veered off into the white lane. No, that was the best intro I've ever gotten. Yeah. I'm sure she's going to listen and be like, 50% of his intro was me. Yeah. That's so great. It's your biggest claim to fame. Yeah.

She's going to be like, it sounds about right. Well, thank you for being here. We found you through our friend Lindsay who recommended you. We wanted it. I can't get enough about money, money episodes. I'm so excited. Yeah. She said that you would be a great person to talk to about money.

Yeah. and I'm a huge fan. I texted you and I was like, I'm like the only guy in the subway just laughing to himself. Everyone's looking at me like I'm a lunatic, but I love this podcast. I'm a huge fan. Thank you. Wow. We're excited. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Where are you from? Sure. Talk about your wife. Okay. I grew up in California, moved to New York about 10 years ago. I was living in San Francisco. It felt a little small to me. So I moved here. And I've been talking about money for like 15 years. But the thing that gets me really interested is the psychology of money. Why do we do the things we do? We all know that we probably should save and invest more.

But the kind of advice that we hear, it's so boring. Can't bring it with you when you die. Yeah. Or no, that's the bad advice. Don't spend money on lattes. Like, I will never tell you. Avocado toast. Yeah. Buy as many lattes as you want. Buy as much avocado toast as you want. There are better ways to get a rich life. And then, you know, you know, money for so many people is such a negative thing. And I think we can actually turn into something positive. Yeah. So that's why I'm excited to talk about this stuff. Yeah. So the first book came out, what, 10 years ago? Yeah. So I started my, my site, I will teach you to be rich. As a blog. As a blog. I was trying to teach my friends at college about personal finances because

I had taken my college scholarship money, which my parents said, hey, if you want to go to college, you better get some scholarships. And where did you go to college? I went to Stanford. Okay. And I come from a pretty big family. So my parents were very very, very, middle class. And they were like, you got to get some scholarships. So I did. And they wrote the first check to me. So I took that check as a 17-year-old kid. This is around 1999 or 2000, when everybody thought they were a genius at investing. And I put it in the stock market. And I lost half my money overnight. Yeah, I was like, so I thought I was so smart. And then I wake up and I'm like, oh. Oh my gosh. And I started, I said, you know what, I better learn how this money stuff works.

but at the same time as a teenager though that's just impressive right so you're on your way to your shitty college and you lose happier money yeah I'm like all right so what's next I'm sitting there reading these books now it's kind of weird as an 18 year old kid to be reading personal finance books but I'll tell you this I read these books and you know when you read you know that story the emperor has no clothes

it's like everyone's saying one thing and you just know it's not true all these books are saying the same thing they're like keep a I'm like, nobody wants to keep a budget. Stop spending money on lattes. I don't want to. I want to go out. I want to have a good life. And at the same time, I was learning about psychology and I was learning about human behavior. And I'm looking around at my friends and none of them want to take this boring money advice. And so I started to develop my own philosophies on money. So my philosophies are things like spend extravagantly on the things you love as long as you cut costs mercilessly on the things you don't. So I start trying to teach my friends at college.

Turns out college kids don't really give a shit. I just want to drink beer. Like, leave me alone. Fine. So, but I was, maybe I was just this cocky kid, but I felt like the world needed to hear what I had to say. What does 18 year old have to say?

Yeah. And I'm like, come on, guys. Nobody cared. So I just started a blog. And I wrote this blog as if it was just us hanging around, having a drink talking about money. Stuff that we would actually want to talk about.

Like, we all have a friend who's a cheap tipper. Right. Why do they do that? What's the psychology here? I love it so much. Yeah, like, what do you do if you make some money? What are you supposed to do with it?

How do you pay off debt faster versus the average stuff that people tell you? And I started writing this blog. After a while, I got a bunch of readers. I treated it like a laboratory. So I would test different approaches. And after a few years, I had a system that really worked. So if you were a man or woman, if you made this much or that much, and if you worked in tech or not, this system worked.

And it allowed me to spend about an hour a month on my money. That's it. And it just worked. So I wrote a book. The book did really well. It became a New York Times bestseller. And from there, I basically built up the business. And now we have courses on our site for careers.

If you want to negotiate your salary, you want to find a dream job or start a business. We teach all that stuff on our site. Okay. And I just was thinking of this when you were talking. What were you majoring at Stanford? Were you doing finance? No. I took a major called STS, which is science, technology, and society.

Okay. And then I did my grad work there as well. So basically technology and psychology. Okay. That's why I love this. You can use technology to help you with your money, but no app is going to solve any problems unless you understand your inner psychology when it comes to money. Right.

It's interesting you said that because a lot of we asked last night we put a call out to our listener is what questions do you guys have? And a lot of people said, what are the best apps for? And I just, it's a great point. Wrong question to ask. It's a great point. I just love everything you're saying so much. I do pretty well for myself.

Obviously, I've ebbed and flowed. You know, I've been broke when I went on my own, but I've never kept a budget. I've never done any app. I've never done anything. I've literally never done it. And that's not for everybody. But I just, those words would like trigger me. I'm like, I'm not going to do this.

I know I'm not going to do it. I know I'm not going to have a budget. I know I'm not going to check these apps and all this stuff. And so I think you're right. You have to like dig deep and be like, okay, what is my lifestyle and how can I figure this out? Yeah. I like what you said too.

Those words trigger you. For so many people, they hear the word budget or they hear the word 401k and all these negative emotions come up. Yeah. Like I should be doing. the word guilt. And then after a while, they're just like, I'll do it another day, which is never.

And I want to totally flip that. It's like, hey, instead of talking about money only when it's a bad thing, let's actually start with what we want to do. Like, what's a dream vacation you want to go on? Okay, perfect. Let's start there. How do we work towards that? And once you start with something you love,

then you can get to the other stuff like your 401K. Yeah. So for me, like what I did to save money is I don't go to the gym because it's a money saving thing. I just, that's why you don't work out. It's definitely, and then I steal cable from my other friends. Oh, my God. Hold on, let me write this down.

I like this. Yes, let's like talk about how we see. And then I took a curing from a friend's apartment who won it in some kind of raffles, so I don't buy lattes anymore. I just do cake cups every morning. Okay, good. Yes, theft. I mean, it's pretty much theft.

And I'm getting fat because I don't work out. Do you pay for an HBO password? No, I use this guy I used to sleep with. I use his moms. I pay for HBO. I don't know. I love what you said. Like, if you really enjoy that latte, you get it. Why should you have to be like depriving yourself of that? Like, I hate that mindset of like, do you know how much you spend on Starbucks? Oh my God. Starbucks makes me happy, okay? Can I just tell you? I love avocado toast. Okay. I know most of the experts who recommend this stuff, the budgets and I'm like, you don't follow your own advice. Right. This is insane. Let's be honest. Yeah. So I think today, I think one of the problems is people don't really understand their own finances. I certainly don't and how to budget and how to, create wealth. And so having those conversations with a partner is like terrifying because you're like, I don't even know what I'm doing. And so I think we'll wrap this episode in mostly is like how to

have these discussions with the significant other about spending, lending, budgeting together. One person makes more money. How do you discuss that kind of stuff? So we got great questions from people. So yeah, I think most of our listeners are sort of at an age where they have a significant other and they're having those conversations that don't know how to. And I mean, I'm really triggered by those conversations. I don't want somebody to tell me how to spend my money. You know? Have you had it happen? Ashley and I both. Well, I've had two pretty significant relationships in the last couple years,

and I had sort of polar opposite. I had one where I made significantly more, I made significantly more than him. And so that created a lot of problems, a lot of like ups and downs in his life. He sort of didn't have, he was in the service industry, so didn't really know how much he was going to make.

We were younger also, so you just are making less in general. So that caused a lot of problems. And I also certainly did not know how to have a conversation with a person about like lending money to them or how do I budget for the two of us, et cetera. So that was a huge issue. The other serious relationship I had in my later 20s and 30s was somebody who made pretty much the exact same amount of money as me. So money was never an issue. It never came up. I knew exactly what he made. He knew exactly what I made. So very

polar opposite kind of situations. And I guess actually should, you know, talk about what she's been, what her situation was. Yeah, Ray and I just had a similar situation where, you know, we were we made more than the person we were dating. And my ex that I was pretty serious with, it was just, it was weird because it was like, we started dating when I was just making more and more and more. Like, it just was like, he got me at that point

where like I just really, you know, I'm not over here saying I was getting rich, but things just started to hit for me. And he was just, he was at a point where he was just still kind of irresponsible and it was tough. It was like, it was at first, you know, you're in love and everything was fine, but I still was just like,

man, he just doesn't have his shit together when it comes to money. And it definitely caused problems in the relationship. And I dated someone else pretty seriously off and on for years that he was fine with money, but he was cheap. So it was like, and he was just so. Nothing worse than cheap people. Yeah, no spontaneity, just like a penny pincher type of guy. And it was such a turn off to me.

Yeah. But I mean, I don't know where do you really want to start. Like I guess like spending habits? Yeah, maybe like at the beginning of a relationship where you meet somebody that sort of like doesn't have a financial plan at all. They're spending like crazy and they have like wild spending habits. Like is that a person you even want to get into a relationship with? So it's funny.

I've talked to my friends about would they get married to somebody who had a ton of debt? Like let's say $100,000. And consistently the answer is, well, it depends what kind of debt. Yeah. What the debt is. So is it like a student loan for say medical school? That's a no-brainer, right? It's basically an investment.

They're going to become a doctor. and they're probably going to do very well. Fine. Is it student loan debt for a major that may not pay off financially, or is it just like credit card debt because they couldn't manage? There's big differences there. Oh, absolutely. So I would say that, first off, I think everybody starts from a different place, right? Some people grew up with two parents, some did not.

Some people grew up knowing about money, most did not. And I think we just have to account for that, right? Not everyone's going to come in with a 401K and Roth IRA max. stop since they were 20. That's okay. But my suggestion for people as they get into a relationship is to start talking about it. The funny thing is the only time most people talk about money is when it's a bad thing. They bottle it up. Conflict arises. And then they blow up and they're like, oh my God, I can't believe you spend this much. And that's a recipe for disaster because what should happen and what you'll notice really wealthy people do, there's huge differences

in the habits of wealthy people and everyone else. Wealthy people talk about it all the time. They talk about money over dinner. They talk about articles in the New York Times. What do you think about this? It's a common thing. So by the time they get to a conflict, they've already addressed it 10 steps back. That's the first thing is to actually talk about it. And maybe we can talk about how to have those conversations. Absolutely. Because I think what we were going to get to after that is, you know, do you ask your partner what they make and how do you ask them? And do you share what you make? So yeah, I think this is like a natural progression into that. I mean, that happened to me. So with your wife. Yeah. Okay. So we were, we sat down. We were. We sat down. We were.

still dating and we were, we knew we were getting very serious. Like it was the point where we were about to kind of take the next step to me proposing to her. And we literally sat down, we set a meeting on Google calendar, okay? And I came with, like, she came with an agenda and I came because I was like, I got to talk about a few things and she did too. So we talked about how many kids do we want to have, if at all? Where do we want to live? You know, financial stuff. And after that meeting, we sort of, it opened up the door, right? Open the floodgates. And she had asked me, she had read, she asked me some questions about money.

I gave her my book. I'm like, read this book first. Then we can talk about it. She was like, you know what? I'm busy. Okay, I have stuff to do. I know. Then she came back.

I'm like, did you read chapter seven? She's like, it's not for me. Okay. I got other stuff. I didn't really like that joke that you made. So, so, so she asked me and so I said I would help her with some of her financial stuff. And after that, she actually said to me, she said, you know what? I kind of feel.

feel uncomfortable. And I was like, why? She's like, I feel vulnerable because I opened up and told you all about my money. How much I earned. She's like, I opened it all up. She's like, I don't even know how much you make. And at this point, we were engaged. So you've been together for, I mean, you talked before about you being in five years at the point, right? So, so I didn't take my own advice, which was that my advice is when you're about to get more serious. And that could be either you're going to move in together. I think that's a natural one for a lot of people these days or you're sort of like you know this is committed you're on your way to something really serious have the conversation and so we opened it up and we said like okay here's how much i earn

here's how i think about money here's savings here's what i do for investing and it was a lot of information to take it once so i you got to kind of stagger it out but to talk about what money like how much debt do we have how much do we earn that kind of question and then i think this is the part that people forget. What does it mean for us? So we sat down and we actually had one of the best conversations of our lives, which was what kind of life do we want to lead? Yes. Amen. I think that's a thing. That's what I realized with my, the ex I said that was kind of cheap. I was like, we don't want the same type of lifestyle. Like what was the difference? I guess cheap is a bad word. He was just very frugal and just like hold on to all your money, like not a lot of vacations, things like that.

Like just it wasn't, we want different lifestyles in terms of where we wanted to live also. Like, I'm just like a city girl and he's not. But just I was like, we're, not, this will be forever, we'll be dealing with this. You know what I mean? This guy that just wants to like live really more simple and frugal. Yeah, I know that. And I know a lot of frugalistas, they don't like me very much because I'm like, I'm like frugality matters. Like I grew up in a frugal family and I think there's a value in being frugal. But I'll give you a couple of examples. So there are certain things I just don't care about. The hand soap that I use, it's the cheapest. Some of the food we eat, we just, we just get the cheapest one. It doesn't really matter to us for some of the food.

but when we travel, we like to travel really well. And so there are certain things that I say I love to spend extravagantly on it. And I don't care how much it costs. But other things, I'm like, this doesn't matter to me. Like the cheapest is the best. That's like my dad. Like I remember my dad, he would like buy jeans at the dollar store

and he had a Rolex. It was just like, what the fuck? My dad too goes to Sam's Club for all of his shopping. Well, parents, suburban parents love Sam's Club. Jeans at Sam's Club. I'm like, what are doing, man? You weren't your whole life. Costco jeans are nice.

Is it Kirkland? No, but it was funny because my dad was like, he just loved, he's a watch guy. Like he loves watches and cars. Jeans from the, he, we can't remember he came home. I got these jeans at Dollar General. We were like, what? And you drove home in your Jaguar with your Dollar General jeans. Your dad has a plane on the property, okay?

Your dad walks out his front door. There's a plane sitting on the lawn. And he's in his Dollar General back. To be clear, my dad bought that plane when he was in his 20s. Like he, you know, he was like saved and like, yeah, I think they spend it on things like traveling and living well and things like that. But I interrupted you before, I think. No, this, this thing about your ex, who is kind of cheap slash frugal, did you ever ask

him how he grew up and what his parents' relationship with money was? No, and to be completely honest, like we were kind of off and on for years, like long distance here and there. I just kind of knew deep down. I always wasn't going to like marry him. I don't know. I realized that and then I finally had to end things. But I could tell they were just military dad. They moved all over the place. You know, just simple middle class life. Like I feel like they were probably the same. You know, save your money. Don't spend extravagantly. Like that was the vibe I got for sure. And that's a pattern for a lot of people growing up in America. If you think about the money messages that we receive growing up, it's almost puritanical. It's like save your money.

save it for a rainy day. We don't talk about money in this family, money in politics. And then there's very little talk about actually growing money or investing. The only thing people in America say is buy a house, which, by the way, for everyone listening, please don't believe the hype. Buying a house is not always the best investment. In fact, a lot of times it's the worst investment. Please, you can just Google my name, buying a house.

You can learn about this shit. Stop with the propaganda, realtor agency. Oh my God. I'm going to go off. No, people like will come from me. They're like, you need to own a property. I'm like, what? That's dumb.

My mom, I just got a new apartment, the amount of conversations I've had to have with it. She's like, why don't you just buy? Well, first of all, New York City, you need to be liquid cash for 20%. And I don't have $400,000 of liquid cash just sitting around. And I'm sitting there trying to justify this. And I'm like, bitch, I'm in my 30s.

Who asked you what I should be doing with my money? Have I asked you for a dime in 15 years? No. Right. Get out of here. I'm like in the gap. I'm trying to like reason with her, but why I'm not buying her.

property for $2 million. All right. This is what you do from now. Everyone listening who gets pressure from your parents. I already know what your parents are saying, do it for the tax deduction. They don't even know what a tax deduction is. They're not building any more land. That's not how real estate works. They don't understand any of the numbers. Just give them chapter nine in my book. Just give it to shove it in their face and say, come back and talk to me once you read this book. Right. But your wife won't even read the book. No, she finally read it. At least that's what she told me. Look, I just want to say this about real estate and

any other investment. There's a lot of myths when it comes to money. And because people think that they have to become this financial expert, they just listen to these fables that their family tells them. Your family doesn't know anything about personal finance. Why are you getting your advice from them? Read a book. Even if it's not mine, go read a good book. So these messages that we receive, save taxes. Oh my God, they're trying to take my tax money. You know what I think? I'm lucky to pay more in taxes because that means I'm earning a lot more. Right. So there's these messages. I think if you were to talk to any of your friends who behave a little weird around money, you would find that almost 100% of the time their parents acted really peculiarly.

Absolutely. Oh, of course it comes. Yeah, it comes from how you were raised and talked about money growing up. I want to shift gears a little bit. I want to talk about how exactly you talk to your partner about finance. Because I think a lot of people don't really know how to discuss money. And things like debts and loans can be super embarrassing just to talk about. So I want to give people the verbiage if you can on sort of how to approach those conversations.

Yeah. A lot of people just don't have the knowledge. So you feel silly, you know? So I think there's power in admitting what you don't know. It's okay to go to your partner and say, you know what? I really want to have this conversation about money and I'd like to talk to you about it. I have to admit, I'm not sure I know all the answers here, but I would love to go through this together with you. And I'd like to start by talking about my finances.

some of it I think is pretty good. Like I've been pretty good at saving. I feel good about that. Some of it I'm not so sure about. Like I have a little bit of debt. I'm not sure if I'm paying it off at the right amount or not. But I'd love to talk about it. And I'd love to start with me.

And then maybe we can talk about you if you're okay with that. So notice what I did in that. You can adapt it for your own use. But I'm starting by admitting what I know and what I don't know. I'm super confident that, hey, I feel good about my savings. I think it's important. A lot of people downplay what they're good at. No, say I'm proud of what I have.

have in my savings. That's great. But I also admitted, hey, there's some things I'm not really sure about. Would you be willing to talk it over with me? Now, what if your partner doesn't know? Probably your partner doesn't know. That's a good opportunity for you to say, you know, let's watch a YouTube video or let's listen to this podcast episode and let's go through a couple of things and look at whether we're saving the right amount. That's the place to start. Probably what's going to happen is there's a lot of emotional stuff underneath the surface. So I'll give you an example. on Instagram, I get the craziest stories from my readers. It's absolutely insane the stories I hear.

I got people who are making a million dollars a year living check to check. I have people who are in like $250,000 of student loan debt. All people, I think most people are mostly the same. So that's really important to know is that if you've been in a situation, there's a way out. And I always believe with money there is a way out and you can get not only just to zero, you can get to growth. So I got this DM from this woman and she goes, can you please tell me how to talk to my partner about his overspending habits? Okay.

And this is what I wanted to get. Yes, I wanted to get into this. Like, before you even know if you're serious, like before you, before moving in, you're still just dating and you don't like their habits. Like that's what I, because like, let's just, I think a lot of our listeners will relate more to that. Like they're like, I'm not at that point yet. I'm moving in marriage engagement.

But like, I just don't like, and I found myself that. I was like, I can tell this guy is just not go with money. but I'm falling in love with him and I don't know how to deal with this. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you broach, you can't tell an adult man or an adult woman don't do that. Who's not your financial partner at that point. But like, yeah, if you tell somebody that, they will fly off the handle.

Yeah, but really that's the wrong level of conversation to be having. Okay. If you are having a conversation where you're saying, you spend too much buying coffees every day, you've already lost the battle and you don't even know it. Okay. Because you're down here in the weeds and you're telling them, you're lecturing them, about some minute thing that probably cost $10 or $100 and really what you need to go is go one level up

and say how do you think about money? Do you think money is something that like some people say easy come, easy go. So they grew up and money was always gone. So as soon as they get it, they want to spend it. And that's what I'm saying. Like this guy, his idea of success was like, I can pay all my bills and like that's really it.

Exactly. You don't have a savings account. Yeah. So this is like you see this with a lot of people who grew up in poverty-stricken households. They rarely had money. So when they had it first thing... spend it. They go spend it because it's not going to be there tomorrow. So it's actually very rational.

So you're sitting over here and not you, but other people are like, oh my God, you make me so mad because you spend too much on shirts or jeans or whatever. That's not the real problem. The real problem is one level up. What is your attitude towards money? Then you have the opposite end of the spectrum, cheap people who drive me insane too. And it's like, you know, you wouldn't believe how many people write me. They're like, I make like good money. They're like, I spend an hour a day in Excel like tweaking things. And I just. can't seem to spend. And they don't say, you know, I'm being disciplined. They say, I feel guilty if I spend anything. So they have their own problem at a high level. What I would start with these conversations, I would not attack them and say, hey, I notice you spent too much on whatever. I would say, how do you think about money? And they're going to be like, what do you mean? You say, like, if you fast forward five years, like, where do you think you are financially? And people will come right out and tell you. They'll be like, well, you know, if I make 25K a year and I'm, I don't have any debt, I'm doing fine. Take them at their word. That's what they think success is. Other people will

say, you know, I really want to be making $100,000 a year and I'd like to be able to buy X, Y, Z bag, or take a trip to this place. Also fine, but like take them at their word. Now, the next question is, okay, have you thought about how to do that? Like, let's talk about a plan because anyone can dream, oh, I want to make a million dollars a year. What's your plan? That's how you start those conversations. Okay. And then when it doesn't align, I mean, I think that's the challenge. You're like, okay, so we are totally different. You get money and you spend it.

You know, I'm more of a, I'm not a penny pincher. I'm better about saving. I like to spend too. Like I want to be very clear. So, yeah, what do you do when you're just like, it doesn't align? I don't know. So that's where you really, that's where it gets tough. You have to have the conversation.

And there's really just a few routes you can go. So the first is to say, you know, I understand that your vision of success is you basically are comfortable making 25K or whatever the number is and you're okay with having credit card debt. And if that's not what you are, come out and say that. I would say, you know what, I have to tell you, and I feel a little uncomfortable saying this, but I think about money differently. Like, I don't want to be having a household income of 40K total five years from now. I want to have money in savings. I want to be taking a trip and staying at these types of places. And I don't want to have to count, can I afford this appetizer? I don't want that.

and then see what they say. If they say, well, like, I don't want to do that. I'm not going to work for that. Then that right there, you have a decision. Either you have to start thinking about whether this person is right, or you have to change your expectation. In my experience, it's really, really hard for people to lower their expectations of what they envision their life to be. Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, if you are earning the kind of money you're earning, you should really ask yourself if you're looking for a financial partner. doesn't mean they have to earn the same or even as much, but are they going to be additive to your life? Or are you going to feel like you are always carrying them? Again, notice I'm not saying that you always have to earn more than your partner.

That's not the case. I earn more than my wife, but we're partners together in different ways. Right, which is the goal. So we were talking about being equal with your partner in a relationship, but I think this brings us to another side of that conversation when that is not really the case that kind of goes into what I was thinking about earning more because with this person that I was with,

I was saying this earlier, but one time he like, we were fighting, because we always fought. And he was like, I don't even know what you make. And I was like, what? Like, I couldn't imagine telling him what I made. Because I just, that's so crazy to me. And so I think.

Well, why couldn't you imagine it? Because I made more. And it was like, it just felt really strange to me because I kind of like worked less, made more. and then I don't really know exactly what he made what I made. Let's just say I made double, for example, or anybody listening hypothetically. I'm a woman.

I make double what my man partner makes. Like, that's tricky. Why? Well, that's why we want to discuss it. To me, I'm like, and then what? Like, we go out to dinner and is he expecting me to pay for more things? Like, I think that dynamic is very tricky, and that's kind of why I wouldn't discuss it with you.

And I'm like, it's, I think women that make more are terrified of these conversations. Super tricky conversation. And I think they're like men, we can get into men, gender roles in another episode. But, you know, I think for centuries men have taken care of women and have been told since day one, you grow up, you get a job, you get a wife, you take care of her. But women were not raised like this. And now we're also at a time in the world where women are making more money than men sometimes. And so I certainly was not brought up to have these conversations.

My mom never made more than my dad made. And my mom never said, like, God, God forbid, you make more money than you're man. Like, you know, I just never knew how to have those conversations. conversations and I, the relationship I was in that was similar to Ashley's, it started to be, I'm sure, incredibly emasculating and incredibly insulting to my partner when I would, I mean, I just paid for stuff all the time because I would rather do it with him than not do it at all. But then like, when you are constantly bringing that up, that makes a person feel like shit. And I didn't have to have those conversations. I totally agree that it's new. I mean, you don't see too many books

written these days saying when he earns more than she does, because it's been happening for You're ridiculous. That's how that works. But I hear every day from women who are earning not just a little, but a lot more than their partners. And there are a unique set of problems that come around with that. I mean, there are words that I hear from my high earning female readers that I never hear from my male readers. Words like emasculated, mothering. I feel like I'm mothering him.

And like disgusted. So these are like really negative. Just listen to how. emotionally loaded these words are. Mothering, that's not what you want to do with a partner. No. So. Well, some partners want that. Right.

Like, I mean, I'm not. Some guys want a mommy. I like, I like, I'm not here being a millionaire, but like, I don't mind dating somebody that makes less money than me. I just don't know how to have the conversation. I'm not like a super materialistic person. I will happily have a partner in like a creative field that doesn't make as much money as me, but like I don't know how to have the discussion.

Okay. So let's talk about how to have the conversation. But first, let's put. pretend you have the conversation. What's best case outcome for you? I don't know. I think ideally I would like somebody who spends the same as me on what we do together. Okay. So like, oh, like you're, yeah, yeah. I'd like to come to some kind of decision that was just like, you know, we're going to split everything. But it's tough for me if splitting everything on his level means that we're going to only fast food restaurants, you know, because I think that I've worked my whole life. I'm in my 30s.

hopefully by the time you're in your 30s, you're not just doing that. And, you know, I don't want to only stay at a dollar in when we travel. I want to stay in a nice hotel. I've worked my whole life to do this. So I think that for me, ideally we come to a point where we're splitting everything. But if splitting everything means downgrading a lot, then I don't know, maybe you don't be with that person. I don't know. I feel the exact same way as right now. I just want to press you on this because I really want to get your vision of best case. Well, best case is for making the same in life. I don't know. I dated somebody that mean less than me years ago. So I don't know, like, if I would do it again. But I'm like,

you can't help who you love also, you know. So sometimes, sometimes love isn't enough. So what do people say what their best case is? So most people have never thought about what best cases. So hence, it's no surprise that these little expenses eat at them. And they're like, why do I have to eat at this place? I don't really want to eat at. And they never have the conversation. It just builds up. It's no surprise that we can't have the conversation. because most of us have never sat down and said, what is my best case? And you have to be really honest with yourself

about what your best case is. Some people come to the conclusion that best case, like you said, is I want to actually be with somebody who earns as much as I do. And that is perfectly okay to say. I have a friend of mine who told me that she said, you know, when I was dating,

I didn't pick my partners based on how much money I made, but now that I have kids, I see how money plays a role in relationships and it happens when you have kids. She said, can I send my kids to this activity? Can I give them equipment? That's when money matters in a relationship.

And she's like, I have to tell you now, I would, if I had to ever get married again, money would be a core part of the apartment. That was pretty bold to say. But I think it's okay to say. And I want to like to, like we talked about this, I got a year ago on our episode, just stigmatizing, wanting to be with somebody that makes money, you know, on the same level as you, you know? So that's interesting.

So let me tell you my perspective is a guy. When I was dating and when I made. my wife, money was, like, the way I thought about it was, I'm good with money. Like, I want to find somebody who is, has a job or has a good job. They have some savings. Like, they're, they're on track. But whether it was, they're making 50K or 150K or whatever the number is, was just pretty much irrelevant to me. Like, as long, because the money part, I felt like, I'm good at that in this relationship. I can help with that, right? But there are other parts, like, I'm not necessarily the nicest guy. I try to have some compassion in my life. My wife has really helped me become a lot

warmer and more thoughtful. And so there are lots of different ways that I thought about my relationship. Money was an important part of it, but it was one part. And I think there were other parts to me that made us partners. So that's just from the guy perspective. Right. And guys have been talking about this for a long time. Because for a long time, they couldn't walk around saying, I want my partner to earn the same as I do. Because that just that possibility wasn't really real for a lot of people. Right. Well, I mean, Raina and I can sit here and be like, you know, what do you do when you're a woman that makes more? But I think in most cases, it's probably the man makes more just because statistically. So I always wonder about that with men, you know, like I have plenty of guy friends that make a lot of money and their partners make okay money, but they pay for most things. You know, they pay for most dinners, most vacations because they make more money and they want to go, you know? And so it's not really an issue. But I always wonder like, do you you feel a little taken advantage of? You know, like, do you feel like you get this in return? I guess traditionally the men pay for this and the woman's a mother, you know, but you're starting to see a lot

more relationships where there's, that's not even going to happen. If it happens, it's far down the road. Yeah. So it's basically like this, this man's kind of paying for this further relationship. And I always wonder if that causes issues too. They start to feel taken advantage of. The woman starts to feel like weird about that too. I don't know. Well, I think, I have a lot of friends in that situation. And that's why it was so important for me after learning from them to have the conversation before we were engaged, down to the level of like, who's making dinner every night? And like who's going to the grocery store or somebody has to get... It's like a contract. We say this all the time. It's not sexy. It's like it has to be talked about.

Exactly. Like when you when you see people who are five, 10, 15 years into a marriage, just day to day. It's not that data, of course they love each other. But day to day is like a partnership. It's like a business relationship. And I'm not. saying it's not romantic, of course it is. But it's like, who's taking the kids or who's going to get the laundry detergent tonight or whatever the case? And like, let's get serious and honest about that. These are conversations to have. So I would say for us, we decided that we sat down and we put the numbers like on a spreadsheet. And oh my God, like I thought it was just simple to put the numbers on a spreadsheet because I've been thinking about money for like 20 years. But money means different things to

different people. So we had to have some really tough conversations about money, like how much do we want in a savings account? Or what if, you know, my wife runs her own business? What if my business isn't contributing as much each month? And so we had to have those conversations. I think that if you get to the point where you're like, you shouldn't have spent that much on that purse or you shouldn't have spent that much on dinner, that's a huge red flag. You're arguing at the wrong level. You're way too deep in the weeds. So move it up. And that is, I think, what kind of life do we want to lead? I'll give you an example. To shrink it down, if you're sitting with your partner and you say, what do we want to do this year financially? And I'm not talking about

investment accounts or anything. I'm saying, what do we want to do? Do we want to take a road trip to Maine? Do we want to go to Europe for a week or whatever? Do we want to go home and visit our families? Start there. Start with something you both want to do. And then say, how do we get there? If you can start with money on something you love, then you can worry about all the other stuff second. But when people are like eight months to a year into a relationship, I think that conversation is really hard because it's like, if somebody said to me like, where do you want to be? I'd be like, fuck you. It's not your business. Like, we're talking about the tip at this restaurant. That's what we're talking about right now. You know, when you're not really a we financially,

maybe when you, I like what you said, you know, think like what your ideal scenario is. If you're never going to get there with a person, then maybe you don't be with that person. But I just, I like what you said about whether of talking about it like, hey, just, if you're with somebody that long and if you're comfortable, you're in love. I think you should be able to be like, hey, I'm just, what do you, how do you, how is, what was your, you're already talked about your family at that point. How do you feel about money? How does your family structure, how you brought up play into this? Like, I think that's a healthy conversation to have and then you have more information. What I think that like, people just are terrified to have these conversations because people,

you know, desperately maybe they want to be in a relationship, they want to get married, whatever. And they just literally are like, we'll figure it out when we're married. Yeah. That happened to this couple that I know, my guy friend of mine, they're his best guy friend. He's like, we're starting to really wonder about Chad. and his wife. Chad. What a great name. Sorry, I won't, Chad.

It's not that far off from his real name. Chad sounds rich. He basically, he's rich. He makes a ton of money. He married this woman and he wants to be a dad. He wants to have a family. He figured in his head, I'm the breadwinner and she will be a mother and will have a family. And that was like the life I think that he thought that they were going to have.

And she has been putting off the child bearing and she's just like not working and she's just wanting to take vacations all the time. And they're starting to be like, this is not what he's. signed up for. And I think like that's such a conversation to have like you can be a man and be like, I'm happy to pay for all these things, but I do want a family. So what do you feel about that? Because you want to find out if you have a woman that just wants to be a stay at home wife and not work. I think that happens. I think men are terrified of that. Men and women are terrified having these conversations and they don't want it to be weird. And so they'd rather go 40 years of their life. Being resentful. I'm like, have one conversation, please. Okay. But you said,

that women use verbiage like emasculating and being taken, things like that. What's the verbiage that men use? Resentful, spoiled. Those are the negatives. Okay. Okay. I'm just talking about negatives. Yeah, that's what I mean. Because women have a different problem with making more money than men do. So I'm just curious, like what men say about that. That's what they say. Resentful, entitled, spoiled. Both of these sides, men and women, can be solved by having the conversation up front. I also want to say, let's say it comes to tipping. And let's say one person, tips like 30% and the other tips like 10%.

Let's just say, sometimes you just have to like say, you know what? Is this the hill I want to die on? Like everything else about this relationship is good. This cheap guy leaves or cheap woman, whatever, leaves 10%. You know, I'll slip an extra 10 bucks on the way out

and we're good to go. Whatever. Like not everything has to be the biggest battle. Pick your battles. Yeah. But there's a couple things that matter. Like, is somebody going to stay home with the kids or not? That's a big one.

Who's going to, how are we going to eat food every night? That's a big one. Yes, exactly. So I just want to tell people, it's actually normal to talk about this stuff. And instead of, people are nervous because they're already insecure about their own money. Most people don't even know how money works for themselves. And then they have to compound it by asking their partner and they feel like they're going to put their partner on the spot. But if you open it up by saying, hey, I want to talk to you about a couple questions I have about money. I've been thinking about this, but I don't really know what direction to go. What do you think about?

How do you feel about money? Suddenly it becomes both of us. talking about it, even if you're just dating. Yeah. How do you feel about money? I love that. I think it's such a good tool. Yeah, I think so too. We wanted to talk about lending money. Yes. So like the reason why this came up is our listeners definitely asked a lot about it. But like, yeah, I had a situation where I lived with somebody for a lot of years and I loved him very much. We were engaged, we'd get married, whatever. I don't know. He had ups and downs. And I would sort of say to myself, well, I'm going to have times in my life where I have ups and downs.

You know, I'm going to need to probably borrow money from him. And I gave him like a little bit of money. Like how much? She's like 25 grand. No, no, no, I never. It amounted by the time we broke up, but it amounted to like $15,000. That's kind of a lot of money. Yeah.

It was a lot of money and I was 27 years old. So also like I did, that was the most amount of money. It was significant. Can I borrow some money before I leave? Yeah. You're going to teach me how to be rich. Yeah, that's not how this works. I gave him a little bit and then I gave him a little bit more.

It was like this slippery slope. And then it turned into, he wasn't paying me back. And there was no plan to pay me back, which you will probably tell me was a terrible mistake. But I just saw the person that I love in pain and in a situation and I wanted to help. And then it started to be like he would take a cab home after work. And then I'm this bitchy wife where I'm like, people that owe their fiance, $15,000 can't afford cabs home. And he, take the train, yeah. He liked to smoke weed.

He would buy weed. And I would like freak out. and he would buy weed because people that own money do not buy drugs. Sorry, that's not like a thing that we do in this family. But I'm sure it was incredibly emasculating. I'm sure he did not want to borrow the money to begin with and then he had whatever. Anyway, so how do you handle those situations? Yeah, don't lend. I get that the intention was good. So you wanted to help this person you loved. I totally get that. What happened was you kicked the can down the road and instead of having the difficult conversation up front, you kicked a can down the road, you lent $15,000,

and you became incredibly resentful. And that makes perfect sense. It would have driven me insane if I lent people, somebody money in there, taking taxis everywhere. It doesn't make any sense to me. But you have to understand that when you are in debt, people behave in very peculiar ways. They don't behave like you would think they would. I would be like, of course I would get on the train, but that's not how people act. So I would have the tough, conversation up front. I would not lend. I would say, look, I totally understand you're in a tough situation. I'd love to help in a couple of ways. Like, I can introduce you to somebody who knows about money. Or we can talk about XYZ. I can't lend you the money. I know it seems like it would

help, but it would create a lot of problems for us down the road. And I care about you too much to do that. Right. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. But, okay, so say that you do it anyways. and I mean, I just, I'm sure I would assume statistically it happens more with men lending their woman partner money. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know too many people who have lent it, but I know that they've done stuff like you don't have to chip in for the rent this month.

Yeah, not exactly handing over a check, but more just, yeah, stuff like that. Yeah. And some of it racked up because of that also. Like I just paid the rent a couple months. But like, yeah, you owe me that money. Yeah. So, okay, so we're in the stair where we've done it. would you say like day one, I'm sure that the advice is don't do it, but like, do you have a payback plan from day one?

Always always have a, what happens if this doesn't work out plan. And this is just part of the conversation. Again, I hope everyone can hear that I'm trying to destigmatize these money conversations. So when I have these conversations, including with my wife, I'm like, okay, let's talk about it. Let's talk about what the best case scenario is. Let's talk about worst case scenario. Like what happens if this just doesn't work and let's write it down. I know it seems weird to people. Oh, it's so awkward. Guess what? It's less awkward than getting resentful for like months and months after. So what I would do is I would say if you happen to do this ahead of time,

I would say, let's talk about a payback period. If you already lent the money and now you're in it, I would say, you know what? I totally understand that things are still tough. I'm happy that I've lent you the money, but I do want to make a plan on what that payback is. And the key here is you can't just create the plan for them.

They have to put skin in the game. so you have to say, you tell me, what does this payback plan look like? And they're going to, of course, not want to do it. Nobody wants to do that. They're going to be like, you tell me. No, you tell me. And they might say, oh, how about three years? No, that's a little long. What could you do to get it to six months? Yeah. That's how you do it? Right. Okay. I like that. Do you see situations where a woman makes more and how do they work it out in terms? You asked us our ideal scenario, but I don't really know if we really talked about like, how do you get there? You know, like, I see it all the time. splitting stuff. Are you doing the vacation? Is she paying?

Great, quite. So, um, first of all, this is stuff. You do a therapy. Yeah. Probably just to work it out with the therapy. Do you lend them a bunch of money and then you keep paying for stuff? And they all just get really pissed. Yeah. And then they leave you anyways. Yeah. Exactly. I can laugh about it. Well, it's super taboo. Because I remember on Twitter one time I asked people, I said, guys, how would you feel if your partner earned more than you? And then next, I said, ladies, how would you feel if your partner earned more than you? Or if you, and vice versa. So on Twitter, 100% of people were like, that'd be awesome. I'd love it. Then like 20 minutes later in my email, I start getting these emails. And they're like, I actually earn like four times more than my partner.

And I hate it. It totally emasculates him. Like, we, our sex life has dwindled. And I'm like, hey, wait a minute. I just saw you tweet to me like 20 minutes ago saying the opposite thing. And they're like, oh yeah, I can't say this publicly. Yeah. I'm like, oh my God. God. So this is a super big and real thing that's happening more and more. Nobody's talking about it. I feel so fortunate that we can talk about it here. Here's what I would say. If there's a big difference in earning between the partners, what do you do? So first off, the classic financial advice is pay proportionally. So pay on a percentage basis. If one person, I'm just going to make up some numbers, If one person earns 50K a year and another person earns 150K a year, it's not really fair to split things 50-50.

Okay, because that's just unfair from a percentage basis. So you can do it proportionally. Right. Okay. That's one thing you can do. And that's nice. You need to keep in mind, though, the person who makes 150K, they might be used to eating at, say, a really nice restaurant two times a month. So even though they're doing it proportionally, for the person who's earning less, that might bring them up.

Right. Might make them overspend. So you need to be sensitive to that. Like my worst fear in life is inviting a bunch of friends out to a restaurant. And one or two of him being like, oh, this dick. Like he picked a really expensive restaurant. Yeah. So I would rather go to a restaurant that's more accessible than pick some really fancy place.

Like I want to hang with my friends. I don't care about the whatever. Yeah. The other thing is, look, if you make a lot more and you really like hotels, a certain hotel when you travel, just own it. Say, you know what? When we travel, I know that based on financially, you know, we should probably stay at Fairfield Inn, but I have to say, like, I really like staying at these hotels.

So when we travel, I just want to kind of talk about how we're going to navigate that. And personally, if I were you, I would just say, I want to pick up the tap on the hotels. That's okay. Just put it out there. That way they're not going to be resentful because you already have an understanding ahead of time. Yeah.

But, you know, the other person needs to pick up the check sometimes, too. For sure. So that's how I approach that. Proportionally, if there are certain things you really care about, put it on the table and say, I want to pick the tab up for this, and then make sure that they are picking up the tab for other things too. Right. I think that's fair. I'm glad that you brought that back up because, yeah, I think we didn't really wrap that up,

and I think that's really good advice. And we said that when we are in our episode, we did an episode recently about moving in, and we use that exact same example. We were like, if your rent is $3,000 and your partner makes double, they pay $2,000, you pay $1,000. There you go. You know, we kind of, but it's just, it's, I mean, I think it's end of the day. It's like easier, and there's like some psychological work that has to be done there. 100%. I've been doing that in my own relationship as well. So the way we've set up our accounts is we both have our own,

we have a joint account where we pay joint expenses like groceries and rent and things like that. We each have our individual accounts too. And like I spend a lot on certain things and she spends a lot in certain things. And we both knew we don't want to have this money being questioned by each other. So let's just take it and put it away and you can do whatever you want with it. And that's the way we approach that. But I'll tell you, it took us. So my goal, my end outcome was to have a spreadsheet where every month we would have a meeting and we would just look at the numbers and just make sure we're on track.

That was my end goal where we could, then it's all numbers and you can sort of, you've already overcome the emotional part of it and you're just looking at pure math. It has taken us months and months to get here because the math part is the easy part. It's like, what does money mean to you? I want to feel safe and, well, I want to invest. And there's all these questions that you have to go through. So this is hard stuff. It's not easy. And it's okay. Like it should be hard. This is your financial future. It's worth spending the time on. Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. And if you don't mind, I just do want to ask what you see the trend being today because, you know, obviously finance is so different than it used to be. Are people when they get married? Are they combining their finances

today? Are they doing something more? Like, do you get a lot of questions about that? A ton. That's the, that's the number one question. Yeah. How do you combine your finances? I can't imagine, like, not having my own. Like, I just always remember my parents. Yeah, they're joint checking account. And then they owed that each other other separate checking account.

Like, that's where my mom would like take me shopping, you know, and like hide what we spent. You know, like, I just, I can't imagine like all of our money being together. But anyway, you're the expert. Well, I think it's funny, you know, most people are not very conscious about their money. Most people just slide into their entire financial lives. They grow up. they go to college, they get a little bit of debt, they get a job, they don't negotiate, they buy a house because they think that's what they're supposed to do, and on and on.

They just sort of slide from one phase to another. That's what I see happening. The people who are coming to me are already a little smarter than the average, right? They're looking at personal finance. They're thinking about it. They tend to settle on a joint account with two separate single accounts, just like I did. That tends to be the thing that works best. And how do they decide what the percentages are going to be? Is it like a hard fast, 75% goes into the pool and 25% goes to my own account? Usually it's the opposite. They start with the expenses and whatever's left over, then they apportion it to their single accounts.

So most people are like, they're not like sitting there with 20K extra per month. They have like a little bit. And then they say, okay, like how much is good for me to take to my single account? So they start with how much rent costs. That needs to be paid. And then whatever's left over, they start to apportion it. Okay. Okay.

but one other thing before we move on from marriage that we got asked a lot about was, are people doing pre-ups today? Is that a thing that people do? Yeah, they are. Yeah. So I did one. And man, there are so many misunderstandings about preempts. Yeah. And I think, I'll tell you that, like, it got pretty heated for us. And it took a lot of time for us to go through it. And I talk about all this in chapter nine of my book. But it's definitely something if you're bringing a disparate amount of wealth or assets into a marriage, I would definitely encourage people to explore it and take it seriously. Don't listen to what you heard on TV about it.

The actual process and why people do a pre-up is very different. But definitely explore it. But even if you're not disparate, like, aren't you, to me, I'm just like, if I got married and the guy made the same amount as me or even more, I feel like I would just do it because I want to protect what I've earned without this person, right? Like, isn't that kind of the goal? Like, should the marriage fail, you get back what you started with? Yeah.

So what I like about it is going into a marriage, of course it's romantic, and of course there's emotional love, but it's also a business arrangement. It's a legal arrangement. And like to get it out on paper and to just be really honest, like here's black and white, here's the numbers. When we did it, we had to really kind of open ourselves up and we had to share things we'd never shared with each other. And when you do that, then of course you're not only planning for the best, you're also planning for the worst. And I know it just sounds weird. unromantic, but I actually think you're just being realistic about what is going to come in this marriage. And what if the worst happens for whatever reason, at least we've planned for it at our best.

Right. I totally agree. I just feel like this romantic aspect like ruins relationships. Like, guys, come on. Seriously, like, most marriages end a divorce. So like, let's get serious about this. Like, plan in advance for the worse. I think people are just insulted that like, you know, oh, what do you think I'm going to do to you? And I think that, you know, what I'm going to do What I've seen from my parents is, you know, people with the best of intentions who love each other the most, they can hurt each other. And I'm not going into this planning on leaving you or hurting you. But, you know, that doesn't mean that people in great situations when they're emotionally charged up, don't do things that aren't nice. Yeah. I wanted people to take the emotions from hot to cool. Like when I deal with people who are really savvy and sophisticated with money, whether it be for pre-nops or investing or even starting on your 20s, they're not using words like, oh, I feel super guilty. They're like, you know what? I have a plan. I really love spending money on this, so I put money aside, and I don't like spending money on that, so I stop. It's just very matter of fact, because they've gone through the emotional journey, and now they can make the cool decisions instead of the hot.

Right, exactly. And just in anything, like, you know, your partner brings up a pre-nup and you feel immediately triggered, like, don't respond in the moment, just take a, take a beat, you know, because I just, I can't imagine, I can't imagine earning a bunch of money on my own and then entering into agreement with somebody that should things go south, they get to take some of that away from me. Right. I mean, I think me, and I'm a woman and I know, you know, I think men feel that way too. I mean, you put things in place that protect each other from each other. You know, that doesn't mean I think we're going to break up and you're going to try to steal all of our money, but like, I don't know. And you don't know what I'm going to do. You never know. So,

you know, I just got to be careful. I would, I'm trying to think of like, you know, we do have like a lot of younger listeners. I'm trying to think of like questions that they might ask. Women that are 20s, you know, they probably still have student. whatever, credit card debt. I had credit card done in my 20s. And so I would think a tough conversation for them to have is telling their partner they're with this guy. He pays for more of the stuff, whatever. He's

happy to do it. And they're like on the road to being together. Like, I can picture this younger woman that's like, how do I tell this guy that I have 40 grand in debt? You know, and how would you, what advice would you offer there? I just want everyone to stop feeling

ashamed of their financial past. Because I think the worry is like he'll break up with me. Yeah. You know, like he doesn't want to take on my debt. I know. Continue, sorry.

Everybody has a past. And, you know, sometimes we made mistakes. Sometimes people are doing really well. Like, we all start from different places. And I think people are, they're less judgmental than you think, but what people want to see is that you have a plan.

And that is, I think, extremely attractive. So if you were to go to your partner and you don't talk about money at all, and then this guy says, hey, like, I notice you never use your credit card. Like, how much debt do you actually have? And then it gets dragged out of it out of you that you have 40K in debt? No good. That's a horrible outcome.

Whereas what if you say, you know what? You're proactive. You say, you know, I like to talk about money. I want to tell you where I'm doing really well. And I also want to talk about an area that I need to work on. I have 40K of debt. Here's how I got into it. I made some bad decisions.

But here's the plan I put together. I have a debt payoff plan. I know that it's going to, be paid off in May 2022. I'm on track every month I'm paying towards it. That's super attractive. Right. And suddenly it's like, yeah, I made a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes, but here's what I'm doing about it. Right. I can't think of anything more attractive than someone being proactive, owning it and saying, this is how it is. You're going to fuck after that conversation. Bingo.

But what if what if her debt payout plan is, I'm hoping that you'll marry me and pay my debt? No, that's really bad. then she's blowing him. No one's fucking, that's how that conversation. They're doing it ends. Anal. Anal is how that conversation ends. 100%.

So we're not really going to do like a game. We're not going to ask you to, you know, a bunch of weird sexual situation. You want to roll play. You want a role play negotiation? Yeah, we're going to role play. Yeah, that's exactly what I want to do. Are you going to be the mean manager and I'll be like the 22 year old girl?

Whatever the noddy or one is. You know I love role plays. He's married. Rana doesn't even want you. She wants your wife. I think she's made that. that very clear. Also, can we just back up that you saying earlier that any

white woman that wants a Indian guy has an Indian fetish? That's your take. But you're right. You call me out of it. I do. Like, I just have a brown fetish. Rana's over here. She's like, dad, that is so ridiculous. I'm like, do you like, brown guy? She's like, I love them. I love them. The first story I told you, I was like, so I was on a day with this

guy's name was Saraj. God damn it. Saraj. I just hate the word fetish. Like, I don't want to fetishize any race. Well, maybe they have a white Jewish girl fetish. And that's why they're date and me. Do you recommend Indian men as a whole? You know what?

That's an excellent question. And I want to say yes to all my brown brothers out there. They're so cool these days. They got the cool clothes. I see him at the gym. They're lifting these days. I'm like, these guys are sweet. So yes, to anyone who's been thinking about an Indian guy or brown guy, go out there.

Thank you. I'm trying. I'm trying. I think it would be funny if you were like, nah. You know what? I'm really not injured. I'm a brown guy, but nah. Oh my gosh. Okay. What are we doing? We're talking about negotiating. This is going to be our segment. This is going to be in lieu of like our, you know, is this weird?

Oh, I love it. Role playing. It will be the segment. It'll be great. And I love these. A lot of our listeners are probably getting out of college. They're negotiating jobs. My dad did this with me when I was negotiating my salary too. He owns a head hunting company. So great. I was like, whatever they offer you, just double it. Tell me you want that. I will say one thing I've learned is I have this big Instagram. account and, you know, I can charge a lot of money for posts. I mean, it's got almost a million followers. People definitely charge more than me. People definitely charge less than me. Like, I think I'm good. Where I am, I feel great about it. When I met Raina, she encouraged me to start charging more, but no one has ever walked away. You know what I mean? Like, I've been like, I can't believe I'm going to give them this number. And they just, every once in a while, they will walk away

because they went with somebody else, but it's not because of the money. And that was one thing I've had to even coach other friends kind of in this space of like, if they want to work with you, they approached you, they are not going to walk away. They will just keep trying to negotiate and maybe they'll be like, we absolutely can't afford this. And then you can make a decision if you want to lower your price or not. But no one, I feel like rarely sees a number and just bails. That's the sentence my dad told me when I was negotiating.

He said, they're not going to walk away. Nobody walks away. The worst they're going to say is no. So yeah, I love that advice. That's what my dad told me. You're going to get to a point where they're like, we can't afford to pay you that. And you have to be like, okay, buy or okay, then fine. and I'll take this.

I just think that, you know, people just get scared. That's the fear. They get scared and they don't know how to do it. So again, fear of an awkward conversation. But if you think about what's the best outcome, one $5,000 raise in your 20s can be worth over a million dollars over your career. So it's like get over your awkwardness. Yeah, it's weird.

Have the conversation. Learn how to do it. We'll talk about it right now. But the whole thing today I just want to get across to people is like, don't be afraid of these awkward conversations. Everybody feels awkward. have them anyway, your life will be so much better, and you can take control of your money. Okay. So let's pitch the scenario is like the job offer, I don't know,

like a sales job. So, and do you want to, do you want me to be the young girl? Because I can play that role. Yeah, you be the young girl. Oh, I specialize. Are you going to be able to do it to be the manager role? Yeah. Let's like to harass him. No, it would be great. Um, you, all right, I'm going to be over here texting with my crush. Well, because you guys can roll. Also, congratulations. Thank you so much. I think that. Thank you, thank you. I can't believe my head was able to do this. I feel like I just got a raise.

I got a text back. I got a text back. That's like basically a $5,000 raise. This guy, like, just texted me. How do I write on a photo that I post? And I was like, oh, my God. Wow. I can't believe that I'm making a surgeon.

Like, how do I put a Band-Aid on my finger? I don't, right? I was like, I can't believe I'm still going to probably fuck you. Anyways, um, saying a lot of people, yeah, are in this scenario. They're like, okay, I think that I'm undervaly. I accepted a certain salary just because, you know, I thought it was that or nothing. I found out my male colleague is making double. Which has happened to me.

I used to manage a restaurant. I found out that my male counterpart was making $20,000 more than me for what I would say, arguably doing less work. So, yeah, I wanted a raise and I didn't know how to handle it. Okay. So I was managing a restaurant at that time. There was no stock. There was no commission.

It was just like a flat salary rate. Great. So like what, I'll just be the boss and you tell me like the kind of stuff that you would do. Let's say this scenario is that I'm currently making 50K per year. And let's say that I go online to salary.com and all these places. And I discover that I actually should be getting paid between 57,000 to 63,000 per year. That's the range that I should be at. Great.

Okay. So first, I'm going to send an email to Raina. And I'm going to say, hey, Raina, I'd love to sit down and talk to you about some career questions. have. Could we set some time up next Friday around 11 to come in? Would that work for you? Great. Let's do that. He's going to quit for sure. That's what's going through your head. Yeah, when somebody has to have a discussion on a Friday about career goals, I'm like, they're quitting. Okay. For sure. So you're prepared for the quit. I'm prepared for you to quit. So I come in and I'm going to say, hey, Raina, how's it going? It's great. How are you?

Good, good. You know, I wanted to talk to you. First of all, I'm really excited to be working on Project ABC. and I think things are going really well. I just wanted to talk to you because I want to figure out what it takes to do an amazing job in my role. And I just wanted to get a sense from you for what it takes to be a top performer here. You know, keep setting goals for yourselves. Keep plugging away. Keep your head down.

Just keep doing what you're doing. Okay. So I'm hoping we can get a little bit more specific because what I want to know is what should I be aiming to achieve six months from now? Like, I'd love to walk out of here with three bullet points so I know exactly what I'm working towards. Can you give me a sense of that? I really have no idea. I'll make it up. I'm going to play you for a second. I know. She's like, well, she's like, I haven't worked at a jobs since the restaurant. Here, I'll make it up. Yeah, how is she supposed to know what I said? Okay, I'm now playing both parts. Damn, here we go.

Everyone just take a break. I'm about to play this whole thing on my own. All right. One man show. And it's not even my podcast. Talk about mansplating. I'm like, give me the mics. Get the fuck off. This is my podcast now. We don't usually record this early in the morning.

Actually, we're going to take a nap. This is the best mansplating segment we've ever done. He's like, actually, girls, you don't know what you're doing. So I'm going to take over from here. He grabs all three mics. They're going to go take a nap in the other room. Two hours later. All right, guys, I'm done.

You can come back in now. I don't even know how I got into this role. So I definitely don't know not explaining you. I don't know how confident you were that you could. do it though. Because I was like, what the fuck is she going to say? And she's like, I'm down, I'm out. The second sentence for that reason. I'm out. You should give me a raise for just having to listen to this. All right. So she says, you know what? Okay, you're working on Project X. You know, our current conversion rate is 5%. The goal for the company is to get it to 8%. So we need that 8% number.

The next thing is, I need you to hire person Y to do this job. And the third thing is, I need, Blake. Meanwhile, I'm writing it down. Okay, got it. So 5% to 8% hire the person. and blah, blah, blah. If I do those things, those sound like pretty big goals. If I do those things, would you say that I was doing a good or really good job in my role? I would say we're doing a great job if you executed those bullet points. Awesome. So I'm really glad you told me that because I just want to get a sense for what great is in this role because I really want to do an awesome job. And I'd like to go back. I'd like to send you a couple updates every month on these projects. And I'd like to come back and circle back in six months. If I do a great job, I'd love to discuss a compensation

adjustment at that time. But we don't have to worry about that until I start sending you updates. How does that sound? That sounds great. I like that what you're saying is actionable and that there's some goals in a future plan. And you're not quitting. And then I'm not quick. Okay, so now it's very simple. What did I do there? I didn't walk in and say, give me money. Okay. That's a big no-no. If you do that, of course your boss is going to say no. Nobody wants to just be blindsided and ask for $5,000.10,000. Next, you started off by saying, what makes me a top performer here? I want to do a better job so it makes your life easy. Bosses love that. Okay, now, this is the key. You got to hit the goals. Okay, so you actually

have to be good if you want to get paid more. And you need to update them. So every other Friday or every Friday I would send him an email, hey, just as circling back on what we discussed and put it in writing, this is what we discussed. We agreed if I hit these goals, I'm going to be a top performer. and at that time we can discuss a compensation adjustment. You know, I moved it from 5% to 7.5% blah, blah, blah. When you walk back back in, whether it's two months or six months later, you set up another formal meeting. You say, Raina, I'd love to circle back on that discussion we had a couple of months ago.

Can we set some time? Raina says, okay, I walk in. Okay. Now let's have the, this is the money conversation. And it's six months. I mean, it seems so long to me, especially people are so impatient. Like, can you do three? Well, dear millennials, stop being so impatient.

I get it, I get it. She's not like my mom, Jesus Christ. I mean, everyone who I know who manages millennials is like, oh my God. Yeah, maybe the key is like not to get to this terrible breaking point. You know, like when you start feeling like maybe you want more, that's when you start this conversation as opposed to like you have a freak out when you're like, I'm not making enough. And then, you know.

Same thing in money, same thing in relationships. It's like, don't get to the freak out. If you've gotten there, it's too late. So most companies are having an annual review cycle. Great. Have the conversation six to eight months ahead. a time. So when you walk in there, which we're about to do right now, you already know you're going to win. People need to understand, 85% of the negotiation is done before you ever walk in the room.

That's how I feel when I got my DUIs. I was like, you know what? My lawyer already worked this out with the prosecutor. They probably played golf on Saturday. Like the deal was done before I walked in. You know what I mean? It's like when I wear a matching bra and underpants on a date, it's like, I already knew we were fucking. It's like, you didn't really have to do that much to tee this out. Wait, how come I didn't have these examples in my book? I need to go rewrite this book right now. I did learn it though, because it was so weird. It was the thing I had to learn when I was like getting DUIs that I was like,

oh, they worked this out before I ever step in the courtroom. You know what I mean? And then it's just like, do you want to say anything to the judge? I'm like, I guess so, whatever. We know all know what's going on here. I didn't pay Thomas Thomas Esquire, 8K to talk to the job. Like, oh, we know what's going on here.

Right. Look, my bra matches my panties. I knew you were going to get laid 85. percent. Okay, all you had to do was like not do something terrible and we were definitely going to fuck. Oh, that's the worst when they just opened their mouth and you're like, I wish you hadn't talked. Oh, God. I wish you didn't sound like this. But I like what you're saying also and I think that most people, and I've certainly made this mistake of jobs where you just walk in and ask for $5 or $10,000. And they say no. And they say no because first of all, they've been trained to say no

to you. That's what you do as a boss. And also when you go in and say, okay, I want to make a plan, here's my goal, what I'm going to do for you. The second conversation, already ready to either give you the raise or not. They've gone to their boss. They've gotten a budget. They know you're going to ask for it. And they're ready to negotiate with you too. Bingo. So let's just do this really quickly so people know exactly what to say. So I walk in, I say, hey, Raina, I wanted to circle back. You know, three months ago, we talked about these three goals. Five percent to eight percent. I wanted to let you know. We have 8.3 percent conversion. Nailed it. The next one is you wanted me to hire someone to do X. I hired

someone. Boom. And the third one was blah. And we just accomplished that. last week. So I wanted to talk a little bit about my compensation here. I know that reviews are coming up. I pulled the similar salary for my role from online. I currently make $50,000. The market pays $57 to $63,000 for this role. I'd like to discuss a compensation adjustment. Now, your boss, what's the boss going to react by doing? I mean, I assume they're already walking into this conversation knowing what they can give you. So they're probably going to try to talk you out as much as possible. They're going to really low-ball you. Yeah, they're going to flinch because that's what bosses do. It's not that they're bad people, but going from 50 to 63,000 potentially,

that's a big jump. So they're going to go, I could never do that. And they're going to visibly flinch. Don't be thrown off. It doesn't matter if they act insulted or they visibly get crazy. It doesn't matter. You just stay calm and you say, well, here's some of the numbers that I've pulled. Now it's not you and them arguing. It's not personal. It's just business. Facts. Here's some of the facts that I pulled. And they can agree or disagree with the numbers. And the company might have better information on the market, but you can say, well, let's start there.

Here's my role. Here's what I do. Here's what we discussed. What do you think is a fair number? Now, if they come back and they say, well, 57 is too high, but I can do 51. Personally, I would not do that. I would say, you know what? I think I have to be honest with you that, based on my performance here.

And I just did all this shit. Yeah, based on what you told me to accomplish. And not only did I accomplish it, I exceeded it, it would make sense for me to be paid at the top of the range. And then you can have a discussion. You want to peg it at the top. Of course, if you are the top, they want to peg it below the bottom. Now you have the discussion.

And remember one thing, your goal is not to get every last dollar. You're going to work with this boss. So if they say, you know what, we can give you 58, but I just can't go higher than that. I'm not authorized. You say, you know what? I appreciate that. I'm going to take that. Thank you very much.

So that's how you do it. It's super cooperative. You're not making anyone feel bad. You're putting in a lot of work. And that is how my, like, I was telling you, I walk around New York. People stop me all the time. They're like, I use your stuff. I negotiated a $25,000 raise.

It happens to me every week. Yeah. So you can do this. And especially for the people listening, you can take control of your finances in this way alone. I love this. Is there a way if you just do realize that, like, you are getting paid less than someone in your exact same role? Is there a way to go in and address that?

Yes. And be like this, I feel like I'm unfairly compensated. You can have that conversation, but you need to be willing to walk away. Okay, right. So be ready to walk away. I had a situation where like I saw. Well, that's worth of a relationship too. Yeah, give that ultimatum, you better be ready to walk away.

Yeah, I saw that my coworker, I saw his paycheck on his desk. I mean, I wasn't looking for it. I just saw it sitting on his desk. And so I was like, oh, oh, you make way more than me and you do nothing. So, and it wasn't like a commission type of situation. So, yeah, I mean, I found another job before I had the conversation. because I asked for a raise, which would have been in my case, like a 20% raise or something. And my boss was like, nobody gets 20% raises.

And I was like, nobody makes no money here besides me. Yeah. Right. And so I had another job lined up. Yeah. So I was ready to walk away. So I had the negotiating power. What happened?

I walked away. Oh, you did. He told me to fuck myself. He said, nobody gets 20% raises. And I said, well, I don't work here anymore. Sorry. You don't live here anymore, bitch. Bitch.

Bitch. It's a deep cut from the old days. my first boyfriend I broke up with in New York. Well, thank you so. I think that was great. I love this episode so much. We're really so running long. It's my favorite episode. I know. Thank you so much. Any other, just anything you feel like you haven't covered? I mean, obviously your book.

You're in the book. Yeah, plug all your things where people can find you. So you can find me. I'm on, my website is I Will Teach You to Be Rich.com. Sign up for my email list. I make it really fun. Instagram. I'm at Remeet, R-A-M-I-T. I'm on Twitter. Do you have any Twitter nerds? Actually does our Twitter? I'm at Rameet on Twitter.

There's one name just out here. Are you verified too? Yeah. Of course he is. Fucking knew it. What? Are you? No.

We don't talk about it. Oh shit. We don't talk about it. Like I wish I had a hook up to get you verified. But one day I woke up and I was verified. I'm like, somebody, somebody DM me. They're like, you're verified. I'm like, what is that?

You need to leave. Get out of here. Oh, shit. That was the wrong story to tell us. Fuck out of here, Remit. Your verification check. Get the fuck out. You're lucky you brought tequila out of this apartment.

Okay, I would teach you be rich.com. Yeah. The book. The book comes out. The new book, right? The book comes out, yeah, 10 years, I updated it. I talk about new tools. Okay.

Talk about how to set your money up so you spend less than one hour a month on it. Totally automated, all the best accounts. Okay. Also, I added a lot on psychology of money. I love this. So getting married, what do you do with a partner? How do, you know, should you buy a house? There's a ton of stuff in there.

You can use it. In six weeks, your money is automated and it's good forever. This is amazing. But the new book is what? Mid May. Mid May. You can buy it and pre-order it right now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, books a million,

anywhere. Sweet. And get it. Okay. And yeah, we'll do swipe-ups too, but you can go to your website and get it link over to that, right? Okay. All the things are on the website.

And our website, guys, Girls Got Eat Podcast.com for live shows, merch, all the things. Follow us. Girls Gotty Podcast, Instagram, Twitter. Anything else? That's it. You really, you wrap this episode up nicely in all the episodes. So thank you. Thanks guys. Get rich, bitches. Make money. Have a good week. Bye.