I Will Teach You To Be Rich - 264. "We’re worth $4M. Why is she so terrified to spend?"

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You To Be Rich talks to J and Ana, a couple in their early 40s with three children who have built nearly $4 million in net worth through decades of hard work, saving, and real estate investing. On paper, they are in an incredible financial position. They have around $4.8 million in assets, more than $1.2 million invested, $136K in savings, and a net worth just under $4 million. But despite all of that, they still don’t feel free. J applied because he feels like they’ve had their foot on the gas since they were teenagers and don’t know when they’re allowed to cruise. He wants to relax, travel, and enjoy the life they’ve built. Ana wants that too, but her fear of debt, her desire to protect their kids, and her instinct to keep building make it almost impossible for her to stop. What looks like a conversation about rental properties, credit cards, cars, and spending is really about safety, identity, immigrant family scripts, and learning how to enjoy money after a lifetime of working. In this episode we uncover: • Why J and Ana still feel stressed despite having nearly $4 million in net worth • How decades of hard work and real estate investing shaped their money dynamic • Why J feels ready to slow down, but Ana struggles to believe they have enough • Why selling one house feels like both a financial decision and a family decision • How credit card spending, shoes, cars, and hobbies became recurring conflict points • Why J feels like he has to justify his spending • The parent-child dynamic that shows up in their money conversations • Why Ramit challenges them on changing the CSP numbers • How immigrant family history shaped Ana’s relationship with work, money, and worry • The question of whether multiple properties are still part of their Rich Life • How becoming more decisive may be the real work ahead Chapters: (00:01:44) Meet J and Ana (00:03:34) “Our foot is stuck on the gas” (00:04:28) Ana doesn’t know when it’s time to sell (00:05:21) Why they are never on the same page about money (00:07:11) The credit card statement fights (00:08:44) Ana’s dream: take away the card and pay off properties (00:10:14) Shoes, cars, and spending guilt (00:13:04) The parent-child dynamic in their money conversations (00:14:47) Looking at the Conscious Spending Plan together (00:18:08) Income, rental properties, and CSP confusion ( 00:30:32) The family house they can’t agree on selling (00:34:12) Why making more money hasn’t made them feel better (01:38:30) Ana’s challenge: learning to spend on herself (01:42:53) Ramit’s final warning: they need to become decisive together This episode is brought to you by: DeleteMe | Get 20% off all consumer plans when you go to https://joindeleteme.com/ramit and use promo code RAMIT at checkoutNetsuite | Get the free guide “Demystifying AI” at https://netsuite.com/ramit Superhuman Mail | Turn your inbox into momentum. Sign up at https://superhuman.com/ramit. Fabric by Gerber Life | Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at https://meetfabric.com/ramit Factor | Head to factormeals.com/ramit50off and use code ramit50off to get 50 percent off and free daily greens per box, with new subscription only, while supplies last until 09/27/2026. (See website for more details). Connect with Ramit • Get my new book, Money For Couples • Get Money Coaching with Ramit  • Download the Conscious Spending Plan • Listen to my book—now on Audible • Get my New York Times best-selling book • Get my no-numbers journal • Other episodes • Instagram • Twitter • YouTube Apply to be coached for free on this podcast at https://iwt.com/apply

Imagine staying in an amazing hotel room with views of the Mediterranean this summer. You might think it's too late, but my friend Chris Hutchins, who is a travel expert, can show you some unconventional ways that you can book trips like this primarily on points. He is hosting an event on travel points, and it is free. You can join us at IWT.com slash points. I wish I could just go out and just enjoy the money with my kids. It's just hard. Right now you have like four million dollar net worth.

So what's the problem? I think I'm a warrior. You're a warrior. Yeah. What if this happens? What if this happens? We never have a true moment to just relax. It's kind of ironic that making all this money has not made you both feel better about it.

I think I'm just afraid of messing up. This is a skill that I think, Anna, you have to build. The ability to actually unlock parts of you that allow you to feel more joy. I actually want you to do it for your kids too. This is the beginning of changing your relationship with money. Some people watching like, I never saw somebody struggle so much to go to a spa day. How much is enough?

This is a question I ask my guests a lot and I am shocked at how few people have actually thought it through. In my experience, less than 1% of people actually know what enough means. In my own personal life, I probably know definitely less than 10 people who know exactly what enough is. I think that's a tragedy. I actually think it's just kind of lame to spend your entire life working and agonizing and worrying about money and you never even went the next logical step to say how much is enough. In a way, it's such a pointless existence to just accumulate more and more blindly without actually

thinking about the natural endpoint which many of us actually get the gift of choosing. Today, I'm speaking to Jay and Anna. They are both 41 years old. Now let's take a look at their conscious spending plan. If you want my help to build your own conscious spending plan and to take control of your money, you can join my money coaching program at IWT.com slash money coaching. You will be shocked how far you get in 48 hours. Assets, $4.8 million. They're 41 years old.

Investments, $1.25 million. They probably own real estate. Savings, $136,000, debt, 2.28 million. So a total net worth of about $3.9 million. Okay, that's very, very impressive. Fixed cost 66%. That's kind of high for having that high of income. Investments at 3%. Savings at 7% and guilt-free spending at 24%.

So they like to spend money. Okay. This is an interesting one. I'm looking forward to speaking to Jay and Anna. Now, something rare happened. You applied to speak to me. Yes. It's almost always the woman in a heterosexual relationship that applies.

So I'm really curious what made you apply to speak to me today. A lot of the stuff that I do is the quote-unquote woman role, right? Like the finances and the outspokenness and stuff like that, the communication, right? I've always had a strong communication. The wedding planning. You were the wedding planner? No, it was not.

I don't know about that one. Wait, I was also, I was like, have you all ever heard of a groomzilla? Okay. All right. Okay, well, let's take a look at the application because you said something that I wanted to ask you about. Jay, you wrote, we've worked and saved like crazy since we were 16. But it still feels like our foot is stuck on the gas and we don't know when we can cruise. What do you mean by that?

We've literally been nonstop. I mean, I started working when I was 13 years old and she started working around. 16 as well and it's always just felt like I've literally never not had a job since I was of legal age. So when we got enough money, we started investing in real estate. And then not only did I have my quote unquote nine to five, but then it was also landlording or fixing homes up and stuff like that. So we never have a true moment to just relax. And do you want that? I do. I do. That's my rich life. Okay, got it. Got it. Anna, what is your reaction hearing this? Yeah, I mean, same thing. Like he says, we don't stop.

So I want to get to a point where it makes sense for us to just, and you know what, we're good. Our finances are good. Our kids are taking care of. Let's just sit on a couch and watch a movie. You want to do that? Yeah. So you both want to do that.

So what's the problem? I don't know when is, when to stop. He thinks we're kind of good, but at the same time, there's still a lot of things we could be doing better. And we have different mindsets, I guess, on some of the rental properties we have. He thinks if we sell them, we could be done. And I want to be able to continue doing what we're doing, work hard now. That way my kids can have what we didn't have growing up.

How have you tried to resolve it? I mean, we've tried talking, but it just feels like it never gets anywhere, right? I'm kind of setting what I think is right and she's sitting what she thinks is right and feels like we just talk and talking just doesn't really get us anywhere. Can you think of a time where the two of you were not on the same page about money?

Every time, I think. I think that's something we're never on the same page about, right? She's definitely the saver and the putting things away and I'm very much the spender, but I think I do it intelligently. It just seems like every extra penny that we have she wants it to go to savings and we've got more than enough in savings. What do you think?

I don't agree because we have a lot of properties that kind of all have mortgages. So to me, I'd rather put, you know, that extra money towards the properties and not have to kind of stress about money and being able to pay things off and not lose them. Are you stressed right now about money? Yes, because like I said, we have property that I would like to be paid off. That when my kids take over, they don't have to worry about, you know, not being able to afford a house or the struggle we had coming up and making money. How many kids? Three. And how old?

We've got a 16-year-old girl, 14-year-old girl, and an 11-year-old boy. Okay, great. Do you talk to them about money? All the time. You do? Wow. What do you say? That was quite a reaction.

I don't know, like how to do your day-to-day without having to live paycheck to paycheck. You know, don't live off credit cards, just teaching them the value of money because we both didn't have that. Okay. And what part of the country, generally speaking, do you live in? Nevada. Nevada, okay, yeah. Got it. Okay.

And what do you both do for a living? I do retail. And I'm a national account manager for a rental equipment company. Got it. Okay. Let's go back to the time, anytime recently where you were not on the same page with money. Think of a specific example. Well, it seems like it happens every time around the same time of the month is when my credit card goes in, right?

Whenever she sees the large payment going in, like I can't believe you spent this much this month. But then I've got a reminder that I use that credit card, not just for personal stuff. I pay a lot of bills from that credit card. We've got a lot of medical stuff going into there, whether it would be dentists or whatever the case may be. That's always kind of a time where she pulls me aside and is like, hey, how did you manage to spend, you know, $6,000 this month or whatever the number is up? Anna, what's the number that when you saw it, you said, oh my God. 10,000. 10,000.

Yes. When I saw him making a credit card payment for $10,000, I was like, whoa, what was on there? He's like, oh, you know, all the little stuff just adds up. So, yeah, every time that bank statement comes in, I'm like, let's see what you have. And then what happens? Happens again next month. And then she pushes buttons until I kind of, I feel silly having to explain myself that I spent 20 bucks here or 30 bucks there. I mean, I get it.

It adds up. But I feel like she doesn't trust me. I feel like she doesn't believe that I'm capable of keeping our family's finances in the green. And I've been doing it since we first moved in, I don't know, 18 years ago before we had kids. Are your finances in the green? For the most part, yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, do I spend more some months? Yes.

But if you look at year over year, yeah, we're definitely in the green. Okay. Anna, if you could wave a magic wand and you were totally in charge of the money, what would you do differently? Maybe take away his credit card and some apps on his phone so that way he can't spend and then use that money to pay off our rental properties. And then try to relax and not have to worry so much about the mortgage payment every month for all the properties. That's it.

So you want to pay the mortgages off faster? Correct. I called BS on that because not even two weeks ago, she's like, oh, if we do sell one of these properties that we have in California, we should look at buying an Aplex here in Nevada. So I know that when something is paid off, she's just going to say, hey, let's go buy something else. So I'm always going to have mortgages is what I've come to the realization. The smile tells me you kind of agree. I'm working on that. I'm definitely working on.

And hopefully after you look at all our stuff, we can kind of come to an agreement of being able to not get any more properties and be content. Be content and just live our rich life because he loves to travel. You need my permission to live your rich life? Yes, please give it to him. No, it's just like the not knowing of making sure we're our financial. are in order and his spending and and the spending, right? We need to be able to control the spending to where if we don't have the rental properties, we can live off our W-2 income.

Because we do compensate a lot for that too. What's the thing about the shoes? Is there something about you buying shoes? No, it's not even that me buying shoes. I don't know, seven months ago there was a sale at Nike and I think I bought like 10 pairs, but it was like $300 for all 10 pairs. So it's like, yes, I have a lot of shoes, but it's not like I'm dropping thousands of dollars. And those shoes will last me maybe the next two, three years.

Okay. So what's the disagreement there? But I guess she's just like throwing me, calling me out when I spend money. Oh, I see. Yeah. And what about cars? That's my advice. I'll be the first to admit that, right?

I've spent a lot of money in my life. And again, we've been together a long time. So she's seen all the money. How many cars do you have? I only have one. that's mine. I've got a truck that's provided to me by my company, but I've spent in the past, right, a previous job. I bought a $100,000 plus $1,000 truck. And then before that, a sports car. I've been lucky enough to sell them for relatively what I purchased them for, but I've lost some money

because I do things to them and, you know. What's your take on the cars? We end up wasting a lot of money on things that we don't need to, you know, like all the modifications and stuff like them, and he ends up selling it. So the current car that he has right now, I said, you're not going to sell that. Like, no matter what? You told him that? Yeah. Like, what do you put into a car?

By the way, this is so hilarious to me because, like, I know you're not a car guy. No, I'm not a car. Or like when I bought, you know, like, when my family bought a house when we were growing up, like, you buy the house and that's the house. Like, there is no renovation. What's that? Buy a car. That's it. And then I find out people do modifications.

They take it in. They get this after dealer, after fact. whatever it's called. And I'm like, what... You literally... This car isn't even the same vehicle anymore. No, it's not. What did you do to your truck?

I did a paint protection film. Okay. Like a wrap on it, I guess you can call it. That was like $8,000. And then I did... It was a raptor, so I did some more suspension stuff to it. Like what? Like made it higher?

No, it was already high. It just tweaked some of the... It already comes factory with, like, off-road. They're the ones that are for like Baja 500 and stuff like that. but my current car is Toyota Supra and I'm kind of afraid to say how much money I've spent into it. I don't know. Tell me. I could have bought a second one.

But yeah. How much did it cost all the all the modifications? Probably about 50, $55,000. $55,000 for modification. How much is it car costs? I got paid $55,000 for it. Wow. All right.

Hold on. I'm just trying to. We can't all drive a Honda Accord for 20 years, man. I wish I could. So when you have these conversations about money, about credit cards, about cars, what role does each of you play in that conversation? She's very much the, I don't know what the correct word for it, but the authority of like, or the mom, right, why did you do this?

And why did you spend this there? And what's your role? I've got to explain myself and say, okay, I justify my purchases and why I did what I did. Anna, what do you think? He nailed it. That comes down to that. But then again, it's just like how surprised you were, right? It's like, do you really need to do all that on an already nice car?

Yeah. So me trying to understand his, I guess, love for hobbies is probably another reason because, like, that money should not be spent. We have some parent-child dynamic here, which is, why'd you do that? Did you need that? Are you sure? And then, but, mommy, I like it. to spend money on candy. I think that it's a little more nuanced than that, because when I ask her,

do you like doing this? She says no. When I think about what he is spending his money on, for the most part, although some of it is a bit extravagant, they can almost certainly easily afford it. So there's something deeper going on here, and I want to find out what it is. Now, I don't know if he should or should not. I don't know. I have to take a look at the numbers, because people spend their money in a lot of ways that I don't understand. But how do I know if they should or should not? Do they have enough? Maybe they're going into debt.

That to me tells me more than just I don't agree with it. How does that strike you? Yeah, I get it. I understand that. Okay. We'll take a look at the numbers too. Actually, should we look at them now? Yeah, let's go.

What was it like to do the conscious spending plan together? Eye-opening and a little confusing just because we had numbers that we didn't know which bucket they should fall. Yeah. Sorry, Anna, what was it like for you to do the CSP? A little confused, how everything adds up so fast. And then some of the stuff comes out of my paycheck, so I just wasn't sure on where to put it. Okay, we'll go through it. All right. Let's take a look here. Anna, can you read off the word in bold and the number next to it in full for this entire box, please? Assets, $4,876,000. Investments is $1,255,9707. Savings is $136,978. Debt is $2,283,283,527. Great. What's the total net worth?

$3,985,358. All right. What do you think about those numbers? I like all of them except the debt. All right. What do you feel when you see those numbers? A little anxious. But overall, content. Okay, cool. Jay, what about you?

I feel proud. I mean, this is, Anna has in my hard work the past, you know, 30 years. It's a lot of hard work. I see the, you know, 18-hour days, the staying up till 3 o'clock in the morning, renovating a property. I see a lot of that. Yeah, the debt is overwhelming, but it's all real estate debt. So I know that we're positive on all the properties we own.

So if we had to tomorrow sell it, we couldn't be out of that debt. Wow. Pretty impressive. Let's not forget, you're both 41 years old. That's incredibly impressive considering, I mean, it would be impressive at 70. Thank you. Thank you. Do you ever celebrate these numbers?

I don't know if we celebrate the numbers, but we do, you know, we'll take a vacation a year. I mean, we skipped it last year, but we'll try to take a nice vacation, right? We used to alternate with the kids when they were younger and they still wanted to hang out with us and then do a couple's vacation. And that was kind of how I celebrated, right? We got to relax for a week. I didn't answer my work phone. We weren't doing anything real estate related. But now I don't think we've ever, to answer your question, sorry.

I don't think we've ever said, hey, good job. Like, look where we're at. And that was kind of what was cool about doing the CSP together. I was like, wow, look where we've come. We've never actually put our numbers on paper. Really? Yeah. Just worked and worked.

Well, I think it's a good thing that you did because those numbers are big. I mean, by the end of today's conversation, it's very likely to be $4 million. That's pretty incredible. And it actually allows you to really think about your life in a different way. But it's so common that most of us are just day-to-day, we got to do this, we've got to pay this bill, we've got to fix this. thing this dishwasher is broken, but we don't stop to look at what does it all add up to. And more importantly, what does it mean? Four million dollars at this age. What do we get? We've done all this work. What do we get from it? Let's keep going on the numbers, though. Income, Jay, can you read me

off your combined gross monthly income, please? 21,279. That's per month. So per year, $255,000 a year. Did you both know that number? Yes. Good. Great. And then the net is $367,000 net. How can the net be higher than the gross? Our rental properties. Income. So you, okay, so you put that income straight into your net. She added that because we were asked to put the rental properties because we didn't know where to put them. Yeah. So I'm not sure.

Let me jump in quickly and save you a bunch of back and forth about Anna's gross income and mortgage payments on multiple properties. The CSP is designed to be very simple. So when people have multiple streams of income at different tax rates, it can be challenging to categorize them here. But we know that it's impossible to have a gross income that is lower than a net income, so we're going to ballpark it. Anna had originally calculated her gross income as $4,518 and her net income as $18,375. We just know intuitively that that cannot be right.

doing some quick math around their mortgage payments led us to adjust her gross income to $10,500 and her net at approximately $8,000. She also double counted their mortgage under fixed costs, so we brought that down, which lowered their fixed costs dramatically. And that makes sense. They are a high-income couple, so their original number of 66% fixed costs did not sit right with me. Now we know that it was a math error.

I see a lot of comments from people wishing that we adjusted the same. CSP to include this and to include that. And I actually think a lot of those comments are pretty fair comments. If you decide that you want to tweak the conscious spending plan for your own needs, be my guest. However, I want to emphasize something. I design the CSP to be simple. And I find that human nature, especially from weird freak optimizers, leads you to add in this line and that line and that line. And suddenly you have a super complicated spreadsheet that nobody actually understands. So I would rather take simplicity over complexity and even comprehensiveness any day of the week when it comes to something like the CSP. All right, let's get back into it.

All right. Let's take a look at your fixed costs. Fixed costs now with some adjustments are 49%, which is lower than I typically recommend 50% to 6% to 6%. 60%, but it actually makes sense because you all have a very high income. So, of course, your number should be lower than average. Most people do not make $243,000 net per year. So good. Let's keep looking. Your investments are at 5%. I don't agree with us. So I've got 7% for my 401k's going into that. I also contribute $1,000 a month into Robin Hood. And then I also contribute the 75% 100 a year for the Roth IRA. That should be here. So let's call it 585 a month ballpark. So your number is now 8%, but it's actually higher than that because you have your 401k.

Correct. Cool. All right. Then savings at 10% or $2,100 a month. Agree? But yeah, I think that's safe to say. All right. Which leaves you with $6,000 per month. What do you think about that? That's a big number. I'm not going to lie. Again, what's tough for me to see is to see how much of that my credit cards every month is actual spending that I'm doing. That's for me, right, non-family related or non-real estate related. Do you track it? I do. You track it on your credit card. Do you like look at it and analyze it? So yeah, I'll look at my credit card every day to see what expenses are going in. Do you do the same? No. What do you think about him looking at this stuff every day? I don't know. I mean, I guess it's good. That we'll be.

He can keep track of anything looks strange or something comes out. So if that's the case, then do you trust his ability to spend correctly? I trust his ability to know our finances, but at the end of the month, we don't really know how much we're bringing in or how much we're spending exactly because of everything that we're making. So if Jay can kind of see like, hey, this month I've spent way. more than I should. How much should you spend?

I don't know. That's the part I don't know. You get to make the allowance. What is it? Please, Mommy. I don't know. I don't know if there's a certain amount. I just looking at our numbers, that does seem like a crazy amount of money, but it's like.

Do you ever say no? No to J spending. Okay. Besides that? Yeah. I mean, I have kiddos, so I was asking for stuff. I'm like, no. You say no?

Yeah, of certain things, like a bag of talkies or something. I say no, we can't eat that. So, yeah, I mean, the word no is in my vocabulary. Okay, and you use it. Yeah. And when you say you say no to J's spending, I didn't catch you saying no. I caught you saying, should you spend that much? You shouldn't spend that much.

But I didn't catch you saying no. Oh, I guess you're right. Hmm. So I'll ask again, do you say no? No, I don't say no. Hmm. I guess not to J because, like you said, I trust him. I know he's worked really hard.

with the life we've put together. So I'm not like, don't spend the money or don't buy the car part or don't get into this hobby. But when the credit card statement comes in, I see that huge amount. Like right now we're seeing with our numbers, that's when I'm just like, why? Why are we doing this every month when it comes to all the spending,

you know? Let's kind of get a better control of our spending because it's true it's a plastic you're swiping it swiping it you're not really paying attention to the amount of money you're putting on that credit card can you imagine a world where you do not have to track everything you spend no because that would mean what relax relax be at peace with what we've done no you told me that's what you want so clearly there's something else going on because you told me you want to relax in fact look at now when you said relax you kind of sit back.

They're just trying to relax. It's like, this is you relaxing. Let me show you. Hey, everybody. I'm relaxed. Okay. Great impression. That was her.

I noticed that you zeroed out my miscellaneous category in the spending. That was me. Because I feel like I'm pretty confident in the stuff that we put in there as far. The only thing that was, didn't have a bucket, I guess, was the credit cards that I say we spend and pay every month. I mean, we don't really have any subscriptions. Besides Apple, we have the extra storage. Other than that, Netflix and stuff comes out of my phone bill. But like you spent $6,000 a month on your credit card. Yes. Every month, it seems like there's something. Last month, I had a tooth that had to get replaced while I was like $2,000.

Where's that planned for in the CSP? It's not. That's what miscellaneous is for. Why do you mess with my numbers when they're designed for you? To get a rally out of you? I don't know. What the hell? I know. I told them, I said, I don't think Rumiy's going to be happy with that. Once in a while, when someone changes something,

I'll ask them why, and they have a very good reason. This happens like 3% of the time. And I'm like, I respect that. You deviated from my system. You adapted it, but you had a very, very good reason. Yeah. What I do mind is, hey, I think this number is big, zero.

Thank you. And you actually need it for things like all the things that come up when you have a family and you have kids and properties. I don't know why I thought it was subscriptions. Now that I'm reading it here, it obviously is not. I'm going to fix your miscellaneous, okay? Let's just do it. We have 57% fixed costs.

Worse than it was before, but before was artificially low. So 57% is still within the 50% to 60% range. Y'all make so much money that I really think this number should be a little bit lower. But still, it's fine. I'm not sitting here. I don't lecture anybody who has less than 60% fixed costs and also has millions of dollars in their 40s. Okay? Any question so far? No. All right. By the way, your savings are 11 months of fixed costs. Did you know that? Yes. Cool. What do you think of that? I feel comfortable with that, right? Her biggest fear is, what if you lose your job or we lose you, right?

That makes me feel at ease that if something did happen to me, my family wouldn't be scrambling. Yeah, 11 months is really good. I've been telling people 12 months is good, especially in a turmoil economic times. I think it's great. Your savings are solid. Good work. Thank you. Thank you.

I think we need to admit that the CSP is a little chaotic. And I'm not sure I did a great job of clarifying everything on. the sheet. I think it's probably mostly accurate, but what I think is really important here is what it suggests about their finances. I think there's probably a lot of chaos. I think there's money here and there. I think the fact that they are not surprised that the money in their fixed costs drop to like 50% is kind of indicative. They don't really know their numbers carefully. That tells me they're not really connected to it. How can you feel good about money if you're not connected to it? I wonder if they like chaos.

I wonder what other parts of their life reflect it. Like constantly working but not being able to relax, even for an afternoon. That kind of worldview shows up in a conscious spending plan and it shows up in other parts of their money. And I want to dig into it more. I want to find out what's really going on here. One of my readers shared with me an account

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Because she feels that we need to throw that extra $5,000 back in the savings. You mean back to the mortgages, right? What are the mortgage rates at? Our primaries at five... Six and a half. Six and a half. Yeah. The other ones are 2.75, 3.25.

And we're trying to sell one right now that we did in a partnership. Me and one of my good friends did in Big Bear House in Airbnb. And that one, I believe, is that 7.25. If you had the money, would you pay the 2.75% fast? No. I'd probably focus it on our primary. Let's say you paid that off. Would you then take the money and pay off the next one?

No. Well, I don't know. So you pay off the primary and the 7% one is gone so you have these low interest ones would you pay them off early? I don't think I'd pay that the 2.75

just because it's too low or rate for me to put money towards that. That's pretty helpful. It tells me how you treat debt. Some people, they just hate debt. I mean, I do hate debt, but just... You hate it, but not... Mathematically, it doesn't make sense

to put that money towards that. You have to understand most people do not get to the mathematical point. Literally, debt is... is just bad. It's like me having like roaches on me. Okay. It doesn't matter. Oh, they're actually not going to harm me. It's like they're bad. Get it off. I'll put all my money. And I go, um, that debt paying it off early is going to cost you like $385,000 in opportunity cost. They go out of it. Get rid of it. Okay. It's up to you. But you're telling me no,

which tells me you understand debt. Everybody has feelings about money, but you also are looking at the math side of it too. Okay, that's quite interesting. So because you understand debt and interest rates, what do you want to do with the money? I mean, we're looking at it here. You've got $5,000 a month in guilt-free spending so you can allocate it however you want.

What do you want to do? I'd probably put in a separate savings account for the rental properties in case anything happens to Jay or I lose tenants. I'd want to be able to hold the properties. Because one of the properties that we have, the kids actually want to keep with the families. because they kind of grew up in it.

So I would like to keep that property with the family. And then when they're older, if they want to move back to California, they'll have a home that they can raise their kids in. Do you all think that you have enough money to do what you want to do? On paper we do. This is where we go back and forth with the property. She just talked about the kids wanting to keep. To me, it's a messy situation, right?

It's a very expensive house as far as it's worth a lot of money. if we lose the tenants there now, it's the same mortgage is what we're paying at our new house now in Nevada. So if we had a three-month vacancy, right, I'm paying two mortgages. Can I sustain it, yes, but for how long? Right?

The weight of that it wears on me, right? And then my biggest thing is in a perfect world where Anna sees the kids wanting to keep this property, right? They're going to grow up, they're going to have their own families. to me it's just going to create issues with the kids, right? There's going to be animosity because only one family is going to get it. So now we're getting, creating potential problems for our kids in the future

versus if we were to sell that property, we can, A, pay off our primary residence now and be mortgage-free, B, pay a portion of it and invest the rest of the money or, I mean, really do whatever the heck we want to do. Buy the A-Plex if she wants to buy an A-Plex. It just opens up way more possibilities by getting rid of that. How have you gone about making this decision about whether to sell the property or not? We've discussed it. No, yes, we have.

We've discussed it. She's agreed to it twice and then went back and said, no, never mind. It doesn't make sense. And then before being asked to join you in your show, we were in the mentality that we were going to sell it. And then as of like two weeks ago, I think she went back again and said, oh, no, never mind. I don't think it makes sense to sell. Why is that? Because my son.

You're 11-year-old. What do you say? He just had a lot of memories there. And then? It makes it harder to sell a home that he had memories than he wants to be able to keep within the family. What do you say exactly? And I'll just, oh, I remember coming down the stairs

or like, he'll watch certain videos in my phone. I love this house. no so okay so it's not just a financial decision for you okay I can see why it is tough to make progress on it everything is kind of intertwined you pull on one question it unravels then there's another one then there's another one and each of them is kind of difficult your son the complexity the not knowing how much you actually have left over every month. It's all just one thing after another, which stops you from seeing clarity on the situation. What do you think I'm seeing when I'm hearing this? I don't know. What are you seeing? You all have so many options on what you could do.

The thing is, it seems to me you are under analysis paralysis. You could do this, you could do that. There's good reasons to do it and not to do it. And so you're stuck. How long have you been stuck talking about money and what you should do with it. As long as I can remember, to be honest with you. Do you feel good? No, not at all. It's kind of ironic that making all this money has not made you both feel better about it. What do you make of that?

It's tough, right? Because you would think getting the salaries that we get or owning all these properties would open more doors and kind of let you relax. But it's honestly a lot of pressure, right? especially when you add your kids and family into the play, it's just you, you're not just doing things for yourself anymore, right? You're doing it for the team, and you don't want to leave it in a situation, right? Going back to selling the house, like I love that my son has all these memories

and that he wants to keep that house, but he's 11 years old. He doesn't know the magnitude of owning a house that size comes, right? Not even just the mortgage, but the upkeep, right? The maintenance. It's a lot of responsibilities for him to try to keep a house. he has memories in, right? And that's how I see it. I don't want it to come across that we're not thankful for everything that we've been able to do because we are very thankful. But it's been a lot of hard work and it's even more work to keep it afloat, right, to keep it going.

Hannah, want to add anything? It's a lot of stress, a lot of tough decisions to make for everybody, but that's what we keep going in these circles, you know? And when the emotions, you know, with the kids, it just makes it not as easy as for me to just mathematically be like, yep, that's what we're doing. Yeah. What do you remember about money growing up? What did your family say about it? We never spoke about money.

We came from a very low income. You know, when we came to America, my parents didn't speak English, so it's not like they could get a job that they can make good money. So my dad did whatever he could to keep a house for us. and food and just pays their jobs, landscaping, car washes, stuff like that. How old were you? Seven. Seven.

And what country did you come from? Middle East, Iraq. Okay. Seven years old, it's like old enough to really notice and remember things. What were some of the first things that you noticed that surprised you? Well, back home, we didn't go to school. So coming here and just going to the schools here and just seeing kids in different clothing than you, and you're just like, wow.

Yeah. How come I don't have that? So, but my dad did everything he could to provide for us. So I'm grateful. But I think that's what makes it hard for us because I want to give my kids what we didn't have. So it's just challenging coming from that kind of background. And then that's what's kind of hard for me to know when to stop because my dad never did. He never stopped.

Until this day, he's 78. It still works. What does he say? Nothing. He's thankful. He still has his legs and his arms and he's out there doing whatever he needs to do. What do you say to him? Do you tell him to keep working?

I don't want him to work, but he says it keeps him young. So he likes to go out there and just do physical work and stay young and still make money. Yeah. Do you remember them talking about money, your family? No? No fighting? What was it? Like, what's a culture of money in your family when you were young?

My mom raised all of us. I have a big family. Four sisters, two brothers. So small house. My mom cooked. We ate. School. Back home.

I never saw the, my mom actually talk about money with my dad or my dad with my mom. Not the way we discuss it, obviously. I think I want to educate my kids on money because I feel like the world has changed so much and it's just so much harder to make it in life that. being educated is going to get you where you want to go. Yeah. So I feel like a mom and dad gave us what the basics, right? Like hey, hard work, go out there and do it.

Do you recognize how much you have accomplished considering especially that you came to the US as a seven-year-old? Oh yeah. I do. Yeah, I do. Like I said, I have to thank my mom and dad for that because even though, you know, They didn't physically sit down and talk to me. I saw a lot of the things that my dad did for us. And then bringing us to America and have given us the opportunity for me to graduate.

I graduated from my CSU all by myself and no student debt and just saving, working hard, job after job after job. And putting money away. I think that I get that from my mom because she was the money handler. My dad worked. Here you go. Is your mom still alive? Yeah, they're both still alive. What is her life like now?

She's good. lives with my brother, my dad, grandkids. Is she relaxed? No, I think she still stresses on life. Yeah, like her daughter. Maybe she does tell me that I need to stop working so much. She tells you that. All the time.

Oh, wow. All the time. Because it's notable to me that the way you described your childhood and growing up, like it was quite rushed. I don't know if you caught that. And just like recounting and moving, moving through it, skipping over it. And I appreciate that you appreciate your parents

because they did something that none of us will do. But I notice it among my friends who have immigrant parents is very tough for them to relax. It's very tough for them to feel a sense of ease. like, and I can see that with you, even with your body language. You told me right at the beginning, I want to be able to relax. But I don't know if I believe it. I think maybe you like being stressed.

I think it's maybe what you've known. And Dave says that all the time. I wonder if you relaxed if you would even know what to do. I don't know. And it doesn't surprise me that your mom hasn't relaxed either. If you never saw it modeled, how would you do it? I guess that's one thing I didn't learn. Yeah.

Or haven't learned? What is your relationship? with money today? How would you describe it? I just feel like not enough. I need to just keep going and make more money and be able to just, I don't know. It's hard. I think my relationship with money is hard because I don't. Like I always said, I don't like spending it. Just like saving it. And then? Saving it for the future, for the kids. Is your future basically over and now it's about the money for the kids? No.

I mean, what I would like is once we know we're in, I don't know, I guess, good standing, but I would

like to just spend time just traveling like Jay likes to do. So. You want to travel together? Yes. Okay. I know I want to travel

by myself. She's on my own. I didn't mean together, but you're telling me the two of you would like to travel. And do you both agree on that?

Yes. Yeah. Okay. Can you tell me, is there a path? from where you are today to that. I want to say yes, it should be a path. I feel like we're pretty smart individuals

that have done a lot in our lives to where once I figure out what it is about me, or being able to stop and just move forward and be able to relax and travel with Jay. I just haven't found that path yet. Do you do a lot of all or nothing thinking? Like it's either got to be perfect or I'm not going to do it at all?

No. Okay. I think I'm a warrior. I just worry a lot. Yeah. You worry about money. You worry about your kids? And if something could go,

what if this happens? What if this happens? What if this happens? That's more my mindset. Do you like worrying about money? No, not at all. No? No.

No worrier ever says they like it. No, I'm going to say. So if you were not a worrier about money, if you did not worry, who would you be? That's tough because, That's been me on my life, so it's hard to say what I would be. Spoken like a true worrier.

What you just said is exactly what every warrior says. They worry about money. It is part of their identity, so much so that when I asked them, who would you be if you were not a worrier? They don't know. And usually it's not only who they are today, it's who they observed in their parents. Oh, for sure.

And Jay, what do you remember about money as a kid? What did your family say? So similar story to Anna, first generation here, a little bit shorter trip that we came from Mexico. I moved here actually right around the same age as her, seven years old. Money was always looking back, I felt like it was treated like something evil, right? We had a couple family members that had money, and I just remember as a kid that they were always talked bad about. You know, they're stingy or they're, you know, they never buy this or buy that, and they have all. this money, right? And my mom was a house cleaner. My dad started as a landscaper and then got into

pool construction. From seven until about 13 years old, it was all hand me down clothes from the people that my mom worked, cleaned houses for. And it wasn't until about I turned 13, started middle school where my dad started making better money when he started doing pool construction and was finally able to afford, you know, nice stuff, right? And I remember clearly because that's when I was right when you kind of start caring what you look like when you get into middle school. So always we're living in a two-bedroom apartment with my younger brother and my mom and dad. I mean, I never went hungry. We always had a roof over our head, but we never really had much, right?

When my dad started making money, I think this is where my car advice came from. He started buying cars, right? He got a car for him and for my mom, and then they had the nice new cars. And that was the first thing that we got as a family. That was kind of a pride, right? like, oh, cool, we can afford something nice now. But definitely never talked about savings. I was the one that kind of introduced him into a 401K

and definitely not financially literate. Do you like money? I love money. Wow. Yeah. Anna, do you like money? Yes. Do you love it?

I wouldn't say I love it, but... Okay. Well, let me redefine it. I love what money can get me, right? Money can get me freedom. Money can get me experiences. So I love what money can bring. Hmm.

Did you catch it there the same age? and that they came to the U.S. at basically the same age, what I don't think they mentioned is that they actually have the exact same birthday. This is quite amazing because growing up, even though they grew up in different countries, they grew up in kind of similar upbringings, parents not talking about money, and yet the way they treat money is markedly different. And there are some gender issues here. We often see the person who is protective and fearful about money,

tends to be women. We often see people who spend more, invest more, tend to be men, not always, but that's common when I speak to couples. It is striking to me that, depending on how you grow up, you might react by being a spender or a saver, as they like to call it, but you can't predict which one will happen. In fact, when they talk about their kids, I would say it's hard to predict which of their children will spend money or hoard it. Which of them will have a healthy relationship with money or not? And I'll be very curious if I end up speaking to their kids in, let's say, 20 years and see what their reaction to growing up with money in this family was.

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Meatfabric.com slash remit. And use my link so they know I sent you, M-E-E-Tfabric.com slash remit. Policies issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company not available in certain states, prices subject to underwriting and health questions. What is the rich life for each of you? My rich life is waking up without an alarm clock, right? waking up at whatever time I see fit with Anna, having breakfast, relaxing, not having to rush to take a kid here or there or a practice or go fix a toilet or an air conditioner,

just having the ability to not have plans that day. Just go about the day wherever it takes us, maybe go walk at a park or go on a vacation or whatever. You know, just spending time with her without having a backlog of duties. Okay. It sounds like retirement. It does. Yeah, you're right. Okay.

Anna, what about you? What's your rich life? I don't know. I just, for me, my kids, I definitely want to set them up. Once that's taken care of, I would love to vacation and hopefully have grandkids one day and just be able to just relax. How long until you can do that? I don't know. I mean, what if I told you you could relax today if you want?

wanted to. I don't think I can. Oh, you don't believe it. Because I mean, theoretically, if you sold all the properties and you all just invested the money, you don't need to work again. What about the kids? You tell me. What about them? They'd still be fine. I mean, this is something, I'm glad you're saying it because we've had this conversation and she just completely writes it off. Like, that's ludicrous, right? But you're right. We've got enough equity and the kids would be more than taken care of. Do you believe that? No, because everything just costs more money now. So, you know, my youngest is 11.

Mm-hmm. He's still got, what, seven more years before he becomes an adult. So that's another seven years of us making sure we do everything in our power to provide for him and the sisters. And then once, you know, they're adult, I would still like to contribute college, buying a house, getting married. age. Yep. I want to be able to provide for them. So then you should work for the rest of your life. I don't think Jay wants that. I was going to say, don't let me into that one. I think that's what Jay's been trying to convince me to know what is the age that you do want to stop. So what is it? I don't know. Okay, right now it's never. It is. If the goal is I want to provide for my kids,

which means I want to pay for everything from now until they die, which is, which is, if you That's kind of what you're saying. You said, you want to everything from now until he goes to college. If he goes to college, you're going to pay for college. If he gets married, you're going to pay for the wedding, pay for a house, probably pay for a car. I would like to help. If he says, I want to buy a $500,000 house, how much are you going to give them? I don't know. 20% of their house, the down payment on the house. Okay. They're going to buy, let's say, a million dollar house, a $200k each, so that's $600K for that. Great. Weddings, each going to be, $50K. Fair? 150K there. We're up to 750K. What else? Car, you're going to buy them a car.

I don't know about all. I want them to still be able to provide for themselves to. I don't want to do everything. Okay, no car. College, you're going to pay for the college, right? Yes, if they want to go to college, definitely. So each of them, let's say 150K, fair? 450K. Now we're at a million. So let's say you have a check for a million bucks and you put it aside for the kids. Now are you ready to relax? I mean, I want to say yes, but I know myself. Ah. I might want to still keep going until I know. I don't know. I guess I don't know.

I don't know realistically when I'll be content to just let it go. Never. I'm telling you, you know how many people I talk to? The answer is never. So how do you change that? That is a very good question. What do you think? Do you want to change?

No. Yes, of course I'd want to change. Okay. Paint the vision for me of the Anna in the future. The Anna who is, describe her. Not worrying about everything. Mm-hmm. What else?

Being able to go somewhere, buy something, and not look at the name tag or price tag. Mm-hmm. Tell me what Anna does. Don't tell me what Anna doesn't. Look at everything, worry about everything. Mm-hmm. Check every account. What does she wear?

Does she wear the same things as today? Yes, because she's pretty plain. Okay. And she drive the same thing she drives? Yeah. Okay. Does she visit the same places on trips that she visits today? I mean, I would hope she would want to see other places in the world.

Where do you want to go? There's a lot of places I would love to see. It's kind of striking to me. If we can just kind of just like zoom out for a second. Like what I'm trying to do right now is try to understand in your ideal world, what would you do? And have you noticed what's happening right here? What do you feel right now? Confused?

Yeah. It's like no matter what I'm asking, there's almost like a shield up. And you're finding it very difficult. I'm asking you, what would you want to do? You're telling me what you wouldn't want to do. I'm asking where would you want to go? And even that is like, I don't know, someplace.

So let's just all take a deep breath. There's no wrong answer here. If you told me I want to go to Cincinnati for my rich life. In my head, I'm going to go, what the fuck? But out loud I'm going to say, that sounds amazing. There is no wrong answer. It can be as small or as big as you would want. I think probably travel.

I like traveling a lot. Where? Japan, Thailand, Greece. Cool. What would you eat in these places? Whatever authentic food they have, the main dish. And day-to-day living? what would you do differently?

I don't know. I would like to go to the markets and get some good food or some ingredients and go back home and teach the kids and some other recipes and just relax with them. Nice. What about without them? Just the two of you. Sit down on a couch and watch a movie.

Nice. Can you do that now? No. How come? I'm falling asleep. But if you did it, let's say, I don't know, know, the middle of the day. Could you do it? No, how come? There's a thousand things that could be doing. Oh, like what? Kids, sports, running errands, managing the rental properties,

fixing our house. There's just, there's always something to do. There's not enough hours in the day for me, I could tell you that. Hmm. You like being busy? Yes. Yeah. I do and I don't. Jay, what do you make of this? I mean, she's being honest and it sucks because I'm the same way, right? One of the reasons we moved to Nevada from California was to slow down life, right? Because we felt like it was high-paced in California. And we thought, hey, we go to Nevada. We get to save some money on taxes and also slow down things, you know, be in an area where the kids can be a little bit more self-sufficient. They can walk to them from school and they less relying on us. And it just feels like, I mean, we came to the realization a few weeks ago.

We're like, man, it doesn't matter where we live. It's us, right? Wow. You realize that. I did, yeah. I was like, no matter what we do, we're always going to have something to do. And it's sad because when one of us finally does, you know, manage to just wear each other out and we sit down in the middle of the day, just take a breather, the other one will call the other one out. Like, what? Why are you resting? You know, it sucks. It does, right? She's done it to me and I've done it to her. And it's like, I'll catch myself after I do it. I'm like, what the hell's wrong with you, man? Like, let her relax. Like, we don't always have to be go, go, go. I mean, we were outside yesterday until, what, 10.30 at night, the hanging string lights in the backyard to finish the project before we came down here with you. It's just... Did you like it? I like the outcome of it. Did you like doing it?

I don't mind it. I haven't done this for so long that it's just the norm for me, right? I used to like sending emails to my newsletter. I would log in. I would type the whole thing. I would send a test. I would check it on my own personal email, make sure every link worked, and then send it out and watch the responses come in and the metrics. I really loved it and I was good at it. Today, I couldn't tell you how to do it. Somebody on my team does it. There's a QA process. There's software.

I don't know what they're using. I also don't enjoy it as much. But I didn't know that until I delegated it, stepped away. what I do love is the responses like you love seeing the lights up I love seeing the email in other people's inboxes

I love seeing their response I don't have any joy anymore in the mechanics of sending it out when I share that example does it connect with you at all 100% it does because there's some projects that I've done that I'm like man I'm kind of over this right

yeah this is not fun anymore I shall even notice it's like, why are you doing it then? But then I know if I add in the cost of a contractor and now it's a project we can't do right now. And it's that way, the options that way. Is part of your rich life having multiple properties? It was early on. Uh-huh. And now?

For me, it's not. Okay. Anna? I'm not allowed. I enjoy the fast pace of just being able to just take care of properties and do all that stuff and the wealth that it's building. and like I said, I have the kids, so I would love to be able to keep them and teach my kids, right?

Did you like it? One out of three, yeah? The reason I ask is, like, the properties you bought obviously have done really well and have brought you to a place of serious wealth. But when I think about the rich life that you described, Jay, it's like not in the... involving the properties very much at all.

In fact, if anything, the properties are kind of opposite of what you've both mentioned, wanting to relax. People who own multiple properties usually do not relax. Oh, I know. Yeah. So that's why I'm asking. I don't have anything against owning multiple properties per se. It's just, is it a part of your rich life? For me, it's not right.

And we've had this conversation recently because we had the most turnover that we've ever had. one of our properties and it was stressful, right? We had a tenant that stopped paying his rent, right? So we had to work on being in California, it's a tenant-friendly state. So it was tough to trying to get him out. We got lucky with him. And at the exact same time, we had another tenant that was moving out. So we had a lot of upfront costs getting the units cleaned out and ready for new tenants. We get good tenants for the most part, right? So it took us three, four months of vacancy. And I don't want to be dealing with that when I'm truly retired, right? If I'm no longer working my W-2 job and we're only getting the income from the rental properties that's paying

for it, it's going to be a lot tougher. Why are you keeping these properties? I'm okay with keeping our triplex because that pays for itself. And my rich life includes that because that's going to supplement if we didn't have any other other income coming in, that's going to pay for our. Okay. What about the rest? Anna? I would like to keep it in the family for the kids to be able to have an option if they wanted to move back to California. Would you rather give them that house or money? Two out of the three bring up that house a lot. So I think for me.

Yeah. That house. I asked my readers on social media one time, I was like, what would you rather inherit? A house in an uncertain location, maybe you have to split it with siblings, but a house or a portfutable. of cash and stocks. Like 90 plus percent of them said stocks. But ironically, most parents think about passing along a house. What do you think of that?

No, I agree with the outcome because Jay said the same thing. It's better. We just sell these properties and put them in an index fund for them. And when they're older, let them do what they want to do with the money. There's a lot of phantom costs. Yes. That come with owning a home, especially a home the size of the one. that we keep talking about. It's a 4,200 square foot house. I'm putting myself in my kids' shoes,

and I'm like, man, okay, cool, I got my house from when I was a child, but now it comes with all this extra work that I didn't really sign up for. Versus, hey, here's, here's million dollars or more. Up to you what you want to do with it. And kids, if you're watching this, that doesn't mean you're automatically going to get the money. You still have to work and go to school. That's right. Tell them. What do you think about that? There's all these phantom costs. There's proper. property taxes that might adjust. And we're talking about not giving it to one kid, but three, right? Which has become incredibly complex.

Unfair. One kid can't afford it. The other one doesn't want to maintain the upkeep. I'm not trying to scare you. That's reality. I'm just saying, like, these are very, very complex. In fact, it's an easy way that kids break up and stop talking to each other because their parents did not do effective planning.

What a tragedy for a couple who has millions and millions and millions of dollars. and we'll have millions more to just be like, here's here, but actually you're not giving them a gift, you're giving them a curse. What do you think about that? I mean, that part is scary. Because like he says, especially if they're not interested in learning the mechanics

and the amount of money that you need to upkeep the property, that's the part that does kind of worry me. Three out of three would have to. And they have shown no indication. The only one who shows it is the young one who doesn't really know what it takes. I don't know if Anna remembers this, but we've straight up asked them.

What they say? Like, hey, would you guys prefer money? And two out of the three said, I'll take the money, right? This has been an ongoing topic since we moved to Nevada and out of that house. What do you think, Anna? I mean, I don't want to pressure you because it's your house and you all decide,

but it seems like this house, among the other ones, what I feel a bit of is a sense of tail wagging the dog. You bought this house and now this house has become the thing that is causing more work. It's causing more stress for the kids. It's, you're putting all this time and stuff into it for a future someday where the kid might have it, but then what about the other two? And I'm just like, so much energy being focused on this house instead of that rich life, which could be so many other things. What do you think? I mean, I agree with you. I wish it was easy

for me to just be like, yeah, let's sell all these properties and do it. But I just, I think holding on a little bit longer and making sure kids are a little bit older, like he says, I feel like they're at a stage right now where they don't really know. How old? I don't know, an adult. Like what? Over the age of 18, 19. So at 20 years old, you make a decision?

That's eight years from now. How do you feel about that? I don't mind if it's 20 or 25. I don't even mind if it's 30. What I mind is in order for you to move forward, you have to start making some decisions. And even if you're wrong about some of them, you have to make decisions.

Right now, there are no decisions being made. It's just doing more of the same. Very common with immigrants. You both are taught from your parents, just keep going. Head down, just keep going. Oh, something's not working out. Double down, work harder.

That's fine. That's why so many immigrants are successful. But at a certain point, it actually is nonsensical to do that. In America, especially among top performers, rest can be seen as glutness. What are you up to today? What's your plan for the week? What's your productivity system? Like, for example, when people say to me, oh, you must be really busy. And I go, no, I'm actually pretty relaxed. And you can see it in their eyes. They're like confused. But Rameet is the CEO.

I will teach you to be rich guys on TV. And he's just like, no, I'm actually not that busy. I don't feel proud about being busy. When I was a kid, we used to call my dad at work. And he would pick up the phone. And he would talk to us for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 40 minutes. I don't think he ever once said, okay, I have to go. If we called, he was there to talk.

And that really inspired me that I can choose to not be busy. Or I can choose to put the people in my life. first and not tell them how much stuff I have going on. In America, we get a lot of value not only from how busy we are, but how tired we are. Do you realize how absurd that is? How's it going? Oh, things are crazy. Oh, you must be exhausted.

Yeah, it's work is nuts. You're never going to hear me say that. Even if things are incredibly busy, that is not how I identify myself. In fact, I actually think it speaks more to not being in control. of what's going on around me, then as a source of pride. I'm not impressed by the two of them telling me they can't find time to relax. I'm not dazzled by the idea that their dream is to one day relax. I've talked to too many couples who have a dream of traveling and relaxing and doing all these things when they're 60, and then one of them dies. What kind of life is it to wait when you're a

multi-millionaire to relax? You can't even watch a movie on a weekday. Surely, there must be another way. There is more to life than being busy. And in fact, if it's up to me, it's not a point of pride. Stop bragging about how tired you are. There are so many similarities between personal finance and fitness. They both involve following a plan. They both involve being intentional and changing your internal psychology. And actually, I find that a lot of people, once they get good at money, they actually transfer that to their own personal fitness. Now, part of fitness is also what you eat. And to be able to have any tools that make this easier for you is a huge win in my book.

So I'd like to introduce you to Factor, which lets you eat delicious, nutrient-dense meals without all the hassle. Factor is a meal service that delivers fully prepared, ready to eat meals directly to your door. And they have a lot of variety. They have over 100 rotating weekly meals, including high-protein options, keto, GLP-1 friendly. They even have a muscle pro collection for strength and workout recovery.

Factor meals include lean proteins, colorful veggies, and healthy fats. Plus, they are never frozen and they are ready to eat in under two minutes. This is an easy way to try introducing systems into your health, specifically the way you eat. And if I needed healthy, ready-made meals, this is what I would use. Head to factormeals.com slash remit 50 off and use code Rameeth 50 off to get 50% off and free daily greens per box with new subscription only while supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See website for more details. It's nonsensical when I look at your CSP and I see a net worth of $4 million. And I hear you stringing up lights. Four million dollars at age 41.

Let me put it like that. It's kind of... It sounds bad. It's absurd. It's actually doing yourselves and your kids a disservice. Why should they have to deal with parents who are tired because they were up till 1030 or 11 stringing up lights when they could pay someone 1,500 bucks to do this and not deal with it? And in fact, they would learn more effectively because their parents would be showing them how to manage money. You're not showing them how to manage money. You're showing them how to be scared of it. Yeah, hard work. That's great. They learned hard work. But if you want to succeed now at this income and wealth level, it's not only about hard work. It's about knowing when to delegate. It's about knowing that sometimes we don't actually even do this, but you're just operating on the old

playbook. Work harder. What do you think? I mean, when you put it that way, it opens your eyes. We could hire somebody to do it, but at the same time, I mean, our son was actually out there with us doing it, so he was enjoying it. That's cool. For me, I think it's quality time too. Okay. Then let's put that example aside. How about all the other stuff? fixing the AC and the dishwasher and this and the screening the tenants and all these millions of things that you're doing, which don't allow you to even watch a movie. I think I gave you grief last time you made me fix the air condition. I was like, man, I could just call somebody's going to cost me a hundred bucks.

And I happily pay that. And you're like, no, I just give it a shot. A hundred bucks? Probably. It's like a $99 service fee. And you didn't do it. She made me fixing myself. I mean, it was an easy fix.

This identity thing is really interesting that the two of you are stuck in your identities. Like, you're a fix-it man. so you got to fix everything. When do you get to graduate beyond that? Well, it's not even that I'm going to fix it, man. I gauge my disagreements with her, right? Was it worth me to fight over $100 charge to have someone come do it or just do it myself?

I thought it would be quicker for me to just to fix it. You're going to do that for the rest of your life. You're right. It would have been faster for me to send out emails myself until I decided I have bigger and better things on this planet to do. I'm not meant to be an emailer. So when do you, when do you? Did you learn?

It took me a long time. I wish I had had somebody to tell to me straight like I'm trying to do to you. Someone to say, you know, you're good at this. And you could do this for the rest of your life. And it will be incredibly rewarding for you. But how much are you leaving on the table? Because by forcing yourself to do this, you are playing small. By having to check my emails, it's very intoxicating because I'm good at it.

And I can click it and see the metrics. But I'm not learning how to go on YouTube. I'm not giving myself room to start talking. talking to other people on a podcast. I'm not writing another book. I'm not doing XYZ, which turned into a Netflix show. No,

I'm sending emails. What is the equivalent for you? The physical work. Yeah. Doing all the physical work. You're right, though. It's work that a couple that has $4 million should not be doing. And by the way,

I'm not trying to convince you of this. You told me, we want to let off the gas. Yeah. So how do you do it? I believe it's by selling some of the properties, not all. Okay.

So let's say you sell some number of the properties. Great. You make some money. What are you going to do with the money? I believe we should pay off, if not all, at least a large chunk of our current residents. We have a lot that we purchased in Mexico. That's going to be our retirement home that we haven't built yet. I'd love to be able to build that house.

All right. So you pay off the house. You have this other thing in Mexico. What about you, Anna? What would you do if you want to? Take your foot off the gas and relax. And I think everything Jay said and just have a good cushion for each kid. How much?

That I don't know. You know, the amount of money you're talking about, you could end up handing over your tens of millions of dollars to your kids. Are you aware of that? Let's do it. Huh? Let's do it. I don't want to do that. What the f***?

Who wants to burden their kids with tens of millions of dollars? They can't even, their parents can't even hire somebody to string up lights. And you're going to hand them $20 million each? Here, good luck. You're f***. Your kids are f***ed. That's what you do. Guys, you, is this for real?

No. If you were to hand them the amount that we are talking about right now, considering you're only 40, so you're not going to hand them any substantial amount of money for at least 10 years, which means it's just compounding, compounding, compounding. And then they're going to see their parents. All they do is work.

Their parents do not know how to effectively use money. I mean, you have a nice living situation, that's for sure. So they'll know how to buy a big, house, but like, how do you travel and appreciate it? Do they know? Maybe not. How do you know when to delegate or when to do it yourself? Do they know? No, because their parents don't know. So you're going to hand them $3 million, $5 million, $8 million, $12 million. And what are they going to do do with the money? Spend it. Yeah? Or be scared and say, I just need to save more. Maybe I need more. Maybe I need more. And by the time they're 60, what do they have?

$150 million, and they go, I don't know if we can afford those luncheables, maybe if we save up a little bit more. What is this? I think that your kids are at an age and your wealth is at a level where the consequences of what you're doing today are actually kind of predictable and they're not good. The amount of money we're talking about is a substantial amount. I'm not sure that you have internalized how much money you're going to have. So right now you have like a $4 million net worth. How much you think you'll have around age 60? Probably closer to 8, 10? Probably more than that. A lot more than that. Well, let's not even talk about selling the properties. Let's just say at age 50, you will have $2.86 million. That's at age 50. Let's say 55, you'll have $4.3 million. Is that just in our retirement

fund? Just investing. Not even the properties, which will have a appreciated. And at age 60, 6.3 million. That's just 60. And you know what happens as it gets bigger and faster. You can't outrun the compounding. So what happens then? Six million turns into 12 million, 12 turns into 24, 24 turns into 48. That's why I wanted to come here, Ramee, because again, you've kind of seen a little bit, when we have these conversations one-on-one at home, you get stuck. You know, I've shown her the math for, you know, we're not fire, but our fire number would be if we wanted to retire, and we've surpassed that now. Yeah. You passed the number. Did it change how you felt? No. No? No, because it's just a number.

Oh. I don't know. I guess just being able to let go and... Should we calculate what happens if you sell the properties? Please. Okay, let's run some calculations. Let's just sell them all. Just for simplicity's sake. Okay, I know that, you know, you're not going to sell your primary residence stuff, but like, let's just see what happens. Keep it simple. And then you all can adjust from there. The thing is, while we're running those calculations, $6 million is already a huge amount of money. $4 million is huge, $6 million is huge, $10 million is huge. Does it really matter at a certain point?

No. Like, what is the difference? It's more money than we need. Yeah, in your lifestyle, from $4 million to $6 million, there is zero difference in lifestyle. Even $10 million, zero difference. So it's not about this. It's about this.

And that's why, in order to connect, with this, which I suspect is a skill. You may not have learned. Most of us don't, especially when our parents immigrate. That's not talked about. It's like work. What are you talking about your feelings? Like, that's not a topic we talk about.

Very true. But actually, at these levels of wealth, you have to connect here. Because if you don't connect here, then you just keep running and running and running. Which is what we've been doing. Yeah. I actually think that it would be more valuable for you to learn this skill. than to make an extra $5 million and pass it to your kids. The amount they're going to get is already very large,

whether it's in the form of a house or cash or equity, to be able to get this with their parents who have united over money, who have been like, hey, this is what we did in the first chapter of our life, and we worked. So you taught them that work ethic. We worked. And then this is what we did next. That is an incredibly valuable lesson.

Most kids do not have the luxury of learning that. They see their parents work and that's what they see. That's what you see from your parents, right? Your parents too. And it's good. I love work. But what about the next step? When do you earn the right to get to the next step?

Yeah, work for a purpose for sure. I agree with that. So while we're pulling the numbers, Anna, how does it strike you? That we're good that we could. Like Jay's been saying, we can stop. If we really wanted to just sell the property, and enjoy life now. Sell one, sell all.

You can choose what you want to do. You don't have to do it all at once. But to me, the dream of just like taking a nap, it's like so easy. Like that's it. If someone had said that to me, like, Rameed, your dream is to wake up one morning and not have to log in and do all this QA stuff for your,

that's it. And I would have been like, yeah, but that's so crazy. Like, I'm the only guy who can do it. And in their head, they would have realized, they would have seen a head in a way that I could not see. Rameit, you could be connecting with people in person. You could be recording a TV show.

But I was playing so small that I was stuck sending emails. And that's kind of the same thing I see here. I guess that's the part for Jay and I have to figure out how to learn. Yeah. Are you saying? I mean, it's hard. We'll stick to it more than anything because we've come to that conclusion. You said, yeah, let's do it.

And then your mind changed in a couple of days. Yeah. The mind changing is another example of scarcity. It's the idea that I don't think I got this right. I need to double back. What if I'm wrong? We should just stick with what we're doing. And you just go right back and retreat back to the thing that you knew. Yep. You nailed it. Yeah. It happens a lot. You guys see a therapist? We do. That's good. You talk about this kind of stuff? No. No, not the money stuff. Could you? It seems like it's a therapist. We do. That's good. You talk about this kind of stuff? No. Ah. No. No, not the money stuff. Could you? It seems like it's a very good opportunity to talk about this. Yeah.

Yeah. It's weird. I mean, like I said, having teenage kids, there's, when stuff is kind of going sideways, you hyper focus on things that aren't money related. Of course. And this is indicative of so much. Three kids, first of all, is a lot.

And at that age, and there is natural chaos to it. And you can't predict. and control everything. So, okay, we'll all accept that. Probably the lack of connection around money shows up in other ways. Like, you know, this classic kind of story, people, they're like fighting over, for example, like physical intimacy, but it's like not really about that. It's about something much deeper. So this is where we get the chance to talk once, but you and your therapist can talk much deeper and money is a manifestation of other things. And those other things manifest in money, like the chaos and like all these numbers being over here and there

and not being able to commit to a decision. Let's take a look at the numbers. If you sell it all and invest the money, age 50, you would have $7.2 million. And that means you could safely withdraw at 3%, like this is pretty conservative, about $216,000 a year. Okay, let's keep going. 55, 10.2, million dollars. Age 60, $14.5 million. And that's just 60.

You see how it turns into tens of millions. 14 turns into 28, turns into 56, turns into over $100 million. That's insane. What's going through your head right now, Anna? It's crazy. I mean, I wish I wish, I don't know, could do that. It would be nice.

I wish we had control of our own properties. I wish that we as the homeowners could do what we wanted with our properties. That would be so nice. Ramee, bust out your magic wand that you have and just... I wish. I wish I had one. Nobody listens to me.

Go ahead, Anna. I wish, but... It's like you said. It's like I just always go back and I'm okay, I need... I got to do this. And then I'm just going back. I'm like, nope, I got to stick to this. What do you get out of it?

I think it's fear. Yes? I think I'm just afraid of messing up. Do you accept that you're... wealthy? Yes. Wow. I mean, Jason asks me all the time. I feel like we are because, especially coming from my background, right? I feel like I'm able to do a lot more for my kids that I didn't have the opportunity to. How about for you? I'm not a spender, so I guess that's hard for me to say. Should a couple that has 10,

plus million dollars, should each of them be a spender or not? No, I think you need to have a saver and a spender to balance each other out. Oh. How about at $25 million? Do you need to have a saver? Yes, because if the spenders likes to spend too much money because now they're at a different level. Can you spend that much? Can't.

Could the two of you spend $2.5 million per year? There's no way. Even if I tried. Sure. I'm wearing a Costco shirt and $40 pants. I'm not that big of a spender here. All jokes aside. I like saving, right?

In our financial situation, I still have a savings number that I insist that we hit, and we do. But I don't define myself as being a saver anymore. I like to spend money. That's what I get after decades, of investing and working hard and making the right decision and being lucky. That's what I get.

I get to spend. And I actually created some rules for myself to make it easier. Like when I go out to a restaurant, I don't care how much anything costs. If I see it, I'm getting it. If I see three appetizers, I'm getting three of them. Can you see yourself ever getting to that? I don't think so. Okay.

I think vacations, yes, because I think Jay's gotten me a little bit more lenient because we do have a really good couple friend that we enjoy going. to vacations and I think that's probably where I can kind of relax. It's interesting that to you relax is some kind of nirvana, like some kind of place where you are not the person you are. But I like the person that you are. Thank you. I don't think you need to be somebody else to be better. I actually think that it's within you to maybe like unlock parts of you that have been locked up. Because everybody can relax. Even your parents, they can relax. They may not know how. It may not be socially

acceptable. They may have never seen it modeled, but they can if they were able to unlock it. What I'm trying to do here is to show you, yeah, the math is easy. There's tens of millions of dollars. You're all going to have more money than you ever know what to do with. I'm trying to get you to maybe unlock part of this. I don't know if it's connecting. I'm not sure. Can you work on it at least? I mean, I would love to. I mean, I... Unless the remit feels like moving to Vegas without being the mediator every time. I think that working on it is a great, I think that's a great question.

When my wife and I have had issues where one of us needed to improve on something, like we were really clear, hey, you need to work on this. Like, you've got to get good at this because this isn't helping us go where we need to go. And that's hard to say because it kind of feels like mean and judgmental.

It's also hard to hear because you're like, what do you mean I have to work on it? But with time and with practice and with the help of a therapist where you can bring these kinds of things up, that's great. You all are very accomplished. Obviously, this is a skill that I think, Anna, you have to build. The ability to actually unlock parts of you that allow you to feel more joy and to feel more pride and not to assign it to your kids. In fact, talking about your kids and how you want to give your kids this and your kids for weddings and that's actually an escape that allows you. you to avoid unlocking part of you. I'm talking about you. And what I want to hear from you is something like I would love to be able to get my hair done once a month or my nails or I'd like to be able to go out

to this hobby event with my friends and pick up the check. Like actually you've been working so hard for this money and it needs to be used. You need to give the money the respect that it deserves. Right now it's languishing locked up in a bank. that's not respecting it. It needs to be used for your rich life. Jay, what is your reaction to what you're hearing? I mean, you put it way more eloquently that I ever did, but that's exactly what I tell her.

The money is depreciating in the bank, right? And that's why I do kind of go overboard sometimes on the spending, because I know what I could buy today without dollar is not going to be the same thing I could buy in next year. Do you see how that might also be contributing to Anna feeling a little bit scarce about money? I could see that, but it's always been an issue even before I got to the spending. I mean, I haven't always spent this much, right?

But even before we didn't have as much as we do now, she's always been this way since she was 16, 17 years old, right? Here's what I propose. I propose that the two of you actually get clarity on how much you have every month. And I think you should actually make a plan for what to do with that. If you have $5,000 a month, Anna, if you really want to pay off one of the mortgages a little early, Okay. Take some of that and put it towards that. But also you've got to spend some of it on fun. And some of it has to be on just you.

So for example, if you were to take $1,000 a month on just you, what would you do with it? Maybe go to San Diego and hang out my sisters. Nice. What else? Enjoy some nice dinner. Mm-hmm. I don't know. I think just that. Rima, can I jump in real quick here?

So last year, each of us opened her own separate. savings account that we each put a little bit of money. Good. So she's had well over $1,000 to spend and she literally has spent zero. Okay. This is a good example. Anna, when the money is there, I think the agreement that I think you should

both come up with is that once that money is there, it has to be spent within a month. Now, that's scary. Because if it's like $1,000 a month, I mean, your answer was fly to San Diego and go to a restaurant. I'm like, I don't think to Vegas to San Diego fly

is even like 250 bucks. So you got dinner. What else? And you have to do this every month. My point is, it starts to become a skill that you have to build. Now why? Am I forcing you to spend your money?

Kind of. Because right now you're really good at accumulating it, but you're not good at spending it. You're not. And that's okay. It's just a skill you haven't developed. But I actually want you to do it for yourself. I want you to do it for the two of you

because you can see your husband is like really serious. about this. I actually want you to do it for your kids too. Especially your daughters who need to see their mom actually enjoying the money that she worked for. What do you think they would do if they saw that? I'd be happy. They'd be happy for you, huh? It's okay. What's making you cry when we talk about your daughters seeing you enjoy your money? I don't know. I just, I wish I could. I wish I could just do that, go out and just enjoy the money with my kids. Especially my girls. But it's just hard. It's hard.

It's not something I've learned to do. I don't know if it has to be. From the way I was brought up with my mom, because I never saw her spend money. Would you have liked to, to see her enjoy it? Yes, I would. I bet your daughters would say the same thing. I actually bet your daughters would love it if they asked you,

hey, mom, can we go out to lunch? And you said, sorry, I have a massage appointment I'm going to get, too, so can't do it today, maybe next week. I bet they would love it. At one point I asked my parents talking about their finances. And I was like, you know, got to spend it. It's important. You worked hard.

What are you doing with it? And I put them on a travel plan. But the travel plan was they had to spend at least this much every month. And they were kind of resistant to it, probably like all of our parents. And I was like, what are you going to do with the money? And they were like, we're going to give it to you. Like, why do I want your money? All of us have been successful because they came here and taught us the value of hard work.

So we want them to spend every last cent while they are alive. And you all are 40. You know your prime spending years? 40 to 60. 40 to see you're both mobile, healthy. Your kids, same for them. And who knows what happens after that. People get sick.

People get injured. People have parents who they have to take care of and they can. can't travel. What a gift to actually be able to spend that money thoughtfully, responsibly, but extravagantly in those prime spending years. So I know it's hard. You didn't come here because I was going to ask you easy things. But it's really important. What do you think? I mean, I would love to work on that. That's a skill that can be worked on. Do you see how difficult it is for Anna to even dream about what she wants? Like it's visceral and physical

that she is struggling to come up with ideas. And I think this is striking, especially for everybody watching, who initially started this video going, boo-hoo, multi-millionaire couples, what a tough life. I want you to see that even when you have lots more money, it is very, very likely that you will also struggle with the mechanics and the psychics,

and the psychology of money. Over and over, I show you couples that are in this situation, and what do you say? Oh, Rameet, so unrelatable. That's not the point. I want you to look deeper. Why am I bringing these couples on my show?

I am showing you a crystal ball into your future. You're following my system. You've read my book. Your investments are automated. Soon enough, you're going to have more money than you ever thought possible. Are you going to magically be in control of your money and your money psychology. No, not if you don't work on it. And that's what we see here.

I actually really look forward to talking to you like in a year hearing what you've done, what you've seen. It could be as small as we bought this little thing for our house. It makes life easier and as big as some big, cool trip that you're going to take. You could do it. If you make some changes, what do you think will happen to the two of you? It could be selling one house. it could be selling them all. It could be selling none, but the two of you agree on your plan. And if you make those changes,

what do you think will happen to your relationship? I believe it only brings us closer, right? Because there is a lot of stress kind of looming. Our primary residence in one of the homes that we keep talking about selling is just, we're talking about close to $12,000 in mortgages between the two properties. And that's just principle and interest.

We're not talking about all the other phantom costs. So we went away with one of those, I think would let her rest of these a little bit more. She's brought that up before, but I think she pushes back into her subconscious. But I think that alone, that would be a lot of weight off both of our shoulders. Do you want to make a decision about that right now? No? You want to look at the numbers more carefully?

What's going through your head? I definitely don't want to make any decisions that, like you said, I haven't carefully thought about. How long you've been thinking about that one? Two years? Over a year. Two years. Maybe just a few more months.

Like, do you feel nervous about making a decision? Yes, because just like Jay says, I always live in the past. I always make a decision, and then I'm like, I shouldn't have done that. Why did I do that? If I would have helped on, if I would have done this. Looking backwards, living in the past, was it get you? Keep staying in the past? Keep thinking, like he says.

But what does it get you though? It must be something because you're doing it. I don't know if it gets me anything positive to be honest with you. No, it gets you something. You get you control? Does it get you feeling like I'm smart because I see the angles of the things that I made a mistake on in the past? Yeah, you're right. Kind of like when I was writing those emails and sending it made me feel smart. Yeah.

Made me feeling control. But I was actually missing the bigger picture, the bigger opportunities. Yeah. You're right. I'm not going to tell you to stop living in the past. No one can change that quickly, but I would rather add something to your toolbox. What if you start living more in the future? The future right now, 40 to 60.

That's the prime spending years. If you could spend a little bit more, relax a little bit more living your rich life, what would it be? We'd do more things with my girls. Mm-hmm. You got anything in mind? We take them to a spa. Oh. Do it like a spa day with nothing they're into it.

I like that. What would you tell them? Let's have fun. Do we just do this right now? Do you want to text them? Yeah, I would love that. Really? Okay, pull out your phone.

Thank you. Tell me, what are you thinking of writing to them? This is a big moment. Yeah, it is. Do you guys want to do a spot-day with Mommy? Okay. Let's pump it up even more. If they saw that, they're going to be like,

who stole my mom's phone, right? Okay. This is such a great chance to tell them how much you love them, how lucky you are to have work so hard that you can take them together. She just read it. Okay. She put, yeah, sure.

What's she saying? What's wrong, bro? I was just going to say, for me. I don't know how much you text teenage girls, but it's, I was kind of waiting for that kind of response. I guess you got bro or not bro. Yeah, that's a good start. What do you see, Hannah? She thought we'd love too, but what's wrong?

Oh, sorry, I read it wrong. What's wrong, though? Not bro. She does say bro all of, though. What's wrong? Why do you think she's saying that? I said, I don't really. Yeah.

It's new for you. It's almost like you're trying on a new outfit, even a new skin. It's new for you. And it's okay that she says what's wrong. There's nothing wrong at all. In fact, everything is right. Money is right. The two of you are right.

You worked hard. You get a chance to take your daughters out for a spa day. Nothing's wrong. I love you. That's it. You wonder what she wrote? Yeah. A little ass text.

So you asked them, would you like to do a spa day with mommy? She said, yeah, sure. We would love to. What's wrong, though? Your response was, awesome. Poppy work really hard and I would love to treat you and your other daughter to have some fun. And your daughter wrote, oh, okay. Yeah, sounds good. Tell Ramit, I said hi and I love him.

It's a really cool way of connecting with your daughters differently. Really cool. I kind of love seeing how challenging that was for you. You did it. I'm really proud of you. Thank you. I am too. Thank you. This is the beginning of changing your relationship with money. It's funny because some people watching like, I never saw somebody struggle so much to go to a spa day. But actually, it's you taking the first step towards a new identity.

First for yourself, next for the two of you. And the cool thing is you've been talking about this for a long time, but sometimes it's like enough talking, we got to take one step. Do it, have fun. Splurge. Get the massage. and then the two of you can work on your rich life together. Now, Anna, you mentioned you want to work on improving your relationship.

This was a great start. What's another way that you can commit to to keep really working on this? I would say work less, but I know that one's more challenging. Okay, so it's not that. What's something you can win at? I don't know. I'll throw some ideas out. If I'm in both of your situations, I would, A, agree to make a decision about the houses within six weeks.

It's long enough that you can run some numbers, but short enough that that's it. This is the decision we're making. Boom. You can always revisit the decision a year from now, but if you decide to sell one house, you're going to sell one house. Boom. So can I ask a question about that? So how do we hold accountability on that? Right, because this, again, this is something that we've already agreed to do multiple times.

Well, I think you should agree to it here. Okay. And again, I'm suggesting six weeks. You might say four weeks. You might say eight weeks. But you should make an agreement now. And I think that you should follow up with this in weekly therapy. You should talk about this.

Probably the biggest decision you're making in your family right now. 100%. Ultimately, it's really making the decision. That's what matters. And you both got to feel good about it. Okay. So that's what I would say. The next thing I would do is I would work on.

some individual therapy as well as the couples therapy that you're doing, that is a way to commit to it. Hey, once a week, I'm going to go see an individual therapist about this very topic. That's a big commitment. That's powerful. And then third, I might say once a month, the two of us are going to watch a movie together. Just that. Melody, for sure, so you can stay up. It's like really simple in the grand scheme of things, but it actually profoundly changes

the way that you've treated money before. Those are my suggestions. You don't have to follow them. You could change him, skip them, whatever. But what do you all think? Make some commitments. Anna? Going out, I think we could do.

Six weeks, maybe pushing it on the rental properties, but I could try to work on that. Let's pick a number. To a month and a half, you don't think you can make a decision a month and a half. Try that a different way. Try encouraging. I believe you're a very intelligent,

person and I believe that a month and a half should is sufficient time for you to be able to make a decision on whether or not we sell that property. What do you think? Yes. Great. Great. I can tell it's scary to even commit to making a decision. I want to encourage you and you will discuss this probably with the therapist that what scares you is probably the very thing you need to do. Like starting to make definitive, decisive decisions is actually the thing that's going to get you out of this paralysis. It feels so good to make decisions. It feels really good. It's a skill. It's like you taught your kids to write a bike. Oh, it's so scary. Oh my God, I can never do it. No, it feels really good to pedal. You're going to do that too. Okay. So that's one.

Other commitments? I'm 100% with going out to the movies and watching a movie again. Yeah? Or even as simple as taking an afternoon and laying on the couch and watching the game or a movie there. Right? We don't have to go somewhere. Just relaxing more. I'm okay with that. Which day? Friday? Usually works best. Friday or Saturday? Friday it is. There's nothing like a weekday movie. Feels very free. Okay, Friday. One of the next four,

four Fridays, put on the calendar and honor it. And then what commitment do you want to make? I'm going to commit to be a little bit more cognizant on the spending. I would love to be able to have you feel more comfortable spending a little bit more on yourself because you've earned it, you know? You do a lot for the family and you deserve it. How much? Ballpark it.

I'm okay with a thousand bucks a month on something that's just for you, right? Nothing to do with the kids or the house or anything. anything. Great. How do you feel about that? Yeah, it feels good. Okay. It's definitely going to be a challenge, but yes. Good. Can you commit to spending that? That's the challenge part. That's the challenge part. Yeah. Just to give you some ideas, because I love talking about how to spend more money meaningfully. Okay. I wish more people ask me, but Anna can do several things. Anna can buy new clothes, new workout accessories, massage, any of the... Anna can also go and tip somebody $250.

Or write a check to a charity for $750. Anna can do whatever she wants, but she has to spend that $1,000 per month. What do you think? Can you make that commitment? I don't think I can. Okay, tell me the number you can. $200 if that?

$200? That's fine with me. How do you feel about that? It's better than nothing. It's a great start. Yeah. 200? Perfect. 200 bucks for you and you got to do the same.

He goes, no problem. I'll spend that in the next 15 minutes. Done and done. 200 bucks for you. And I think you two should share with each other. Not to be judged. There's no judgment whatsoever. They could spend it on the weirdest thing ever and you say, that sounds awesome.

I want you to get in the habit of talking about it, of being unapologetic about it. I like it. All right. What surprised you most about our conversation today? I mean, I knew she had a problem with not spending money, but I didn't know it was that severe. It's crazy to know how much your upbringing truly has on your money and the way you spend it. So it was a very eye-opening experience from day one to find things out about myself and Anna. Good. Anna, what about you? What surprised you about the conversation? How much of my traits are from my mom?

Mm-hmm. A lot. Yeah. And your mom did a great job. She did the best she could. Different circumstances. But if your mom imagined going up in California and then Nevada and having properties and children and houses and she probably would not do what she did in your circumstance. So you actually get the chance to rewrite that.

and then your kids, they will rewrite what they see as well. It's cool. I think it's an amazing opportunity, amazing insight. And how did you feel coming in here versus how do you feel now? I was super nervous. I'm very nervous, but I feel like I have a better understanding of the reasons why I am the way I'm with money. Yeah, cool. It's a gift.

To be able to understand yourself more is really cool. Nice work. Jay, how about you? Same. Definitely nervous, but I feel good because now we've got a non-biased third party that's kind of hitting home the same things that I've been telling Anna for years. And I'm hoping that it hits home this time around right. She understands that.

Both of you have been really vulnerable and I appreciate that. I think we've opened up a lot of kind of like where you, your beliefs about money come from. I'd like to encourage both of you. The journey that you are about to go on is actually going to take both of you to open up and to change because until now,

both of you have basically worked, worked, worked. And this is where I think another unbiased third party can help you construct a way to talk about this. I say this because you mentioned that once in a while when one of you relaxes, the other one will kind of half jokingly go like, hey, what are you doing? Why are you chilling? Get up. And so you have these like bonds together that an identity of we work. That's what we do. We work. And it's going to take a lot of careful

unraveling and then building something new. And it's going to be tough to do it on your own. That's why I'm so glad you came here. You need somebody outside and you're going to need somebody outside to help you keep doing it. So that's why I encourage you to see other folks, coaches, therapists, others, they'll help you get where you need to go. My wish for them actually has very little to do with the money side of it. My wish for them is to develop a skill. And that is the skill of being decisive. It actually sucks to go through life being indecisive. You take one step forward, two steps back. Even when you make a decision, you look back and room. it's not a healthy place to be and especially if you are a high performer it stops you it's

almost like going through life with breaks on you can't reach your full potential what a waste so i want them to become more decisive together not one not the other together i want anna to build the confidence of saying this is what i think we should do and for her to build a support system so that she can talk about that skill. It's going to be hard. For Jay, I want him to be a good support system for Anna. I noticed that a couple of times he said stuff like, this is what I've been telling you. That's got to stop. And for him to provide clarity to her and encouragement so that they can both start to effectively use their money. What do I think is going to happen? I think it's going to be really hard. I think that people who have spent their entire lives,

working hard, seeing exhaustion as an aspiration, I think that it is incredibly difficult and often nearly impossible to change. For me to say, I want you all to have a life of leisure, that would be very difficult for them. It's difficult for Anna to even commit to spending $200 a month. But I do think there is hope. I do think that there has got to be a bigger tomorrow than today.

And I don't just mean about money. I mean about showing their children how to use money effectively, how to connect with each other so they can actually spend some time together and watch TV on the couch. That is what a brighter tomorrow would be. That I have confidence they can do. And now let's check out their follow-ups. Hi, Anna here. After meeting with her meet and discussing our situation,

my biggest surprise from our conversation was learning how much of my money habits and work ethics came from my parents. My need to save and not spend was definitely from my mom and my continuing to always work was definitely from my dad. One thing that Rameet educated us on on our finances is that we are doing really good and we put in a lot of hard work already for the past 20 plus years. So my biggest takeaway is we are going to try to work less every day and be able to enjoy our time and money with the kids now and not focus so much on the future. So we are going to be doing a lot more vacations

with the kids and just more relaxing time and definitely going to the movies with Jay at least once a week. Thank you. Jay here, a little recap after meeting with Rameet. It was definitely a very eye-opening experience, very emotional, and my biggest takeaway from it

was definitely finding out that we're taking care, right? Anna and I have worked our butts off since we were 16 years old. And though we have a lot of good memories throughout our life together, it's always been go, go, go, right? We never get to enjoy moments because we're always moving on to the next thing and just working our butts off. So knowing that we're, we've done all the right things in our 20s and 30s

and now leading into our 40s that we could finally kind of let go a little bit and put the car on cruise control was great to see and hear from somebody like Rameet. So my biggest takeaways are that I need to slow down, enjoy my family more, spend a little bit less and hopes that I can spend a little bit more. But we're definitely making a lot of changes already. We've already put one of our properties on the market, hopefully two here by next year. So implementing changes that Remyi told us to do and hoping that things get a little bit more relaxing moving forward.

Thank you. Listen up. If you want my help with your specific money questions, there are only two ways to get it. First, you can apply to be on this podcast at IWT.com slash apply. Or second, you can join my money coaching program instantly at IWT.com slash money coaching. In that program, you get access to live virtual events, monthly group coaching calls, live Q&As, and an amazing, huge community of other people like you. Check it out at IWT.com.

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