I Will Teach You To Be Rich - 9. “I hid thousands of dollars of credit card debt from my husband”

Episode Date: September 14, 2021

Jordan wasn't raised to talk about money. She constantly saw her mom withhold money matters from her dad, and now, history is repeating itself. Jordan has hidden her debt from her husband, Dan, twice. He feels violated. This is not the kind of thing you do when you're saving for a down payment on a house and building a family. He needs the problem not to happen again. Before talking this out with me, neither realized they were on the verge of a relationship breakdown. Most people don't truly appreciate the consequences of their actions. They run away from their problems and shove important issues under the rug. Jordan thought she could fix this alone, but her mom wiped out her debt the first time around (it takes her a while to drop that bombshell), and she's still learning how to talk about finances openly after growing up with a money code of shame and secrets. Listen to their initial money visions. They're as imaginative as a cardboard box. There are lofty visions of "travel" and "a kid," but no specifics. Nothing to get excited about. No wonder why they aren't investing or saving together. Tune in to hear how I coax out the clues from them -- and offer them a vision of where to go next. Connect with Ramit Website Instagram Twitter Facebook YouTube Linkedin Produced by Crate Media.

I was running late from work and shut over to the office and she was having a conversation with him and the first thing he was talking about as I sat down was how to manage credit card debt. Now that she had $10,000 of the credit card debt and I was like, you have $10,000 of credit card debt. I thought I could fix it for a long time. It kept telling myself, why bring somebody else into this space when it's so awful? And I want anybody else to feel like this.

I just kind of felt like my trust was rock for those first two weeks, like I just kind of felt violated. And it wasn't even my money. If we want to have a family together and grow together like this can't happen anymore. I'm Ramid Saiti and this is the I will teach you to be rich podcast. My guests today are Dan and Jordan. Dan earns $125,000 a year and Jordan earns $60,000 a year. And for the most part, I don't really think about money that much. Or at least that's what Dan thought. Right up until the moment when he discovered Jordan was keeping $10,000 in credit card debt

from him. And it wasn't the first time. Let's listen in. We were meeting with our financial advisor for the first time and had shared it in that space. I was running late from work and shut over to the office and she was having a conversation with him and the first thing he was talking about as I sat down was credit card debt and how to manage credit card debt now that she had $10,000 of the credit card debt and I was like you have $10,000 in credit card debt? Like how?

And in those type of conversations, like, he obviously was like, you didn't know this. I didn't want to have that conversation there. Like, I wanted to keep it progressing and focus on everything we were there to accomplish. And if it happened, we need to figure out a way forward. I think what was jarring to me is that technically we are married and like a good tenant of a good marriage or a good relationship period is communication. And the fact that that didn't even get shared with me because a lot of the debt was from our wedding.

Our parents were very gracious with us and generous on wedding related costs. And I thought in that net, like, we were good. I didn't even invest it a little bit in advance of the wedding and made some off-stock mark in through a torsor wedding. Like, I thought we were, we had nothing. So that was really surprising to me because I never wanted to go in debt for a wedding. Like I just thought that was outrageous. So hearing that not only caught me off guard, but it was kind of like,

well, why wouldn't you just share this with me? Yeah, so horrifying, honestly. I kept it a secret because I thought I could fix it for a long time. I had an idea in my head that I'd be able to do it on my own. I also had this, I think, fear about what the reaction would be. And I think after so long, it just was a part of me. And I knew how much it impacted me emotionally that I was worried about what and how it would impact

in and long run. Like, it's going to suck either way and it sucked either way. But I had this idea in my head, I had one of those invisible money scripts in my head that I'd fix it. And I went through it for a long time of like, I can fix it, I can fix it, I'll get it down. It's not a big deal. That I think is that in a nutshell,

is that I really thought that I could do it myself and that I didn't need help from anybody else. The best predictor of your future behavior is your past behavior. So I suspected this wasn't a one-time thing. And usually when you see people behaving in a peculiar way with money, it's not the first time. By the way, this is true in many different parts of life.

There's a great book called The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker. And he talks about how when violent crimes happen, inevitably, the local news will go out there, interviewed neighbors, and they'll always say the same thing. He was such a nice guy. And then more times than you can believe, they'll do a little bit of investigation, a little bit of digging. And you'll find out there was a history of unusual or destructive or even criminal behavior. By the time you notice something is really off,

it's almost never the first time. Now, I highly recommend that book. It's called The Gift of Fear and you can actually search for Remete Book recommendations to find out more of my favorite books. Let's see if my suspicions here are correct. The second go around was when we were applying for our mortgage or applying for approval for our mortgage, our lending application. And so both times, they came out in other places, so not like me, like finally, like coming to my knees

or like coming to the ground to be like, hey, this is happening, this is hard. If they came out in, and I don't know, I don't know, public ways is the right way to be like, hey, this is happening. This is hard. They came out and, you know, I just don't know, I don't know, public ways is the right way to say it, but in spaces involving other people where that information was then like disclosed or brought up from, from those spaces. Do you think that makes it different that it involved other people? Yeah, absolutely. The impact of it is more felt maybe more weighted because I didn't come to him initially, right?

Like I didn't come to say, hey, I'm having a really fucking hard time. I'm in debt. I have accrued this debt like I need help. So we put Jordan on a good track record of like, okay, let's move this debt over to a 0% interest credit card for a year. Let's figure out how you can ship away at it

and eventually like get this down to zero. She was making great progress on it. Like I think what was the Jordan for like two years you got it down from what like 12 $10,000 to 6. Yeah. So like she did a great job. I think it was really frustrating looking forward to when we were submitting letting applications is that it came again and like I knew there wasn't any like big purchases happening or anything along those lines and I just kind of felt like my trust was rock in the form of really like not disclosing that since we had already been through it before. And the fact is like putting thousands of dollars again back into the credit card, which is the worst step that you can have and not sharing about it when we're putting massive documents out there to get approved for lending.

Like that's an issue for me, especially since I was the one putting up all of the money for a home. So, like, I can forgive you on the first time, I can forgive you on the second time, but like, I can't, like, as a family, if we want to have a family together and grow together, like, this can't happen anymore. And like, we're not rich people right now. I mean like in terms of how you define it like yes we're doing pretty well for our age. But at the end of the day like we can't really forward that going forward. Especially like when you think of several parents we're going to give us the money for a down payment or something. That money in conversation after this, we put towards the credit card to get rid of all

of that, rather than putting it in towards a home that would probably appreciate what, maybe like 4% a year or something along those lines. Like it just didn't make sense. So take that out of the equation. Now it's like 100% me putting anything into this down payment plus anything that needs to go into the home. So it's like 100% me putting anything into this down payment plus anything that needs to go into the home. So, it's heavy. But like we talk a lot about it and I think we've worked through it pretty well, but for

those first two weeks, like I just kind of felt violated. And it wasn't even my money. Notice the language that Dan is using here. He said, my crust was rocked. This can't happen again, and I felt violated. This is a huge issue in their relationship. Now, if you were in my role, what would you do right now? Where would you take the conversation?

My instinct is telling me something here, telling me to dig deeper. And it's telling me that they don't fully understand the implications of what's going on right here. You know, I've talked to lots of people and they'll say, Oh, yeah, this is a big deal. This is a nine out of 10. And the other partner will agree. But when I probe to see if they really understand what's at stake, that sometimes they are weeks away from potentially ending the relationship. The other partner is totally stunned. Most people don't truly appreciate the consequences

of their actions on their partner. The first time I was just more like surprised than anything, and I thought as more of like a teachable moment. The second time it was just like, we're married, like we have great communication with one another and we share everything with each other. So like, why couldn't you share this with me? The emotionality of it for me and the matter of factness

of it for him is so striking for us all the time. And not for us, I guess for me for sure. Everything I do is within emotion. I don't have an off switch. I am constantly assessing other people's emotions, my emotions. I'm worried about other people's emotions. I was so sick about what would happen or what Dan's reaction to be. I knew it would be awful. I knew how disappointed he would be. I'm not buying it. Remember what I say?

People with money problems love to talk about their money problems. But it's not enough to talk about your problems. It's not even enough to admit you have a problem. Like Jordan just did when she admitted she knew it would be awful. This is where people commonly make a mistake. They'll say things like, I get it. I totally screwed up by showing up late again. Or I know I need to stop overspending on the credit card. Guys, admitting a problem is a good first step, but it's just the first step. Especially when a partner

is involved, they need to see change not just hear words. I want to probe how Jordan is feeling about this. I think she's using a lot of words, but I still don't really understand how this is affecting her. So shitty guilt. I mean, I guess still some guilt, but better. Oh, I was gonna might get up,

see I'm gonna get emotional. It's hard. I mean, it's really hard. It's hard. It's hard to think about having like the compared, like to hear how it equal. They are as hard,

but for the first time, I feel like not, yeah, like it's not heavy and that there's a chance, you know, like that I have a chance to do better. Feel it, that feels better and okay. And I haven't been able to say that, you know, like prior I haven't, I haven't been able to actually look at what I have without seeing a deep dark hole. It was hard to have to unload it onto other people. It's still hard to have to have done that, right? Like to let other people into that hole when I go back and think about how it came, how the information came out, like how it finally came to me. I regret it, but I also, I don't know how I would have been able to have gotten to that point.

Otherwise, I really don't. And that's so scary to think about it really is. It's so horrifying to think about. As a partner, it's in being someone who's solution oriented. Like, there's no way that I can't just like, not help her through this and try to make it more approachable. And we've had those conversations, like we talked about previously, it's like, okay, how do we make this a,

where you can be a little bit more vulnerable, and I can help answer questions to make it better. But at the end of the day, it's just a tough scenario. And it's still relatively new, even though it happened once previously. One of the things I'm hearing from you, Dan, is that it sounds like you are willing to engage, have discussions,

understand her perspective, but also you need this problem to not happen again. Yeah. At this point, I was feeling a little stuck. I had hoped to get them to talk about what the consequences of this behavior would be on their relationship. Instead, we sort of got sucked back into this black hole of how she feels bad. That's very common. Again, people with money problems love to talk about their money problems. At a certain point, it almost becomes intoxicating.

You cannot escape it. And yet, you have Dan over here, who's being very matter of fact, very cool about it, and that can be very dangerous to the relationship. So, I was feeling stuck. I decided I'm going to zoom out. See if I can figure out what their world view of money is. When you think about money, what's the first word that comes to mind for you? Oh, I associate my mom with money.

Bingo. I didn't expect that. But boy oh boy, is that a clue. What word comes to mind when you think about your mom and money? A lot of it. She had a lot of money. Has. Has a lot of money. A lot of it. She had a lot of money. Has. Has a lot of money, okay. I think right now that's what I think. If you would ask me a couple of weeks ago

and you'd said money, I would have said, something probably really dark. Like what? Got like black death. Like really, yeah, dark. Like it was off. Heavy, heavy that heavy I would have said heavy I think a lot about how I how I was raised with money or how I wasn't you know we didn't talk about it my mom there's still some secrets between in their

relationship and I see a lot of that it's gone I don't have it anymore I don't have debt anymore why what happened Because my mom paid it off. Jordan just went off on a long digression about money and Dan and then right at the end, she mentioned that she used to have debt and that it magically got paid off. I was like, what? You know, my sister's a doctor and there's a running joke in the medical field that you sit down with your patients and you ask them what's wrong and they go nothing, Doc, I'm feel fine. You know, it's just I'm a little tired sometimes. So you talk for 15 minutes and then as they're walking out, they have one foot literally outside the door. They turn around and go, Oh, by the way, Doc, you know, I can't breathe at night and

my head started bleeding two days ago and both of my feet are totally swollen. Anyway, thanks for the Tylenol prescription. Talk to you next time. This happens to me all the time, like this. Why? What happened? Because my mom paid it off. How were you raised as it relates to money? I always had it. I could always ask for it. It was always there. And who brought in the money in your family? My mom. And what about your dad? Did he work? He had a lot of seasonal jobs.

He had had a full-time job at one point and then got pretty sick. And so I wasn't able to do that. And so there was a lot of, there was a sort of sort of incidence that led to him being unemployed for a long time and then trying to find work and not being able to find work. So money is a pretty sensitive, it's a sensitive topic in my family.

But it's also a very open topic as well. What do you mean? We talk about it, but it's touchy. How they, how my parents spend it? Who spends it? I think you can go to love with Beeper on it too, because her parents were very differently like her mom's family. It was like grew up in corporate America.

Her grandfather was like a staple of the community. Her dad's side of the family was dirtboard. So when you put those two together, that's very much how their relationship is today. So like her mom is a breadwinner. Her dad is basically retired early and kind of just takes care of the community around him. And he's kept that I grew up poor mindset

so I can't spend this money. And there's a couple of levels to why her mom doesn't necessarily share things with her dad because her dad would just go crazy about it. He's possessive of how it spent, who spends it, who gets it. Think about this a little bit in sort of our relationship too, baby, it's just like, I don't make a lot of money.

My dad didn't make a lot of money. Dan and my mom are very similar. My dad and I are very similar. That I think money for my dad and I is emotional. It can be emotional in the sense. And I think a lot about the way he uses or doesn't use money is so varied. It's so varied.

Yeah. So I guess from that perspective, the sensitive thing, right? So we talk about it. And then, you know, we'll be in conversations with my parents and we talk about money with them. And then it just, but then it depends. It's very delicate. So my dad needed a new car at some point

and has never owned a brand new vehicle. Mom had said, you know, what kind of car do you want? Right? My dad loves a G-Wag. It's like his dream car. And my mom's like, great, let's get you a G-Wag. You want a G, we can get you a G-Wag. Absolutely.

I mean, couldn't, so now he's driving my 2004 Ford Escape that has a cracked windshield. And the engine, you know what I mean? He is just, you couldn't, he could not possibly imagine having put money into a car. I see. It sounds like your mom would have easily been able to afford that.

And he wanted it, but he just couldn't bring himself to accept that. Is that correct? Yep. And I've been in occasions or conversations with my mom where we talk about like, is this something that we tell bad Do we not dance in their tuba? We're like, oh, do we tell them? Do we not tell them like how if we do tell them? How do we tell them do we tell them all of it? Do we not?

What if you tell him we're gonna go by this expensive thing what how's he gonna react? I wish you could see my facial expressions whoever's listening Dicey? Can you think of any deeply hurt? It hurt. That's a good one. It's deeply hurt and angry. What?

Was a emotional guy. Because he wasn't consulted. Yeah. And he didn't have a say in it. He's not involved. Even though he's not the bread winner. Yeah. It's irrelevant. Yeah. It was not involved. Even though he's not the breadwinner, yeah, it's irrelevant.

Yep. Mm-hmm. So you walk on eggshells when it comes to financial things. You find it difficult to bring certain things up. You actually strategize about what to bring up and what not to bring up. And I'm going to venture to guess that you have probably forgotten on a couple of occasions and something slipped out and he got angry, man. Can you think of an example

like that? Okay, this is it. This is the clue. Remember a few minutes ago when I asked you, what would you do if you were me? Now, as you're hearing what Jordan is saying about how she was raised, would you change your answer? What we're hearing right now is the crux of what's driving Jordan's behavior, her overspending and more importantly, her hiding of money. Can you hear it? Jordan, do you think there are any cultural issues

and or gender issues? With, oh yeah, oh, gender for sure. Talk to me about this. My dad is a macho. I mean I think there's a lot that goes into him not making the money in our family as a male. I think that there's a lot of sensitivity to the fact that he doesn't provide for our family in some sense, right? And I think what's so fascinating is that, so I'm a psychologist, I mean mental health is my game. Like I self-analyze the hell out of everybody.

And I think so often about my dad provides in so many other ways. He really does. I mean, he is the backbone of our family for so many reasons that aren't bringing in money or having a job, but I think it cuts him in pieces. He worries very much. So that my mom will leave, you know, like that, that there's this other mysterious personnel there that my mom could be with, right? You know, like, why is my mom with him? Why, or why is your mom with me? Right? Like I don't bring anything to the table. What is, you know, why am I doing? Why are we still together? Kind of a thing. Go on.

He'll say that in spaces. Yeah. Yeah, pretty openly. I think. Yeah, I think there's, I think that there. pretty openly, I think. I think that there, if anything, there's definitely gender roles. I think the gender thing is playing to it very much. Here's what I'm noticing. Jordan grew up in a dynamic where she was trained to walk on egg shells around money. She literally strategized about what to say and what not to say. If you learn from a young age that money issues are secretive and shameful, it's almost no surprise that Jordan has grown up to keep financial secrets to herself and her partner.

And these are secrets that carry strong negative emotions. Imagine that from a young age when you see money, you don't just see a $5 bill. You have an entire extra layer that rings in your head. Should I talk about this? Well dad get mad. I should probably just be quiet about this and not mention it to anybody. It's constant. It's ever present.

And after a few years, it's just a low level buzzing in the back of your head anytime money comes up. You may think you're good, but deep down this is like a tiny needle that's pressing on your skin every day for 25 years. You've just learned to live with it. One of my money dials is generosity. For example, I love tipping big, I love buying gifts and experiences for my family. And recently, I bought my parents a subscription to delete me. This episode's sponsor. Delete

me is a subscription service that will remove your personal information that's being sold online. If you've ever Googled your name, you'll notice tons of search results with your personal information being shared online. That's not okay. It's not okay for you. It's definitely not okay for your family, including your parents. Now delete me will remove it all. Your name, address, phone number, all of it.

It automatically works in the background to scan and delete your personal information from over 30 data brokers, but they'll do custom requests on over 580 data brokers total. The thing is, identity theft is a real issue. An estimated 15 million Americans had their identity stolen in 2021. We've had a number of people on this very show who were victims of identity theft, and often it put them into tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt and it ruined their credit. That's why I find delet me so valuable.

It's a service that I personally use, and I love it. They reviewed over 4,600 listings for me and removed dozens of pieces of personal information. I knew it would be important to protect my parents too, but I also knew that they probably wouldn't sign up themselves, so I just got it for them. So if generosity is one of your money dials, great. If you care about your parents at all, if you have ever given them a hug, just sign them up. You know they aren't going to do it for themselves, but you also know that they probably

need it. So if you want to get your personal information and the personal information of your loved ones removed from search results on the web, go to joindeleteme.com slash remeat for 20% off a plan for you or your entire family. That's joindeleteme.com slash remeat R-A-M-I-T for 20% off. Recently on the show, you heard me speak to Jennifer and Andrew. They were struggling to pay off their credit card debt, and they had a bunch of subscriptions that they didn't even know about. Look if you love having all these subscriptions, and you can afford it, I'm all for it.

But a lot of times when people actually see all the subscriptions they've signed up for months or years ago, they realize they need to make a change because they can redirect where that money is going much more towards their rich life. If you are wondering where all your money is going, I want you to check out this episode sponsor RocketMoney.

RocketMoney, formerly known as TrueBill, is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps you lower your bills all in one place. RocketMoney will find the subscriptions you don't want and then you can press cancel and rocket money will cancel it for you. No more long hold times with customer service or emailing back and forth. That is convenience. I love it. Imagine finding an extra $50, $100, $200 per month by eliminating subscriptions you just forgot about. What could you do with that extra money? You could redirect it to things you actually care about, like an amazing dinner out with

friends or investments, or you could use it to pay off debt even faster. Stop throwing your money away, cancel your unwanted subscriptions, and manage your expenses the easy way by going to rocket money.com slash remit. That's rocket money.com slash R-A-M-I-T. At one point, probably this second go around, I would look at my credit card statement and I would say, well, I've already got this much. So I might as well just keep on going or I've already got this much. There's nothing that I can do here. There's nothing that I can do that's going to make this better. So why bother? Or why bring somebody else in, right? I think that was a big one for me that I kept

telling myself it's why bring somebody else into this space when it's so awful. Why do I need to bring somebody else into this? It's already awful for me. I don't want anybody else to feel like this. I didn't want anybody to feel what I was feeling. I felt awful until I have somebody else feel that way, didn't feel like an option. I'll give you a real life example. So I got charge extra for this massage and the membership that I have. And I was like, I just read my meat's book. I'm about to call them and I'm about to get my money back. And I'm going to cut, like I'm about to cut them up, right?

And it didn't work. I came quick real fast. So I'm trying, I'm trying, I think like the more that I can get into it and the more that I can familiarize myself with the terms and the knowledge and that stuff, I certainly have more of a drive to do it than I did before. I can say that 100%. I think one of my invisible money scripts was,

I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this. It's too overwhelming. You said to me yourself that you are an emotional person and the way you said it was almost as if to relinquish control. Yeah. And an emotional person. That's that.

Therefore, I'm not good with money. Yes. And can you think of anyone else in your life who's emotional and not good with money? I mean, my dad, but he's still good with money. He just doesn't use it. Does that count? I guess. Did you describe him as good with money?

No, because he doesn't use it. Yeah. So he's actually not good with money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you got me. Yep. 100%. Yeah. You're living out the programming of growing up with your family as trite as it is. Mm-hmm. But it's no surprise. Yeah. Yeah. And when I hear you talking about the anxiety you felt about even bringing it up Because as you said you spent 50% of the time on yourself 50% of the time on Dan and

Add those up. You were a hundred percent preoccupied with what would he say that fear becomes so looming It suddenly becomes its own problem and what do we do when we encounter problems? Most of us are not solution oriented. It takes a lot of work to become solution oriented. Most of us, when we encounter the problem the first time, we do the same thing everybody else does. We run away. So I can see why the first time it happened.

That I understand. The second time is much trickier. I want to dig into this idea, because you've both mentioned potentially having a family at some point, and this seems like a really important issue to get corrected before that happens. Adding that kind of complexity with a child or children would be very, very challenging. I think short term right now we're trying to

buy a house, so a house for sure. Long term. I think travel is a big one for us and wanting to be able to travel without worrying about the without having to worry, you know, that we can just pick where we want to go and we can go. And where do you want to go? Oh, okay, well, it was on our, I mean, I want it, Spain, I think is the next one we got

to, Spain. So a house in travel, very good. Dan, what about you? I mean, the house is the biggest piece for us right now, just because we live it every single day, especially in this crazy market. Like, is that top one, two, and three for us at the moment, just because we're so engulfed in it?

I think like two for me is, I see it is more kind of like a step after the house is having a kid. You guys saved together? No. Mm-hmm. Do you invest together? No, I haven't got any.

Okay. Do you know why you don't save and invest together? All my money was going towards debt and I couldn't, I was keeping that a secret. And such a have those things together meant that somehow that was, I saw a connection between, that was my, that's a my initial thing. Nope, that's not it. She thinks that's it, but that's not it. That first time when we walked in the financial advisor's office and I learned of all the debt that

she never shared with me. So like that kind of made me feel some sort of way. One of the principles that I wanna share with both of you is something I really crystallized when I went on our honeymoon. You might remember this story from episode four of the podcast where I sat down with John and Wendy to teach them about the importance of both having skin in the game

if they want to play together. Skin in the game, it means if you go on a trip, everybody who comes needs to plan at least something, even if it's just bringing the sunscreen. If you haven't heard that episode yet, go back and listen to it for the full story, so that you understand this rule. But essentially, the key principle here is that one way to get buy-in is to make everybody have to put a little skin in the game. If you're bringing someone along with you

in whatever part of life, they need to put some skin in the game. Now, I think that there's an opportunity for both of you to do the same thing here. One of the reasons that you both are not saving and investing beyond the secret debt and beyond all these things is that neither of you have anything you're actually saving for. Everything you're saving for is really boring.

Oh, did you hear it? You guys remember what you told me? Yeah. I'm pretty excited about this house for me. That is cool. Okay, I'm sure it's a beautiful house. I'm sure it's great. What about the future kid?

What about it? That's Spain, what's that? What about the kid? You didn't tell me anything about what you want to spend the money on. He did indicate that it was going to be a mail, which I don't appreciate. So I did. Yes, you did. You said he and we can roll the kids back, but that's neither here nor there.

Well, okay, we can talk about the gender stuff later, but I have to tell you, Dan, I'm not excited by saving for a kid. What are you gonna spend the money on for your son or daughter? All right, you got me. Some jays. Hold on, I'm not trying to get any, but I'm trying to get your dreams out on paper so that you both have a reason to save together.

And when you do this, Dan and Jordan, you're not going to have to push each other, which is, I found, is a really losing battle, especially when you are at divergent levels of expertise and interest, but rather, you're gonna be pulled towards the things that create your rich life. So I wanna do a different exercise this time, because I was bored by what you told me, oh, I wanna travel.

So does everybody, I wanna breathe oxygen. You got anything else for me? Let's dream a little bigger. So instead of a couple things that you're interested in, I want to ask you both to take 30 seconds. I want to have multiple properties in different cities for us to be able to travel to. So like I would love to retire well before 65 and have a couple different properties that I could either, the week and either, Airbnb on the side, and then enjoy with friends and family if we want to go to the city.

For example, I would love to have a house in Savannah. I would love to have a place in New Orleans. Another spot in Minneapolis, etc. Fantastic. Way more compelling. I love this. So you have this concept. You have multiple properties, and they're big enough

that you could go with friends. You could let them stay while you're not there. You could Airbnb it out for a little extra cash. And what age do you want to retire at? Man, I'd love to retire at like 55. Right. Okay, this is a vision. 55, you're driving around to the,

oh, let's go to New Orleans today. Ah, you know what? Minneapolis tomorrow. That's a rich life. Okay, hold on to that. I love that. Jordan, what about you? I have two ones together,

one's individual. Together goal. I, and I hope you're not gonna do this as boring, man. I wanna take Dan to Italy. I wanna do a full on, like, top to bottom, train trip of Italy. Like, start at the top, start at Milan, Chiquitera, come down to Florence,

Sienna, do the whole Kianti region. The South is a little scary sometimes, but I want to take like an entire, I just want to go top to bottom, Italy together. And actually, I'd like to bring my family too. I like traveling with our family. I think it'd be a great time. I'd like to bring my family along,

our family's along, and do an entire, top to bottom, Italy, full court, appetizers. I want the cheese board and play, I want the bottle of wine, I want all that, I want that. I love it. I am inspired and my mouth is watering. Okay, hold on, I gotta ask a few questions

because this is the kind of trip that I'm living for. How long is this trip in your month? A month. A month. Okay, so that means both of you take a month off of work, whatever work is to do it. Great. That might be the less than a month.

All at least a month, beautiful. And you seem to know all the cities that you want to go to. You know that you want advertisers, you know the kind of food and drinks you want. Is there anything else in the back of your head? You know, I'm gonna do this. In Italy? Yeah.

It's gotta be in the summer. Great. Summer time, I would like even like, uh, oh, those, what are those like boats that you get to take the gondola? You definitely want a gondola involved there. Oh, the Amalfi coast. That's the other one. You got to hit the Amalfi coast and do, you know, like, I think you wrap up the Amalfi coast on the beach where you're relaxing, right? Or like you spent all that time hustle, bustle, all the cities up top mid regions, key addies, so you catch your breath there.

And then you hit the emulfi coast at the end of like top it off cherry on top. Who's coming with you? How many people? I think, oh, two of, I, I'm not even, I've been intrigued to like bring people in and out, you know, like we say, hey, we're going for the month, right? We're going for one month. This is where we're going to be bring people in and out. We say, hey, we're going for the month, right? We're going for one month. This is where we're going to be hop in, hop out. Take one of those hop on, hop up, bust tours. I love it.

Dan, what do you think about this trip? This sounds fantastic. Did you know about this idea that Jordan has had? She's always wanted to take me back to Italy because that's where she studied abroad for six months. So, like, it was a very special place in her heart and my extent of traveling to Europe was like the UK for a week. So, I always wanted to go. Okay.

Okay. You guys, this is exciting. This is exciting. This is visionary. This is the kind of stuff that gets you both a reason to talk about money regularly, to learn about the mechanics of money, and to start investing early and consistently. You know, it's great because one of the things I wanted to emphasize on our call today is nothing wrong with having emotions about money. And I've had to learn this. I grew up very utilitarian, practical. Like I said, I want to get to the model. The model

does not have any emotional turmoil. It's just math. It's so simple. But what I've learned is money is emotion. It's psychological. It's rooted in our childhood. Nothing wrong with that. But you also have to apply a level of mastery to the mechanics of. It's just like driving, right? It can be scary, but you need to learn how to drive. Great.

How do you feel about learning about personal finance? Better, I feel capable, capable and competent to take in information and ask questions about the things that I don't understand. Yes, beautiful. You trust yourself. Yeah, this is a new language you're learning. Of course, it's going to be hard. You're making mistakes. You're going to trust yourself and you have Dan, who's really experienced, totally aligned with you.

So if you have questions, you can ask him about to write another thing is you are emotional about money and so am I. And so is Dan. That can be a strength when you balance it with this new knowledge that you're going to get from reading the book and practice. Yeah. I love the, the metaphor of like it's a new language, like learning a new language. It feels like that

That's that is that resonates a lot Awesome I think there's this such a stigma and talking about money and I know that firsthand until this I think was another nice step for me in the space of like being able to Naturally talk about money This was an interesting conversation This was an interesting conversation. There is still a lot for Jordan to unpack about how she was raised around money. There's also a lot for both Dan and Jordan to construct in their new joint way of looking at money.

But one of the things you heard me do just in the last few minutes is to really shift them away from talking about their problems, which exist and are real and definitely need to be addressed, and to start talking about what they want to do with their money. In other words, it's typically a very bad strategy to sit there and only talk about problems. It's also a horrible strategy to tell people you got to stop that. That berating people does not work. I found it's way more compelling

to help people construct their own vision of a rich life and then teach them the foundations. Learn how a Roth IRA works. Learn your debt payoff date. And when you combine those two things, this beautiful rich life vision plus the basic foundations and mechanics of money, you're on your way towards a rich life.

Here's what you'll find next week on the I Will Teach to Be Rich Podcast. I hate it because I know we're paying so much interest right now here and there. And it's all money that we could actually be paying off the debt. And putting aside and stating that actually buy things, not credit and you know, or say so we can go to a trip or say for a future cottage or this or that. And tonight we're just, I feel like we're throwing money out the window. When she asked me for stuff, I want to say yes. I'm not interested in my life. I love her. I want to please her.

If you ask me where I want to be in the gift, hopefully I'll be here, but it might not great. you