Life Kit - How much money do you need to become a parent? An episode from This Is Uncomfortable

Episode Date: November 26, 2022

A couple clashes about how much money they need to save before having children. This episode is from our friends This Is Uncomfortable's podcast series on fights about money.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is NPR's Life Kit. I'm Mariel Seguera. Often in our lives, we have these big dreams. You know, we want to travel the world or own a home or have a baby. But then money gets in the way. Today on the show, we have a special episode from our friends at the Marketplace podcast, This is Uncomfortable. It's a show about life and how money messes with it. Hosted by my incredible former colleague,

Rima Reis. In the episode, Rima talks to a couple that desperately want a baby, but don't agree on whether they have enough money. It's a great story, and there are also some super helpful tips in there on how to have these conversations. Here's the episode. Carrie and Natalia Mansmith know they want to be moms. They fantasize about baby clothes, cribs, tiny socks. Sometimes they scroll through TikTok or Instagram and fawn over other people's babies. Talking to them, it's almost like their future baby already exists. Well, first of all, let's refer to him as Bryson. This is Carrie.

He's had a name for a long time. He's had a name since before we've gotten engaged, I believe. And that's her wife, Natalia. So Bryson E.J. Mansmith. You don't have to refer to him as that, but like this is how... Well, no, we'll refer to him as Bryson. Okay, that's not weird. I. Mansmith. You don't have to refer to him as that, but like this is how... Well, no, we'll refer to him as Bryson.

Okay, that's not weird. I'm just kidding. Carrie and Natalia talk about this imaginary baby, Bryson, all the time. At the breakfast table, in the car, during dinner. But lately, these conversations are breaking down, ending in angry silence or hurt feelings. Because there's this one little thing that they're not on the same page about.

Go ahead, Carrie, you started first. We can't afford to have a kid. Carrie doesn't think they're making enough to have a baby yet. But Natalia doesn't want to let time slip away in case it becomes harder to get pregnant later. They're both nearly 30, which is the age fertility starts to decline. So this argument goes round and round. It's always a rotating conversation.

And it's like, I get so exhausted sometimes because I'm like, I'm ready. But it just scares the heck out of me. It scares the wits out of me. This disagreement about how much money is enough money to bring a kid into the world, it never seems to get resolved. It's like Carrie and Natalia are in this holding pattern, spinning their wheels, then falling right back into a never-ending stalemate. And meanwhile, the biological clock keeps on ticking.

I'm Eri Mejdeis, and you're listening to This is Uncomfortable. This week, on our last episode of the season, we're bringing you another money fight. That's part of our ongoing series where I talk to two people about one of their biggest fights around money and how they dealt with it or didn't. The thing about money fights between couples is a lot of the time you can kind of see them coming. Like if one person grew up without money and the other person grew up with a lot of it. But sometimes money fights are harder to predict. And that's what intrigues us about today's story between Carrie and Natalia, two listeners who grew up with some amount of financial insecurity, yet ended up with two entirely different relationships to money. Differences which today are at the center of their stalemate in deciding to start a family. Carrie works in the medical field and brings home the bulk of the money,

and Natalia is going to start school soon to become a teacher. Together, they make about $110,000, which for many families would be more than enough. But Carrie still feels anxious. Carrie, you have a cap on when she wants to have a baby. She says we have to make, I want to say, $100,000. $115,000. $115,000 to be able to have a child with our combined income. And they're incredibly close to making that much. But Carrie is firm with this number.

I can imagine that it's especially tough as a same-sex couple. There are all these extra hurdles you have to go through, which can be very expensive. I've poked around online at adoption agencies. It starts about at $20,000. Wow. There's also, they can do the, you know, IVF. That's also very expensive. You're talking to two ladies that have $1,000 in their savings account, Rima. Carrie says they've also got student debt, about $50,000. But despite all of this, Natalia tries to convince Carrie. She tells her, listen, we've got everything a kid would actually need. Shelter, food, and most importantly, a lot of love.

And Carrie usually responds with something like, You never had to worry about where your next meal was going to come from. No. And I think if, until you understand that, which I'm very thankful that you never have had to understand that, it takes a lot more than, you know, hugs and kisses. Carrie had a hard upbringing. Her mom was addicted to drugs, they were on food stamps, and were barely able to make ends meet.

She was mocked by her classmates and even relatives. And so this fear of slipping back into her past, it haunts Carrie. I just don't want my kid to hate me the way I hated my mother. So that's why I think to myself, I need to make so much money that my wife and my child will never have to wonder or worry. For months now, they've been arguing over this, and it's starting to take a real emotional toll on them, especially on Natalia. Like, it hurts me because it's like, if we're not ready, then we need to stop talking about it right now because it's making it harder than it already is. Carrie and Natalia have talked and talked and talked. But at this point, it feels like they're talking past each other.

For now, they're just trying their best to keep on marching towards that $115,000 number, doing what they can to cut costs. Like Carrie stopped getting her nails done, which saves about $200 a month. And they're spending less money on gas by visiting Natalia's family less often. But during our conversation, I found myself wondering. So much of this is about memory and experience, more so than a magic number. Would any amount ever feel like enough? What would it take for them to get unstuck?

And could we help? That's after the break. One of the things about money fights is they tend to sound kind of like a broken record. You bring up the same point, counterpoint, point, counterpoint, again and again, with what feels like no progress. Disrupting that pattern is hard. It often requires help and a willingness to be vulnerable and try something different. So on a Monday evening, we invited Carrie and Natalia to sit down for a Zoom call with someone who could maybe help them approach their money fight in a new way.

Natalia and Carrie, it's great to meet y'all. This is Wendy Wright. She's a licensed financial therapist based in Colorado, which makes her a member of a pretty small club. There's like literally less than 100 people in America, probably in the universe at this point, that specialize in financial therapy. But it's a really cool way to approach that emotional part of money. Whenever we invite a financial therapist on the show, we need to stress that this isn't true therapy. Therapy is private and usually happens over many sessions. But Carrie and Natalia were very down to speak with Wendy on the record for this episode. How are you, what feelings are coming up right now, even as you're just

entering this topic? Do you notice any feelings bubbling up? I'm hot, and I'm sweaty and clammy, and it's uncomfortable, for sure. Okay. So helpful to name. Yeah. Natalia, what about you? Anything you're noticing? I wouldn't say uncomfortable, just kind of stuck.

For this part of the episode, we're going to share three tools that Wendy often uses with her clients. Tools that honestly could be used for all sorts of difficult conversations, but that are especially helpful in getting unstuck with money. Okay, so tool number one. Wendy says that one way to get to the bottom of our relationship with money is actually to try to take out the money language completely. Like, no money words at all. In Carrie's case, no mention of the $115,000 benchmark. So let's take that number right now, that number that feels really powerful, the 115.

Without using that word, what are you wanting to carve out? What does that number mean to you? That number means that my child will be able to go to school and not have student debt. My child never having to decide, I want to invite three friends to my birthday party, but I'm going to have to hear about my mom not being able to feed us later. That's what that means for me. It sounds like it's connected to safety, security, protection, giving someone the nurture you want. Wendy explained to Carrie that that number, $115,000, it's less about what the money could

actually buy and more about the power Carrie assigns it symbolically. Even though right now the number has the power, that number is always going to be changing and evolving anyway. The second strategy, Wendy suggested, was to schedule regular timed sessions for Carrie and Natalia to talk about money. She calls these meetings money dates. What I find really helpful is to come into it with a very small, limited time and literally use your timer on the phone, like 10 minutes, 15 minutes,

and have one or two topics that you want to have covered that day. I like that. I like the idea of having a time limit. I think that'd be great because I think you're right. It does tend to get to nowhere and then it turns into, but I'm still thinking about it or it's still just lingering. And then like the next day, if it happens again, it's like, here we go again.

Yeah. What are you noticing, Carrie? I was thinking the same thing in regards to the time, because I do notice, like Natalia just said, if we start talking about it it just goes and it goes and it goes and it goes the next thing you know we started this conversation while we were making dinner at five and I'm getting into bed at eight o'clock to get up to go to work at four and I'm like okay well you know let me know when you're out of debt and then you know roll

over go to sleep kind of thing like just really just really sassy, really rude, really not productive. And that's the hardest part for me, because we're not collaborating with each other at that point. Wendy says that when money has become a dreaded topic in a relationship, you need to reestablish trust that you and your partner are capable of talking about it and walking away feeling okay. That's why the timer is crucial. It helps remind both people that even if things get tense, they have an out and that they can take a breather before the next money date. It's important to set some goals for these talks and especially at the beginning to focus on some positive things.

So sometimes those things can be like, okay, how did you feel about your paycheck this week? What did you like that you did at work that brought that paycheck to us? And she told him to make this date feel casual and light. Carrie liked that idea. We'll make it fun. We'll have like hot chocolate or something. We're not really big drinkers, so maybe we'll have like a charcuterie board or something. The third strategy Wendy suggested? Journaling. Not the kind you might be familiar with, like writing about things that already happened. She actually recommends journaling about scenarios

that haven't happened yet. Here's an example. Carrie worries about how she'd react if Bryson walked up to her one day and asked her for money for a field trip. What if she gets anxious on the spot and makes him feel guilty? What if she feels like they can't afford it? Wendy told Carrie, Write out the script of how you want to handle that and be detailed. I picture myself, I'm sitting at the kitchen table. I was drinking a cup of tea and they came in and they said, hey, I need $5 for a field trip.

My first thought was, oh, no, I don't know where it's going to come from. And I took a breath and I said, okay, let me work on that. What Wendy's having them do is edit the current story by imagining a different one. I often will say we want to name the story you want your money to tell. And right now, right now you've got this $115,000 in your head and the story you're wanting it to tell is things can be good and calm and nurturing and all this. So we're just expanding that.

I think that's a great idea. Actually just, yeah, because actually when you were saying that, it made me remember that, okay, you're going to be the parent. Like, I think because a lot of times I think back to my parents, and I think that my parents, not that they're actually going to be raising our child, but that because what they did, I should do. I think it'd be interesting to see how we would parent without parenting yet, or like what would happen in those kind of situations when it came down to money, or maybe even just seeing like the differences and what we come up with as a response might be pretty interesting. Wendy says the thinking behind this is to help people remember that they do have agency in their life. And just the act of recognizing that can make these conversations more expansive and less charged. Their chat with Wendy lasted about 45 minutes.

Thank you, Wendy. Yeah, lovely to meet you all. Lovely to meet you. Nice to meet you. Bye. A few weeks after the session, Carrie and Natalia were already trying out some of Wendy's strategies, including timed money dates.

Okay. Starting timer. Seven minutes. Starting timer. Seven minutes. Go. Go. Okay.

It is about 6.45 p.m. We just finished having some mom Chinese food for... On their kitchen calendar, Carrie has marked one day each week as a money date night, or as they like to call it, a money makeout. I'm hoping one day it actually ends up in a makeout, but we'll see. Probably not. They know that to move forward, they'll have to be intentional about finding new ways to really hear each other with compassion and work through the financial anxieties. Even small ones, like monthly bills.

$250, that's a lot. It is, but going forward, I think that we just need to compromise a little bit when it comes to the heater and the air conditioner. I mean, I can work more out. Well, I feel like, no, I feel like what we can do is because you did put a lot in the savings this time. I already took it out. Oh, you did for what? For gas. Oh, I didn't know that.

Now this bill is just looming over my head. And I'm going to have anxiety about it. Because I just got paid on Thursday. I busted out a bunch of bills. And I don't know. It's understandable, but at the same time, you can't beat yourself up for something, especially if you can't change it now. So we just have to move forward. You know, we're luckily we are going to be able to have the funds to pay for it this time.

Like now we're aware. Of course, this money make out session wasn't-shattering, wasn't meant to be. But they at least got through the seven minutes talking about their finances without any tension or hurt feelings, which felt like progress. I also keep thinking about what Wendy said, how they'll basically have to start reimagining a different future, one rooted in hope instead of fear. It's something they both desperately want. But they know to do that, and to reach their ultimate goal of having a baby, that first, it might mean taking some baby steps. All right, that is all for our show this week. And like I mentioned at the top, this is also the end of our season.

We'll be back with new episodes this fall. In the meantime, if you also want to share your story or if you have any thoughts about the show, you can always email us at uncomfortable at marketplace.org. This episode was lead produced by Camila Kirwan and hosted by me, Rima Reis. And I got production support from Markay Green and Phoebe Unterman. Our senior producer is Zoe Saunders. Our editor is Karen Duffin. Markay Green is our digital producer with help from Tony Wagner.

Sound design and audio engineering by Drew Jostad. Donna Tam is the executive director of On Demand. And our theme music is by Wonderly. All right, I'll catch y'all later this year.