Money For Couples with Ramit Sethi - 10. “Money is overwhelming so we find instant gratification elsewhere”

Episode Date: September 21, 2021

Jacques and Jennifer are stuck in a money rut. They are trapped by their $40,000 debt. Jennifer feels overwhelmed with money talk, and Jaques doesn't want to say no to his wife. When he comes home from work, they’re both tired, so they order takeout, overspend...and repeat the cycle. This isn't a math problem. It runs way deeper into their money identity and sense of self.  Jacques grew up in a poor household and was always told no, so he'll do anything not to feel that way again. As a stay-at-home mom, Jennifer feels the money is "his," so she finds control and comfort in food. Suddenly, all of these restaurant trips and takeout receipts are starting to make more sense. The relationship between food and finance is a tricky one to navigate.  Then I ask about their Rich Life. Listen to how vague they are about their future financial goals. When you've got a large debt that seems insurmountable, it’s hard to look ahead. But I think there’s a way to get them to take ownership of their money. Connect with Ramit Website Instagram Twitter Facebook YouTube Linkedin If you and your partner have a money issue and you want my help, I occasionally select a couple to work with, free of charge. Apply for my help here. Produced by Crate Media.

Let me share some of the coolest ways that my community has recently used money to live a rich life. One member did a month-long honeymoon in Europe after deciding she didn't want a big wedding. Another member bought a VW SUV that was their dream car that they've wanted for years. And another member made a rule that any time she buys a ticket for an event, she always buys a second so that she can bring a friend. These are just a few examples of how my money coaching members have built systems to use their money. Notice that there's no more anxiety, that they have a smooth running system.

They know when their debt's going to be paid off. They can feel comfortable spending on the things they love. They can actually spend less time on their finances while living an amazing life. In my money coaching program, members also get access to live events every month, including topics like money with aging parents and how to create amazing vacations.

That was one of my favorites where I shared how I saw, spend my money on travel, plus Q&A directly from me. If you want to start building your rich life today, join us and get instant access to our back catalog of years of live calls. Check out IWT.com slash money coaching to join now. That's IWT.com slash money coaching to join the program right now. I hate it. 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 saving to actually buy things not credit and you know or say so we can go to a trip or save for a future cottage or this or that instead we're just i feel like we're throwing money out the window when she asked me for stuff i want to say yes right she's my wife i love her i want to please her if she asked me where i want to be in a year hopefully I'll be here, but might not, right? I'm stuck at home as a stay-at-home mom, but I still can't go outside and socialize, and we just moved in this new city that I held absolutely no one.

So I've been alone for months now. And when Jacques gets home, I know he's tired from work and he needs his own time, so I leave him alone. My name is Rameit Satie. Welcome to the I Will Teach You to Be Rich podcast. My guests on this episode are Jennifer and Jacques, who contacted me because they're in debt and they just feel stuck. Now, the more I talk to them, the more I realized how common their situation really is.

He goes to work. She stays home with the kids. At the end of the day, they're both tired. They order takeout. They overeat. They don't track their spending. But something really interesting happened when we shifted from their problems going to towards a solution. And as I always say, people who have financial problems love to talk about

their financial problems. They are problem oriented. And many of them can spend their entire lives talking about what's not working. But as I switched them to focusing on what their rich life is, we had a pretty fascinating breakthrough. So listen in today's conversation with Jennifer and Jacques. feel like she's spending too much and I'd like to pay the debt and the reason she spends a lot she's asking me

when she asks me for her to buy something is because she's asking me are we having enough money right and well I just want to say yes because I don't know and I want to please her right so it's like things like

buying ordering out because we can't go to restaurants right now but ordering out for me is a once in a while it's fine but if we do it more than once a week then it's starting to be too much but I've never really mentioned it so yeah a lot of work I feel like I'm in the dark he's the one who takes care of the finances mostly because when it comes to that, I'm more visuals, so I have to have charts and everything,

but because numbers are really not my biggest strength. The moment you see numbers, I just, it feels like a whole total other realm as much as I want to know what's going on. So the moment we start about talking about the budget, I know we need to get a budget, get things in order, but I feel overwhelmed because I don't know what we're, like I don't know. I feel like I'm in the dark.

So I kind of play blind and, okay, well, he'll take care of it. So I'll be asking, okay, do we have money to buy this? Or do we have money to buy that? And it's mostly usually, you know, stuff that we eat for the kids. It's not like I'm asking for a purse or something. So I'm always kind of asking permission. This is a common pattern. It's one partner throwing up their hands saying, I'm not good at money.

Can you just do it? And then over time, that very same person starts to feel in the dark. They feel out of control. Sometimes they feel resentful. So they push and they demonstrate their discomfort in lots of different ways. They'll start fights about interest or cable bills. But the real problem is not the cable. It's deeper.

it's a feeling of being out of control. Now, it's really easy to sit back and yell at them, well, you need to learn about money. Duh. Well, that's easy to say. There are often very good reasons why people don't just pick up a book. And I say that as someone who wrote a book on personal finance.

Listen to how Jennifer's psychology and her behavior is affecting her. So I need to get them stuff. And of course, I'll get anxious so I can't sleep. So Jacques, I know he's, I think he doesn't want to cause me grief and more worry and stress, but he kind of doesn't talk to me about the number. Kind of like, well, I know he means well, but I do feel like a child because I feel like, oh, well, you know, he's taking care of me, right? but at the same time, I'm kind of sick and tired of having to ask all the time. I know I'm the stay-at-home mom, so money-wise at the moment, I'm not bringing anything I haven't for a few years,

so I feel like it's his money because he's the one bringing the income home, so I don't want to ask for money. So I kind of don't ask. And with all the restaurants we've been adding, well, then I just feel like, okay, well, you know, I'm burnt out being at home. home all the time can't go out because we're in a red zone here so i kind of you know i feel like but the moment he talks about it like he's like okay let's talk about the money i get overwhelmed and when i get overwhelmed well we kind of just shut that conversation out because he doesn't want me to be overwhelmed so i know he means well it's just i know it's all that i need to figure it out somewhere. It's pretty much the only thing that's a stress point in our relationship. That's

really it. We are usually pretty good at communicating with one another except money. That's the one thing. I know what he means. Like I would love to pay the debt. I just personally don't know how to get there. Well, let's make sure my instincts are correct. What are the actual numbers? 80,000 household income. Would that be accurate? Ballpark? Great. And let's talk about any debt. How much? Well, like I said, we're selling a house right now. Once everything's done, we're going to be around $40,000 in debt left. Okay. From credit cards and other things. Tell me about this debt. How did you incur this $40K of debt? Part of it was when we repainted the G

And part of it was just overspending I went from a higher paying job To a lower pain job So we had to cover that So yeah it was just basically Overspending I know it's overspending But why

Restaurants Going out with the like on trips with the kids Not like fancy trips But going to see the family it's minimum $500 per trip right with the gas and

and food on the way there and once you're there you go out with the family and all there's activities with the kids things we needed in the house things like that for us

for the kids or the vehicles or in general that's what it is sometimes it's emergency stuff, I find one big chunk was actually the Jeep, of course. With the pandemic, we had decided to get the Jeep repair because it needed quite a bit of repair. And with the pandemic, the price kind of doubled by the time we got our quote to getting it done with the pricing of pieces went up, double and all that. But it is the, you know,

spending here and there restaurants. And like Jock said, you know, we go visit the family in your Brunswick because we live far from them. It's little things that kind of seem to creep up. This is a very common response that you'll hear from people whose finances are out of control. They will constantly describe little things that seem to come up. Why? Because in the small view that they have on their financial life,

the 50 feet that they can see ahead as they're driving, there's always something. But if they zoom out, if they can get a bigger perspective, maybe see a mile down the road, or a month forward, maybe six months forward, they start to get a better grasp on them. And they realize,

oh, that surprise car repair that seemed to come out of nowhere, that seems to come around every three years. Maybe we can put 20 bucks a month aside so that next time it comes out, we're ready for it. Again, people who are out of control with their money will constantly feel like they're taking one step forward and two steps back. That feeling is real. We can't dismiss it.

What we can do is help them zoom up, look at the bigger picture, and switch to planning a little bit more proactively. Where do we want to go? I'm not even sure myself, to be honest. I usually see a couple of months ahead of me, that's it. Yeah. If you ask me where I want to be in a year, hopefully I'll be here, but might not pray. Yeah. Living month to month is very difficult.

That's all you can see. It's like driving in a snowstorm. It's very scary and difficult, and half of it is just, I hope there's nothing 50 feet ahead of me. Yeah. Yeah, and that's why we want to, another reason why we want to take care of it is I'd like to have some protection in case there's something in front of us like that that we don't foresee.

Yeah, and I also want to go beyond protection. Well, yeah, because, you know, we do have plans. Like, Jacques, we were talking about that where we'd like to have a cottage. In your brunswick, so when we visit family, we could stay there instead of staying with family, because when we visit, we actually stay with family, and it's getting annoying. And when we go there, I'm like, well, let's get a cottage, and then we could rent it out when we're not there. Because we'd only visit, you know, a few weeks a year and the rest of the time.

But it's to get the money to get to that, to make future income. And then we're like, oh, I would like to travel. we can never seem to put it in a concrete plan like it's so vague. Yeah. Because usually when we, it's, I don't know because it's weird because when we decide to like, okay, this is what we want, we go there, it actually happens like snap, like really fast. When we actually decide that this is our, the way we want to go, it usually happens extremely fast.

Well, that's the opposite of a plan though. you're telling me when we decide to do something, we do it overnight. Okay, great, that's good. You're very spontaneous. But a plan is the opposite. It takes years and years of slow, bring work, automatic transfers. It takes a longer vision than let's go buy a house or let's go on a trip.

That makes sense. You can hear me slowly starting to show. them away from a problem orientation to a solution orientation. I'm taking it very, very slowly. I don't think they're fully bought in yet. You can kind of hear it by the okay. But let's see where it ends up. Again, this often takes months and months of work, but I've got a limited time. So I'm going to try to do my best here. There's a pretty cool TikTok trend going around right now that I really love. It's called admin nights. Basically, you get your friends together, you get some snacks, maybe some drinks, and you do all the infrastructure stuff in life that most of us skip over.

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dot com slash remit and i want to thank zoc doc for sponsoring this message can you tell me when this debt will be paid off at this rate it would be 20 30 years at the rate we're going right now okay and how does that make you feel i hate it 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 put aside and saving to actually buy things, not credit, and, you know, or say so we can go to a trip or save for a future cottage or this or that. Okay. Instead, we're just, I feel like we're throwing money out the window.

Yeah, you are. Let me go to you, Jacques. What, when do you think you will pay this debt off? The way I calculated it would be 15 years. 15 years. I am wondering with 80k of income. And your rent price looks pretty good. $1,500, that's good.

It's not too much. A lot of people, they spend too much on their housing. You have affordable housing. That's good. Your car may be a little high, but eventually that will get paid off. Where's the rest of the money going? Food? Food like groceries or food like eating out?

Both. Groceries and eating out. Like, it's funny. Well, we were actually talking about that a little while back. We have issues buying ourselves a piece of clothes that might be $50, $20, $40. But we have no issues going out to the restaurant one night and pay $50 for takeout. Why is that? Well, as you can see, I'm big, so food is my addiction.

And, you know, it's just my comfort, the way to comfort myself, and I've been working on that. But it is a way of like, oh, well, it's okay to spend it not food on, but not on other thing, right? I appreciate to honestly on that. sucks balls. Yeah, that's a tough situation, but you have a very high level of self-awareness. I've been doing a lot of work to get through that. There is a relationship between food and money. When I first wrote my book, it was published in 2009.

In the introduction and the first chapter, I wrote about the similarities between food and money, how we often don't track what we eat, how we often don't track what we spend, how we often listen to fad diets, and how we often do the same thing with fad investments. when I wrote the 10-year update to my book, the 2019 edition, an editor that was working on the book strongly encouraged me to remove that material.

And she said that it was offensive to write about the connection between food and money. In the intervening 10 years between writing the first edition and the second edition, I had gone through a fitness journey of my own. I used to be very skinny. I would call myself a skinny Indian guy. And I really wish, looking back, that I had not said that. That I had not condemned myself to a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the intervening time, I learned how to change my body.

And I learned that a lot of the things I believed about myself were not true. And I needed a lot of help. I had help of friends and trainers, nutritionists. And eventually, I started to feel in control. That if I wanted to put on muscle, I could. If I wanted to cut fat, I could. And so I told the editor, no.

In fact, I insist on keeping this material in the book because more than ever, I see a connection between food and money. And I've seen it with many of my own, I will teach you to be rich readers. Many of them take control of their money. and they realize, oh my gosh, if I could do this, the thing that I was never good at, what else can I do? It is very common that I will teach you be rich readers later go on to change their fitness,

their food, their nutrition, because many of the skills are transferable. So I wanted to add that here because it's really important. What Jennifer is doing, she's being so honest about being out of control with food. and I was candidly very surprised at how honest she was, how self-aware she was. You can see that there's a relationship between food and money. And so I want to approach this with compassion, not judgment. And I just want to share that oftentimes when you're out of control in one part of life, it can feel like dominoes.

On the other hand, when you start to make steady progress, even a tiny bit of progress in one area, it can really cascade into other areas of life as well. For me right now, it's just taking that stress off, you know, with the whole COVID stuff going to the pandemic. I'm stuck at home as a stay-at-home mom, but I still can't go outside and socialize, and we just moved in this new city that I held absolutely no one. So I've been alone for months now. And when Jacques gets home, I know he's tired from work and he needs his own time, so I leave him alone. So when it comes to making suppers, I'm just, I feel so burnt down and I don't want to be around no one that I, it's easy access.

It's the only way I can seem to have a certain sense of control and relief for a moment, I guess. Yes, that's it. You both understand your behavior pretty well. Understanding it doesn't change it. But I love the way that you are in touch with why you are doing things you do. Jennifer, you're nailing it. It's control. It's relief.

I see all the numbers and I see, like, example, I smite my credit card. I have one credit card and it smacked out at the moment. And I see the interest that I pay on it. And I'm like, big word. I'm just like, I'm paying all this money for interest where I could be paying if we had it like in one big loan with less interest and pay more of it so we can pay it faster.

Or put it aside to build some savings so we can buy that cottage that we want down the road. When I see the numbers, I get mad at myself that we're in that situation. So I just want to put the book. blinders off because I'm sick and tired of being mad. I'm like, well, you are sick and tired of being mad and you've done everything except confront the problem. Pretty much. I hear deep down that both of you believe you've already lost. You've already lost the game of money. And so why not just give you just give you. up and order this food.

It's, we already got 40K a debt. An extra 40 bucks isn't going to change anything. And at least we'll feel good for a couple of hours. That's it. For me, that's how I feel, yeah. This is classic. In personal finance, you see this in two particular areas. This is the idea that if I'm not perfect, I might as well throw it all away.

Forget it. None of it really matters. The first area is the area that generally. is talking about, which is people in debt. People in large amounts of debt, at a certain point, they go, what does it matter? Forty bucks, it's not going to change anything. Might as well be happy. That's exactly what we heard Jennifer saying. Can you think of the second category? The second category of people who say, I have lost the game. So forget it. Well, the answer is parents. I will frequently get DMs on Instagram or Twitter, my email. They say, how much should I save

for my daughter? I said, how old are you? And what is your financial situation? They go, I'm 44. I don't really have anything saved up, but just had my daughter really need to start saving for her. I go, your daughter has time. You do not. And what they are really, saying is, I believe I've lost the game of personal finance, but at least I can win it for my daughter. Jennifer and Jock are smart. It's not that they don't know they should pay off their debt. There is something much deeper here, and finally, we are ready to start talking about it. Listen. It's interesting when you can afford to buy lots of different things, what you actually choose to spend your money on. For example, I've tried these different shampoos. At a certain point,

I was just like, most of these are all the same. I'm just getting the one from the drugstore. I was talking to a friend about what type of meat we buy. He was shocked that we didn't buy the most expensive meat. And I think the lesson that I have taken as I have made more money is just because it's expensive doesn't mean it's right for me. That's why the mattress that I chose to sleep on every single night is from Lisa. Lisa offers many high-quality mattress models, whether you sleep on your side, your back, or somewhere in between. From the first night, you're going to be able to feel the difference.

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factor box plus free breakfast for one year. Offers only valid for new factor customers with code and qualifying auto renewal subscription purchase. Make healthier eating easy with factor. What is it, Jock? I think it's part of me. wants to say yes. So when she asked me for stuff, I want to say yes. Right. She's my wife. I love her. I want to please her. So part of it is that, right? Because I want to say yes. And that's why,

you know, sometimes she'll ask me a couple of times, you know, can I get this? Can I get that? You know, stuff for her? I mean, no, we don't have the money. No, we don't have the money. Like, fine, get it, right? in your mind is creating a plan? Does that mean saying no? Well, we've got to say no. It's some things, right? Well, you haven't yet. So let me see if I can get this right. Tell me if I'm off. I like to be a good husband. I don't like confrontation. I want to say yes. I want to please my wife. deep down I know there's a couple things we probably shouldn't do we probably shouldn't go here and

maybe buy this but sometimes she asked me and I don't like the confrontation I know she's going to be upset so I say yes I know it's probably going to cause problems down the road but I'm just trying to get by day to day here yeah pretty much on the dock yeah from a young age I was always told no like when I grew up my mom was a single mother I was a single mother we didn't have much money so anytime I asked for something it was no because we just didn't have the money so keep going trace it to yourself now how do you think a child reacts when they hear no no no no no my needs are not important like what I want is not important because I always got told no right yeah and then what do you think is a possibility for how someone reacts to that as they get older

I was just trying to please people, I guess. What's the connection between being told no by everybody in the family and then saying yes? What's that connection? How did it feel when they told you no? No, it sucked, but eventually you get used to it, right? I mean, do you? Do you get used to it? Does it ever feel good when somebody tells you no?

Well, no, but you, like, I don't put it. myself in a situation where somebody will tell me no. Exactly. Eventually, you say that is painful, so painful that I'm just not even going to ask because I don't want to hear no. And then growing up, getting in relationships, this relationship, do you think it's possible that somebody who's been told no their whole life says, I felt so bad I never want to feel like that or have anyone who I love feel like that? So I'm never going to put them through what I went through. Yeah, that's the first time I thought about that.

There's a lot. I've never connected the dots, right? This is a really big realization. Oftentimes we behave in ways that seem totally rational to ourselves. And if I asked you, you know, why did you say yes to this? Well, you know, it was a long night. Why did you say yes to that? Well, she asked me four times.

And there's a reason. Our minds are really good at creating reasons. I'm actually not concerned about the math here. This isn't a math problem. I want to say it again because it's really important for me to say that. This is not a math problem. It's to take charge and do it. Yeah, but if that were the case, you would have done it already.

Like, motivational phrases only snack. They only get you so far. So what's the real problem here? wanting to put myself in a situation where I have to say no. Right. Right. That's a deep, deep issues. If you pull on that string, you're going to end up back being three years old or four years old.

For me, it's more of an instant gratification. I want it now versus weight. And do you see any similarities between the food instant gratification and the money? Oh, definitely. Yeah. Pretty much everything. Yeah. Like that.

So that's another deep-seated issue. And you mentioned you've been getting help. I'm really happy to hear that. And that's the thing. Like for me, food is my gratification. Oh, you did well. Here's some food. Oh, you feel like shitty.

Here's some food. Yeah. So I've been trying to do some work on that to try and heal those wounds to get over that. So I don't use food because all that food, well, you need money to pay for that food. Yeah. I'm really glad to hear that you are pursuing this because it's challenging. It's not easy. And it takes a lot of deep inner work, ideally with some help as well. We've made a couple breakthroughs. I want to shift them now to what they are doing with their money. One of the observations I have about this couple is that there's no real purpose to their money. It's a lot of, instant gratification, whatever's in front of them.

I bet you, if I ask them, do you remember the last four meals you ordered as takeout? They wouldn't even remember. It's nothing memorable, nothing special. It's just whatever's in front of them. And I think there's a totally different way to think about money, a way where you can say, you know what, let's think about what meal would be amazing for us, or what trip, or what baby car seat, whatever. And let's save up.

Let's get that. Let's dream big and then go after it aggressively. So I want to talk about what they want with their money. I'm curious if they've even thought about it. One thing we had talked about, Jacques and I, was buying cottages or building little cottages in different areas and then renting it, renting them out. Since we would have like, okay, we want to go there for a vacation,

let's go two hours away from here, five hours from here. But at the same time, those houses, would be working for us when we're not there. Okay. So that we can, you know, I'd like to build on that, build a business or something that build an income that we don't have to, you know, go to a job 40 hours a week. And then what?

And then it would allow us to be able to travel. We mentioned we wanted to travel. and we've been looking into the schoolies and RVs and whatnot. And that's something that I'd like us to do, especially with the kids being young. Nice. Okay. Love it. Beautiful.

I love the vision. Jacques, what about you? My vision of being wealthy is you have an RV and you go to these far out places where, you know, there's nobody around and just have a campfire and the kids are there and can see nature and look at the stars up night because there's no pollution or lights or anything like that.

You know, that's my vision. First of all, there are two places you're never going to find me. Number one is in a Home Depot. Okay. And number two is in an RV. Those two places are a special kind of hell for me. All right? But remember, it's not my rich life.

It's yours. Okay? Your rich life is yours. It's not your parents. It's not your friends. It's certainly not mine. So while I don't understand the appeal of an RV, that has nothing to do with it.

In fact, I love hearing people's rich lives the more different they are from mine. I love it because it tells me they've really thought about something that they want. And the more you dial in your rich life, your money dials, everything, the more incomprehensible it's going to be to everybody else. So I'm getting excited and I can hear it in their voice that they're getting excited as well. How old can kids be while you take them there and they still enjoy it? I don't know. I would still enjoy it.

Well, what do you think? What's an ideal age to take your kids to something like that? Well, I'm thinking before they're 10 to 11. Teenagers. Yeah, because that's when they start having friends. They're like, no, I'd register at home. Yeah. My friends and all that.

That's right. So really, now we're starting to get a little bit more specific, which is in the next X years, we want to take our children on some kind of outdoors RV adventure. Mm-hmm. How many years? Four. I would see for me, it was more like two. Okay, so soon.

Well, look, we're getting somewhere. Whether it's two or four, it's not 20. No. Okay. So guess what? Now we have a real reason to start changing our finances. You know what? You had no reason before.

Of course you're going to order out. Because what else are we going to do? Pay off debt? That sounds boring. It sucks. Yeah. But listen to what I heard. I just have to repeat this back to you because it was so vivid.

I heard no light pollution. I heard outdoors. Look at the stars. RV. Traveling with the kids. These are words that are very emotional. That is beautiful. And I would love that for both of you to actually expand on it outside of this call, I would love for you to have a conversation where you say, what would it look like if this were magical?

How does this feel, Jacques, just to start thinking about this trip, how does it feel to you? Well, it feels pretty good. It's a direction, right? I'm realizing now that's that's what it was like I had no goals or anything like that nothing to shoot for and it makes sense that what else is there to do get some food or oh we want to do that this weekend let's go do it you need to buy that let's buy that now I'd rather go do the trip than eat out tomorrow let's say that's 5% right now you would be paying $400 a month, and like I told you, it would take you 11 years to pay that off. Okay.

Now, let me ask you a question. What if you increased that to $600 a month? How long do you think it would take you to pay it off? Seven? Seven? Yeah. 6.5 years. Just from $200 a month extra.

Jeez. Do you think you could find $200 a month extra? I'm sure we can figure something out. A hundred percent. When you go through your numbers, you're going to realize you're sitting on way more than you think. Okay. And if you have to get creative to do it, you're going to get creative. It's either going to be 10 years or three years.

What are we going to do? And truthfully, I hope you both see the costs of what does it cost you to be treading water for so long? You start to actually normalize it. Like, oh, it's normal to be sinking. Yeah. It sucks. Well, that's all I've seen all my life is my parents being there. I really love what Jennifer just said.

Just offhandedly, she opens up the floodgates. You know, that's what we knew. That's what I've seen all my life with my parents. Think about the implications of just that one sentence. That's what she modeled forever. and therefore you normalize it. In fact, when you think of money, you think of problems, pain. And if you do that for enough time, you can't even imagine that money can be joyful, that it can be a source of opportunity instead of one of problems. Now, this presents some real

identity challenges as you start to shift from paying off your debt. I often find that people who are in a severe amount of debt or have been there for a long time, they can't even envision what it feels like to be debt-free, much less to actually have money in their savings account. And as they go towards this debt-free status, they start to ask themselves lots of uncomfortable questions. Oh my God, what's it going to be like? What if I told myself that being debt-free would make me happy? And I finally pay off all my debt, and I'm not happy. And ultimately, Am I worth it? These are really tough identity questions that many of you will face.

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So I want to point out that based on your numbers, you both could do that. And if you were to contribute instead 800 a month, you'd pay that off in 4.75 years. That'd be cool. Yeah. Jennifer, what was that look on your face? I wanted to say another swear work. Well, I encourage swear.

There was something that really puzzled me in this conversation. When I asked them, what do you want to do with your money? They had this whole thing about we want to buy cottages and eventually use that money to be able to get an RV and sit under the stars. It was beautifully described. But then when I asked him, when do you want to do it? They got very fuzzy. Did you catch that? I don't know.

First, we need to get the first down payment. We can't seem to save any money. And then I asked him, how old do you want your kids to be? Well, probably before they're teenagers because they'll still like us. suddenly you realize that this isn't a plan. It's just a wish. I don't want you to just wish for things to do with your money. I want you to make a plan.

And so for this couple, my dream would be that we just start by saying, what is it you actually want? I want to take my kids. I want to get an RV. And I want to sit under the stars with them and create some memories. Love it. Beautiful. Okay.

How can we do that quickly? Well, maybe we can start aggressively paying off our debt. Maybe we can put $100 a month aside for this trip. Maybe we don't have to buy four cottages and then buy an RV. Could we just rent an RV? And what if we don't have to take a month off? What if we just go for two weeks? Suddenly, you shaved off 15 or 20 years towards your rich life.

Well, you can do it in 18 months. This is my wish for you. my wish is that you look creatively at what your rich life is, that you get super detailed about it. I want to know what are you going to be eating underneath the stars. Tell me about that. And then you go from a wish to a plan. You say, how can we do that?

How can we do it bigger? How can we do it faster? And suddenly you start to go from problem orientation to solution orientation. you are between four to six years away from paying off this debt. My guess is if you made this a true priority, like number one, you could pay it off in less than four years. Three or three and a half years. That would be hard. You'd have to change everything.

You'd have to do a lot of inner work. That may be even too hard. But four to six years you could comfortably pay it. off. Well, if we got rid of the car and you use the Jeep to go to work, you'd still burn more gas than the car, but it'll be one at $400 who could actually check there. There it is. You can hear Jennifer getting engaged, putting some skin in the game, becoming creative about how they can work towards their rich life. This is a beautiful moment. Here's what you'll find next week on the I Will Teach You to Be Rich podcast.

I felt like a joke saying, I will have to pay everything for you. And in my mind, it was that I can pay for myself. Like if you don't want to support me, like I can support myself. When I questioned her about, you know, what we're leaving on the table as a family and what that implies for us, her response was,

well, I have my own savings and I can kind of do whatever I want.