Money For Couples with Ramit Sethi - 19. “My husband has been promising that we’ll buy a house in a few months… for five years”

Episode Date: November 23, 2021

Brian is a struggling tech entrepreneur and relies on his wife, Serena, a physician with a stable income of $235,000, to support his family. Serena wants Brian to get a job and admit that his start-up isn’t working. She's extremely focused — perhaps too focused — on buying a house. Brian doesn't like saying “No” to Serena, so he evades questions and promises that everything will change "4-6 months from now," but after seven years, Serena's patience is running thin.  Can you spot the red flags?  Listen to the resentment and distrust in her voice. Brian's promises to get a job and turn things around are falling flat. What's worse is that he can't even see it.  I'm not going to sugarcoat it; it's heartbreaking to watch a seemingly successful couple totally disconnected from each other.  I'm determined to get them on the same page. Tune in to see how their story unfolds.  We started the conversation focusing on Serena’s dream to buy a house sooner rather than later, but it becomes apparent that the house is a distraction from the deeper desire to have a partner on the same page as her.  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.

If you or your partner has fallen for a scam, I want to help, especially if you've recently fallen for an email or text scam, or you've gotten bad financial advice from someone who did not keep their promises, or maybe you just have not even told your partner because you are embarrassed. If this is you, I want to talk. Apply for free coaching with me by being on my podcast. Apply today at IWT.com slash apply. That's IWT.com slash apply. 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 a lot.

amazing vacations. That was one of my favorites where I shared how I 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. With each year, my frustration keeps mounting because I feel like I'm not being This is not a joint decision to continue the startup indefinitely. He made some jokes about me being his retirement plan, and I have a bad feeling that it's happening.

I think that her attitude in general is negative at times. Does she have a right to be negative about money? Yeah, she does. I was exactly afraid that if I push, I will have a very resentful partner with seven and a half. years later, I am resentful. So there is a resentful partner. It's just not him. Hi, I'm Rameet Seiti and welcome to the I Will Teach You to Be Rich podcast. Meet Serena and Brian. Serena is a 39-year-old physician and Brian is a 40-year-old tech entrepreneur. For the first

three years of their relationship, they earned roughly the same amount. But now Serena brings in $235,000 while Brian brings in $65,000. Between the two of them, they have about a million dollars invested. So what's the problem? Well, for the last five years, Brian has been pursuing a startup that hasn't really taken off. And Serena feels that the time has come to accept that the company isn't working and that Brian should get a traditional job.

She wants to buy a house together. You're going to hear a lot about that house today. Brian actually wants to buy a house too, but he keeps promising her that the startup will pay off. He tells her, it'll be in the next six months, the next six months, but he's been saying that for years. By now, Serena doesn't trust him anymore. Brian keeps saying that things will change. To start our conversation today, I asked Serena what she wished, Brian would understand. I would like to tell Brian that there is an opportunity cost to a startup

that's not making any money for seven and a half years. It's the third startup too in those seven and a half years. And by now, had he been working, you know, in a job which was generating income, we would have bought a house by now and moved on in life. I wish for the startup to make money for him because that is the dream that he holds so close. But since it hasn't, and we've tried it out for seven and a half years, I would say to get the job, buy a house, and then reconsider doing the startup, perhaps in a later stage. Okay.

Brian, what do you wish that Serena would hear from you? It has been a long seven-year journey, but I did do consult. in gigs and make a decent amount of money for about four of those seven years. Yeah, I'm super excited to buy a house and really looking forward to doing so in the next four to six months. So I'm looking forward to building that dream and realizing that dream together in the near future. I've heard that before.

Actually, three years. So I'm a little skeptical about the timeline. Plus, we don't even have a realtor. So clearly, we're not really making any concrete moves towards that. Are you both going to buy a house in the next four months, Brian? I'd love to do so in the next four to six months. Are you going to? Yeah.

Then why are we here? I'd say that Serena is worried that it might not happen, but I'm optimistic. So here's what I want to say. Here's what I want to say. I've heard this three, four years in a row, actually. So usually around the mid-year, we're going to have a house by December. We're going to move towards it. My startup is going to make money.

We're going to make the payment for the house outright. There's going to be no mortgage. And then the years go by, right? And this argument, this conversation, I feel like you're in a, We're sort of in a never-ending loop that nothing is moving forward. The years add up. And I'm getting more and more concerned with two little kids. I'll bring up all my anxieties about the startup.

Where are we going? What's going to happen? When are we going to buy a house? And he'll tell me, you know, in four to six months we're going to buy a house. It's going to be all great. Everything is going to be together. And then four to six months pass by. There's a new year.

I'm going to get funding for my startup in the next three months. I've put in applications. And then another year goes by. And along with each year, my frustration keeps mounting because I feel like I'm not being heard. This is not a joint decision to continue the startup indefinitely. COVID threw us off by quite a bit. So the last year plus has been slow. We've had a few pivots, technology challenges.

We're working on a really hard problem and hard product. So it's taken much longer to build that love for the customers. But we have done that now, and we have just gotten our pitch deck ready and redesigned to submit some of these applications. So I feel like we're getting close with our patents being recently granted, the customer love being built. Okay, for this huge problem in their relationship, first thing I'm curious about is what does a house mean to Serena? You know, when people tell me what their rich life is, they almost always use vague words. They'll say something like, I want to travel, or I want to do what I want, when I want. I always push them to get more specific.

It turns out that many of us haven't really thought very deeply about what we truly want. And I can understand that. We're caught up in work emails, cooking dinner, just trying to stay afloat. Some of us just envisioned our lives being a certain way. But we rarely stop to reconsider that vision as we get older. Imagine you go through life with some vague idea of what you like, never stopping to really question it or clarify it. I think that's a tragedy.

It's like floating down the river of life, but never choosing your own path. And my job is to give you the perspective to zoom out of the day-to-day and really design your rich life. Watch as I dig into the real reasons behind the house. Have you asked her what a house means to her? No, I'd like to hear it again. Ask her. What does a house mean to you, Serena? I think having my own place with, you know, I'm very,

wanted to sort of by now at this stage in my life have a house to call my own to do up to raise the kids in this is the third house that we've moved and just that sense of having roots down you know that we belong to a place we have something to call our own would have meant a lot has he asked you any questions about money during your relationship you know you funny you ask when we were dating he uh we you know he i was still in residency and i made very little but he'd been working for nine years and so he wanted to see my credit score make sure that we were all no debt and he taught me all about how to invest in the rot IRA i knew nothing about that and um and yeah and then he made some jokes about me being his retirement plan and i have a

bad feeling that it's happening. So that's the extent of our money conversations. But after the startup, it's mainly being me, after three years of supporting him for the startup, it's mainly being me asking, you know, what's the end goal? And when you ask him, his mode of response is what? When I ask him, you know, he's always very placating. He would say, yes, in three to six months, I'm going to, we're going to do this. I'm going to get funding. It's the same thing. And how does that feel to you?

The first time I heard that, I felt like, okay, maybe I am, you know, I'm being pushy, but it could be only the next two, three months things will work out for him. But the second time, I thought, okay, maybe, maybe finally this time. By the third time, I started thinking it's a delaying tactic. It's just a one way of sort of saying the right things, but not doing it. thing about it. And then by now, we're three, four years

down this pattern and it leads to very heated arguments and a lot of angry words and for otherwise, pretty good relationship. Brian? What do you think here is? I agree with

her concerns. I think that her attitude and general is negative at times and am a very positive person in general. So there's a little bit of conflict. Does she have a right to be negative about money? Yeah, she does. How much is the house that you want to buy? One point four. Okay. One point four. Fine. So you want to put down, what, $300,000 is a down payment?

Okay. And your savings right now is 110,000. Your total investment is just over a million bucks. So, Brian, you mentioned that you know, you may hopefully get the house in three to four months. Where would the money come from? A couple of options. One is we're starting to pursue a small acquisition for our technology. And if that comes through, we would get a chunk of money. and the other option would be we raise funds for our startup and then we have two stable incomes. So we do have a little over like a certain portion like a buffer amount over the 20% down plus the closing costs. But if we put that all down today, we won't have much of a cushion left. It doesn't sound like you can do this in three to four months.

Would you agree, Brian? I'd say if we get a small acquisition or fundraise or if I get a job, I guess either of those three things becomes true. And we should be able to get the house. I noticed that you never say no. Have you ever noticed that, Brian? Sometimes, yeah, that could be the case. Have you ever said no to Serena? I have.

What's an example? Yeah, I'd say one example is for this podcast. My first response was no. Wait, but you're here right now. Right. Yeah. So what's another example where you said no to her? So a no that stayed a no or converted to a yes or does.

doesn't matter. A no that stayed a no. A no that stayed a no. I'd say, like she said, let's buy the house in the last few months. And I said no. No, you didn't say no. You said it's going to, we're going to buy it in four months. Right. But yeah, I said her question was like she'll be by it right now, like today, for example. And I said no. In the last, in the last, in the last. the last few weeks. And then what did you finish that sentence with? I said no, not now. We will buy it in the next four to six months. Okay. You see what I'm getting at here? That I have a hard time saying no. Yeah. What do you think that causes in your relationship? Differences, Rift, and a little bit of conflict.

Yeah. Watch this. Serena. Does he have a problem saying no? You know, he said no to me many times about finding a job. That has stayed a consistent no. Wow. He said, you know, I don't want to be in the rat race, quote unquote.

So no. So that has stayed a consistent no. But these days, though, he says, I will find a job. I'm talking to. to a recruiter, but it's sort of in the same way in as I will buy a house, and someday in the far off future. The inability to say no is a huge red flag. Oftentimes it's a people pleaser and or someone who desperately avoids confrontation

at all costs. It's often cultural. It's almost always taught from childhood. People lie to themselves all the time. We tell ourselves we'll go to the gym and we don't. We tell ourselves we'll start managing our money and we don't. Over time, you stop trusting yourself. You literally know that you're lying to yourself

as you make yet another commitment that you're going to break. Now imagine how this affects a partner who can't trust what you say. And it's made even more confusing here because you never really say no. That means you get to stay the good guy. Instead, you just say, we'll do that later. Just guess the average wait time to see a doctor in the United States. I'm not talking about a specialist, just a regular standard family doctor.

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Stop putting off those doctors appointments and go to Zocdoch.com slash Rameet to find and instantly book a doctor you love today. That's ZOC, doc, dot com slash Rameet. Zokdoch.com slash Rameet. And I want to thank Zokdoch for sponsoring this message. It is impacting our relationship. We have a pretty strong relationship, but I'd say 10% of it is impacted because of this.

We agree on a lot of the other things and we have great fun doing a lot of the other things. But this specific part, the 10% is severely impacted. I think it's put a great deal of strain on our relationship. I wouldn't say 10%. I think we've had some epic fights. We had to delay like because he didn't want, to have a second child because he still wanted that start up to sort of, you know, take off

because obviously when you add another child into the mix, everything takes, it takes away time and energy. And we were both in our late 30s and I didn't want to delay that because it was in our, it was what we had discussed before, the family size and all of that. So that was a big fight again. And so I feel like for each of these happy milestones in our life, it's like sort of colored by this background where there's this push and pull. I'm pushing and he's pulling. And it's not sort of we arrived at these decisions together harmoniously. And Brian mentioned maybe it's 10% of the relationship. What would you say it is? To me, I think it's over 50%.

Right. That's a big difference. Right. It is. What does that make you feel when you hear that? Surprised. Where do you want to go next, Serena? I want to sort of go, okay, so if it's hard in three to six months, when do you think it's going to be possible? And do you have a timeline that you think you could stick to? Did you catch that question that Serena just asked? She said, when is it going to happen?

Now, I guarantee you, Brian is going to interpret this as a logistical question. He thinks Serena is asking about dates and dollar amounts because her words had things like timeline in it. If he answers that way, she's going to respond with more questions and they're going to be dragged into the logistical weeds. Both of them are going to end up frustrated. But look deeper. That's not what she's really asking. Deep down, deep down, deep down, she's saying, Brian, I don't trust you. Can you give me a reason to trust you? She's really crying out for reassurance. She's looking for some evidence of trust. In love and money, we have to look beneath the surface of the words. In love and money, our words matter. We should choose our words

carefully. And if we're the one listening, receiving those words, it's our job to look beneath the surface. Watch how he interprets her question. I'd say with a year's worth of stable income and two payst, two incomes, two pay stubs, and a little bit more in savings, we could get there by the end of 2022. So how are we going and get that income?

I would have to take up a job soon, let's say in the next four to six months if nothing works out with the startup. So we can then... So we're back in that loop again, right? Like the next four to six months, I will find a job if nothing works out with a startup.

In the next four to six months, we'll be in January 2022. Are you going to do that, though? I would prefer to give it like one last shot at the startup because we... because we've made a lot of progress in terms of efficacy, customer love, IP getting granted, and with three plus years of effort in the bootstrapped startup, both for myself as well as my co-founder, to be fair to him, I see two options.

One is like take up a job soon and pursue that on the site. which might be hard time-wise. The other option is to give it like one last shot and see if something can happen. And I think we're really close given some. What is the dynamic between the two of you right now? Brian? I think we're playing out the pattern that we have been trapped in for so long.

Correct. What is that pattern? You know, I'll ask, he'll be. say six months from now. Correct. I'll say now, he'll say, I'm so close. Yes. It's the same thing.

You two are playing the same pattern over and over. You're doing the same dance over and over, and you wonder, why do we end up in the same place? I like this discussion. I think it's great. You're making big progress. But what if we completely flipped the dynamic? So, Serena, you've been talking about the beautiful $1.4 million house. When do you think is a good time we should buy it?

I would say soon as possible, the rates are increasing every year, and I would rather put it towards mortgage rather than rent. What were you thinking? That sounds good. I'd like to work towards that, build up a little bit more in savings, so we can do that in the near future in the next six to 12 months. months and excited for the amazing house and a place that we can call home. I don't know. I still feel like it's going to be six to 12 months and you're going to be

putting in savings, but what's the plan? Ask him a question. It's very easy to talk about what's not working, but a better approach is to ask a good faith open-ended question. Go ahead, Serena. Okay, so you're saying that we'll be buying the house in a year. And then how do you see us making, you know, funding the down payment? Right. It would be like liquidating the or in cashing the liquid assets and then having two stable jobs and paychecks to be able to get the best mortgage rates. Brian, answer the question. You know what she's asking you.

What is she really asking you? See, we could get that with two jobs and two reliable incomes. Do you see yourself finding a job? Does there a job that you have identified, that you will be starting soon? There's a few that I've been looking at and talking to a recruiter as well. So I could pursue that, submit the application. and start interviewing. Okay.

And do you see that happening? When do you think that you would be done with the process of recruiting and starting the job? November. Oh, that's pretty soon. I'm glad that you found a job that you like and that if you're thinking that November, you'll start. I feel like we'll be close enough to get the house at the end of next year. Right. I'm feeling that she is more comfortable, less anxious, less worried and also excited for the house.

What about for you? I have a little bit of mixed feelings, but I would, I'd like to be supportive and then do what's right and best for our family. Two of us. Can I try to play a role in this dialogue? Of course. All right. I want to ask the questions that neither of you are asking. Sure. First, I'm Serena. Brian, I'm so happy that you are open to getting a house, but I'm really surprised that you're just agreeing to get a job. You've resisted getting a job for four plus years. And suddenly you're saying you're going to get a job in the next two months? How can that be? Right. It's more about realization and getting an independent advice and perspective that has helped me reach the right conclusion. What is the conclusion? That I need to find a job

so we can afford a house comfortably. But what about your startup? I could. pursue that on this side and fund it through the additional income. I thought the income was going towards the house. Pause right here. Serena, what do you notice I'm doing with my questions? I'm not trying to trick him into buying a house. You'll notice that. The last thing you want to do is back him into a corner and then be like,

gotcha. You said you're going to get a house. That's not what we want to do. I'm actually asking questions that disconfirm the hypothesis. Brian, back to you. I'd say that it would grow slower if I pursue it part-time. And yeah, or I could just quit doing that and focus on the job, the new job, once that starts. Which one do you think? How would you make that decision? Based on the work-life balance and time balance where I would prioritize family, new job, and then the last, if there's any spare time, would go to the startup.

Okay, I'm hearing you. How much time per week? would you need to give to the startup for it to be meaningful? I'd say 10 hours or so. Okay, 10 hours a week. So given that you'll have a new high-paying job, let's assume that it's going to be pretty demanding, especially at first.

And so that's how many hours do you think, Brian, per week? 45 to 50 roughly. Great. 45 to 50 hours. And then how much? How much time do you want to spend with the family? Weekends, Saturday, Sunday, so let's say 20 hours or so. Okay. Great. And so how much does that leave you to spend on the side business for now? Not much. Almost zero. I'd say zero. Okay. Yeah. So what decision do you want to make,

not do I want you to make? What decision do you want to make? Say spend time with family and the new job. Focus on those two and just do those two. Okay. Listen to Serena's response. This is the moment that was really heartbreaking for me. What's the area of life that you want to spend more on this year? A lot of people will say health or relationships.

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get our free business guide, demystifying AI, at netsuite.com slash remit. That's net suite.com slash remit. To be honest, I'm not confident. But it was nice to see a better way of having a dialogue. Brian, ask for why. Why are you not confident? Because I kind of, even when Ramith was asking you the questions, and you were giving the answers, and you were learning to say no,

or, you know, being realistic. I could hear the pain in your voice about like letting go of the startup, the pain to kind of want to start a job. And I feel like in the end you're going to go with the startup. I see. I've already started talking to a recruiter and looking at the jobs that are kind of interesting nearby. So I hope those factors would build more confidence in you.

Oh, thank you. Thank you for, like, talking to recruiters and looking for jobs nearby. But I feel like I've heard that before as well for two years now. So it's hard. I think, like, it'll be hard for me to believe what you're saying until I actually see you sign a contract. and then move towards a job. And I'm not even sure personally

if a job is the solution to get the house, I think what's missing is perhaps us no longer being able to collaborate to help each other fulfill each other's dreams. And I feel sad about that, but I no longer hold belief in this startup providing us the life that you hoped it would. And you kind of are not a lot of

ready to let it go yet. And I understand that, but it's hard. I have to be this pushy person for everything in our, the life that we're building together to constantly remind you where this is like both of us wanting to do it together, having the initiative because that's what we discussed. The real problem is not the house. Do you hear that? It's not the house. Part of living a life is being honest, honest to yourself and honest to the people around you. The real problem here is not the house. If you buy the house, do you think that this dynamic will magically change? No. No, I don't. So you spend seven and a half years, she's chasing you, you're evading, you finally save up $300,000. You buy this dream house, $1.4 million.

And you're in this big, beautiful bedroom and you look at each other and you realize, oh my God, we still have the same dynamic. We just have a bigger bedroom. No, I hear you. I hear you. Is it a house that's the real problem here? I don't think so. I think it's, I don't think so.

I think it's the shift from the sort of partnership that we had thought we would have to what came to fruition. And the pressures, I think, of being a startup entrepreneur, but also like having a young family. I think, yeah, and I also, as a working mom, the pressures because of the startup and a young family and of needing to be the pushy sort of partner, you know, makes, it leaves you being the person that you did not imagine yourself to ever be where I'm sort of being the pursuer. I'm like pushing and pursuing and I don't want to sort of, I don't want to be that person who is chasing my husband down to keep up with promises or things like that. I would hope that, you know, we both wanted the same thing and we're going to work towards it and get there together.

And if we're not seeing eye to eye on that, then I mean, I would hope that we could like figure out a way to realign, but we are not able to do that. Brian, sounds pretty serious. Yeah, it does. I think the two of you have become so fixated on this house that you've forgotten what the purpose of your relationship is. Purpose of relationship isn't to have a house.

You can have a house or not have a house. In the grand scheme of things, you two could die very happy without a house. Now, would you like to have one? Sure. Should you get one? Maybe. That's up to you two to decide. But if you get the house six months from now, is your happiness level in the relationship

going to change? No. Maybe for a month, but the dynamic will not change. It'll buy you a little bit of time. It's not going to change anything. There's a larger problem. And while you two have been fixating on this house and chasing and pursuing and evading, the house is the thing that you were both circling around.

But it wasn't ever really the point. The big challenge is your dynamic. The one of are you two partners or is one of you always going to be chasing the other one? If you can change that, then all the other details fall into place. You can get the house whenever you want to. You both are high earners. You can decide, do we want to get it in six months or do we want to get it in 18 months?

No problem. That's up to you. You can decide what kind of family life you want, what kind of childcare, what kind of vacations you want to take, family dynamics with others. All of it becomes just a detail. if you have this shared vision. If you don't, you're going to keep chasing and evading for the rest of your life.

What do you want to do? I'd like to work for us towards being partners. Me too. So let's do it. How do we change the dynamic from this to partnership? Brian, what do you think? we could come up with a combined set of goals, vision, how we look at things, perhaps in the next year, five years, ten years, and align that and then work together

collaboratively to see how we can get there in the next one, two, five, ten years to realize those dreams together. So since we've spent the first seven and a half years, you know, trying to fulfill Brian's dream, I would hope that the shift wouldn't be like a five to ten year goal thing, but maybe now trying to see how we could like fulfill some of the other things which got left behind as we were pursuing the startup. Serena, I hear you loud and clear and I hear the resentment in your voice. but I think it's going to be difficult for you to become partners if you're living in the past. It's very hard to take someone who has thought of him or herself as an entrepreneur and tell them to get a job. It feels like a loss. It feels like you lost and you're having to

crawl back to getting a job. Oh, if I just had one more month, I could have made it. If I just had this one more deal, we could have done it. But you force me, to quit. And so I'll never know. That's a bad resentment to fester. I think a better approach is to say, look, you're an entrepreneur. I understand that. All I'm looking for is some guidelines. It's gone on for three and a half years. I want you to have a full chance at succeeding in this, but I also need us to come up with a very clear set of rules. If you don't have Series A funding, of at least $2.5 million by this date, you find a job. If you cannot provide XYZ dollars to the family, you find a job, et cetera, et cetera.

Clear rules. And then you negotiate, how's it going to be? Well, I think I need six months for that. Six months is too long. How about two and a half months? Okay, I can make that work. And everybody gets the chance to weigh in and commit to it. We have those conversations exactly like how you said.

We said, okay, you know, three years was what we had agreed on, and after that, those three years are long gone, but we're still here. So clearly, those conversations are not working out because somebody needs to keep their end of the bargain. Uh, what? They already did this? I mean, what am I doing here then? I love how every time I'm talking to these couples, these bombshells just drop hours into our conversation. That is partly true. I did do consulting for the first three years. So the last three years have been hard with this new startup in terms of income has been less, etc. But I like your idea of probably like writing it down in paper like with the C to Series A milestone, two to two and a half to three months, something like that. And then that's an option. I'm sure you'll write it down. But did you, did you already have this? conversation, you agreed? Yes, we did. We had that conversation. We agreed because I was exactly afraid of the same thing that if I push, I will have a very resentful partner. But seven and a

half years later, I am resentful. So there is a resentful partner. It's just not him. Right. I guess I'm more concerned if you already had this conversation, then what's going to change having it again? Right. Right. That's my concern too. Right. That's a valid. And so. or Brian, if you're not following through with what you agreed to, that's a really bad sign for your relationship. There's no integrity there. And when your partner doesn't trust you, the one person in the world who really needs to trust you, so what do you want to do about it, Brian? Right. I'd say build, regain the trust, rebuild the trust. Yeah, if it can be rebuilt. I'm curious to know how are we going to be saving towards that house.

Sure. I'm confident that I would get a job, especially after getting remains amazing advice, so we could work towards a 50-50 partnership. That sounds promising. That sounds very promising. Brian, what are you hearing in her voice? Confidence, promise. You hear confidence? I don't.

I'd say it was more confident than the last time. No, no, no. These are the words of someone who is just not listening. Someone who's become so tunnel vision focused that he's not watching the entire room around him go up in flames. it is really, really hard to reach these people. And even when disaster finally strikes, they often never realize their true culpability in their own circumstances

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That's drinklmnt.com slash remit. Try it totally risk-free. If you don't like it, they will give you your money back, no questions asked. What do you think is going to make Serena confident? She's not confident right now. She's very skeptical of you. job offer. How would you describe that, Serena? What would make you feel that confidence? When I hear in Brian's voice, the excitement and passion to actually go start a job, sign a

contract. And I, every time he talks about getting a job, you can see the hesitation in his voice, it quivers. And so I get the sense that he may not yet be ready for that. It's a long-held dream of his. I get that. And it's hard to let go. This conversation made me so sad. Maybe it's because I can hear the distrust in Serena's voice. Maybe it's because I understand what it feels like to fail as an entrepreneur.

Or maybe it's just that I know couples who fight like this. You know, worst of all, I hate to see a seemingly successful. couple that's just totally disconnected from each other. There's so much pain in this relationship, so much living in the past. And I understand it. When your trust is violated over and over, you learn to stop trusting. In this episode, you heard Serena talking about the house. Now, you might notice that I didn't sit there and ask her five million questions about buying versus renting and has she really run a TCO calculation because buying a house is not always the best investment. Listen, there's a time and a place for that kind of discussion, and this wasn't it.

Deep down, they both know that buying a house is not really going to change anything. Serena really wants a partner, someone who's by her side, someone who pushes her, partners with her, not someone she has to convince and drag along. Brian is an entrepreneur. To him, the idea of working at a full-time job feels like career death. Don't dismiss that. It's important to him. He has to recognize the costs of those beliefs, though. As he continues believing that story, and it is a story he's telling himself,

his relationship is deteriorating. Some relationships can be healed. For others, it might be too late. I wish Brian and Serena the best. Thanks for listening to I Will Teach You to Be Rich. I'm Rameet Seity. Please follow the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Head over to IWT.com slash podcast to find our entire back catalog of episodes and links to all the places you can listen.

Here's what you'll find next week on the I Will Teach You to Be Rich podcast. you're netting $80,000 a month and you're questioning my audible $12 subscription every day, there's a problem here. You know, we file our taxes jointly and I had to sign for taxes recently. Couldn't believe my eyes. I didn't even know how much we made. I had to sign $175,000 per month. My yard is in shambles.

There's no reason for this. When we fly, we fly as basic economic. as we can. When we say in hotels, it's the cheapest. I am cheap. I am frugal. I am cheap. There's no mistake about that.