Money For Couples with Ramit Sethi - 274. "We have a newborn and 89% of our income is already spent...Now what?"

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You To Be Rich speaks with Shelby and Calvin, 31 and 43, who have a new baby and feel trapped by their financial situation. Together they earn about $102,000 a year, but they have just $3,500 in savings, more than $20,000 in debt, and $0 currently going toward savings or investments. Shelby wants more structure and transparency, while Calvin admits that talking about money makes him uncomfortable. Their relationship has also been strained by financial secrecy, including a personal loan Shelby believed had already been paid off. Once their baby expenses are fully accounted for, their fixed costs rise to 89%. Ramit pushes them to stop relying on vague plans and small cuts and instead make bigger changes to how they manage money together. By the end of the conversation, they have a plan to reduce expenses, aggressively pay down debt, save automatically, and become more active financial partners. In this episode, we uncover: Why Calvin kept a personal loan secret Why Shelby does not fully trust him How they earn about $102,000 but still struggle Why their fixed costs reach 89% Why $0 currently goes toward savings Why Calvin says he has been in debt his whole life How he quietly sabotaged their money meetings How their childhoods shaped opposite money habits Why Shelby takes on more financial responsibility Why cutting small expenses isn’t enough How Calvin confronts the impact of his financial decisions How they could pay off their debt in around 11 months How they begin saving automatically Whether they can follow through on the plan Chapters (00:00:00) Introduction (00:03:01) Shelby discovers Calvin’s hidden debt (00:04:55) Why Calvin kept the loan secret (00:05:52) One layoff away from needing help (00:08:28) Calvin wants Shelby to manage the money (00:12:48) Shelby admits she does not fully trust Calvin (00:21:14) Ramit reviews their financial numbers (00:23:59) Calvin has been in debt his whole life (00:24:42) They earn more than $102,000 a year (00:27:36) Their fixed costs reveal the real problem (00:35:39) Calvin admits sabotaging their money meetings (00:38:08) Their fixed costs reach 89% (00:44:58) How Calvin grew up around money (00:50:10) Shelby’s childhood experience with scarcity (00:59:05) Rebuilding financial trust (01:03:03) Ramit rebuilds their Conscious Spending Plan (01:09:17) Creating a bigger financial vision (01:21:07) Redirecting spending toward debt (01:27:38) Calvin confronts his financial decisions (01:54:14) Shelby and Calvin’s follow-up This episode is brought to you by: ElevenLabs | If you run a business or handle customer operations across support, sales, or marketing, start with a demo at https://elevenlabs.io/ramit Skylight | Get $30 off a 15-inch Calendar at https://myskylight.com/ramit ZocDoc | Go to https://zocdoc.com/ramit to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today #sponsored Gelt | Gelt is taking on new clients now. Find out if you qualify at https://joingelt.com/ramit Leesa | Go to https://leesa.com for 25% off mattresses PLUS get an extra $50 off with promo code RAMIT, exclusive for my listeners Start a business in one hour | Join Ramit live on August 19 at 8pm ET for “Start A Business in One Hour.” Reserve your spot at https://iwt.com/business Rich Life Session | Join Spencer Greenberg and Jeremy Stevenson live on August 20 at 4pm ET to learn which self-help techniques actually drive lasting change. Sign up at https://iwt.com/events Connect with Ramit • Get my new book, Money For Couples • Join my Rich Life: Road to $100K program • Download the Conscious Spending Plan • Listen to my book—now on Audible • Get my New York Times best-selling book • Get my no-numbers journal • Other episodes • Instagram • Twitter • YouTube Apply to be coached for free on this podcast at https://iwt.com/apply

You have zero going towards savings. Zero for investments. You have debt. And a baby. If you literally just continue on this path, you will hit a brick wall. How long have you been in debt? My whole life.

I'll get a paycheck. Just pay it off. Continue the cycle. The two of you make $102,792. What do you think of that number? That's enough to not be in debt. So why are you where you are? Mismanagement.

Poor decisions. He didn't have as much money. have as much money as I thought he had because he's trying to pay this loan off secretly without me knowing. Oh. Do you trust each other? No, not fully. We've had a lot of stuff.

I haven't prioritized the safety and stability of my family. Guys, it's going to take you a lot to build a healthy relationship with money. You will not walk out of this room without making dramatic changes. Is it too late to take control of your money? get a lot of questions from people wondering that and wondering how they can catch up because they didn't start in their 20s. Now, this is challenging, especially if you don't make hundreds of thousands of dollars. And that is exactly the scenario that we are going to talk about today. Meet Shelby and Calvin. Calvin is 43. Shelby is 31. And they feel trapped by their financial

situation. Shelby applied to speak with me and let's take a look at what she wrote. We are unable to plan efficiently and realistically for the future because we have no savings, Calvin has no retirement, and now we have a baby to support. This sounds like a lot. It honestly sounds overwhelming, and having a baby with no savings is terrifying. Let's take a look at the numbers. Assets, 17,500, investments, $9,000, savings, $3,500. Remember, they have a baby, and debt $20,000. $3,326. Total net worth $9,674. Fixed costs are at 87%. Right there, that explains how they likely feel about their money, feeling trapped, feeling overwhelmed. Investments at zero, savings at zero, and guilt-free spending at 13%. There's something important that I need to flag for today's conversation.

There's no magic wand that is going to make us be able to go back in time and change their financial situation 20 years ago. Here we are. These are the numbers. It's going to be a tough discussion. So I want you to prepare for that because there are no secret shortcuts to what's about to happen. So to answer the question that I first asked you, is it too late? Of course not. You can always make changes with your money and with your life. But sometimes when you are making jointly $100,000 with very little in savings and a new baby, it's pretty hard. We just have tough decisions that we're going to have to make. Let's take a look at what happens.

Let's meet Shelby and Calvin. Shelby, you applied to speak to me, right? Yeah. And I remember that you told one of my producers that you were trying to plan for the future, but you discovered some hidden debt. Can you tell me about that? Yeah, so Calvin let me know.

He had taken out a personal loan before, and I was informed that he paid back that money. but I found out six months after or so that that personal loan was not paid off. Oh. How much was the amount that he told you? It was about $5,000. Yeah.

And what did you feel when you heard that? I felt a little frustrated. It always sucks to be lied to. But I took it with ease and just started planning how we're going to pay this off. How did you discover that the loan was not paid off? We both got off leave for our baby. And we were talking about how, like, I was confused.

Where was the money? Like, I thought we were better off than we were in the moment. And I come to find out the reason he didn't have as much money as I thought he had at the moment was because he's trying to pay this loan off secretly without me. knowing. So once he said that, your reaction was? To start planning on how to work through it. You didn't say anything? Like, hey, how did you not tell me that? Well, yeah, I, I, of course. What'd you say? It's hard to remember exactly. She was upset. She just, just let me know that to not, like, keep those kind of things from her in the future. It's better that, you know,

it's out in the open so we can take care of it. And looking back, why did you keep that debt as secret? Probably embarrassment, mostly. I initially took out the loan to purchase a ring for her. And then we kind of had some difficulties picking one out and finding the right one. And I was supposed to just take all the money back, but I ended up paying off some other debts from my previous marriage. Okay, got it.

So you have a baby you mentioned, how old is a baby? Eight and a half months. Eight and a half months. Congratulations. Thank you. And are you two married or no? No. No.

Okay. And how long have you known each other? It'll be two years, November. Eight. Yeah. So like a year and a half or so. Yeah. Okay.

All right. Where are you with your finances today? Probably like a layoff or a firing away from needing welfare or help. Wow. We live very separately, financially, as often as like I tried to bring it together, which, you know, I've tried like Sunday finance meetings and things like that. I don't know how much money he has at any given time. He doesn't really know how much I have. We just understand that we're paying off, you know, we're paying our bills.

So how would you describe that? Like, how does that feel? I feel like I'm in the dark a lot of the time because he is the primary, you know, moneymaker in our relationship. I put my trust in him that he's paying the bills that he pays and I pay the ones that I pay. If you had to describe your relationship with money, with the two of you, in a word or two, what would you say? Uncomfortable. I agree. Okay. What is the role that each of you plays in this relationship with money? I'm the planner, the instigator of like financial conversations. I like to

learn about money. That's, you know, that's something I'm always been into. And I like to bring it up maybe too often. Ah, how awesome? Uh, multiple times a week, Probably. Got it. Okay. How about you, Calvin? I would rather just send her to my paycheck and not have to deal with it, not have to talk about it and just get it done.

Do you do that? Not yet. Oh, why don't you do it? I don't know. I've just trying to – I've been trying to kind of get caught up on personal, like, credit card stuff. Trying to do it on your own? Yeah. Yeah. In my own relationship, when we first met, I was an optimizer.

Like, I've freaking spreadsheets and like, okay, let's talk about our compound interest, which I still do. I love it. What I realized would have been more helpful for me would not be to create yet another spreadsheet or calculation, but actually to connect with my wife. To hear what she's saying and to be able to create a culture where we can speak. in a way that we hear each other. You know, that's what I needed to do in my next role. What would it be for you? What role would you have for the next chapter of your lives together? I would like it to be for her to just kind of take the reins on that and kind of be looped in.

And what would your role be? Provider. Provider means you make money. Yeah. And then hand it over to her. Yeah. Okay. Shelby?

I want it to be a partnership, so I don't want to be the only one doing the work with the money afterwards. Like, I want him to also educate himself on how to deal with it rather than me be like the leader. What do you think? Are you too compatible? I'm okay with her leading in the finance because that's her area of strength. If I could just be there to come alongside her and be looped in to make decisions, I'm poor with money. So, like, I feel like that would just be a better situation altogether just to not have my hand in it at all. But what did she just say, though? I heard what she said.

She would like it to be a partnership. But I feel like in that way it is, like, in a group, there's people with her. strengths and there's people with weaknesses if, let's say we're writing a paper, if your strength is punctuation and, you know, sentence structure, then you would be the person writing, right? So what would the other person be doing? Maybe research, maybe, I don't know, you know, gathering information for the person to write. I take your example. What's the chore that one of you does? You take out the trash mostly. Taking out the trash, I can understand. But it would be a little weird if it was one person solely doing baby stuff, right? It's just not really appropriate these days.

We're both involved. We both want to be involved. Money is very similar to a baby. It cuts across everything. It's where you live. It's what you eat. It's what you're able to do. It's how much safety you have, your roof. So I will gently challenge you that your vision of where you would like to be right off the bat, that's going to be really tough. I don't see any. I don't see any, couples who are good with money where one person goes, here you go, you deal with it. How does that strike you? Yeah, I understand it. Okay. Would you be open to participating with the money? Yes. That was tough. That was like, whoa, big breath. What was that? Like I said, I'm not good with money. Like, were you good with a baby before you had a baby? Yeah. I'm the oldest of 12,

so I've been raising kids since I was a kid. So, whoa. Were you good? good back then with a little sibling? Probably not. I mean, they didn't die. In that way, you were great. Like the first time you meet a baby, certainly the first time you have a baby, you're not automatically good, right?

It's a skill. Same thing with money. I'm trying to demystify money because I know that for some people, like, they're really good at sports. For some people, they understand nutrition. And we kind of get that. We're like, okay, like, you're really good at sports,

But what we don't realize is, oh, there was a lot that went into that. They've been running since they were a little kid. They played with their parents, all that stuff. Money's a skill just like anything else. And it might feel like you used an interesting word earlier. You said, I'm poor with money. Yeah. I want to hear more about that.

But obviously, there's some things you have gone through with money, which we'll talk about. But it's a skill like anything else. And so the important thing is that we all agree you two want to. be partners because if you want to be good with money, you've both got to be in it. Okay, here are the clues that I'm noticing already. Shelby wants more transparency. She wants more access. She's trying to convince her partner. Please participate in the finances. Calvin says he wants to be a provider. He also says he would like to not really have to think about money at all. In fact, he'd rather just give the money to her to manage. And yet he hasn't done that.

So there's something going on here. Let's see if I can find out more. Do you trust each other? Yeah, I'll trust her. Okay. Shelby? No, not fully. Okay.

Is that because of the secret debt? That didn't help. I mean, it's a little lie that builds into, you know, breaking trust. Okay. I appreciate the honesty. It's like we're here. We might as well just be honest with each other. And then we can try to figure out what we can do about the situation.

What would it look like to be able to trust? Calvin. Take your time. Sorry. No need to apologize. Thanks. Take your time. I don't really know. What's going through your head right now? We've had a lot of stuff. I recently broke trust in our relationship. I was having, as you can say, emotional relationships with women and was not honest about things. So that has caused a lot of mistrust. Got it.

Shelby? Yeah. Is that accurate? For the most part, yes. Okay. Have you all spoken to a therapist? We are in the works. Actively, good.

We're in the works. And where are you in your relationship? We're together working through it. that, you know, we don't know where we're going to end up, but we're trying to end up together. Got it. Okay. Thank you for being honest.

That really helps me understand the background of what's going on here. I'm not a couple's therapist. I'm glad you are seeing one. That's awesome. The thing that I can help with is money. So although all of this is tied together, obviously, you're here to talk about money. So in light of what you have just shared, is it okay if we focus on the money part?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Look at Calvin's body language. A lot of deep breaths, a lot of low energy. It's telling me that he's not comfortable with money. And while he has shown up here, which I appreciate, I get the sense that he does not like talking about money at all. That has implications for how they manage money together as a couple.

If you hate money or you hate talking about money, point blank, you're never going to get good at it. How can you get good at something that you hate? So part of what I try to do with couples is make them realize, hey, money isn't something that's just a bunch of confusing numbers. It's actually your ability to go out and order an amazing meal or put your kids in math tutoring class or be able to travel. Money is not just numbers. Money is your life, the one that. that you choose to create. I'm really curious to see what their numbers say.

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You can save your seat to join the call on August 20th at IWT. dot com slash events. What was it like putting this conscious spending plan together? It was a struggle for me. Yeah? Yeah. Because again, that uncomfortable feeling with money. What was it like for you, Shelby? I loved it. Oh, were you the one driving it? Of course. Okay. Who typed it in? Me. You typed it in, but you were asking him for his numbers. And what was the energy like that first time? I was excited. He was not miserable. Miserable. Miserable. Were you like? Kind of like grumpy, hands crossed, that kind of thing. I just, yeah, I was just like, I just didn't, I didn't want to do it.

Okay. You all match energy on anything? No, not usually. Ah, so this is the dynamic. So we have Shelby who's kind of excited. And then Calvin, your energy is? It depends on what it is. Tell me.

If it's fishing, we're both excited. Okay. Nice. But if it's, you know, going over money, it's, she's, excited and I'm, you know, dragging my feet. Got it. Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. Let's take a look at the numbers. Shelby, will you read off the word in bold and then the number next to it for this entire box, please? Assets, $17,500. Investments, $9,000. Savings, $3,500. Debt, $20,3,326. Total net worth, $9,600.

$174. Okay. What do you make of these numbers? It's rough. I mean, it's not great. But we're in the positive, and I'm going to be positive about that. Okay. Are you always optimistic? I feel like I balance out whoever, you know, I'm working with, whether it be friends or a partner. So I'm going to be positive about it because I've seen his face when I tell him the number. And it's not usually. super happy. And do you ever feel it's okay for you to not be positive? Yeah, yeah. I have plenty of times. You know, I'm not super positive, but I try to keep it, you know, as light as I can.

Mm-hmm. Okay. And, Calvin, what do you make of these numbers? They're scary. Mm-hmm. What part? Savings and the amount of debt. Mm-hmm.

the $20,326, what type of debt is that? That's my car loan and some credit card debt. And the other. Oh, and the loans. Two loans. $5,000 for the first loan. Yeah. And then?

Yeah. What was it? $1,500 left on the ring. Yeah. Okay. The ring we ended up going with. How much was the ring? $2,800.

Okay. And how much credit? card debt? I have like 200 and some odd dollars right now. Right now I'm up probably at about 600. 600. What's the debt for? Honestly, living. I took a new job and the earning potential is more at this new job, but it's not immediate. And my previous job, there was more money like up front. So things were a little bit easier. So now it's like pay bills and then kind of of living off of the credit cards until it's time to do it again. How long has that been going on?

About three months. Who's the one who charges the credit card? The 600 is his credit cards. We're separate. I usually pay off my credit cards by the end of the month. How long have you been in debt? My old life. I can see the way you talk about it.

You talk about it like it's a mosquito bite. It's a minor nuisance. If I were in credit card debt, I would talk about it like I am drowning underwater. Is there a future where you change your behavior so that you're not in debt? I hope so. That's why I'm here. Good.

Great answer. Okay. Let's go to the income. Calvin, can you read off your combined gross monthly income? 8566. Yeah, 8,566. Which means that together, if we just combined for a second, the two of you make $102,792. Did you know that?

We were in the ballpark. How much did you think? Well, it used to be like 105 to 110,000. Okay. But with the new job. It's less, but it could be more. Yes. Okay.

What do you think of that number? It could be better. What do you think, Calvin? I think with that number, we shouldn't be where we are. Oh. Tell me more. I feel like that's enough to not be in debt. So why are you where you are?

Mismanagement. Poor decisions. Okay. I like this. Which decisions? Mostly me. I don't have that sense of urgency when it comes to the debt. It's like, I don't know.

I guess I have. I feel like, you know, I'll get a paycheck, just pay it off. Kind of continue the cycle. How many people that you know in your life are in debt? Everybody. Yeah. So it's just part of life. It sucks, but it's just part of life.

Yeah. Okay. For the breakdown on the income, I want to highlight a couple things here. We have one person, I think this is Calvin, who makes $6,100 a month. Yeah. And then we have Shelby who makes $2,400 a month. Shelby, what do you do for a living? Right now I'm working part-time as like a bartender customer service at a bowling alley.

Okay. And are you in school as well? I am. It's changed right now, but I'm going back in the fall. And how long will it take you to get your degree? Two to three years. Okay. Let's say three.

I don't like ranges. I always like to pick the conservative number. So three years. I saw somewhere in your CSP, you have some school costs. Is that for you? Yeah. Okay. So three years of that. And then will you be able to increase your earnings? Yes. How much?

Drastically. Probably. Yeah. What do you think? Like how much would you make annually? I can make at least like 65 to 70K. No kidding. Yeah. That's a big deal. Okay. Good to know. Calvin, you're at 6,100 a month gross. Something about a bonus. Yeah. So right now I'm trending at my job. towards a decent bonus. How much?

I just started the job, and right now I'm like five for six on sales. So it'll be probably around like $1,500 for that quarter. So probably like... $6,000 a year? Yeah, yeah. Ballpark? Yeah. Okay.

What do you do for living? I'm a project manager for a restoration company. Okay. Yeah. Have you all talked about this number before? How much would this potential commission end up being at the end of the year? Yes, we talked about it. And you feel confident you can get 5K in bonus.

Yes. Great. Now we're cooking. All right. Let's go down to the rest of the numbers. Fixed costs? What's that number? 87%.

What does that tell you? That we're not doing great. Yeah, you're drowning. Yeah. This number right here explains your anxiety with money. Because you're the one who manages the money, correct? No. For the most part.

Wow. Interesting answer. One person says no. The other says for the most part. This kind of explains part of the problem, right? Yeah. What do you all think? I don't manage the money.

If I manage the money, I feel like it would be different. Oh, okay. And I know that's terrible to say, but that's how I feel. Why is it terrible? It's the truth. Because it's nothing. I don't want to down him. No, it's not down to me at all.

It's the truth. If you were like, yeah, it would be different. Let me say it a different way. This is how I might say it. I might say, right now it feels really confused. using because we both kind of do something with the money, but it's not really clear who owns what. And if I were just in charge of it, I could probably at least have control over everything. I could make sure that the numbers fit.

It feels a little frustrating that he won't go along with that. But what I really want is for both of us to be involved together. Did I capture that accurately? Yeah. Okay. Have you ever said something like that to him? I've told him I want us to be partners and by him just giving over a paycheck to me. It doesn't feel like it's a partnership.

Agreed. What do you think about that? I don't necessarily agree. I don't want to not know about anything, but I just feel like in that area, like she's better at it. When you think about money right now, what do you feel about it? I don't know. It gives me anxiety. I didn't grow up with money

I didn't have you know much as a kid I didn't have a my own bed until I was an adult and out on my own like my relationship with money is like if I have it I want to enjoy it

now and that's just that's what it's been since I like my whole working life so like I take care of my bills but like if I have money, like I want to enjoy it. Yeah. Is it like easy come, easy go? Yeah.

Money's burning a hole in my pocket, that kind of thing. Yeah. And is that working for you? No. Okay. You still feel that way, but you can also see that it's not working for you. Yeah. No, I know there needs to be a change.

I just don't know how to change it. That's great. I don't mind that. I don't mind if somebody accepts that they need to make a change. They just don't know how. that part is relatively straightforward. I can help with that. It's when people don't really know they need to make a change

or they're not willing to accept what it will take. I can't make somebody want that. Let's take a look at the fixed cost real quick. So at 87% you're drowning. You're effectively spending more than you make every month. And with a savings of $3,500 and a baby, if the income went away, do you know how long you would last?

A month. Less. Like a couple weeks. Yeah. Yeah. What would you do? I would have to figure it out. Let's just figure it out right now because it might happen.

What would you do? Well, I've already been trying to get a second job. So I would continue that. Okay. He's really good at finding opportunities and work. And we can also ask family members for help if we needed. How would they help? probably with like alone of some sort.

I don't like asking family members. I don't either. I don't either. So I don't like waking up early, but I have to do it. What's to hell? I understand. Not to joke about it. I understand there are family dynamics,

but there are also things sometimes we have to do. What I'm trying to get us to do is think ahead because it's quite possible. And I have learned that most people don't like to even plan ahead at all with things like career, family, certainly money, but you know what they hate even more? Is planning ahead for something to go wrong? They might plan ahead about a vacation they're taking or a car they're going to buy,

but they almost never plan about, hey, let's get serious about what happens if one of us loses our job. You know what they say? We'll figure it out. And when that day comes, because it does come for all of us, they are so shocked and they have to go into panic mode. I'd rather we just talk about it now and just get some plans out on the table. What do you say? Yeah, I mean, that's why you're here.

Yeah. Okay, I can help. All right. Okay, so a couple other things here. On your fixed cost, I note, like one person pays for one thing and another person pays for another thing. Groceries are more to you, Shelby,

but he pays part of it. Yeah. How do you decide on this? I get cash tips. And so when we're shopping, like I shop during the day while he's out work, I generally like figure out what's for dinner. But we also, sometimes he'll pay for the groceries when we're out. It seems like a kind of a loose agreement. If we're together, I try to.

Yeah, pay. Try means it's loose. Yeah. Yeah, it is loose. Can I tell you all something? I hate loose. I hate sloppy. I don't like it.

not with like basic stuff like this. Because if we can't get dialed in on like who pays for groceries and how much, then how are we going to get dialed in on more advanced concepts like debt payoff, retirement, investment fees, stuff like that. Like we got to raise the bar. Are you all with me? Yeah. There needs to be a set of rules that are crystal clear.

My wife and I have a rule about the dishwasher. Not because we're punitive or we're like freaks. It's so that we know at 9 a.m. every day that dishwasher is empty. So you could be blind and you can reach in there and it's clean. We know that. I want you to have that kind of confidence about your money. The same way you know if the baby's been fed and bathed and all, you don't have to discuss it every day.

You can decide. And if you need to change the rules, you can change the rules. It's your rules. But I want no slop. I want clarity. how does that strike you? Something we've talked about. Yeah.

Yeah. A lot. Oh, talked about it. A lot. So, Shelby wants clarity, I can tell. Yeah. We've tried different methods, especially with groceries we tried to figure out. What did you do?

Like, let's keep all the receipts from when we shop so we can gauge how much we're fully spending on groceries a month. Let me guess. No one ever looked at those receipts. Yeah, it didn't. It didn't. They said on a job. jar. Yeah, who wants to look in a jar? Who wants to look at receipts? Okay, okay, it was a valiant effort. I appreciate it. So that didn't work. So then what did you do? Then I just moved to gauging how

much of my tips, you know, I used. And then he did his thing. And I kind of just asked, what the f***s the range? What are we working with? Okay. That's quite interesting, actually. So you first both said, let's figure out this grocery thing. And then who proposed the receipts? I did. You did. And then your response was? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, great.

So you went along, you put the receipts in a jar. When we had scheduled our finance meetings, we were supposed to pull them out and do that. Good. What happened? I did it. I did it separately from you. I kind of quietly sabotaged not doing this stuff. Why did you do that?

Because it's uncomfortable. Okay. Yeah. And so when things are uncomfortable, your response is, don't do them. Yeah. Yeah. So you sabotaged it. And then Shelby, your response was?

I just kind of gave up. Yeah. I don't mind if things don't work. Like, we're all trying stuff, right? We try lots of different stuff. But giving up, we can't do that. We've got to find a different way. And so if the receipts don't work, cool.

We could laugh about it. Oh, okay, this didn't work. Calvin, since you didn't enter it, you're in charge of coming up with our next strategy. of how we're going to make sure we're on top of this. You didn't say that, right? No. No. You took it on yourself.

Yeah. Of course. It's been made clear that that's kind of my role. Oh, is it? And you accept that role? I mean, yeah, sure. I find joy in trying to figure out problems. What if the very approach that you are taking with money in this relationship

is actually co-creating this dynamic? Oh, it 100% is. Yeah? Oh, yeah. How so? I think I don't want to upset him. And I think if I pry or push too hard, I don't know what's going to happen. So you keep doing it, taking it on more.

It's not really effectively working. You don't even know how much he makes where he's spending, but you don't want to hurt his feelings. I don't want to deal with the frustration. What's the solution here? I don't know. For me to get uncomfortable or get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Okay. How?

It's by doing. It's just words, though. Because if you were just going to do it, you would have done it. Yeah. So what's the real solution? It's not just like try harder. That's not a solution. I mean, this was the first step.

Like, I could have said no. Like, I don't want to. That's true. It does take a lot to come here. I'm sitting here being comfortable with being uncomfortable. True? What's the next step? Come up with a plan, put it in action.

Agreed? And then? Follow through. Okay. I like this. I like this. Do you agree? You want to add anything?

Shelby? No, that sounds, yeah. That sounds good. We're going to take this CSP. Before we take it off screen, I just want to point out, we caught that the baby items were not being factored in. So it increased your fixed cost by 2%. You're now at 89%.

Lovely. So you are effectively spending more than you make every single month, which is a huge problem. You have zero. Zero going towards savings. Zero for investments. You have debt. I would say that your situation, I would call it dire.

It's working in the sense that you can pay bills, but every month you are falling behind. And you're hoping you get this bonus. But even if you get the bonus, it doesn't change anything. It's just money used for past expenses. If you literally just continue on this path, you will hit a price. brick wall and with a baby it's as serious as it gets. So can we all agree that you will not walk

out of this room without making dramatic changes? Is that why you're here? Yeah. I mentioned that over coffee. Tell me. This morning. Just like things are going to have to change after today. What were you envisioning? We like small joys daily. So like, you know, going to get coffee and, you know, things like that. Like, we were really good for a while at cooking at home. It's kind of falling off, but just getting back on track with things that we were doing before and staying consistent. I'm with you. What do you think, Shelby? Yeah, all of that. And? I think there needs to be, like, more transparency between the two of us, because we both don't know

each other's daily spending or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. I think if you're living together, I think if you have a baby together, like these questions about transparency are like, it's happening. Like if you've seen a baby's ass, then what are we talking about? Like, come on. Transparency is the baseline. And I'm not trying to get you all to baseline.

I'm trying to get you to a rich life. So it sounds like we all agree before anybody leaves this room, you're going to make some dramatic changes. Are we on the same page? Absolutely. Okay. Amazing. I don't think they understand how serious this situation is. This is how so many people go through life until they hit a brick wall. And if I take a look at the numbers, I am terrified. I see fixed costs over 85%.

That's a ballgame right there. It means you're spending more than you make every single month. I see basically no investments and no savings, which means not only are they at risk today, but they are definitely at risk tomorrow. They will live in poverty if nothing changes. And then a new baby. A new baby introduces all kinds of uncertainty, not just financial, all kinds of other uncertainty. And so even if this couple had no baby and were operating at their absolute best, this would be a bad situation. But with a baby, no savings, no investments, debt, we are in a really bad position.

My gut take is that they are not really aware of why they do the things they do with money. So if I can hold up a mirror and help them really see their own relationship with money, that might help them change. What happens if you're away from home and you need to see a doctor? My coworker, for example, needed to see a doctor ASAP while she was in another state and she used our sponsor, Zoktock. Here's what she said. I searched by condition.

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I can see a lot of fingerprints on your conscious spending plan. Calvin, what do you remember your family saying about money when you were a kid? I mean, nobody really talked about it because we didn't have much unless, you know, we were trying to get more. I was raised by a single mother and, you know, she was on like, you know, assistance. And then I lived with my great-grandmother for a while. And then I lived with my grandmother who never talked about money. And you mentioned something, I didn't quite catch it, something about a bed as an adult. What was that?

Yeah. Like, growing up, I'd never really had my own bed, like a bed. Like a bed that was mine that I slept in. Meaning you shared it with your siblings. Like I slept on the floor or, yeah, shared a bed with my brother. Yeah. So would you say you were poor? Yeah, absolutely.

And what are the other ways that you knew you were poor? Sleeping on the floor is one. Not having, you know, school supplies or clothes. Stuff like that. Just, you know, the lack. Do you work when you were a kid or a teenager? Once I had, like, the age to start working, yeah, I've been working ever since then. What'd you do with the money you got as a kid, a young adult?

I didn't save it. Took care of myself so that my mom or a grandmother wouldn't have to do it, bought my own clothes, shoes, fed myself. What was your mom's relationship with money? Get it. Spend it. I mean, she kind of had to, though. with all the mouths to feed and clothes, shoes, things to buy for, you know, so many kids. Yeah.

But she didn't work. She didn't work? No. Because she was taking care of the kids? Yeah. Got it. And is everybody out of the house now, your siblings? Yes.

Is your mom still alive? Yes. What's she like now in terms of money? She doesn't have any. Ah. No mouths to feed anymore. No. She's living with one of,

my sisters. What messages do you think you grew up with that you are bringing to this relationship with money? Probably that it's more of like a tool to use than something to be looked at as like, you know, putting it away, saving it. I didn't grow up with a respect for finances or money or, you know, it's like you get it. It buys things, buy things. I like your acknowledgement that you did not grow up respecting money. In my experience, very few people actually respect money. Even people who make a ton of it. Don't respect it.

Because if you respect something, you talk about it, you have a point of view on it, you plan for it, all these things that we do when we respect something, whether it's our body, whether it's our partner, mom or dad, we respect it, we treat it with respect. mostly with money, I find that people grew up, their parents didn't really talk to them about it.

If anything, they modeled, like, we can't afford it. And then people grow up just being like, well, I guess money's bad, but I like having it, so I'm just going to spend it. It's just a very unhealthy relationship. Yeah. Shelby, what do you remember your family saying about money when you were young? I didn't hear much from my mom.

She was in active addiction. Most of the time she had us. I was in foster care twice. between her having me for like three years. But I remember a game she would play with us was like throw the smallest in the dumpster and see what you can find. Throw the, you, how old were you?

I was like three to six. Wait, this is a game I have not heard before. Throw the youngest in the dumpster, that's you. And then you fish out food. Not food per se. Usually just like things we need or want. Like on a hot summer day, I remember. You know, I found a pool that was like brand new, but it just had a little gash.

So we patched it up and put it in the backyard. Wow. Like something like that. What do you think about that looking back? I mean, I think it was really fun in the moment, but looking back, that's really sad. And I don't think my mom, even though she was getting assistance for us, I don't think she was allocating that money to us. So it is sad in that respect. Yeah. Okay. Can you keep going? So yeah. So then we went, you know, back to foster care and my great-a-uncle, who I had never met, found us by seeing a newspaper article about my mom being, you know, taken to prison.

Wow. So they were like, we're going to take them in. And it was a whole different lifestyle change. I went from a foster care home that was a single wide trailer on a patch of dirt to. Being in Portland, Oregon, in a beautiful house with four acres of wooded property behind me. Wow. It was dramatic difference. What was that like? I think I was in awe for most of, you know, those first few months, you're just not accustomed to having, you know, all of that and more. My great uncle was very close to becoming CEO of a company. So he, yeah, he was really great.

great with money. And my aunt, she was a stay-at-home mom, and he did, did all of that, the money-making. What age were you when you went to this four-acre house? Six. Oh, young. Yes. And is that where you grew up? Yes. Wow. What do you remember them saying about money? My uncle would generally say, you know, save. We would talk investments. He still does to this day. Really? Yeah, so he started giving us allowances. Okay. And my sisters generally spent, they were older, they would spend it immediately.

I saved every allowance up until I was 18 to buy my first car. Really? Yeah. It was not chosen like that. It was more just like I had a situation come up and I could no longer live with my great-a-and-uncle. I see. So I went to try to build a relationship with my mom in Spokane. So I got a car and I'm sorry to hear that. It's all good. Once you left, did you live with your mom?

No, I hopped around friends of mine like their couches or I paid rent at one apartment for a little while. While I was finishing up my high school degree, I wasn't getting the relationship from my mom that I thought I was going to maybe build. So I came back to Portland. Got it. And you've been working ever since? Okay. What made you decide to go to school, the school that you're in right now? I've been working on my education for so, so many years. Like, I have an associate's, but it took 10 years to get that because I've had to stop, start, stop, start. Yeah.

I've always known I want a real career. But it's just taking a lot longer than I. Yeah. It was hoping. When you look back on the way that you grew up around money, everything from the game that your mom played in the dumpster to leaving the care of your mom and joining this other family with the huge house, when you look back on it, what do you take away from the lessons you learned? I think I've always had an anxiety around money where if I have it, I do want to save as much as possible. because if you don't have it, there's a lot of bad things that come with not having money. And you have to figure it out and you have to go into survival mode if you don't have it.

It's quite interesting that both of you grew up with a lot of scarcity, but your reactions to money is in many ways opposite. Shelby, you save or you try to save. And Calvin, you spend it and say, worse comes to worse, I'll figure it out. Is there a vision together for what you want this relationship to be? Because right now the way I see it, it seems pretty overwhelming. Like, you may have gotten used to it, but when I look and I see you got a young baby with two weeks of savings,

it's not normal. It's really, really risky. Yeah, I mean, I would like us to be in a position where, like, we had a very comfortable savings and didn't have, to worry about things. Like I worry about not having, you know, like something going wrong all the time. But yeah, I would like a savings and for us to, you know, be able to spend time together as a family, like, you know, vacation or whatever it may be without having to go into debt more to do so.

Mm-hmm. So you want to have more savings and to be able to spend a little bit more travel without worrying. Okay. Shelby? I would like all that plus being together long-term retirement is important as well. Okay. And Calvin is a little bit older, so he needs retirement because I'm worried that if you

don't have that, and then it relies on savings or. once I become a retirement age. What I'm hearing so far is a wish list. I want to have money in a savings account, and I want a money to travel, and I want retirement. Great. Now, what are you willing to do to get it? I would like to minimize certain things,

like our phone bills. Yeah. Cut back on a lot of things and kind of not having those small comforts that we are, so used to. The things that just kind of eat away at your money without you even realizing. Do you think that's going to do it? No. Being aggressive with the debt that we do have. I'm a believer. So like in this season for me, it's like the word uncomfortable is kind of like

what I'm sitting in right now and just being uncomfortable because comfort is good. It feels good. It's like, yeah, like I have all my little, you know, creature comforts that I enjoy. And, but that thing that will kind of drain everything that you have is just around the corner. When you say you're a believer, what does that mean? Oh, and God. Okay. So were you raised religious? I wouldn't say religious.

Just I was raised by two grandmothers who took me to church a lot. Do you believe God will provide? Yes. Got it. Common when I speak to folks who are religious. It's tricky when it comes to money. It's been that for me, though. Like, I've had situations where it's like, okay, like I'm looking at my account and I'm just like, okay, things are not going well. And then randomly I'll get a call, you know, from somebody who needs some work done or something. and like, you know, it happened when we first met. And I kind of got this job and made, you know, a decent amount of money.

What happens when God doesn't deliver? I don't know. It hasn't happened for me yet. We got chosen to be here. It's not happenstance that it happened. I don't believe in coincidences. Okay. We're here for a reason.

Yes, I agree. We are here for a reason. Shelby, what do you think about this? Are you religious? No. Okay. Hearing God will provide. in this idea.

It does get a little frustrating to me. Because? Because I'm more of a realist based in, you know, what's happening now, not what could happen or what does happen. Maybe there's a way to honor both perspectives here. Like, we can make room for something really good to happen to us. And at the same time, we can execute on a plan.

It's like my mom has a sign in her last house It says, trust in God, but lock your car. We can do both. Yeah. Hearing their story is really painful. And if you truly put yourself in their shoes, it's kind of no surprise that they have ended up in an unhealthy relationship with money. Because if you are in perpetual survival mode, I'm talking about for decades,

that's all you know. I'm not surprised that almost everyone in their life has an, unhealthy relationship with money. And when that's what you know, that's what you do. So what a gift for me to be able to actually talk to them and share what a healthy relationship with money might look like. That's what I would like to do next. Recently, my producer told me she's been struggling with sleep, so I asked our sponsor, Lisa, to send her a new mattress. And here's what she said. I've struggled with insomnia for years. Now every night when I get in bed, I'm instantly relaxed and asleep within minutes. Lisa mattress is somehow soft and supportive at the same time, it's the most comfortable

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trial. Go to Lisa.com for 25% off mattresses plus get an extra $50 off with promo code Rameet exclusive for my listeners. That's L-E-E-E-S-A.com promo code Rameet for 25% off mattresses plus an extra $50 off and support our show and let them know we sent you after checkout. Lisa.com promo code Rameet. Originally I asked about trust from a financial trust perspective, Shelby. Do you think it's possible for there to be a future where you trust Calvin? Yeah, I think there's a possibility of it. Okay. What would you need in order for that?

I would need to know like what money's going in and out. Okay. Accurately, not rounded. Good. That's one. What else? I can tell you're not used to saying what you would need, right? In these circumstances, when I know it's such a soft subject, you know, a sourced subject for him. Can I make a suggestion? Because I encounter a little. a lot of folks, especially women who tiptoe around their male partner's feelings.

And I get that money can be sensitive for men and women. The people who tiptoe around their partner's feelings often feel that if I just say it the right way, if I'm just soft enough, then they will finally come out of this shell and engage with me. Feel that, right? Oh, totally. Yeah. It never works.

Yeah. That's not how it works. The actual way that change works is for one, per person. in a relationship. Ideally, too, but sometimes it has to be one, to say, these are the standards that I expect. This is what I need. This is what I expect. I'm not going to try to change you. I will help. We can read a book together. We can do therapy together. But this is what I expect. And if not, that's up to you. But here is what I'm going to do. Any of this sound familiar at all? We've set boundaries and such.

With money? Money, no. Money's hard. Okay. Yeah. It's funny. I can talk to couples, and they may have incredible boundaries. They may be really communicative in other parts of life.

But with money is this real weird, peculiar thing. And actually, the reason that I'm here, the reason that I wanted to speak to both of you is to show you that money is just another part of our life. It's not even something we have to sit down and discuss formally. it's as important as did you feed the baby. So in the same way that you're able to set boundaries in other parts of life and standards, that's what I'm asking you to do here.

And I think, Calvin, I would invite you to set standards and expectations and we can discuss what those are today. This is a great place to do that. And also what happens if one or both of you do not live up to them? Because right now it just feels really sloppy. Hey, come on, let's try. Can you please send me some information? Let's put it in a jar.

It's not getting anywhere. And you all do not have time to mess around. Yeah. I feel like I'm running out of time. Let's fix it. Okay, this is what we're going to do. I, in a minute, I'm going to put your CSP up on screen. I want us to make some big changes.

Typically, I like to see fixed costs between 50 to 60%. You all are at almost 90%. So we have some changes to make. We need to start saving money every month. Not one off, not with a bonus. it needs to happen every month automatically. The only way to win with money is the same way you win with health,

with learning how to read, riding a bike. You do it all the time consistently. And then finally we'll get down to guilt-free spending. Truth is, you all don't have a lot of money for guilt-free spending right now. That's life. And what I'm going to try to do

is be really honest with you. This is what you can afford to do. You all should be able to eat out once, but not once a day, probably not even once a week. And then you all tell me what you think. Okay? The key thing as I put the CSP up on screen now is that you are going to drive it, not me. Who's the one who drives the finances more in the relationship right now?

I drive it verbally, but I feel like in action. You drive it more. Yeah? Okay, who wants to go first on this one? Oh, well. Okay. Let's take a look at your fixed costs. your fixed costs are at 89%.

You're drowning. So we need to reduce those. And we're going to start here. Calvin, take it away. Phone, like our phone bill. Phone is 150 right now. Yeah. I think we could probably get that.

Well, I know we could get that lower. To what? Less than $100. Shall we say $100? Yeah. Okay. Watch what happens to this number up here. This 89%, okay?

we can take it from 150 to 100 What just happened to that number? Went down to what percent It went from 89 to 88 percent What does that tell you? That's a start, but not enough Yeah, we're trying to get to 60 percent Shelby, you're next

I think we can get the phone down more I used to have it for $37 a month Guys, I think we're missing the message here I'll zero out your cell phone just to show you what I'm talking about Watch this, you all don't have a cell phone anymore, okay? Watch. What happened to this number? Yeah.

86%. What are you noticing here? Focusing on the wrong stuff. Yes, you're focusing on the wrong stuff. Do you realize how much of this you've done? You're here because I get to show you how to focus on the right stuff. So I'm going to put it back up to 100. And what are we going to do next? Shelby?

We can take subscriptions down. Great. We could get rid of Netflix. Do you want to? It's one of the things. things we do at the end of the night sometimes when the baby goes asleep is watching an episode of our favorite show together. So do I want to know? Do we need to? Yes. We could get rid of things like YouTube and those things, but like certain things they're not mine. So like YouTube, I can't

be like, oh, get rid of YouTube. Why not? Because it's something that he enjoys. And if I'm just taking away everything that he enjoys, I feel terrible. I guess I would like you to re- look at your role in this. I think your role as you see it right now is to be nice and to make sure that he's feeling comfortable. And I can't do that. I couldn't say that he should stop paying for YouTube. Who am I to say? It's his money. You either both have a joint vision together or you don't. If it's separate, that's separate. We could work with that too. I want to jump in here quickly. because Shelby told me earlier that they've been working through some trust issues and that she's not sure they're going to stay together. And that's significant because if they separate,

their financial picture is going to dramatically change, and I need them to understand that. Listen in. I can tell you right now, if the two of you separate, your financial lives will be catastrophe. Can you imagine what would happen if you two were to separate? Have you thought about the numbers on this? We're talking about going back to government assistance. There is no secret way out of this. The rent right now, your rent is quite low. 1690. Yeah.

If you split up and each of you got a smaller place, it would be more than $850 a month, right? Yeah. So right there, you're already behind. All of this would be way more expensive if you separate. I'm not saying stay together because of the money. I would never say that. The way that I operate planning is I'm going to assume that the two of you stay together.

We have to make some assumption here. And if you don't stay together, then you'll figure that out, but it's going to be even harder than this is. So what does that imply for the two of you? I want to work harder to get rid of credit card stuff. Good? Shelby? I want to cut costs where we can.

Okay. What's the energy level right now? It's pretty low. It's low as far. What's happening here? I'm trying to raise it up. Yeah. You all cannot get to a healthy level by being like,

oh, boo, I got to cut my cell phone $10. I think just like, I don't know, just kind of reality sync. Just like, you know, kind of set in. What is it telling you? What's reality telling you? That we're pretty screwed. Unless we do something. Yes, unless we do something.

Are the two of you used to taking big, bold action? No. Fear is a big thing. Fear of what? Failure. But you are failing. Yeah, but catastrophically failing. That's going to happen too. It's just a matter of time. It's like this is very perceptive. You're worried about failing, but you are actually failing a little bit every day. And until we confront that, until we make big, bold action and raise the energy level. We light it up. Then we're going to sit here fiddling around with freaking cell phone charges and YouTube. Correct.

And being delicate. Oh, I don't know if I should tell him to cut YouTube. No, we're trying to take that energy to a different level. Who do you know that has high energy about money? Nobody, right? You know what I know? You all know anybody who has a healthy relationship with money? Healthy?

That tells me the answer I need to know right there. Healthy? It's okay to say you don't. That's okay. if you don't have anybody who has a healthy relationship with money and you don't know anybody personally, then it's no surprise that you have found yourself in an unhealthy relationship with money. So how do we get out of that? One, we have to envision somebody who has a healthy relationship. If you can't think of somebody, think of a movie. If you can't think of that, use me. Do you think I would

go to my wife? Oh, honey. I don't call her honey, but in this situation, honey, do you think, maybe YouTube. Oh, I couldn't make you stop YouTube. That would be mean. You didn't know how to talk like that? No. What would I say? We need to cut YouTube. Yes. And go one level up. YouTube, cell phone, Netflix. Okay. But what's one level up from that? What's the vision of all of this? Why are we doing it? Get aggressive with the debt. Yes. Get aggressive with the debt. And then once, what happens after the debt? Because debt is not a rich life vision. Savings. Savings. Savings. Savings.

And then what does that get us? Security. Yeah. Security means what? Peace of mind. Peace of mind. It means that if something happens to one of us, like... Losing a job.

Losing a job. School gets delayed. Can't find a job, whatever. What does it mean for us? It means for us. We're stable, at least. We're stable. We can make it another day.

Yeah. And what happens, by the way, after you're stable? We're stable. We have six months of emergency fund. We feel good. have secure jobs. Is stable the end? Is that it? We're here on this planet to just be stable. That f***ing it sucks. What's after that? Enjoyment. Yeah. What does it look like? Enjoyment means what? Going on more trips. Yes. Buying a boat.

No, we're not buying a boat. Maybe one day. You could buy a boat. I'm just saying you could rent one. Talking about, you know. What comes before the boat, though? We like to fish an adventure. So that would probably be. be like, yeah. Great. You want to fish more. Cool. What else? Take out of state trips or out of country trips. Yes. What about with the baby? Baby's going to be older. Yeah. What do you want to do with this baby or kid? I want to show them the world if I can. Yeah. Try different foods, play different games, learn different things. Yeah. This is a much more expansive vision than I need you to cut YouTube. Do you see? Yeah. If you are constantly only down here talking about

do this, cut this, blah, blah, blah. You might be right. You probably do need to cut YouTube, honestly. But like, what are we working towards? We need to have a vision, something that keeps us going. And I suspect that you may not have seen somebody talk like this and think like this. Is that accurate to say? Yeah. Okay. First time for everything. That's why we're here. Yeah. Okay, so now we have a vision and it's like way up here, it might be the boat, it might be like a cool fishing thing, it might be saving for your son's education. Love it. A step down, some restaurants, some trips, et cetera, a step down, stability. And like, today right now is what? The first steps. Getting our cost down, paying off debt. Yes. How do we get the cost down? What are the specific things you want to eliminate?

subscriptions, clothes. Yes, great. Let's do it. Yeah. So we work on our way up there by starting with what's right in front of us. Shall we do it? All right. We're trying to get to 60%.

Go ahead. Energy's up. Speed is up. Go ahead. Calvin. Aggressively paying off the credit card debt. How? Yeah.

So like the $360 that I'm paying for, you know, using living off my credit card. Yeah. I just need to get rid of it. how though. You got to cut expenses somewhere, right? Yeah. Where? I don't know. That's the problem. You don't know because? Because it's a cycle that is, I don't know. You don't know what steps to take. That's okay. I want to help you get there. What I'm trying to do is, we have your expenses up here. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out what you want to stop spending money on

so that that money can then go to your credit card debt. What do you see? Read off every line. Car payment. That's at $195 for you, correct? That's gas, really. I don't have a car payment. Anything you can do about that? I recently have been able to use the company gas car to fill up my vehicle.

Okay, so does this need to be $195? No. What should it be? Right now, maybe like 80. I think just like every two weeks, $65 is a conservative amount, because we do take trips to go fish at multiple spots. And I did see 65, you know,

go into the tank off of your card. So, you know, if you take that just conservatively, like every two weeks, that's $130 a month. Okay, so you say it's $130 on gas. What do you say? I like hearing your point of view, Calvin. We'll call it 100.

I'm going to put this number at 130, okay? I'd prefer to estimate high. It's still lower than what it is. 130. I think we need to have a larger discussion about can you all afford $130 a month on recreational gas? Maybe, maybe not. But let's put it at 130. We are down to 87%. Shelby, what do you want to change next? We should lower groceries to probably 600 a month realistically. Great. 600 a month, okay? And I'm going to make these proportional. I just want to show you how much each of you is spending per month. Okay? All right. So if we take a look at the proportionality of this. Shelby, you would pay 534 a month for rent. And Calvin, you would pay

1156, which will take you to 1690. Okay? You see how the proportionality works? Yeah. Calvin makes more. Calvin pays more for that joint expense. Let's do the same for utilities. Shelby, you'd pay a little bit less. 78 and 169 for Calvin. Same amount you're paying in total, just broken up differently. Let's take a look here at grocery. Let's go ahead and take that number down. So you're saying instead of roughly 750 or so, you're going to take your groceries down to 600? You can do that?

Yeah, I think we can do that. Who's the one who shops for groceries? We do it together and separate. What? That doesn't sound... That sounds sloppy. It is sloppy. I don't allow sloppiness when you have this level of debt

and this little savings. We can't be sloppy anymore. It could be one person. It could be both of you together, but it can't be all three. Who wants to do groceries? Do you want to do it on the weekends? We'll just stay doing it together. Together.

One, like, Saturdays. Is that it? Saturdays, Sundays, yeah. Great. Love it. All right, so we got 190 for Shelby, 410 for Calvin, and you all are shopping once a week. So you better have their plans ready to go.

Good? Yeah. And you all are going to hold each other. to that number, which means 150 per shopping trip. Can you do it? Oh, yeah. Love it. Love that energy. Okay, great. Let's look at baby items. We got 47 for Shelby and 103 for Calvin. All right. Y'all are still at 84%, so too high, but at least it's a little bit more equitable. Subscriptions, we're not going to do this anymore. Cut this out from me. me, please. What's left? We're not going to try to eliminate one by one. We're just going to say y'all get one subscription. What's it going to be? Hulu.

Hulu? That's your choice. Let's go with Hulu. How much is it? 20 bucks? I think it's 22. All right. Child support. Who's that for? That's for me. Okay, that's for you. So, okay. It goes away in November. Oh, really? Possibly. Yeah. Okay. My son turns 18. Okay, great. So that's money that can possibly be redirected to other stuff. That's really good financial news. Okay. school payments, we could drop it to like 80 bucks. That'll account for summer ballpark. See what I'm doing?

I'm spreading out the whole year. And then we have this miscellaneous number. You know what this is? So at the end of every fixed cost, we automatically add 15%. Most people, when they start earning a bunch of money, they have some unexpected stuff come up that they don't plan for, like registration for their car every year and stuff like that, right? Something breaks, whatever.

if you all were making like a ton of money and you, you know, had a bunch of savings, I would just be like, leave this miscellaneous. It's fine. But when you have debt and when you are in dire straits, you can't afford this. You have to actually be dialed in on your money. So I will give you a tiny amount of miscellaneous because life does get in the way, but you simply do not have the room to be like, oops, like $611 per month. There's no way.

So we're going to take this number down to like 100. I'll make it 150. Let's take a look at the numbers now. What is this fixed cost number? 75%. What do you think? Still too high. Still too high.

Better though. Better. Yeah. Calvin? Yeah. What's going through your head right now? It's too high. I'm just thinking of how to make it even better.

Mm-hmm. Good. Well, if we take a look at this, I mean, you all have two, or somebody have a car payment here? Yes. Yours? When is it over? I have four, four and a half more years.

All right. Can't do anything about that. You have the car now? Can't do something about the gas. Don't drive as much. It's expensive right now. I feel like nobody in America is like, oh, things are really expensive.

I simply should not drive. We're just like, yeah, it sucks. We talk about that. Let's just talk. I hate this. Look at my, look at my hand. See this? I hate this.

When someone is doing something where they just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I go like this. It drives me insane. Just talking. Shut the fuck. I hate talking. Take action or don't waste my time. Yeah.

If you all had like two years of savings, I would still be annoyed. Oh, we talk about it. Oh, I don't want to hear that. I want to hear what you do. So tell me now, reflected. in the gas if you say we've been talking about it and we want to

drive less, what number are you going to put there? Probably 65. You want to cut in half? Yeah. Okay? And right now you go fishing every weekend. Yeah. Okay? So that means every other weekend you're not going. What are you going to do? Walk down to the park.

Love it. So you can fish there? Yeah. So what are you talking about? Get rid of that car. Actually, for that matter, do you even need two cars? Yes, we do need two profits. Oh, God, all right, fine. $65, down to 74%. Okay, fine. I think we've cut as far as we can reasonably cut.

We could also cut the $50 for close. Great. 73%. Okay. I'm okay with this so far. All right, let's just go down to the bottom. Holy shit. Okay, look at, so now that we made all those changes,

all that extra money flowed down to the bottom. And what this tells me is you now have 27% available for guilt-free spending. So usually I like that number to be 20 to 35%. For a couple that, as I described, was in dire financial straits, should your number be higher or lower than that? Lower.

Lower. Way lower. So lower than 20%, because that's like if you were in a healthy financial position. Ballparking, what do you think your percentage should be in your financial situation? 10? Yeah.

Yeah. I would say something like that, eight to ten. Especially if you can walk to a park and whatever. Great. All right. So we got money to play with, meaning this money can be reallocated somewhere. Pay off debts. Good. Your debt is $20,000 and you're currently paying $360 a month towards it.

Is that right? If you took out the car payments roughly around $7,000 left. Okay, that's fine. And so the $7,000 is what this $360 a month is going to do. Yeah. So those were just bare minimums. Yeah. We both put more than the minimum every month.

Yeah. How much? I usually... According to this, you put 135 and 225 a month. Is that right or wrong? Wrong. Okay. What should it be?

$450. Okay? Instead of $225. Yeah. Okay. And Shelby? Mine gets paid off by the end of the month usually. So...

Why usually? Sometimes there's like $80. that goes over. I know there shouldn't be. Yeah. There's not going to be. So here's some words that I don't use in my household. Try.

I don't try to do anything. I either do it or I don't. Simple. Maybe I hate that word. Do it or don't. And if I'm not sure, I put it on a list and I'll review that list once a month or during our money session. But like, I hate this uncertainty.

When I speak in an uncertain way, then it makes it okay for me to be. be uncertain and it also affects my wife. She knows when I say something, I'm going to do it. And if I'm not going to do it, I'll tell her that too. Hey, I'm just not into this. I'm not going to do it. At least she knows and she does the same for me. Yeah. Could you demand the same of yourselves? Yeah. And of each other. Could you, Shelby? I will work on that. I will do it. But it is going to take some time for me getting comfortable doing that. So you're saying you find it difficult to be that clear? When it comes to, yeah, because I try to keep the peace. Yeah. But I am, I'm going to work on that because clearly that's needed.

Yes, good. I love that you're going to work on it. That's a good way to put it. I'm going to work on this. Love that. I want you to see that, although Calvin has not been forthcoming with things like debt, etc. In almost every situation, almost every couple I talk to, they are co-creating the dynamic. And part of the dynamic that you are co-creating is by tiptoeing around and even ending your sentences when you were right. You were right about the gas. But you didn't even end your sentence because you were so like nervous about what's he going to say? No, you are a part of this relationship. You are mom. You need money to be certain and clear. So you need to speak up with a loud voice. And you all might be wrong sometimes. If you're wrong 20% of the time, I don't mind. Sort it out. Hash it out. But I'd

rather you speak up with both of your voices and then work it out. Cool? Cool. All right. So you'll work on that. Great. I appreciate that. Calvin. Do you appreciate that as well? Yeah. I want the accountability. I want the difficult conversations. I want that from her. Great. This is also an awesome thing to talk about in therapy. All right. How long is it going to take you to pay the debt off? If we stick to these numbers, it should take, what, like seven months? Okay. At most. What's the interest rate on this $7,000 loan average?

Well, the $7,000 is not the loan. The loan is down to $4,600. $45. $4,500. What's the interest rate on that? I don't know. I don't know exactly. You guys don't know your numbers.

I thought it was closer to 11. 11%. No, you had to hire. Yeah, I think it's more like. higher than 11%. I don't know where... 17. Let's just say 20%.

I'm going to do a quick debt payoff calculation. So we have $4,500 at 20%. And then what else? We have the $1,500 left on the ring, which is 11%. Let's just make it all the same. Just for easy math. Okay. It's going to work in your favor.

So $4,500. So $6,000 total? Yes, roughly. $6,000 at 20%. And we are currently paying $585,000. a month towards it. Okay, we'll find out in a second. In retrospect, what do you think about this ring purchase?

I think the ring purchase would have been a good idea if it wasn't for the other loan that I didn't pay back. In retrospect, financially speaking, we shouldn't have done that. You agree, Calvin, or no? Yeah. Okay. What I'm trying to get at, I'm not trying to beat anybody up for decisions they made. You made these decisions.

Here you are. We're going to deal with it. Okay? What I'm trying to do is that you both grew up with a lot of financial trauma, like a lot. And when I asked you, who do you know that has a healthy relationship with money? Both of you were dumbfounded. You don't know anybody. Guys, it's going to take you a lot to build a healthy relationship with money.

I am trying to show you with a few specific examples. Like, if I had not been able to afford the wedding ring that I bought from my wife, cash, then I would have told her. I would have said, look, I love you. I'm going to be in a position where I can buy a beautiful ring for you. Right now, this is what I can do. It's not the ring that I want you to have, but this is a ring that I think is right for us

and for the future that we are building together. That level of confidence to be able to be like, look, I'm not going to lie about it. I'm not where I want to be right now. It's a very different way of interacting with money than what happened. Would you agree? I initially bought a lesser.

And then? And I just, I didn't feel right about it. it. That's what I'm trying to correct. Your feelings led you astray. Because that ring is going to end up costing like double what you paid for it. You don't need to be buying multi-thousand-dollar rings. It's actually okay if you do it together. If you make a decision jointly, be like, look, we're going to be able to get that. But right now we have something more important. That's actually how wealthy people talk. And I would like for you to get to the point where you are comfortable with money. Okay. You all are going to pay off your debt in guess how many months? Anybody want to guess? Go for it.

Six? Okay. Shelby? Eight. Eleven. Eleven. Eleven months. What do you think about that? It's too long. I think it should be sooner than not. Okay. What does it feel like to realize you're paying this debt off for the next year? Not good. Okay. It feels a little frustrating. Mm-hmm. What decisions did each of you make that brought you? you to this point. Piss poor decisions, not paying the loan back, getting the ring, using my credit cards, Shelby. I think we've decided to allocate our money to different things

rather than towards the debt. So with the APRs and all that, it accrues more and it costs us a lot more. And did you decide consciously to allocate? Or did you simply ignore the debt and pay a little bit and then spend the rest of it. I think we did consciously decide on certain things, like a road trip or things like that, you know, so making those decisions knowing that it's only going to put us in deeper rather than put us ahead. Okay. Calvin?

Honestly, like, just throughout this whole thing today, talking, it's just become evident that like I haven't prioritized the safety and stability of my family. Yeah. I think that's really accurate. Good job. It's really perceptive. I find that people rarely sit down, carefully map out their money and make the wrong decision. It almost never happens.

That's not the way it works. They simply ignore what's bad. and they just do the thing that feels good. That's pretty much how humans behave, but we actually can do better. I notice, it seems like you have a realization right now, getting a bit emotional. What's going on for you, Calvin?

Take your time. I want one of these things for myself and my family and, you know, I have dreams and stuff like that, but just haven't been making the right decision. decisions. Keep going. This is big. It has to change. It's powerful. What I like is that you connected the dreams with the decisions. The dreams happen if you make the right decisions. If not, they just remain dreams. They're just fantasies. It's all just bullshit. I can't stand when people come and they talk about all these fantasies they have. And then I look at what they're actually doing

and it's just totally different. I go, why are you wasting my time? It's not a fairy tale class. tell me what you like. You like to fish. I'd like to be able to have you go on an amazing deep sea fishing trip. Okay. But it starts with YouTube. It starts with are you two actually talking about money? Right now you're not. I know this is hard. Seeing a grown man cry is not easy. It actually takes a lot of courage for him to allow himself to do that. But this is important because Calvin is realizing that the identity he has cultivated for himself as a provider is not actually being matched by the decisions he's making. That is a moment of reckoning where he can start to say, am I not a provider? Am I making bad decisions?

And to his credit, he's realizing the decisions he's making are not good ones. That gives me hope that he is listening, that he's ready to potentially make a change. Now I want to see if I can drill it in. I think we made some pretty good progress. You want to keep going and make a few more big changes? Because we're on the cusp of something here. Yeah.

Can you all feel it? Yeah. I could feel it. I could see it. Look, I'll show you. Look at these numbers. It used to be 89% fixed costs. We're down to 76%. And we have more that we can do.

isn't there some bonus coming in conservatively at $5,000? Yeah. So we're going to get that in here. That is going to get taxed. So let's just say $3,000. Easy math. So $3,000 divided by $12. We're going to add that here.

Here we go. Look at that number. 73%. That's if you get the $5,000 bonus. What would you do with it? We need to put it towards our debt. interesting answer. So usually when people get a one-time thing like a bonus or a tax refund, they actually use it to either pay off debt or save, which is not such a bad thing. It's fine.

And if you were to use it to pay off your debt in full, I don't mind it. It's not so bad. But what I'm really trying to get you to do is to actually treat your money stably. So you're not taking these one-off things and doing random stuff. Because I bet you if you paid off your debt the next time you got a bonus, you know what's you would use it for, right? What? Your debt that you now accrued. Yep. Or vacation. Because you're like, it's free money. Yeah. You're not respecting it.

Yeah. Respecting money means when it comes in, you have a plan for it. And right now, you all don't need to be doing one-off things. You need to be consistent. See what I mean? Yeah. That's why I put that money here. Right here, just like the rest of your take-home pay. It just flows. That's why this number went down. All right, now let's go and look at the rest of this. You still have 27% in guilt-free spending. That's a lot. Way too much. We got to reallocate that. Where should the money go? Should go to savings, debt payoffs, investments. Great. Let's put some towards savings. How much?

At least 200. Keep going. That's way too low. 500 gets you $6,000 per year, right? So we want more than that. Finish strong. I want you to really develop your voice, Shelby. Go ahead. If I was looking at the numbers, I'd probably say at least like $700. $700 a month. What do you say, Calvin? Yeah. Notice the dynamic. What is this dynamic that's emerging over and over again?

Shelby, your reaction is? Save. Save and be aggressive. Calvin, your reaction is? Conservative. Yeah, be conservative. Like, I don't know. But guess what happens when you leave money just sitting around in your system?

You spend it. It just gets eaten up. So what's going on in your head is you have this invisible script. Money is meant to be spent. The minute I get it, it's burning a hole in my pocket. And I'm trying to get you to change that relationship. The way you change it is not by telling yourself like, oh, I need to be better. That's just words.

The way you change it is literally by saying every single month, our savings account is automatically going to pull $700 a month. You don't have to make the decision anymore. Let's take a look. $700. That's 10% savings. That's pretty good. You still are at 16% with guilt-free spending. That means you still got some money.

Yeah. So shall we take a little bit of that and maybe put it towards the debt? How about like 300 bucks extra per month towards the debt? What do you think? Yeah. I mean, could we do more? You could put more towards debt for sure. But I'm worried about your savings account because if something happens, you are in really bad trouble. So I actually don't mind if you have to spend 11 months or 12 months paying off your debt, even if you're incurring all this interest, because I need you to have more savings. I need you. I need you to have like thousands. It's $5,000 a month just for you to keep the lights on. So I would actually like to take the extra $300.

Forget about the debt. You've got a debt payoff plan. Leave it. Put the $300 towards saving. So now we're at $1,000 a month. This is looking good. I hope you all are prepared to take your rotten bread and use it to attract fish because no more buying fishing food.

That's it. I know that game. We used to fish too. Duck bread. That's why we call it duck bread. Well, whatever. I don't like you. All right.

You all have $835 a month for fun. Can you do it? Yeah. Who's packing the lunches? Me. Great. And coffee out. Is it important to you?

No. Okay. It's not. Great. So you're making coffee at home. What's important to you? Like, we want to go to dinner at least a couple times a month somewhere. Two times a month.

You know the place? Not yet. No. Here's how people who have to hit a strict number do. They go, we got $835 a month. We want to spend, I don't know, of that $835, $300 for eating out. Want to eat out twice? That's $150 each time.

Divide by $2, that's $75 per person. We're going to look at the menu before we go, and we're going to be very clear with each other, like, are we getting appetizers? Are we getting a drink? And when you have like $75 per person and you live where you live, maybe you are, maybe not. It depends where you go. It's just that specific.

But if you want to eat out twice a month, you totally can. I don't know, that feels good to me. It's like we're paying off our debt. We're building up savings at $1,000 a month, and we can still eat out twice a month. That's pretty cool. What do you can do with the rest of the money? We should probably start putting some away for our son.

Don't worry about your son. He has plenty of time. This is a classic thing that people do who are poor money managers. They're in dire straits themselves and they start thinking about their son. Your son needs you two to be way more financially healthy.

And if your son ends up having to take out some debt, so be it. Because you all need to get your financial act together first. So I would say maybe five, ten years from now, you will be like so dialed in. You easily could get there, no doubt, that you're like, all right, we got extra money. Where retirement goals are on plan,

we hit our six, to 12-month emergency fund, XYZ, let's start putting a little bit away for him. But doing it before then would be a massive mistake. Okay. What do we do about retirement? Good question. You right now have nothing going towards retirement. Yeah.

Some of this changes once the debt gets paid off. As an example, you currently have $585 a month going towards debt. Once that's done, if it were me, I would immediately shift all of that. over to investments. Immediately. I wouldn't miss a month. So when there's, you know, like two months left to go, I'm always making plans. What's going to happen? Two months left to go on the car payment? What are we going to do with that money? That's how you get ahead. And that's how you avoid just like spending money. We got free money. No, we make a plan. You might increase your eating out amount a little bit, but you're going to redirect it. If you wanted to, and you want to take 300 bucks a month right now and

cut and direct that to investing, it's not bad. It's not a huge amount, but it's not bad to get that started. I would really like that. And of course, you could even make a rule. Anything we make above that $5,000 for commissions, we're going to take 50% of that and invest it. And you all can decide what you want to do with the rest. See what I'm saying? I like that. I'm going to leave this here, as is. I want to just summarize what we have done so far. I want to point out a few things that I'd notice. Okay? First of all, I want to just take a second and recognize both of you.

That was not easy. Took a lot, right? Think about where we first began with this. We probably spent five, ten minutes talking about a cell phone. And what do you realize now after all the changes we made? It's a drop in the bucket. There's a drop in the bucket. And we were stuck on this tiny expense just going da-da-da-da-da-da.

And actually, we were missing the entire situation. So I want to commend you for that because you picked up on that pretty quick. Second, there's actually a lot of stuff that changes that you could have made and you did. The first part was like really hard. I think you were stuck in the old mindset. And then we created a vision. Hey, we need stability. We need to light a fire, increase the energy here and make changes together.

And then you started doing it. What did we do? We reapportioned how the money is being spent. That means the two of you need to be. be talking about money a lot. Transparency is a default expectation. So in order for this to work, Calvin, you've got to have the books open, how much you're making. She needs to know everything. And you all need to have the money going back and forth. Since you are not married, I think it's okay for you to have separate accounts, but I do think you should probably have a joint account where you

each transfer money in every single month. Okay? We looked at your debt payments. You discovered how long it's going to take for you to actually pay it off. You were both unhappy with that. I like that. I love irritation with money. Because every day you wake up for the next 11 months, you're going to open the bathroom. You're going to look in the mirror and you're going to say,

good. After 11 months, you will be done and you will never go back. And finally, we made all these other changes. We cut down miscellaneous. We removed all these subscriptions, blah, blah, blah. Turns out you have a lot of it. of money every single month. So we reallocated some of it. Now, I don't love where your fixed costs are at. I'm going to tell you the truth. 73% makes me super uncomfortable. But I know that you are paying

off your debt aggressively. And I know that in 11 months, you're going to be debt free and have a lot more flexibility. You want to see what it's going to look like when you're debt free? Look at this. I'm going to take this debt and drop it to zero. Okay? Watch what happens to the fixed cost number. 65%. Huge. It went from 73 to 65%. That's massive. Y'all are in a pretty, pretty solid position at 65%. Keep in mind, your commissions can go up. And so if I'm you, I am like dialed in.

What do I need to do to hit these commissions? That's what I'm thinking about while I'm at work. Shelby, if I'm you, I'm thinking, can I get another job right now? Is that feasible? Because even an extra $1,000 a month would actually be huge. and also when I get my full-time role after graduating, that's going to change the game completely. Y'all could actually be in a very good financial position.

Like your number could be less than 60%. No doubt. And that means more money to invest, more money to save, even a little bit more money to spend. How does that strike you? It's good. I'm not really worried about spending. Yeah.

Good. That's a good answer. What's the thing that is important to make this work? that does not show up on the conscious spending plan. Accountability, communication. That's actually the most important thing is the togetherness. And I know that you have a lot of issues to work through. If you have a unified vision of where we want to go, we want to attack this debt with unrelenting force.

We want to make sure that we are saving $1,000 a month to our savings. and we want to make sure that we are like, I own the groceries, you own the lunchmaking, et cetera, et cetera. If you guys are unified on that, you're actually going to find that it's much easier to be a team. As for the rest of your relationship, that's for you to decide with the help of the therapist, I hope. But the money part, at least that can be one source of stability for you.

In November, when that 700 child support comes off, should that all be allocated towards the debt? Great question. What do you think? I think it would be good. Okay. I think getting it paid off sooner rather than later is better. Okay. What do you think, Shelby? I think it should be like a 500, 200, 200 split. Like 500 in debt, 200 to just boost the retirement. You want to talk about it, make a decision right now? I love a decisive couple. We can do it that way. That works. You're open to that. Yeah. You good? Yeah. That was easy.

I like that. I like the proposal. I like saying like, hey, here's what I think. No, here's what I think. And then you both agree. Speaking up, articulating your vision, that's really cool. That's going to make a big difference. That's going to help you pay that debt off faster. What are you going to do once that debt is paid off? And now you have more. Invest. Yeah. You can literally put hundreds, if not $1,000 a month towards investing. You have the money. It's the $700 in child support and the money you were paying towards debt, all of that's going to be done by the end of the year, roughly. Let's say 12 months from now. Yeah. And we would aggressively put it into his retirement. Correct. No, I don't think it should all go to his retirement because you're both making money and you both need retirement.

Like what if it all goes to his retirement and then you'll end up not being together? Yeah. Not to raise a morbid question, but we need to be practical here. So no, you need to each have your own investment accounts and, if you decide to get married, you know, that's up to you. I probably don't think you need a pre-nup or a post-nup or anything like that, but I would like for both of you to have your own investments. And this is where you have to be willing to say, Calvin, you're older than me. You need to prioritize your investments, which means that, look, we can say, like, of your salary, this percentage goes

towards retirement, your retirement. But you can't be saving him from himself. Part of what has been missing here is a bit of shielding him from the consequences of his own financial decisions. So Calvin might spend money and not really pay attention to this. And then you come along with a smile when it's like, there's nothing to smile about here. And you kind of say like, hey, let me like handle this. Let me try to handle it. Come on, please like share your finances so I can help. That's not the way it works. A better way is what? Being direct. And setting boundary.

Exactly. The same way you've done in other parts of life here. Calvin, how much are you going to need to be putting away every single month in order to have enough for retirement? If you ask Calvin that question today, I guarantee you would not know the answer. Okay. And that's okay. The vast majority of people do not know. But how would you find out?

Is there perhaps a book that was written about this exact topic called I Will Teach You to Be Rich? Exactly. And so the two of you could read it. You could have a little book club, one chapter this person, one chapter that person, and you could figure out what it looks like to unify. That's how you do it. There's also 211. Have you heard of this service? I want to make you aware of it because it may be something that you can avail yourselves of.

211, a free confidential service that connects people across the U.S. to local community resource specialists who find assistance for essential needs, including housing, food, utilities, health care, crisis support. I mentioned it because we talked for a second about what would happen if the two of you separate. Financially speaking, you would both be in a really difficult position. Here's my take. I would rather find out my options now before something bad happens. Because if something bad happens, I don't want to have to be like, oh, what do I do? I want to just like open up the playbook and be like, okay, this is what I'm going to do. With your income, it may turn out that you actually have opportunities for some help with food, stuff for the baby, et cetera.

Why not take advantage of it? That's what we all pay taxes for. So I'd like to encourage you to take a look at that and any other resources available. Okay. What surprised you most about our conversation today? The realization that it's a lot worse than a thought. It's kind of easy to go and ignore the reality of your financial situation. right? What the CSP does, especially with a bit of a trained eye, is like a crystal ball. It just lets you

see a few months into the future, a few years. You could quickly see that if one of you lost any source of income, the game is over. And I don't want you to get to that point. Thanks for acknowledging that. That's a big one. Shelby, what surprised you? I thought I was coming to you with, you know, wanting to talk. You know, wanting to talk. talk about finances all the time in a way that was benefiting us, but I don't think I've been doing it in a way where it actually has been doing anything positive for our situation. What do you think you've been doing? I think I tiptoe and instead of actually taking action, I allow it to just kind of, you know, whittle away at whatever, but it doesn't get us anywhere.

Nice. That's a powerful realization too. You know, my wish for you is for you to begin seeing yourselves as a power couple. I don't say that to every couple. I don't know. There's some clue that I can sense from the two of you where, you know, there were times where you said, like, we talk about stuff. And I was like, oh, God. But there were also times where I saw that you could become decisive. And when I see that little hint, I go, oh, there's something there. A power couple can be a couple that is. united, that understands each other, that makes it a point to communicate regularly, that disagrees sometimes, I don't mind that, fine. They talk about it over and over, they don't give up. They try one way, it doesn't work, they try another way. That's a power couple.

And also, they have their money dialed in. They are not sloppy. Power couples know exactly. You ask them, what's your savings rate? They know. Who's the one who empties the dishwasher? They know. So that's my wish for you. Got some work to do. Yeah. The one other thing that I see for you is I see lots of positive things happening over the next one, two, and three years. Do you know what they are? Once we get out of debt, we can create savings. We can create stability, security and retirement. So extra security.

Yeah. What else? We can do more things with our son and family and create, you know, memories. Yeah. Calvin, what do you see coming up? One, two, three years when it comes to your finances? Not having to worry about debt. Because it will be paid off. Yeah. And knowing that my family's good. specifically here's what I see

the debt's going to be paid off in 11 months maybe sooner child support payments end in about a year maybe sooner we have a potential $5,000 or more bonus at the end of the year

then we have Shelby your potential income increasing that'll be a couple of years from now we have savings of $1,000 starting this month, that means a year from now you're going to have $12,000 in savings plus what you already have. There's a lot of really positive steps. I think maybe you haven't internalized it yet because it's just like, we're living like, oh, we're paying these random bills and da-da-da-da-da.

That's because you have so much chaos around when it comes to the money. But when I look at just a simple numbers, I'm like $700 a month about to open up soon. The credit card debt and the other debt's about to be paid off. Then the income increase. Then the bonus. Then the this, end of that. It all really starts to change your financial trajectory. I think you're in a potentially better spot than you think. If what? What's the most important thing? Follow through. Yeah. And is it just one of you doing it? No. No. This fails if you don't both do it. That's the most important. Is a healthy relationship. You have that and follow through. Y'all are good.

What do I think will happen with Shelby and Calvin? I think that, financially speaking, if they were to execute the plan, as we outlined, they can actually be in very good shape in a few years. They're going to have more income, their expenses are going to go down, they can allocate that money accordingly. They actually have a bit of time. Realistically, I think it will be very hard for them to execute. at a flawless level. I think that there's instability in their relationship. And when you grow up

without healthy role models, it's almost like you're operating with one arm tied behind your back. So could they do it? Yeah. I believe in them. Will it be harder for them than other couples? Yes. There is no magic wand when you are operating starting late in life and without a very high income. We ran some simple calculations. If they contribute about $785 a month until Calvin turned 65, the amount they will have for retirement is just over half a million dollars. That's not enough. That is definitely not enough. And at that stage, they would be living in poverty. Could they make changes? Of course. Her earnings are going to go up. I hope his earnings go up. They could get aggressive about how much they are investing and saving.

There are things they could do. They have cards to play, and they do have time. But they would need to be on it. And they can't be talking about things. They need to be taking decisive action right now. My wish for Shelby and Calvin is that they create a bold, powerful vision of who they want to be as partners, as parents, as individuals. Something that is special, something that is aspirational, something that is not

them worrying about bills for the rest of their lives. And then when they do that, and they have that identity they want to get the help that's going to allow them to live it. And now, let's check out their follow-ups. Hi, everyone. It's our first follow-up since our conversation was from me, and we were just talking about our biggest surprise from the conversation, and that was just the manageability of getting our dead down and what it takes. He laid it out really simply for us. Yeah, with putting it in perspective of 11 months, that is something that is very obtainable and it is not as bad as, you know, we initially thought it would have been. Yeah, we're hoping we can crush it in less than 11 months if we really get on our game. One of our biggest takeaways was just, well, for me, it was that I'm not trustworthy with finances that really made me look at it in a different way and kind of see it from her perspective and understand that things need to change in order to, yeah, have that trust gain back.

I think a big takeaway for me was the fact that I was partially communicating, but just stopping the sentence a lot of the times to kind of appease, you know, you. And I think, you know, as Remyt pointed out, I should just be confident in what I'm saying. And I think if we plan to have more money meetings on a regular basis and continue like an open line of communication about what we're spending. So focusing on transparency, I think will meet our goals a lot quicker. Yeah, absolutely. And since then, we've been really focusing on making sure that we are tight to the budget, groceries, and, you know, fund money and any extra spending.

We're really tracking and making sure that we're accounting for what's going out. Yeah, we've definitely been crushing groceries. We do weekly trips now together and we stick to our $600 a month. Yeah. Trying to get it a little bit lower than that. Yeah, we would love to get like $500 if we could. Yeah. But we don't want to push it.

And then, oh, our fun money, we write it down and we subtract every creature come for every day from it. And, you know, once it's out, that's it for the months. So that's been helping a lot. And really keep into the script. And, yeah, just trying to plug away at it and make things happen. Yeah, we want to thank you so much for taking the time to help us. We really appreciate it.

Yeah, it was an awesome opportunity. And, yeah, like you said, we really appreciate it. And, you know, look forward to our growth. Definitely. I'm excited to see where it takes us. If you want to know the exact month and year that you will have $100,000 in your investment portfolio, sign up for my new program, Road to 100K. I'll help you hit that number fast.

Go to IWT.com slash 100K to sign up.