Money For Couples with Ramit Sethi - 275. "We escaped debt so why are we still spending like this?"

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

Ramit unpacks how to stop overspending, stay out of debt, and start building wealth as this couple confronts the spending habits they thought they had already fixed. Three years ago, Mason and Becca finally confronted a financial reality they had been avoiding. Despite good careers and the appearance of success, they had accumulated nearly $50,000 in credit card debt. They cut back hard, aggressively paid it down, sold their house, and moved to Florida. Now they have around $100,000 from the home sale sitting in savings, but they’re worried the same habits that got them into debt are starting to creep back in. They still don’t properly track their spending. Shopping, expensive date nights and a large “miscellaneous” category make it difficult to see where their money is actually going, while Mason experiments with day trading and considers ideas for generating passive income. On paper, they’re doing far better than they realize: they have around $204,000 invested, $124,000 in savings, and a net worth of roughly $326,000. But without changing how they spend and manage their money, Ramit sees a real risk of them falling back into debt. Ramit helps them figure out what comes after getting out of debt: how to stop mindless spending without giving up the things they love, save and invest intentionally, and start building real wealth. They rethink their plans for an $800,000 dream home, confront the scarcity they both grew up with, and discover how increasing their income and investing more could completely transform their financial future. In this episode, we uncover: How Mason and Becca built nearly $50,000 in credit card debt The conversation that finally forced them to change their spending Why they used a 401(k) loan to aggressively pay down debt How selling their house left them with around $100,000 in cash Why having that much money makes Becca anxious Why they’re scared of slipping back into their old spending habits How shopping, expensive date nights, and impulse purchases added up Why they still don’t properly track where their money goes How their $3,000 Disney annual passes fit into their Rich Life Why Ramit sees a real risk of them falling back into debt What Ramit sees in Mason’s day trading and passive income ideas Why their $326,000 net worth surprises them How Becca’s childhood shaped her belief that she would never be rich How Mason grew up seeing money as stress and struggle What they want their son to learn about money Why buying an $800,000 house would require major trade-offs How Ramit helps them rebuild their Conscious Spending Plan Why increasing their income becomes the biggest lever for their future How their retirement projection jumps from around $3.1M to $4.7M How they finally become completely debt-free Chapters: (00:00:00) Introduction (00:02:45) How they built nearly $50K in debt (00:06:39) Using a 401(k) loan to escape debt (00:08:53) Selling their house leaves them with $100,000 (00:11:15) “We just swiped the card” (00:14:37) Their old spending habits start creeping back (00:16:31) They disagree about buying another house (00:24:05) Ramit reviews their financial numbers (00:31:13) Ramit digs into their 71% fixed costs (00:37:30) Day trading and the dream of passive income (00:38:46) How Becca grew up around money (00:47:50) How Mason grew up around money (00:52:43) What they want to teach their son (00:56:41) Ramit starts rebuilding their financial plan (01:07:26) Redirecting their money toward investing (01:11:59) The reality of an $800,000 dream home (01:19:18) Why earning more becomes the priority (01:24:01) Their retirement could reach $4.7 million (01:32:15) Their house timeline changes completely (01:33:25) Mason and Becca become debt-free This episode is brought to you by: Facet | As of the date of this recording, Facet is waiving the enrollment fee for new annual members, and for my audience, Facet is offering $300 into your brokerage account if you invest and maintain $5,000 within your first 90 days. Head to https://facet.com/ramit to learn more about which membership option is best for you. Offer has been extended to 12/31/2026. #FacetAd Shopify | Start your free trial at https://shopify.com/ramit Wispr Flow | Try Wispr Flow for free at https://wisprflow.ai/ramit MasterClass | For unlimited access to every class and at least 15% off any annual membership, go to https://masterclass.com/ramit If you’re ready to stop putting off your money goals, Road to $100K gives you a step-by-step plan to reach your first $100,000, focus on what matters, and accelerate your timeline while building your Rich Life. Join Road to $100K at https://iwt.com/100K 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

Vacation, debt. Little purchases, odds and ends things, debt. We've made debt normal. We should not be living this way. How do you decide what you spend money on? Just buying things that we see that we want. Go into Target, coming out, spending $300, extravagant dinners. When we're done with that, let's go bar hopping and just running up bills. You ended up with $100K in your bank account? Is that just sitting there right now? Yes. What does that feel like? Very intimidating. I don't want to be tempted.

to spend it. You're creating these behaviors to shield yourself from yourself. Yes. From the start, we had really bad money habits. We came from very similar upbringings. Mom or dad ever tell you to save? Wasn't a lot of open discussion about finance? No advice at all.

We don't know the right steps to not get back into that creep of just swiping the card. To change your entire relationship with money you would need to trust yourselves. Right now, you're a little... of yourselves. Imagine you woke up tomorrow morning and you had $100,000 extra in your bank account. How would you feel? Would you be happy? Or might you feel scared, even anxious because you don't know what to do with the money? Mason and Becca, 34 and 32 years old, used to be in debt. They have diligently paid it off. They even sold their house. And now they have $100,000.

But what are they supposed to do with it? Mason applied to be here on the podcast, and he said, we've spent the last three years buckling up and fixing past mistakes. Now that we've relocated to Florida and have $100,000 from our home sale, the challenge has shifted from paying off the past to protecting the future. Let me take a look at their numbers. I'm going to pull up their conscious spending plan. Assets, $11,000. Investments, $204,000. Savings, $124,000. Devings, $124,000. Debt, 13,600. Total net worth, $326,567. Fixed cost 71%. That's too high. Investments 2%, savings 13% and guilt-free spending 14%. I have questions. This is actually quite interesting because you can tell that the day-to-day spending, the fixed cost, the savings, the investment is out of alignment with their net worth.

And so we need to fix this so that they don't simply depend on a windfall, but they fundamentally change the way they treat money. That's what I'm going to try to do, speaking with Mason and Becca. Let's take a look at the application. So you wrote, for a long time, we lacked a unified plan, which led to significant debt. Tell me more about that. So we've had a few years of debt,

that we've been working hard to pay off, and we're now toward the end of that. So it's not something that we ever want to go back to, since we're so close to the end of it, being completely green, and we don't know the other side of that. Did you feel the same, Becca? Yes, I think we've been together for a very long time since 20 years old. And we've, from the start, we had really, really bad money habits.

We came from very similar upbringings of not having a surplus of money growing up. So I think when we started working and getting our career started, that money in our head was a reward for us to spend and to get into really unreasonable expectations of what we should be having, which is what led to a lot of debt that we got into. It wasn't until about three years ago that we, I guess, got a little bit more critical thinking on, you know what? We should not be living this way. And we need to get a handle on how we're spending our money. Take me back to that decision three years ago. Sure. Where were you?

What happened at that very moment? The conversation really came up because we wanted to move out of state. And we didn't think it was possible because we're like, we don't have enough money in the bank to be able to move. But then we started a question, why don't we have enough money? You know, our salaries look comfortable enough to be able to do something like that. Why are we not feeling that way? And that's when I think we really uncovered. I had credit card debt.

He had credit card debt. And so when we looked at it together, we're like, we have to do something about this. If we don't want to be the same place that we are now in five years, we have to make a change. So it was really starting to go, we need to hold ourselves more accountable and find a better discipline for ourselves than just spending a ton of money and not having any plan, any budget for it. Wow. How did that conversation and series of conversations feel?

It was honest. It was very brutal. Yeah, very revealing. You took the lead, and it was a brutal conversation. It was a good conversation. It was no, like, arguments. It was just very factual. Like, in hindsight, it was very much of a sit-down that you recommend.

It was just our first one, so we didn't know the guidance. but it was very eye-opening with what we had, you know, what we both owed. We put that together. We sat down, hash out of plan, and it came up. It came through. I think I felt a little bit of disappointment in ourselves because we have worked really hard and we grew a lot in our careers over time and then realizing that we did not set ourselves up for success.

So it was a, and I think that was part of our avoidance for a long time is go, like, pretending like we are doing okay. We are setting ourselves up for success. Because I think on the outside, looking in, we did look successful. We owned a home. We had, you know, our cars. You know, we were living the lifestyle that we wanted. But in our bank accounts, it wasn't reflecting that way. Wow. I wish more people talk like this. It's quite amazing. We've become very self-aware within the past few years about this. I like what you said about the fact that you had progressed in your careers. And you had the nice accoutrements of things. You had the cars and the house. But when you look in the bank, when you literally say, what do we have? What do we have? It wasn't matching up to

what your expectations were. Right. I think that's really powerful. Okay. So you had this conversation. What did you do next? We took out a 401k loan. Huh? I know. Okay. I didn't. I didn't find my book by then. Okay, fine. We did. Just to be honest, we took out a 401k loan. We basically put our credit cards away. We're like we're not using them at all. And we very aggressively decided to pay it off. Now we have probably close to $50,000 in credit card debt.

We are down to $5,000 now. Whoa. Amazing. How's that feel? Great. Feels good. That's what I'm saying. It feels really good to be so close to green and nervous at the same time.

Nervous because what? We have never had the education or the tools to know how to not put ourselves there. I think both of our family is very much normalized, not having money. Being in debt is very normal and everybody is. So we don't know the right steps to not get back into that creep of just swiping the card and moving on with our day. Okay. This is very helpful to know. Now, you took the hard look in the mirror and you said, like, we got to change the way that we do.

So you took the 401k loan. You started paying off the debt. Yes. Did you know when the debt was going to be paid off? Did you calculate that? Yes. Yes. We had a plan.

I think initially the 401K loan was for 18 months. We paid it off in 12. You paid off the loan. Yes. The loan is gone. That is gone. This is quite rare, by the way. So one of the reasons that nobody in the financial industry recommends people take a 401k loan.

loan is that people who take 401K loans often, sometimes usually have bad financial habits. So they take the loan, they don't change their habits, and then they never pay the loan back. So they basically screwed themselves today and tomorrow. So the fact that you paid it off is rare, very impressive. Don't do it again. We don't want to. We did not want to. I completely agree.

It was a good option at the time. I'm glad we got a chance to pay it off early. If that is one of the top five financial mistakes you make, okay. Like you fixed it. It's behind us. It's behind you. Yes. Are you married?

Yes. Any kids? One kid. How old? Six years old. Six years old. Okay, got it. So you also sold your house, I understand.

Yes. Okay. How much did you buy it for? How much did you sell it for? We initially bought it for 169. We sold it for 289. 289. 289.

Yeah, 289. And then did you subtract out all the fees and transaction costs and stuff like that? Yes. So we ended up making about $133. $13,000 off of the house. Got it. Okay. All right.

So you ended up with $100K in your bank account? Yes. Is that just sitting there right now? Yes. In a H-Y-S-A. Whoa. What does that feel like? Very intimidating.

Uh-huh. I made sure, you know, I don't even, I never even activated the card for that account because I don't want to be tempted to spend it. So you're kind of creating these behaviors to shield yourself from yourself. Correct. Both of you? Yes. Yes.

We both have access to that SoFi account. I'm not touching it. But, yep, we're just not touching it. Okay. Okay, I don't mind that. I don't mind it. I would like you to get to the point where you trust yourselves. Sure. But I understand that right now, you're a little wary of yourselves. Yes. Look, if you're sitting here saying, boo-hoo, what am I going to do with an extra $100,000?

I get that. But consider this. They make $150,000 or $60,000 a year. It is very reasonable. for a couple making that much to eventually have $100,000 liquid. Just as it is going to be for you to have more money in a savings account and an investment account than you ever thought possible when you're following my system. So I want you to pay attention to this and not dismiss it because whether it's today,

tomorrow, next year, or 10 years from now, you are going to have more money than you ever thought possible. And you may not realize it, but you are probably going to feel. the same way about money then that you do now. So pay attention because this is your future and you can apply what you learn today. I want to understand a little bit more about how money works in your relationship. Take me through how the money flows. Do you both work? Where does the money go? What happens? Sure. So we do both work. We've always just put our money together in one account historically and all of our money just goes to all of our bills.

And how do you decide on what you spend money on? And I'm talking about for the entirety of your relationship, not just the last three years. We just swipe the card. Okay. So groceries, eating out, trips, kids. Yep. We don't talk about it. We just swipe. It's in there. We get it. And then what happens once the bills come? Well, I think, luckily, we've never been in a position where we don't have the money to pay our bills. Well, you were in credit card day. But it was never for bills. Oh, what was it for? Very mindless spending.

Yeah. What? That's bills. We made it bills. We made debt normal. So vacation, debt. Little purchases, odds and ends things, debt. Okay.

And it added up. And I guess that our habit was just paying the minimum payment. So in our head, we are paying it off. Got it. And just so I understand, because do you see trips or groceries or whatever not as bills? I guess I don't. Yeah, it's interesting. In my head, I think it's more, you know, mortgage, car payment, utilities.

Okay, interesting. I would say I see all of it as bills. Okay. Mortgage, Fritos, any of it, right? Disneyland, it's all bills. Some of them are static. They're automatic. Some of them are variable because we're charging different amounts.

But at the end of the month, they all transform like a fairy tale. they all end up being bills. Sure. And then I got to find a way to pay them off. Okay. So you essentially didn't track most of your spending except for the big ones. And was there ever disagreements about spending? I would say on a very minor level, you know, for me, like when we go grocery shopping,

I'm a huge, let's find the best deals. I'm going to coupon cut everything where he will just go without any thought to it and just buy whatever it is. So in general, when we look at your entire relationship with money, would you say you are frugal, extravagant? Like, what do you focus on? What's your thing? Like, for example, I tend to spend money on convenience. That's like my thing. What is it for you? For me, it would be like clothing and beauty products and jewelry. Got it. Self care. Yes. Okay. Cool. That's your money dial. Okay. Mason, what about for you? I do like to get out of the house. We work from home, so getting out and being able to go eat somewhere at some of the restaurants we have in our area.

I like to do that. It's something that we can do all together. It's something specifically for my son. It's something specifically for her. What will be an example? Because it's like going to the park or like going to Disney World for seven days? Definitely go to, I mean, definitely do Disney World. So I'm definitely a big fan of that.

How many times a year? We have annual passes. We go all the time. How much is that these days? About $3,000 for all three months. us to go all the time. Total. Okay, $3,000. That is just the park passes? Correct. Okay. Do you do the thing where because you have annual passes, you go for like two hours and you're just like, correct. Absolutely. I'm going to work, do a ride. We get to fully enjoy it and not have to be

exhausted at the end of the day. Wow. Okay. You mentioned that you are afraid of going back to mindless spending. Tell me a little bit more about that. We have really bad habits. Just going to the wall, many shopping sprees, just buying things that we see that we want, just going to Target, going in there for no reason and coming out, spending two, three hundred dollars, extravagant dinners for a date night. And then, well, when we're done with that, let's go bar hopping and just running up bills, you know. What, like, what's an example of something you buy that's, like, kind of expensive and kind of mindless? Botox.

Okay. How much does that cost anyway? I don't get a ton, so maybe like $200. $200 per what? Three months. For three months. Okay, all right. Oh, I mean, look, I never saw a line for Botox in a CSP, but I love it. Why not?

All right. You spend on the mall, spend on eating out, and just to give me a sense of like a date night, walk me through that. Sure. So have to hire babysitter. So that's the first. You know, usually it's going to be for a good five, six hours. We'll make a dinner reservation. Dinner is going to cost $250.

You know, we're not ready to go home yet. So let's go somewhere else. Let's go try out this bar that we've been looking into. So we'll go there, get a few drinks. You know, maybe we'll go to another one. Or we'll go out with friends and meet up with them. And then that just gets way more expensive because we stay out later with them. And then in your own relationship, the two of you, is one of you like, hey, we maybe shouldn't

do that? Or are you the opposite where you're both like, yeah, get it? Let's get that. You should get that. Are you hyping each other up? We get each other on a lot when it comes to purchases. Like, just get it. Like, you like it. You should get it. I would agree with that. You look, you look good at it. Both of us. Got it. Can you think of a time where you were not on the same page about money? I think our timelines of maybe buying a house are different. We have sold a house. Now we have money from that. Do we want to buy a house immediately? Do we want to continue to rent to explore the area? We don't know. I'm on the latter side of that. I want to kind of wait and explore. You also want a house because that's part of your rich life. And that's fine. Okay. I like that. Have you had a discussion about

exact timelines? Initially, we were thinking when we moved to Florida. I was going to to be within a year. I think now that we're almost close to the year, we've set that expectation that it's not the right idea. I personally would like to do it within the next five years. He's more open-minded to it. It's kind of based off of how our finances look. Oh, good. Yeah, biggest purchase of your life. Finances should be probably the number one, maybe the number two decision. Okay, good to know. What's the plan for the 100K? Initially, it was to buy a house. And then I think we realized that if we just put that down as down payment, we'd be back to not having any savings.

What? I thought that you're always supposed to buy a house immediately. Well, you know, that's what our realtor was trying to get us to them. Oh, the realtor. I know. They're not our friends. They're not your friend. Your realtor is like, they might be nice.

They might buy you a nice lunch, but they are there to make a commission. I take a real job. That's how far I trust him. They're there to do a job. You work for me. I'm going to be polite to you, but that's about it. We're not going to, you know,

go watch a play together. All right, so you realize that. So now it's just sitting there and we really want to find out what we should do with it. Okay. Did you ever think you'd have $100,000 just sitting in your account?

No. Never. Not until way later after the house was paid off and way down the road. That's going to be much further down. Like 20, 30 years from that. for sure. Now that we're out, we just don't know what the next step is for that. Because I agree. I think I want you to, I'd like to get you another house into a backyard by the pool and all the things. But also it could be like a good starting point for different financial aspects, different brokerage accounts or different avenues. You mentioned something in the application about a business. Can you tell me about that?

Yeah, I had an idea about starting an arcade. There was a small, 800, 900 square foot underutilized building at the complex that we're actually staying in. And so I pitched them and sent them a letter of intent to rent the space and introduce arcade. Is it an arcade with video games? Yeah, just video games with the tap pass. Got it. What do you think of this? I think it was a good idea to help make some passive income because it could, the way that the idea was set up was to make it staffless in a very high volume.

vacation area. So I was on board for the idea. But I think it's just throwing out the idea, man, I would love to get some passive income. So no plan. Got it. I'm picking up a lot of clues that their relationship with money is not really that healthy. I'm hearing phrases like passive income, which can be a big sign of a dreamer. I don't like to phrase passive income because I know the truth about what it takes. This idea that's peddled online, of you can just plop a quarter into some machine and it will just print out money passively for the rest of your life.

Guys, it's bullshit. That's not how it works. In order to generate passive income, it takes a lot of work and a lot of time. And much of the time, it doesn't even work. If your goal is passive income, to me, it's an immediate red flag because it means you're trying to effectively get rich quick.

So as I'm getting these clues, I'm starting to wonder, are they actually in a healthy position or not? I'm actually really glad that we get a chance to talk because if you remember, they were worried they were going to slip back into debt. And based on what I'm hearing, I think that might actually be a realistic possibility unless they make a change. We're going to look at the numbers right after this. Two misconceptions about Ramit Sati. Number one, he doesn't like Italian food. That's not true. I like pizza. Number two, that I'm categorically against all financial advisors, also untrue. I'm

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the enrollment fee for new annual members, and for my audience, FACETT is offering $300 into your brokerage account if you invest and maintain $5,000 within your first 90 days. Head to Fassett. com slash Ramith to learn more about which membership option is best for you. Facet is an SEC registered investment advisor. I'm not a member of Facet and have an incentive to endorse Facet as I have an ongoing fee-based contract for cash compensation based on this endorsement. All opinions are my own and not a guarantee of a similar outcome. When I was thinking about quitting my last job to do, I will teach you to be rich full-time.

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With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business, so go make it one. Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash remit. Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash remit. I want to take a look at your numbers. Sure. What was it like to do the conscious spending plan together? It was eye-opening.

You know, I don't think we ever really sat down and looked at our numbers like that before. Did you have any disagreements with each other? When we were talking about it, I did see him going, oh, well, that doesn't matter. And I had to remind him that, no, that is a monthly cost. Oh, really? What's an example? Some of the subscriptions. So, for example, the annual pass we have to Disney, he's like, I mean, that doesn't have to go on there and had to remind him that that is a monthly cost that we pay on every month.

That's right. It makes sense now that you mentioned it. I was overlooking it and it's a 12-month-o-interest purchase, and that makes it a cost. Your instinctive reaction was that doesn't matter. Why was that your first reaction? Why wouldn't it matter? Because maybe I knew that it was going to be paid off. The money is there in the account.

So in my mind, it's paid. And that's probably not the healthy way of looking at that. I like... Yeah, that's not the right way to look at it. But I like how honest you're both being because you have these very interesting mental contortions that you use. And I'm not coming down on you at all.

I think it's interesting to learn more about ourselves. So for example, Becca, you go... Originally, you go, like, eating out is not a bill. Right. It's a bill. And our $3,000 a year Disney payment doesn't count because we have the money. It counts. So I want you to kind of start to shine a light, almost like you're putting on one of those

headlamps. Right. And you're just looking at our own beliefs. And sometimes you might interrogate your own beliefs. Often you interrogate your partner's beliefs because it's easier to see someone else's. but what I want to model for you is that it doesn't have to be like you're stupid or you're a bad person. It's just like, whoa, isn't that interesting? What do you mean by that?

Oh, how come you think about it like that? You're going to discover hundreds of these little contortions that you do as you start to embrace a new chapter of your money. Sure. Okay? Let's take a look at the numbers. Mason, can you read off the word in bold and then the number next to it? assets at 11,000. We have investments of $204,867,000. We have savings at $124,300, debt $13,600 for a total net worth of $326,567. Okay. What do you think about those numbers? I know we've had debt kind of holding or kind of kind of staying, but it's now such a low number.

I want to make it zero. Okay. And keep it zero. We could definitely make it zero. I mean, if you just look at the savings versus the debt, you could do that while we're sitting here. That's what we were discussing. If we should just wipe it out at this point. We can talk about that for sure.

You will walk out of here having a clear decision on that. I promise you right. Okay. Okay. And Becca, what do you think about these numbers? I feel a lot better about it than what I did this time last year. Oh, why is that? Because we actually have a real savings at this point. Seeing our investments, so the actual 401k and the pension, the rot that we have, makes me feel a lot more comfortable

than where I thought we were because I wasn't looking at it. I didn't know how much we had in those accounts. What did you think was in there? Probably about 60,000 is what I thought. And it's 204,000. Yes. It's a, we are so. funny when it comes to money. We go most of our lives agonizing. You mentioned that you cut coupons at the grocery store. And I'm just imagining like sitting there, like looking on your app, going to the grocery store. Like, oh, I saved 129 on green beans. And meanwhile, you have more than triple the amount you thought of investments. Right. So this is good to know. It's good for you to see

almost the hilarity of how we behave because that will help you change the way you behave. your savings at $124,000, is that $100K from the house? The $100K is from the house, and then we've been consistently saving each month as well. How long have you been doing that? I started actually putting away savings into an HYSA two years ago. Wow. And I'll do $1,000 a month. How did you decide on that amount?

When we started paying off our debt and getting really into making sure we're not just overspending on mindless stuff, I kind of looked at how much I was making compared to the bills we had at the time and went, okay, I can take $500 from each paycheck. And if it's just going out and not in my spending account, I know I can live without that money. So I've continued that. I would like to eventually do more than that. Good. That's a very healthy way to do it.

It's like I'm putting the money away. Yes. I'm not even going to see it. And then believe it or not, you live. I don't need it. You don't need it. It is crazy. Very common when people are really tight. Maybe they have a lower income or their bills are high. They go, Rameet, this stuff is impractical. I can't even save $50 a month. I go try it. Try it with 20.

Just have it automatically set aside. You will not miss it. Right. Great work. After two years, you have $24,000 save. That's great. All right. Let's keep going. Becca, can you read off your gross combined monthly income, please? Sure. 13,256. Okay, for a household annual income of $159,000. Let's look at the rest of the numbers here. Fixed costs, what's that percentage? 71%. What do you think about that?

It needs to go lower. Agreed. It's high. We'll go down to investments. What's the number? $200. $200 or 2%. Two percent. Savings? What number? 13%.

That's pretty good. That's that $1,000. Yes. And then you have an HSA. Yes. Good. And you're putting $3.80. away. Out of curiosity, are you investing that money? I wanted to wait to come on the show and ask you what to do because they have to have anything over a thousand dollars can be invested. I'm there now.

Okay. We'll talk about that. Good, good. Health savings accounts are awesome accounts. I'm glad you have one. And then finally, guilt-free spending at 14% or 1,442. Is this accurate? Yes. I think it's just about there's also a miscellaneous line that I think we'll take a lot of things out to haircuts and appointments. I think combined between the. those too. I think that is very high. And your Disney stuff, where did you count that? In the subscriptions is where I put it. That looks really high, but that's part of where I put that. Good. Good, good, good. I'm glad you, that's exactly where it should go. Okay. Totally. It must be important because you made it a fixed cost.

So I'm assuming you're going to do Disney every year. Ideally. Okay. Cool. Shall we dive into the fixed cost for a second? So we're at 71%. We like to see this number between 50 to 60%. Let's look at your rent. which is $2,550. Yes. That's pretty good. That's good. We found a good spot when we moved. It was also fully furnished.

So we got to just move right in. It was a really good deal. It was. Listen up, America. We need more furnished apartments. People don't want to have to buy a bunch of furniture now. I love a furnished department. All right.

Car payment, one car payment? That's one car payment. What's the car? It's a Honda pilot. Good car. Good. 765 includes gas? Um, no. I would say it doesn't include gas. We also work from home, so traveling. Our gas costs are very low.

Pretty low. I would say maybe $100 a month. All right. I'm going to add it here. Okay. Okay. Wait, so what else are you missing if you didn't include gas here? Because this is a big tip off. If you didn't include gas, what else did you not include? Maintenance on it. Okay. I'll make a $125. Besides the car, what else are you not including in this conscious spending plan? Honestly, I think I was thinking gas was under miscellaneous in my head. See, this is what people do. They see the miscellaneous and they treat it like a junk drawer. Ah, it's covered in there. No. Miscellaneous is for this stuff you did not count even though you tried to count everything else. Another mindset shift I want you to have. Yes.

Right. So let's just quickly run through this here. Groceries at 800. Is that accurate? It is. Okay. Clothes at 250. Y'all got some nice clothes on.

You're telling me $200, $250 a month, get set? I don't know if I believe that. I don't buy often. I sell my clothes and you sell this stuff too. You buy more clothes. Come on. I know how much you get when you sell your clothes. It's like pennies on the dollar.

It's not a ton. All right. But I kind of help myself with that. Yeah, all right. Let me ask a question. When you had that conversation three years ago and you took a hard look in the mirror, what spending changes did you make? During that time where we were aggressively paying off the debt, we were not buying clothes.

We were not going out on date nights. When we paid that off and we moved, we started creeping back up on some spending there because we felt a little bit more comfortable in doing that. Okay. I don't mind a little bit of increased spending. I do mind it if it is mindless. Sure. Where is it today?

Better than it was, but they're still mindless spending. Okay. 100%. Cool. Subscriptions are at 605. So we have the Disneyland. What else do we have? I also put in my son's extracurricular activities there.

And then there's a meal service. Amazon. Prime, Audible. Spotify, some little odds and ins. How much is the meal delivery? $100 a month. Okay. And then Miscellaneous, which is $1,05.

So that's your catch-all. Yes. What do you think falls under that? The haircuts. Right. I agree. I think any self-care is probably in here. And I think that would be hair, massage,

nails, trainer, whatever it may be. There's a lot of stuff that I think falls in here. I suspect it's probably higher than $1,000. What do you think? Depends on the month. I think it can be. I don't know. We were trying really hard to pick out what else that could include.

Do you track your spending? No. Okay. Did you track it when you were paying the debt down? We still weren't tracking it very well. Wow. We were just not doing stuff. I think I understand your numbers now. I have some other questions I want to ask you.

There was a note in your conscious spending plan next to the investments that said day trading pre-market. What does that mean? So that is me. I do have a brokerage account. I do trade out of it. I do trade small account. It's under $1,000. While I don't want to lose it or day trade it away,

it's all I will have to use for this account. $1,000. I started with $1,000, yeah. What is it now? 600. So not doing hot. Okay. But it's also a lot of it.

This is all the year into the plan or the strategy. Got it. Did two of you talk about this? Yes. What did you say? I was open to him trying it out. Okay. You know, I think in my head was, you know,

if it's something he could learn and be able to be successful at it. I don't see the issue in it. Got it. And what if it went to zero? What would you do? If it went to zero, I would no longer be able to trade for that time frame. I try to keep it from January to December. And after that, what would you do? I guess reassess, how was my skill? If I took it to zero, not great. Perhaps. So maybe I should stop. It's pretty honest. Okay, got it. You have to pay attention to what people say and how they say it. Because when I'm looking at the numbers, they look okay. A couple, I'm talking to them, they seem great. But then I start hearing little phrases that are making my antenna go up. Like Mason goes, yeah, I don't buy much, but when I do, it's on sale.

Like, hmm, filing that away. Becca goes, I like to go shopping. I sort of swipe. We don't really think about it at all. Hmm, filing that away. My question is, where did this money behavior come from? right after this we're going to find out my team at iwt is fully remote and i love that because of that we're constantly sending messages through slack through google drive through all kinds of different technologies and that's why my team is such a big fan of whisperflow whisper flow whisper flow turns the way you naturally talk into clean ready to send text in any app on any device i'm talking about slack gmail notion i message even chat gpt and claude on Mac, Windows, and Android.

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slash remit. Head to masterclass.com slash remit to see the latest offer. Let me understand how you both built your relationship with money. Becca, what do you remember your family saying about money when you were young? I had separated parents and they didn't talk a lot about money, but I could tell. Even as a kid, we didn't have a ton of money. We got our necessities, not a lot of our wants. And I remember, you know, my dad, we'll go to our dad to say, hey, I want this. He goes, I give your mom enough money each month. She can get that.

So we asked my mom. She goes, that money went to bills. I don't have money for that. So I knew we didn't have money. But there was really no discussion outside of that about money. What do you take away from dad tossing the ball to mom, mom, telling you that the bill, what do you make of that? That neither one of them wanted to take responsibility for it.

And you mentioned that everybody in your life has normalized having debt. Yes. Tell me about that. Yeah. I did not grow up in an environment that was wealthy by any means. I think everyone normalized debt because that's how they got by. What did they say? You know, that we work hard, but sometimes we don't have enough.

money to make ends meet. So we put it on a credit card. So it just, it was very normalized in my environment to not have a lot of money. Got it, got it. Okay. So let's fast forward to you getting a little bit older. You're a teenager. Did your relationship with money change at all? When I was 16, I got a job. And I think that was the first time in my life I was ever actually able to get things that I wanted because I was able to start buying them. But I, I, I, I was fairly responsible with it back then. I saved half of my paycheck up until I was 18. So I bought my own car.

I was able to pay for two years of my college with it. Wow. I think the issue was I turned 18 and went wild and didn't try to uphold what I was doing with saving money. So you were saving from 16 to 18. Where'd you learn that? I don't know, actually. You know, I went and opened up.

a bank account and maybe the lady there told me that was a good idea. I have no idea. That's interesting. Yeah. Mom or dad ever tell you to save? No. Do you ever talk about investing, debt, any of that? No. No advice at all. You said at 18 you started spending your money. You called it going wild. Yeah. What'd you spend it on? Parties. Um, trying not to live at home. So apartments, um, just utilized everything I could just to not go back. call them. Got it. Credit cards? I did start those when I was probably about 21. Okay. Did you finish college? I did not. Okay. So what happened after you left college? I started working full time. And I got an apartment and just started paying my bills. Did you save anything? No.

How'd you go from 16 saving to not saving? I think in my head, I had time. I was, you know, I can spend this money now because I have so much time. So I'm young, I'm going out. I'll deal with the saving stuff later. Right. Okay. Did you have anybody in your group of friends that was financially savvy? I don't think we did until our late 20s. And I think that actually was what got my mind started going, oh, these people are my age. They're doing well with money. They know what they're doing. Why am I not doing that? How did you know that they were doing well? We would talk about it. Really?

Yeah. This is both of you? Mm-hmm. Okay, so these are friends. What did you say to them? Well, I would ask them advice. You know, we would get into conversations and ask what they were doing or how they did it. And they'd talk about saving money.

They'd talk about how they would split up their bills with their spouse and talk about, you know, not doing the mindless spending that we do. So. It's quite interesting. Hearing your journey. Did you grow up religious? I did. Uh-huh. Still religious? No. I see. At what age did you maybe step out of religion? About 26.

Aha. Mm-hmm. What was going on then? I just started going on a deep dive of really looking into what I grew up thinking and realizing I don't agree with that anymore. I see. Mm-hmm. And as part of that journey, what other parts of your life did you reexamine?

I became a whole different person I feel like in that time frame. I just started realizing the person I was was not who I wanted to be. And I think this financial piece kind of came with it too. Because it really made me realize who do I want to be and where do I want to go and not living a life that other people told me I had to live. Tell me more. I'm very fascinated. Sure. You know, I think, you know, growing up religious and then I think just kind of the environment

I grew up into, like with my mom, like, you work really hard, but you really have nothing to pay off for it. She doesn't take big chances on anything in her mind. I'm supposed to work 40 hours a week, go home, not do anything else. And I realized, like, I was missing something in my life. And it's because I was mirroring the way that she lived her life. And that's not how I wanted to live it. You know, I think there was a lot of judgment from her or even people that we grew up with in a religious standpoint and church and everything.

And I really started to realize like their opinions did not matter of me. And to make me happy, I need to start living the life that I truly want to live instead. And you were married at this point? We were, yeah. I'm going to come to you, Mason, but were you religious as well? Did you grow up religious? We met at church. grew up religious.

And are you still religious? I'm not. Same time period where you had this realization. Maybe a little bit earlier, but generally. Wow. This is very rare. It's not rare for people to change their views on religion, but in a married couple that met at church to go through the journey together. And it's no surprise. That's why I kind of got a clue that there may have been something going on with religion. Because to change your entire relationship with money in your 20s by asking friends and listening. suggest there's something else going on. Wow. What money messages that you grew up with do you think you are still bringing to this relationship today? I think I for so long just thought I wasn't going to be rich. I thought that was just reality. I thought everybody's poor because

everybody around me is poor. So I think I haven't found that confidence yet to know that I don't have to be that way. Wow. It's interesting. It kind of shows up in your conscious spending plan. The spending on certain things without tracking it carefully, that is indicative of somebody who's like, yeah, I'm not going to be wealthy. Like little old me, but actually, you very well could be. Yes. When I think about how Becca grew up with money, I think about like a sponge, just someone absorbing the lessons learn, but not really knowing how to make sense of what's going on. When you're a child, you don't understand how money works.

And for so many guests, including Becca, their parents don't tell them anything about money. Oh, sure, they might leak out stress and anxiety, but they're rarely talking about savings and investing in different tax vehicles. No, it's just like, we don't have money. So what are we to make of that as children? Many of us are consumed with scarcity. Many of us might save a little bit of money and then spend it all in a single night or in a month. Becca did something interesting.

She became pretty responsible with her savings. She saved half of her money. And when I ask her, where'd you get that idea from? I don't know, maybe the lady at the bank. And then she goes on just a couple years later to spend all of it. I am begging all the parents who watched this show. stop trying to protect your children with money. You are not protecting them by not talking about money.

Money is not something that is an evil monster. It's actually something you need to engage with and discuss, even if you have made mistakes in your own life. I wish Becca had been better trained with money. It would have put her in a completely different place. But to her credit, she has found that place pretty much on her own. Tell me about how you grew up with money. What do you remember your family saying, Mason, about money?

Good question. I mean, I also came from a family of divorced parents, so money was always tied on both sides. I don't remember openly having money discussions about this. But as a kid, you just noticed things. So you notice the car changes or the furniture going away or, you know, garage sales and moving all the time. And you realize these things.

So money messages and things from how I grew up, it was all like self-taught. And that's not, it wasn't great. I didn't have great habits and saving or spending until I got into a serious relationship with her. And that made me just want to change all of that. Furniture going away. What's that about? Yeah. I got to see my dad struggle through the divorce.

There was a lot of changes through the house. and selling that and what we would come over and visit and sleep on and stay on, almost being on the verge of like cards being like canceled or bankruptcy or losing a house and like things that you will see. That was all normalized to me. And I don't think I ever want to be in that position or show that I'm in my position to our son. So if I can read between the lines, tell me if this is accurate. but your parents separated. What age were you?

12. Okay, that's a tough age. And it sounds like your dad had to downsize. You go to his place. It's probably smaller, not as much furniture. Sure. Not as comfortable. 100%.

What did you feel at that moment as a 12-year-old? You're pretty smart at 12. You know, you get to grow fast, which, you know, you learn to try to do the next steps of, do I have to start helping my sisters? do I have to start dropping extracurriculars in sports and things? Yeah, it was a big drawback. Right.

And did you start hearing more about money at that point? Because presumably money's got to be tighter for both parents. Again, it wasn't a lot of open discussion about finance. One thing I do distinctly notice or remember is, like, my mother constantly checking the books and like having pages and pages of bills and scrolling through them and filling out these things. And that to me was how bills were handled. You struggle over them and you stress over them and then the next month you do it again. Yeah. That's pretty clear. I think a lot of people believe that. You struggle. And who struggles? Mom struggles. Sure. She struggled. She also went back

to school and put herself through school with three kids and got to a better spot. So like I learned that you can get out of those certain scenarios. Wow. I also watched my dad not do that. And slide different directions. Really? What was your takeaway from that differential? My takeaway was you can work hard and get out of where you are. And that's what my mother did. So that was the work ethic I learned.

Okay. Do the two of you as a couple have role models, folks that you look to, you get inspired by when it comes to money, when it comes to parenting, when it comes to relationships? I'm seeing kind of a quiet realization on both of your faces right now. I don't think I have one. Wow. That's honest.

I actually think that it explains a lot. And if anything, if I are in your position, I'm thinking like, wow, I'm proud of how far we have come. The transition we've made as a couple because we don't really have anybody who's guiding us. We had to figure this stuff out on our own. So I think that's quite powerful. You could turn that narrative into like, oh my God, this sucks. We don't have anybody around us. Or, wow, look how far we've come despite it.

And now that we realize that our next goal is to find a couple who we really respect who want to learn from. Sure. Take that mindset you've already got. Make it bigger and more explicit. Okay. Mason and Becca both grew up with money scarcity. And interestingly, when,

people grow up with scarcity, I find that they can go one of two directions. One, they can become even more scarce about money, protective, worried, anxious, or the other direction, they basically spend it all because they go, finally, I have some money and I'm going to spend it. The key is, you cannot predict which direction they are going to go. And with Mason and Becca, when they met, especially for the early part of their relationship, they both decided to go the spending Rob. What kind of financial future do you want for your son? I want him to be able to be successful in money management from day one when he becomes an adult. But I don't want him to have to go through what we did, which was living very paycheck to paycheck. I would like to be able to set him up

and be comfortable. What if he turned 18 and he opens up his checking account and there's $100,000 in it? What would you teach him to do? All my hope would be to invest it to be able to really think about how he could really utilize that money for his future instead of just mindlessly spending it.

Well, we have a great opportunity because his parents happen to have $100,000. Yes. And to your credit, you are not immediately spending it. Right. I really respect that you have put it aside while you learn so that you use it thoughtfully. Sure. I want to talk about what you want to do with your money.

Yes, the 100K, that too, but just in general. What kind of life do you want to live? Dream home, several vacations a year, have family vacations and then one-on-one vacations. You know, date nights often, being able to maintain. our social life, without feeling stretched then for that, being able to go shopping and not feel like we're overspending in that amount. But overall, too, just not have the anxiety that I have every single day. You still haven't? I do. Okay. Mason, how about you? Definitely owning a home and with some of your requests, a pool, I think that's got to be there, you know, not worrying about

the spending because it's something that I can afford. Maybe it is, maybe not the nicest things that are out there, but definitely nicer. I want to set up my son to mirror how we are with our money once we get in a good spot. And so far, we're really close to that good spot. Okay, nice. I don't know the exact number here, but for the type of lifestyle that the two of you talked about, what kind of income do you think you would need to comfortably be able to do that. 250,000, at least. 250, maybe 300,000? I think that'd be a good, great goal. Yeah. The type of lifestyle you're talking about is probably $300,350,000 a year in your area. Okay. So at 350,000, you're making 160K right now. What does it tell you?

We need to make more. If you want to live that life, you would need to increase your income. I agree. Do you need to do that tomorrow. No. No. So you got time. Plenty. Think of how much you've changed in the last five years. Oh my God. If you continue that stretch, you have time. Then the question becomes, hey, if we want to live a lifestyle that's going to take X years, it's going to require us one doubling, tripling, whatever our salary, which is obviously a lot of work and good luck. Do we want all of those things? What do you think? I would. Okay. I think we had the means, of course. I would love to...

But I'm saying it takes a lot of work. I'm fine with that. Okay. I think we're great hard workers. You know, I think it's just not always knowing where to go from here. We'll work very hard to get to what we want. Okay. We always have.

I believe that. I love that. That's a very interesting answer. I don't hear that as often as you would think. Yes, I do. I want that. Yeah. And I'm willing to work. I already have plans to up. my career, so I know I can get to those goals that I want to do. Great. What do you do for a living? I'm an HR manager. Great. And Mason? I work customer service for an energy company.

Great. Okay. I want to help you position yourselves with your money for building real wealth, right, so that you can live the type of rich life that you envision. And part of this is going to be changing your mindset, but we actually have to do the numbers as well. So I would like to try to get these fixed costs down. If we can get them down, then we can redirect more of that money towards investments, savings, etc. That's why we thought about knocking out that debt because we're aggressively paying it. Yeah. So it's $588 a month. Should we just assume you're going to pay it off today? Okay, so if you paid it off with money from your savings, that'll be $13,600, which is negligible because you have $124,000 in savings, you paid it off. That makes this monthly debt payment, what? Zero.

Zero. Watch what happens to the CSP. Whoa. It just went from 73 to 66%. Yeah. Big jump. Love that. So paid off. Yeah. Fine. Great. I'm kind of like jokingly being a bit flippin about it, but let me tell you why. So you know why. You have $124,000 in savings, liquid savings. That means you have more than 12 months. You're done. Your emergency fund is filled up. You're good. So yes, I would like for you to save for more stuff because you like to spend money on trips and stuff like. So we'll, we'll do that. But you all do not need to be putting more money in your emergency fund, which is $1,000. A thousand dollars a month. So look at how it's cascading. You paid off the debt. You paid off the debt because you have enough in your emergency fund. Now you don't have to pay any debt. Now you don't have to put money to your emergency fund. It starts to really work together like a puzzle.

Sure. Okay. What else should we do here? The miscellaneous needs to go. Yeah. It can't go all the way. Sure. But it probably needs to get under control. How would you get it under control? One, I think we need to actually look at what we're spending. Yes. And really finding those hidden costs that we probably didn't think about. Yes. And then looking at certain things that we're doing and do we actually need it. So let's pick an example. What is a very likely, sizable cost that you're not thinking of here? Like the hair. Hair costs. How much, just like, let's approximate me, how many times a month or year do you get a haircut? I will go get my hair done about every six weeks. Every six weeks. And that's like, whatever relating to hair cut, color, style, all that. Okay, every six weeks. How about for you, Mason?

If I can't, every two weeks, be and my son, that's about $65 so we can call it $120. 128. Okay, got it. And how about for you? About $300 every six weeks. Got it. Okay. So we're talking thousands of dollars per year, right? It's a lot. Yep. Knowing that, worth it. Knowing how much you spend on bell peppers, whatever. It rolls into the grocery. Sure. Sure. Okay. So yeah, I can tell you have thousands and thousands of unaccounted for dollars. Yes. Get that tracking. Okay. So you might, you might be like, hey, hair is important to me. Every six weeks. Cool. But then what are we not doing? Maybe it means we're not doing as frequent of a date night. Sure. It's up to you. What is the actual function of that? Do you set aside from a paycheck, you deposit $100 into a

separate account, and then that's now groceries account, then $100 and something else. And now that's closed. Good question. So the automation part and the CSP work really nicely together. Here's the way I do it. So we know how much we have set aside for groceries every month. Okay, let's just say for easy math is 500 bucks. We don't need a grocery account. We just have the money in our paycheck, which goes to our checking, which then the money is automatically dispersed. We know that when we go to the grocery store, we're swiping on our credit card. And that credit card gets paid off by the checking. So we make sure that we have enough money in that checking account to cover the groceries and other bills. So you work backwards. How much are we going to be spending every month?

Those things are mostly coming out of checking. Let's make sure that we have enough in checking. Be bringing focus to it would help a lot. Yeah. I think right now, what I'm hearing, it's better than it used to be for the two of you. Yes. You used to just swipe. But now to get to the next level, you have to first identify all the major categories. And then second, you have to actually put numbers around them. And those numbers are your fingerprint. It tells me what's important to you. So like right now when I look at this, your fixed costs look a bit generic. They look like everybody else. But actually like when I see you all walk in here and you look very nice, I go, oh, they like clothes. Clothes should be dialed in. Self care should be downed. That's actually nothing to apologize

for. If you saw ours, you could instantly tell what kind of people we are. We love traveling. We don't care about a car. You would instantly be able to tell. I want that level of bespoke nature for your CSP. Okay. Okay? All right, you said you want to bring the number down. Let's approximate it.

So right now, your miscellaneous is $917 a month. I feel that's pretty high. What would you like to bring that number down to? I'll say 500. Okay. We're going to just eliminate this. You're at 523. You're down to 63%.

Nice. Closer. I think we could get the groceries down. Shall we bring it down 100? I don't want to be too crazy. Sure. I think $100, I think, would be a good start, and you could always adjust that down. Agreed.

Because we have a mail service, too. So I really think we could bring it down to $600. Yeah, that's cut our lunches. Shall we? Yes. Okay. I love the aggression. This is the energy I like to see.

Okay, let's look. Whoa. We're at 61%. We're close. Honestly, amazing. Do you want to just get to 60? Yes. I do.

I'll make a couple of six. suggestions from what you told me. You told me about your subscriptions. You have the Disney thing. It sounds like that's important to you. Let's keep it. But you mentioned like Audible, Amazon, da, da, da, da, da. Could there be one where you just go like, hey, we got plenty of others? Not for us. I think so. I totally think so. I think Audible can definitely go out. I think we can easily cut down like 40 bucks, 50 bucks on that. Okay. Let's take it to 1.25. Okay. There we go. All right. Round of applause you. This is actually amazing. What's most amazing to me is not just the numbers. It is the approach that you're both taking.

Like, you know how you told me you hype each other up to spend? I'm actually seeing you do the same thing, but in the opposite direction. You're aligned. This is the energy you bring that a wealthy couple brings together. It's not you against me. It's this is what we want for our life. Let's figure it out together. You are a true team. That's what we always strive to be. So. I love it. Okay. So according to this, you have $2,634 a month or 25% of take-home pay that you could currently spend on guilt-free spending. Now, I typically recommend 20 to 35%. I'm going to tell you why I think you should be somewhat towards the lower end of that. I think that in the last five years, you have displayed a very rare ability to completely change the trajectory. of your lives, money and otherwise. And to me, when someone has that skill, I'm like, let's go. Let's double down. Let's triple down. Because you can clearly do it. You clearly want a big, rich life. And the age you are now, young, upwardly mobile with your income, I'm like,

take advantage of it. Later in life, you may have more heavier burdens, expenses, things may come up, family, et cetera. But right now, it's like a golden age. So for me, whenever I see the golden age, I double down. Yes, I still go out and I have a nice time, but I take my money and I invest it. So you have $2,634 extra per month. And we know that it's a bit high right now to just be getting spent on stuff. So where would you reallocate this money for your rich life goals? Investments. Let's pick an amount and see what happens. A thousand dollars. Okay. $1,000 a month. I'm going to put it right here under stocks. A thousand dollars takes your number from 2% investments to 11%. This is post-tax. And let's go down and look at your guilt-free spending.

You're now at what number? 15%. 15%. That's pretty healthy. I'll tell you why. Especially because you like nice things. Well, y'all are spending $3,000 a year on Disney. So that is, we can call that guilt-free spending. That's like pretty nice. So if I'm in your position, I'm going like, I sure would like to be able to do, let's just say, four date nights a month. How come we can't? Why? Because we decided as a couple we're going to cut down the amount of date nights and instead be able to go to Disney all the time. That's how we think about it. Nobody's chopping my arm off. Nobody's forcing me to not have date nights. We chose. Yeah. And this is what we decided as a couple. Sure. And if at the end of the year you go, we want to change our decision, there you go. Don't get the Disney pass. Cool? Makes a total sense. Okay. I like seeing.

people take ownership of their decisions. I like that. And I can tell that you two are into that. Yes. Can we talk about your health savings account for a second? How much do you have in that account? Just about $3,000. $3,000. And how long have you had the HSA? Oh man, probably seven or eight years. But the thing is, I've always used it as just literally health money. So I didn't let it invest. I didn't let it grow. I didn't learn about those options until six months to a year ago. It's a bit obscure, but it is an amazing account. Do you think that you will use the money in that health savings account for health-related expenses? Occasionally, I don't think that amount. Yeah, I now don't want to because our health and costs are only going to be more expensive later in life.

Okay. So if I actually have a after-tax or tax-advantaged account to pull from separate from retirement, separate from Social Security, I'd like to do that. I love it. you could invest that money in typical low-cost index funds. Okay. It's quite amazing. You get a triple tax advantage. And then you can use that later in life.

You can cash it out if you want to use it in a year, whatever you want. It's incredible. I kind of want to up that to the maximum. Very good. That's what I would do. So let's do this. Let's take the 380. I'm going to just move this entire.

I'm just going to zero this out here. And I'm going to add 380 here because that HSA, We're going to consider it an investment. Sure. Okay. You're now investing $1,580 a month plus $845 a month. So you're in the $2,700 range per month. That's pretty good.

We have $1,000 a month going to an emergency fund. We don't need that. But I do think you need savings to be built up for certain things. Sure. What are the big expenses that you foresee? coming up? The car payment is actually a lease. So we like the Honda though. We like the car. So we kind of want to keep it. You want to buy out the lease? Probably. How much? I think at the end of that it's going to be about 25,000. I would create a savings account called lease buyout. Okay. And if you

decide to buy it, you go right into that account. And there you go. Nice. I like it. I do like that. That's how you do it for all major purchases. And this is where you get to take control. If you go, we want to go, what's a dream vacation spot you want to go to? Bolly. Beautiful. Bolly. So like you do the calculation, you go, all right, we want to take this trip. It's going to be like $10,000.

Right now we can afford to put X hundred dollars a month, so it's going to take us a year and a half. And then you go, I don't want to wait a year and a half. So what are our options? We could cut spending elsewhere and redirect it here. We could shrink the trip down. So instead of $10,000, it's $5,000. Or we can just extend the time period and settle for 18 months, 24 months.

what we don't do is just swipe it and then deal with it later. Right. We, as a couple, we never do that. That's the kind of energy you bring, right? For sure. All right. 18,000, we are now calling this car, buyout. And then don't you need more money for something?

Didn't you talk about a house? Yeah. Where's that? Not in there. What does that tell you? We need to do something about it. Okay. So what are your options?

Let's be super creative before we see. start putting money aside. Your options are what? Either save for it or get a huge loan for it. Even if you got a huge loan, you would still have to put down tens of thousands of dollars. Yeah. Is there an option to, I don't know, just save over years and years and outright buy? That's another option. I like that. Good. Not buy. Not buy it. That's an option. Because that also gives you a lot of freedom to choose and explore different places and areas. Again, we don't have to commit to any of these. I just want to put all. All the options out on the tape.

I love the vision, but because at least one of them is a dreamer, I need to ground this rich life vision and create a plan where they can make concrete tradeoffs. Like you can't have it all. On their income today, they cannot take four vacations, they cannot go to Disneyland, they cannot have all these clothes and eat out. They've got to prioritize, especially with big purchases like a house. When I say prioritize, I mean some of the things they may want to do right now. They're like, this is important to us.

We're going to do it right now. Other things they may say, we can delay that for 18 months or even five years, 10 years. Some of the things they may realize when I'm looking at the numbers, that's actually not that important to us. So kick it off the vision. That is how you go from fantasy to an actual plan. And that is what helps bring a dreamer down to reality. If I just let them fantasize about what their rich life is, without an actual.

actual plan, they would walk out of here and go right back to the way they used to be. So the rich life that you told me was a powerful vision. House with a pool, multiple vacations, date night, self-care. We have a very functioning CSP for your baseline. You're saving a bunch of money. You're investing a good amount of money. You have some money left over. Now we've got to make some trade-offs. So I want you to tell me what changes you would like to make. Because as it stands, there's no house. Right. There's no vacation. I mean, I think we can definitely cut down the guilt-free spending. We did it before. We made sacrifices and what we were spending. So if we want to save up for the house, we can do that. Tell me how much. I think if we were going full rich life,

I'd probably go more like a $800,000 house. Where would the money come from? It's a great question. Right now, it would be draining savings, maybe doing some kind of loan, something off of current retirement, which I don't want to touch anymore. Okay. That's the main reason why we passed on getting a house now because I don't want to drain my savings. Okay. I don't want to be house poor, for sure. You don't want to be house poor.

I love seeing that in your application. Yes. Great. Okay. So you don't want to use $110,000 of your savings for a down payment. Right. Do you want to use part of it? I'd like to see what other options we could do when it comes to maybe investments.

Is there anything we could ever do to get the down payment there? You know, if you, so when my wife and I were in our mid-30s, we asked each other, do we plan to buy a house anytime soon? The answer was no. We didn't want to. So I had some money for a down payment, invested it. Okay. And just said, look, we're not going to get a house in the next five years, probably not 10 years.

So let the money grow. And if one day we decide to buy a house, we will have more. We can either get a nicer house or put a bigger down payment down. I would feel fine with that. You know, I think realizing now house costs and what that really looks like, I think a five-year goal would be a really good pinpoint. Minimum goal? Minimum, yes.

Okay. So where would the money come from for the down payment? We could take more money out of the guilt-free spending. Let's say you could take 500 bucks out? Yes. All right. And we could put it in investments, and we will call this house. Does there need to be a specific account or a separate account for something for myself?

If you had to choose which one is more important, buying the house or putting money aside for your son, which would it be? I personally think the set-aside account. Both? I agree. So if that's the case, then we are now making trade-offs because we can't have it all. right now. So that house might not work. You might put the money aside for him instead. Right. Or split the difference. Is there a way of doing $800 towards an account for us and $200 for some kind of custodial or specific Roth? You could. You could. How do you know if you can afford to save for your son?

It's a provocative question, right? Because I think from your reaction, you've never thought about that. You just assumed this is what we do. Yes. But how many other things have you deconstructed? Like maybe we do, maybe not. What's going on underneath? So let's walk through it for a second. Most parents, they want to do something for their kids, obviously, financially.

I get a ton of panicked messages every week on my Instagram DMs. Hey, Rameet, love your stuff. I'm 38 years old. We just had a son. He's one and a half. what account should I have for him is a 529 the right one and they're just like frazzled and I go hey congratulations and before we talk about your son or your daughter tell me about your finances and you know what they always say well um you know like I actually like started pretty late so

I don't really have much and what they're doing in essence is saying I've lost the game of money for myself but I won't allow that to happen for my son Any of this sound familiar? I think that's very accurate. You know, I think we're really big on him not having to live the life that we did. Can I tell you what I see? I see a couple that takes their kid to Disneyland a lot. So already you have put your son in a different position than you both ever were.

Already. In addition, if you are talking to your son about money, if you are sharing things like saving, investing. Hey, we flew across the country to learn more about money because it's important to both of us. And we want you to understand it. Help us pay this bill. Click this link.

We're going to go to the grocery store. We only have $10 and we need to get these three things. Can you help me do it? He is going to grow up with a hundred times more knowledge than either of you ever did. So I don't see a risk of him growing up like you. I would take that fear and set it aside. you all already won that battle.

Okay? Sure. Now, do you need to give him a bunch of money? I don't know, maybe. If you want to, we can find it. But I also want you all to think about your overall vision. Yeah. It'll be nice to hand him $50,000.

Fine. I don't mind that. Maybe we can make it happen. But when I think about like generational wealth and stuff like that, like my parents, they didn't give us a check. They didn't have it. but they taught us what investing is. They helped me open up a custodial account,

encourage me to get jobs, say, let me play, do all this stuff. And so they gave me way more than any check ever could. They gave me knowledge and my siblings as well so that we knew what good money management is. Oh, I like those lessons way better. Yeah. I don't know many 18-year-olds that would be responsible

if you handed them a $50,000 check. No way. No way. But they might know philosophy that their parents have. Like in our household, we are a no debt household. That's a philosophy. You could choose it or not. Once a month, we all sit down and we do a formal presentation where we talk about money

lessons learn and what we're going to do and what we are not going to do. You could learn that. And he could walk away with those lessons which are worth infinitely more than any amount of check you could write him. Sure. Saving for a house could benefit all three of us the end of the day. And as we grow in our careers and make more money, there's still that option. opportunity to save for him. Yes. Totally. That's a good way of looking at it. You don't have to make

decisions for the rest of your lives today, just for today. And then any upside, you can always adjust where your money goes. Yeah. I would like for you to get to the point where you got so much money in investments, et cetera, that you're like, well, I already hit those goals. Extra. Let's put it aside for him now. That's the way you think about it. Your son has time. You have far less. he could take a loan out. It's not the worst thing in the world. You all cannot take a loan out for retirement. So we've got to prioritize the two of you first.

Okay, we've decided for now, it sounds like no money for him. Okay. Put the money towards the house. So we're at 500 bucks a month, which will be $6,000 a year, which over five years will be $30K, but it will grow a little bit probably because of investment. So maybe it turns into, I can't do the math off the top of my head.

50K, whatever. What do you think? Still not enough, I think, for the house and lifestyle that we've chosen. Correct. So what would you do about that? Figure out how to save some more. Yeah? Save more, make more.

Let's talk about that for a second. Because I think there's a limit now. We're kind of reaching it. And I think it's starting to get a bit unrealistic. I don't really think the two of you can function the way you want to on $1,000 a month of guilt-free spending. because all the money is pretty much spoken for. Right.

So there's only one real area to focus on, which is what? Income. Income. So can we talk about this for a second? Remember the lifestyle you told me how much you'd approximately need to make? Like, what would we say, 300, 350, something like that? Yeah. How can you get there?

My goal is to excel in my career. I was looking at going back to school. to get some higher level of roles than I am right now. Okay. How about for you? My company's pretty stock standard, 3% year every year. Got it. Okay. Okay. I think I do have some opportunities when they do open up as far as different kind of supervisor roles. There's also sales positions that while I'm not immediately equipped for, I'm not against learning.

So I think there are opportunities moving up within the corporate ladder. here's a couple of things I want to draw your attention towards because now that we've got a CSP that is somewhat standardized, rationalized, now I'm thinking about what kind of lifestyle you're going to have ongoing. What do you think would be the worst case for the two of you? Worst case.

You walk out of here, you got this plan, and then what derails it? Not following it. Yep. And just going back to our bad, habits of spending. Just spending, swiping without tracking it. Yep. What else? Like a job loss. Yep. That would be huge. That would be tough. You could sustain it for a long time. I will say, with your savings, that's really nice to have that. You could sustain that. But that would

potentially derail you. Sure. So when I hear you describe your money, especially where you came from, there are a few red flags I want to draw your attention towards. So the non-tracking was just like, okay, we swiped. I feel you have a pretty good handle on that now, but I do think the miscellaneous thing is a bit of a red flag, and you have to get control of that. Each of you's got to own a couple of numbers, and you both report on those at a monthly money meeting. Like, it should be a formal thing like you do it at work. Take it seriously. The other thing is I hear a bit of dreamer tendency, I think from you, Mason. You agree? Oh, I totally agree. So on the plane right over here, Yeah.

Becca was reading your book and calling me a dreamer. Whoa. You're reading money for a couple's? I started reading it. Okay. Why did you say that? Because he is. He very much just talks about things.

He knows, like in his head, like, I would love to get here, but there's no action to it. What's an example? I would say one, like he dreams all the time about starting businesses all the time. He comes out with all these ideas and he'll ruminate on it for months. then nothing happens. What do you think about that? Accurate. I mean, it's something I would like to start.

I don't think I always want to work for a corporate ladder, but getting to the next point in either owning a small business or investments are starting to pay for themselves, I don't know that. It's very unknown for me. Yeah, yeah. Dreamer tendencies are very dangerous because they kind of exist in la-la land, and it's because often they are subsidized by somebody else.

In this case, you're an interesting dreamer because you've transitioned to making some concrete plans. You've changed your spending behavior. So I would say you're like a dreamer, but dreamer adjacent. You're willing to change. It's very rare. Okay? But you cannot be a dreamer if you want to live the kind of rich life, the two of you describe. It simply can't happen.

So I hear things in your application about a solar business. I hear about the arcade day trading. All of them fit the dreamer dynamic. And that is a huge red flag because one, it's hard for you because you go, you're spending months coming up with these ideas, but two, it's hard for the two of you. Because the place you're going where you've described with vacations and house and this and that, you actually both need to be rowing exactly the same direction. There cannot be any misalignment. Power couple. That's what you need to be. So if one of you is dragging behind, that's a problem. If one of you

rowing the opposite direction, impossible to get where you're going. You see what I mean? Totally. Okay. Wow. I don't get the chance to talk to Dreamers a lot because they don't come on the show. So I feel very honored right now. Can I give you some projections from your retirement?

We have some projections just so you understand what the numbers look like. So when you walked in here, do you know how much you would have in retirement? From what I did calculate, I think it was around like 1.5 million. 1.5 million total? Yes. Well, I don't think that included the pension, right? Yeah. Oh, you have a pension?

He has a pension. What? How much? I think it's supposed to be like $800,000 at the end of the pension. $800,000? How the fuck did I not know about this? If I was to retire with the company. Oh, okay.

And then how much would that be worth? You have either a lump sum or a payout or... I love finding $800,000 in the couch cushions. All right. Well, putting aside the pension, we calculate that you would have... about $3.1 million when Mason turned 65. So 3.1 million, a lot of money, that's about $126,000 of safe withdrawal income that you could make per year. It's a lot more comforting than I thought it would be. I like it. 126 is good, but you wouldn't own a house. But on the other hand,

you wouldn't need to invest anymore. You wouldn't really need to save anymore. So those costs would go down. You'd have Social Security in addition to that. It's not bad, honestly. It's not bad. The new strategy that we did where we cut some of your spending, got more aggressive on investments,

that would yield you $4.7 million. It's a big difference from a few small changes. And the Safe Wistrate all income is $188,000 a year more than you earn today. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely definitely a better goal. More comfortable for our lifestyle. I think so. Yeah. What do you think? What's going through your head now about the decisions regarding vacations, saving for your son, and a house when you hear these numbers? There's a good chance in that this time period we'd want to up our lifestyle and then that won't be enough. agree. If I'm you, I'm trying to live a cooler lifestyle. I'm not trying to stay at this level or worse go down. No fucking way. Okay. You don't want to go down. You don't even want to stay here stable. You want to elevate your lifestyle. Okay. So how are you going to do it? Make more money. Yes. How will you do it specifically? So you've mentioned Becca going back to school. How much more are you going to make? From my projection, I could eventually get up to $245,000 a year.

Really? Yep, with certain levels of roles. If I stayed with the same company. No kidding. What's the job title that makes that much? A VP of HR. Is it required that you have the degree? Not necessarily with this company.

If I ever wanted to look at other companies, though, it would make me a lot more competitive. Okay. All right. Noted. What about for you, Mason? Right now, I'm comfortable in the position I'm in, but I know it doesn't, it's not as fulfilling. It's not going to give me the pay scale that I would like. You could absolutely put energy into client any corporate ladder.

I like my coworkers, my upper management team. I can join them. Being the dreamer, I also like the idea of a potential day trading opportunity. I have seen someone make my salary in a day. I've also seen a ton of people opening businesses. And those owners start somewhere. Yeah. So I don't know.

I like the opportunities. I always see the successful side of it. Well, that's by design. You see the successful because the ones who lose their money disappear. Don't. That's survivorship bias. Okay, let me give you a little bit of the stuff you can find in chapter six of my book, where I talk about day traders, et cetera.

They almost all lose their money. Like almost all of them. And I'm talking in the 98 plus percent range. So you are seeing some of the folks kind of like, seeing Michael Jordan playing basketball, being like, oh, I'd like to be like him. Well, yeah, me too, but I'm not. And so we're seeing these freak aberrations and day trading, sadly, has a lot of lies. Because almost everybody loses money, it's notorious that they will go and erase their previous

bets. They don't show you the things they've done. It's basically gambling. It is. So I don't mind that you had, you know, 500 bucks or something that you're playing with. I think people can have a little bit of fun with their money. It could be self-care. It could be freaking day trading. The problem is that people who do that, they usually do not have containment. They go 500, then turns to a thousand,

it turns into recurring, turns into 5,000. And they really believe, if I get this strategy, I'll do it. You will lose your money. It's simply a matter of time. If the two of you want to live a rich life, then you all need to focus on increasing your income, like directly and dramatically.

It is a priority because you can't get the other things you want. There's no real way to get the house right now based on the income you have. Sure. Sure. So the income's got to go way up. I can definitely work with my management team and letting them know that I'm interested in the next position. There was another opportunity for a supervisor role that came up. Hours didn't work and the time frame didn't work for me so I couldn't take it.

But they do come up. Okay. And instead of watching the opportunity to pass by, I can take it. I like that. And whether it is at this company, hopefully it is, or another company, the two of you having a mission, which is like, hey, we want to live this awesome life, but we never want to go back to where we were. Never.

I don't want to wait 30 years to be living there. So what do we need to do? The only thing now beyond following through that matters is income. Yes. Sure. It's got to go up. And if it's me, I'm taking any dreamer stuff and I'm putting it aside. Keep doubling down on what works until you have literally scraped the meat off the bone,

which means you basically are CEO. And if at a certain point you got so much money and so much free time, you go, I really want to start a business, okay, try it then. But right now I just see way too much upside in your careers. Sure. I think that's very accurate for sure. I'll just show you something. I'm going to put your CSP up on screen. What might we increase your income to, let's say, five years from now? Hopefully it would be at $10,000 a month. Double? Yes. Amazing. Watch what happens for the rest of your numbers. You're at 60% fixed costs. What just happened? Went down a lot. Fixed cost dropped to 43%. If we go all the way down,

you have $5,000 a month. Five years from now, you will have hundreds of thousands of dollars invested. You'll have a fat savings account. You'll have gone to Disney. You'll have taken a couple of vacations, great. And you will be able to start putting money aside for a house,

et cetera. You want to do yours, Mason? Five years from now, ballpark it. realistic, they probably like 65. Love it. That sounds reasonable. You're at 4,800, we're going to 6,500. If you stayed in the same place, you're at 39% fixed cost. Could you guys stay in the same place for five years?

Could we? Sure. Do we want to? Probably not. I think there are better opportunities. Fair enough. Yeah. Without varying that number too much. I mean, maybe by four or five hundred bucks. I don't think you need to have fixed costs at 39%. I frankly think that's ridiculous.

Right. And I think if you're making this kind of money, which is a huge amount of money, you probably want to be spending more than $25.50 a month. Fine. But if I'm you and I'm like, hey, I want this curve. Steady growth. That's going to go up and up and up and up and up. And I don't not want to go up and down and up and down in debt. Then I'm like, cool, once we get a big raise, let's build up our savings for a few months. And once we hit these milestones, then we will increase our rent just a little bit and take the extra and put it aside for buying a house. So you're living for today and for a bigger tomorrow. Yep. I like that. I love that. When you first came in, there was a timeline

difference on buying a house. It was a year. It was two to three years or five years. What do we know now about your timeline? A 10-year timeline seems a little bit more doable for a dream home. Good. So no sooner than 10 years, you'd be, what, in your early 40s? Yeah. What's the problem? Freaking great. I rent. I'm in my early 40s. And if I wanted to go buy a house, I would not feel like I missed anything. Sure. But you can't wait until you're 42 to start saving for a house. So what's the key? Let's start saving now. Yeah. What could you do specifically to build a healthier mindset with money, not to let the old mindset that you grew up with control you. Start better habits and unlearning those mindsets that we have. How?

I think for me actually having the confidence to know that I actually don't have to live that way and that I can be rich. You are going to be rich. We already saw the numbers. I am going to be rich. I am going to be rich. Yeah. I actually think you all are living. Don't doubt ourselves. Yeah. Aren't you living a rich life today now that I think about it? After today, by the end of today, you're debt free. Yeah. Do you all realize that? Yeah. No, that's, we were tumbling the idea back and forth up into the show. We're just like, let's not do it yet. Let's ask for me. Let's see what's going on. That's exciting. We've not been debt-free since I was a teenager.

Okay, round of applause. It's like, will you send me your screenshot when you pay the debt off? Yes. Like, that's amazing. And you do that and like celebrate it. You know, we're never going back here. And whatever celebration is meaningful to you, you just turned a. a major corner. Also, I love that it didn't happen by accident. You made a lot of lifestyle changes too. And the crowning moment is when you bring your son in on it. And you start repeating you basically are building family values. That's when you know you have true wealth, true rich life. Oh my God, just got a text. Student loan is officially paid off. Zero dollars left, paid in full.

Amazing work. I have a lot of confidence in Mason and Becca. The fact that they have demonstrated excellence with their money for the last few years tells me that they have a very, very good shot at making amazing major changes with their finances. Honestly, they are a high-performing couple that simply did not have access to people teaching them about money. And the fact that they came out here, raised their hand to ask for help, that tells me they're going to be very successful. I already know they're going to pay off their debt because they just did it. So boom, they are now a debt-free couple, their identity has changed within minutes. I think they're going to start investing more. I think they're going to start saving more. I do think they're probably going to

constantly entertain the idea of buying a house, but I hope they continue making clear trade-offs with their finances because if they just save and invest aggressively for a few years, they will be in an amazing financial position. And now, let's take a look at their follow-ups. Hey, Ramead, thanks for having these on the show. It was a really great experience. biggest surprises, you know, biggest surprises for us is we were in a decent spot financially. We're a better spot than we thought with the conscious spending plan. We just have to sort out and had to sort out. We're going to fit the pieces in our financial puzzle.

Yeah, and our biggest takeaway, we're all really positive for us. We talked after our family and really realized that we are living a version of a rich life currently, especially when we can hear ourselves from this time last year to now. We've really hit some of our money goals, as well as some of our goals of where we want to be with our mommy, and then we're going to continue to reach additional goals that we see for our vision in our rich life. Now, some of the specific changes, you know, we walked out of the studio and immediately paid off our debt, like we said.

Immediately debt-free. Immediately debt-free. Great feeling. Also, we've created accounts. I've started and maxed out a raw. I also have created a brokerage accounts to do monthly investments and to continue to grow that for our future. Yes, and we've also decided to start meeting weekly about money.

This is really just gained some more confidence and communicating about it and also really seeing where our miscellaneous spending is going and ensuring our guilt-free spending is more mindful versus mindless. Thanks a lot. Hey, Ramee. So it's been three weeks since our podcast. We wanted to do a follow-up. One of my biggest takeaways is something that you said is your household is a no debt and a note debt household. And I would like to make that ours now that we are officially debt-free. Yep.

And my biggest takeaway is definitely not getting back into bad debt and getting back into those bad habits and really starting to make really good habits for us and spending our money, smartly, investing our money and putting our money to work. One of the biggest changes that I've done is, of course, contributing to the Roth to max that out, as well as putting several thousand dollars into a brokerage account for investment. And I have an automated plan of deposits going toward that every month now. And we've been having a lot of really good, confident conversations about money, really being positive and it's not a bad thing for us anymore. I think it's more exciting for us now when we are talking about our money and still really looking at how we're spending it, what changes we need to make and how we can still use it and have fun.

So thanks a lot. We really appreciate it. Bye. 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.