Money For Couples with Ramit Sethi - 9. “I hid thousands of dollars of credit card debt from my husband”

Episode Date: September 14, 2021

Jordan wasn't raised to talk about money. She constantly saw her mom withhold money matters from her dad, and now, history is repeating itself. Jordan has hidden her debt from her husband, Dan, twice. He feels violated. This is not the kind of thing you do when you're saving for a down payment on a house and building a family. He needs the problem not to happen again. Before talking this out with me, neither realized they were on the verge of a relationship breakdown. Most people don't truly appreciate the consequences of their actions. They run away from their problems and shove important issues under the rug. Jordan thought she could fix this alone, but her mom wiped out her debt the first time around (it takes her a while to drop that bombshell), and she's still learning how to talk about finances openly after growing up with a money code of shame and secrets. Listen to their initial money visions. They're as imaginative as a cardboard box. There are lofty visions of "travel" and "a kid," but no specifics. Nothing to get excited about. No wonder why they aren't investing or saving together. Tune in to hear how I coax out the clues from them -- and offer them a vision of where to go next. Connect with Ramit Website Instagram Twitter Facebook YouTube Linkedin Produced by Crate Media.

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

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That was one of my favorites where I shared how I saw, spend my money on travel, plus Q&A directly from me. If you want to start building your rich life today, join us and get instant access to our back catalog of years of live calls. Check out IWT.com slash money coaching to join now. That's IWT.com slash money coaching to join the program right now. I was running late from work and showed up at the office and she was having a conversation with him.

and the first thing he was talking about as I sat down was how to manage credit card debt now that she had $10,000 a credit card debt. And I was like, you have $10,000 a credit card debt? I thought I could fix it for a long time. I kept telling myself, why bring somebody else into this space when it's so awful. I don't want anybody else to feel like this. I just kind of felt like my trucks was rocked for those first two weeks. Like, I just kind of felt violated.

And it wasn't even my money if we want to have a family together and grow together. Like, this can't happen anymore. I'm Rameed Seity, and this is the I Will Teach You to Be Rich podcast. My guest today are Dan and Jordan. Dan earns $125,000 a year, and Jordan earns $60,000 a year. And for the most part, I don't really think about money that much. Or at least that's what Dan thought. Right up until the moment when he discovered, Jordan was,

keeping $10,000 in credit card debt from him. And it wasn't the first time. Let's listen in. We were meeting with our financial advisor for the first time and had shared it in that space. I was running late from work and showed up at the office and she was having a conversation with him. And the first thing he was talking about as I sat down was credit card debt and how to manage credit card debt now that she had $10,000 of the credit card debt.

You have $10,000 a credit card debt? Like how? And in those type of conversations, like, he obviously was like, you didn't know this. I didn't want to have that conversation there. Like, I wanted to keep it progressing and focus on everything we were there to accomplish. And if it happened, we need to figure out a way forward. I think what was jarring to me is that technically we were married and like a good tenant of a good marriage or a good relationship, period, is communication.

And the fact that that didn't even get shared with me, because a lot of the debt was from our wedding. Our parents were very gracious with us and generous on wedding-related costs. And I thought net net, like, we were good. I didn't even invest it a little bit in advance of the wedding and made some off-stock market and threw it towards a wedding. Like, I thought we were, we had nothing. So that was really surprising to me,

because I never wanted to go in debt for a wedding. Like I just thought that was outrageous. So hearing that not only caught me off guard, but it was kind of like, why wouldn't you just share this with me? Yeah, it's so horrifying, honestly. I kept it a secret because I thought I could fix it for a long time. I had an idea in my head that I'd be able to do it on my own.

I also had this, I think, fear about what the reaction would be. And I think after so long, it just was a part of me. And I knew how much it impacted me emotionally that I was worried about what and how it would impact Dan in long run. Like, it's going to suck either way and it sucked either way. But I had this idea in my head. I had one of those invisible money scripts in my head that I'd fix it. And I went through it for a long time of like, I can fix it. I can fix it.

I'll get it down. It's not a big deal. That, I think, is that in a nutshell, is that I really thought. that I could do it myself and that I didn't need help from anybody else. The best predictor of your future behavior is your past behavior. So I suspected this wasn't a one-time thing. Usually when you see people behaving in a peculiar way with money, it's not the first time. By the way, this is true in many different parts of life.

There's a great book called The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker. And he talks about how when violent crimes happen, inevitably, the local news will go out there, interview the neighbors, and they'll always say the same thing. He was such a nice guy. And then more times than you can believe, they'll do a little bit of investigation, a little bit of digging, and you'll find out there was a history of unusual or destructive or even criminal behavior. By the time you notice something is really off, it's almost never the first time. Now, I highly recommend that book. It's called The Gift of Fear. And you can actually search for Rameith book recommendations to find out more of my first time.

favorite books. Let's see if my suspicions here are correct. A second go-around was when we were applying for our mortgage or applying for approval for our mortgage, our lending application. And so both times were, they came out in other places. So not like me, like, finally like coming to my knees or, you know, like coming to the ground to be like, hey, this is happening. This is hard. They came out in, you know, I don't know, I don't know, public ways is the right. way to say it, but in spaces involving other people where that information was then, like, disclosed or brought up from, from those spaces. Do you think that makes it different that it involved other people?

Yeah, absolutely. The impact of it is more, felt maybe more weighted because I didn't come to him initially, right? Like, I didn't come to say, hey, I'm having a really fucking hard time. I'm in debt. I've accrued this debt. Like, I need help. So we put Jordan on a good track record of like, okay, let's move this debt over to a zero percent interest credit card for a year. Let's figure out how you can ship away at it and eventually, like, get this down to zero. She was making great progress on it. Like, I think, what was it, Jordan for like two years? You got it down from what, like, $12, $10,000 to $6?

Yeah. So, like, she did a great job. I think it was really frustrating looking forward to when we were submitting letting application. is that it came again. And, like, I knew there wasn't any, like, big purchases happening or anything along those lines. And I just kind of felt like my trust was rocked in the form of really, like, not disclosing that since we had already been through it before. And the fact of, like, putting thousands of dollars again back into the credit card, which is the worst debt that you can have and not sharing about it when we're putting massive documents. out there to get approved for lending, like that's an issue for me, especially since I was the one

putting up all of the money for a home. So like, I can forgive you on the first time. I can forgive you on the second time, but like I can't, like, as a family, if we want to have a family together and grow together, like, this can't happen anymore. And like we're not rich people right now. I mean, Like, in terms of how you define it, like, yes, we're doing pretty well for our age. But at the end of the day, like, we can't really afford that going forward, especially, like, when you think of, so her parents were going to give us some money for a down payment or something, that money in conversation after this, we put towards a credit card to get rid of all of that rather than putting it in towards a home that would probably appreciate what,

maybe like 4% a year or something along those lines. It just didn't make sense. So take that out of the equation. Now it's like 100% me putting anything into this down payment plus anything that needs to go into the home. So it's heavy. But like we talk a lot about it and I think we've worked through it pretty well. But for those first two weeks, like I just kind of felt violated. And it wasn't even my money.

Notice the language that Dan is using here. He said my trust was rocked. This can't happen. again, and I felt violated. This is a huge issue in their relationship. Now, if you were in my role, what would you do right now? Where would you take the conversation? My instinct is telling me something here, telling me to dig deeper, and it's telling me that they don't fully understand the implications of what's going on right here. You know, I've talked to lots of people, and they'll say, oh yeah, this is a big deal. This is a nine out of ten. And the other partner will

agree. But when I probe to see if they really understand what's at stake, that sometimes they are weeks away from potentially ending the relationship, the other partner is totally stunned. Most people don't truly appreciate the consequences of their actions on their partner. The first time I was just more like surprised than anything. And I saw it as more of like a teachable moment. The second time it was just like we're married, like we have great communication with one another and we share everything with each other. So like, why couldn't you share this with me? The emotionality of it for me and the matter of factness of it for him is so striking for us all the time and not for us, I guess for me for sure. Everything I do is with an emotion. I don't have an

off switch. I am constantly assessing other people's emotions, my emotions. I'm I'm worried about other people's emotions. I was so sick about what would happen or what Dan's reaction would be. I knew it would be awful. I knew how disappointed he would be. I'm not buying it. Remember what I say. People with money problems love to talk about their money problems.

But it's not enough to talk about your problems. It's not even enough to admit you have a problem like Jordan just did when she admitted she knew it would be awful. This is where people commonly make a mistake. They'll say things like, I get it, I totally screwed up by showing up late again, or I know, I need to stop overspending on the credit card. Guys, admitting a problem is a good first step, but it's just the first step. Especially when a partner is involved, they need to see change, not just hear words.

I want to probe how Jordan is feeling about this. I think she's using a lot of words, but I still don't really understand how this is affecting her. There's a pretty cool TikTok trend going around right now that I really love. It's called admin nights. Basically, you get your friends together, you get some snacks, maybe some drinks, and you do all the infrastructure stuff in life that most of us skip over. If you're going to set up an admin night, here's my suggestion for you. Use Zoc Doc to book your health appointments and you will be done fast.

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Sorry. It's hard to think about. having like to hear how they are as hard but for the first time I feel like not yet like it's not heavy

and that there's a chance you know like that I have a chance to do better. That feels better and okay but I haven't been able to say that you know like prior I haven't been able to say that. been able to actually look at what I have without seeing a deep dark hole.

It was hard to have to unload it onto other people. It's still hard to have to have done that, right? Like to let other people into that hole when I go back and think about how it came, how the information came out, like how it finally came to be, I regret it, but I also, I don't know how I would have been able to have gotten to that point. otherwise they really don't. And that's so scary to think about it really is. It's so horrifying to think about.

As a partner, it's in being someone who's solution-oriented. Like, there's no way that I can't just, like, not help her through this and try to make it more approachable. And we've had those conversations, like we talked about previously of, like, okay, how do we make this where you can be a little bit more vulnerable and I can help answer questions to make it better? But at the end of the day, like, it's still, it's just a tough scenario, you know? And it's still relatively new, even though it happened once previously.

Yeah. One of the things I'm hearing from you, Dan, is that it sounds like you are willing to engage, have discussions, understand her perspective. But also, you need this problem to not. happen again. Yeah. At this point, I was feeling a little stuck. I had hoped to get them to talk about what the consequences of this behavior would be on their relationship. Instead, we sort of got sucked back into this black hole of how she feels bad. And that's very common. Again, people with money problems love to talk about their money problems. At a certain point, it almost becomes intoxicating. You cannot escape it. And yet you have Dan over here, who's being very

matter of fact, very cool about it, and that can be very dangerous to the relationship. So I was feeling stuck. I decided I'm going to zoom out, see if I can figure out what their worldview of money is. When you think about money, what's the first word that comes to mind for you? Oh, I associate my mom with money. Bingo. I didn't expect that, but boy, oh boy, is that a clue? what word comes to mind when you think about your mom and money? A lot of it. She had a lot of money? Has.

Has a lot of money. Okay. I think right now that's what I think of. If you would ask me a couple weeks ago and you'd said money, I would have said something probably really dark. Like what? Like black death? Like really, yeah, dark.

Like it was off. Heavy. Heavy. I would have said heavy. I think a lot about how I was raised with money or how I wasn't, you know, we didn't talk about it. My mom, there's still some secrets between in their relationship. And I see a lot of that. It's gone.

I don't have it anymore. I don't have debt anymore. Why? What happened? Because my mom paid it off. Jordan just went off on a long digression about money and Dan. And then right at the end, she mentioned that she used to have debt and that it magically got paid off. I was like, what?

You know, my sister's a doctor, and there's a running joke in the medical field that you sit down with your patients and you ask them what's wrong and they go, nothing, Doc, I feel fine, you know, it's just, I'm a little tired sometimes. So you talk for 15 minutes. And then as they're walking out, they have one foot literally outside the door. They turn around and go, oh, by the way, Doc, you know, I can't breathe at night and my head started bleeding two days ago and both of my feet are totally swollen. Anyway, thanks for the Tylenol prescription. Talk to you next time. This happens to me all the time like this. Why? What happened?

Because my mom paid it off. How were you raised as it relates to money? I always had it. Always had it. I could always ask for it. It was always there. And who brought in the money in your family? My mom. Your mom. And what about your dad? Did he work? He had a lot of seasonal jobs.

he had had a full-time job at one point and then got pretty sick, and so I wasn't able to do that. And so there were a string of sort of incidents that led to him being unemployed for a long time and then trying to find work and not being able to find work. So money is a pretty sensitive, it's a sensitive topic in my family, but it's also a very open topic as well. What do you mean? We talk about it, but it's touchy. How will they, how my parents spend it? Who spends it? Yeah. I think you need to go at level of deeper on it too because like her parents were raised very differently. Like her mom's family was like grew up in corporate America like her grandfather was like a staple of the community. Her dad's

side of the family was dirt poor. So like when you put those two together, that's very much how their relationship is today. So like her mom is a breadwinner. Her dad is basically retired early and kind of just takes care of the community around him. And he's kept that I grew up poor mindset, so I can't spend this money. And there's a couple levels to why her mom doesn't necessarily share things with her dad because her dad would just go crazy about it. He's possessive of how it spent, who spends it, who gets it.

I think about this a little bit in sort of our relationship too, baby. It's just like, it's, I don't make a lot of money. My dad didn't make a lot of money. Dana and my mom are very similar. My dad and I are very similar. That I think money for my dad and I is emotional. It can be emotional in the sense. And I think a lot about the way he uses or doesn't use money is, is, it's so varied.

It's so varied. Yeah. So I guess from that perspective, the sensitive thing, right? So it's, we talk about it. You know, we'll be in conversations. with my parents and we talk about money with them. And then it just, but then it depends. It's very delicate. So my dad needed a new car at some point and has never owned a brand new vehicle. Mom had said, you know, what kind of car do you want? Right? My dad loves a G-wagon. It's like his dream

car. And my mom's like, great, let's get you a G-wagon. We can get you a gene wag. Absolutely. I mean, so now he's driving my 2004 Ford Escape that has a cracked windshield and the engine, you know what I mean. He was just, you couldn't, he could not possibly imagine having put money into a car. I see. It sounds like your mom would have easily been able to afford that. And he wanted it, but he just couldn't bring himself to accept that. Is that correct? Yep. And I've been in occasions or conversations with my mom where we talk about, like, is this something that we tell dad? Do we not to, Dan's been there too? We're like, oh, do we tell them? Do we not tell them? Like, how, if we do tell him how do we tell him do we tell him all of it do we not because what if you tell him we're

going to go buy this expensive thing what how's he going to react i wish you could see my facial expressions whoever's listening dicey can you think of any deeply hurt it hurt that's a good one he's deeply deeply hurt and angry why emotional guy because he wasn't consulted yeah he didn't have a saying it's not involved even though he's not the breadwinner. Yeah. It's irrelevant. Yep.

So you walk on eggshells when it comes to financial things. You find it difficult to bring certain things up. You actually strategize about what to bring up and what not to bring up. And I'm going to venture to guess that you have probably forgotten on a couple of occasions and something slipped out and he got angry, mad. think of an example like that? Okay, this is it. This is the clue. Remember a few minutes ago when I asked you, what would you do if you were me? Now, as you're hearing what Jordan is saying about how she was raised, would you change your answer? What we're hearing right now is the crux of what's driving

Jordan's behavior, her overspending, and more importantly, her hiding of money. Can you hear it? Jordan, do you think there are any cultural issues and or gender issues? Oh, yeah. Oh, gender for sure. Talk to me about this. My dad is a macho. I mean, I think there's a lot that goes into him not making the money in our family as a male. I think that there's a lot of sensitivity to the fact that he doesn't provide for our family in some sense, right? he provides and and I think what's so fascinating is that so I'm a psychologist I mean mental health

is my game like I self-analyze the hell out of everybody and I think so often about my dad provides in so many other ways he really does he I mean he is the backbone of our family for so many reasons that aren't bringing in money or having a job but I think it cuts him in peace he worries very much so that my mom will leave you know like that that there's this other mysterious person out there that my mom could be with right you know like why is my mom with him why or why is your mom with me right like I don't bring anything to the table what is you know why am I doing why are we still together kind of a thing he can go on he'll say that in spaces yeah yep pretty openly I think yeah I think there's I think that there if it's

anything is there's definitely gender roles. I think the gender things play into it very much. Here's what I'm noticing. Jordan grew up in a dynamic where she was trained to walk on eggshells around money. She literally strategized about what to say and what not to say. If you learn from a young age that money issues are secretive and shameful, it's almost no surprise that Jordan has grown up to keep financial secrets to herself and her partner. And these are secrets that carry strong negative emotions. Imagine that from a young age, when you see money, you don't just see a $5 bill. You have an entire extra layer that rings in your head. Should I talk about this? Will dad get mad? I should probably just be quiet about this and not mention it to anybody.

It's constant. It's ever present. And after a few years, it's just a low level. buzzing in the back of your head anytime money comes up. You may think you're good, but deep down, this is like a tiny needle that's pressing on your skin every day for 25 years. You've just learned to live with it. I have this email software that I love so much. I pay for it personally. And just 20 minutes ago, I used one of its AI tools. I'm currently doing a pitch to some journalists for the story that I want to run. And I said, go through my emails for the last two years, identify every top-tier journalist that I've interacted with and then sort them based on this story that I want to pitch

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Go to superhuman.com slash remit three and try it for yourself. That's superhuman.com slash remit three, the number three. This episode of Money for Couples is brought to you by Wildgrain. Do you have someone in your life who always tries to one up you? Like if you bake a cake, they'll ask, Hey, have you tried using hand-milled flour because it just tastes so much better? You know, I prioritize my help. Hand-milled flour?

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remit at checkout. At one point, probably the second go around, I would look at my credit card statement and I would say, well, I've already got this much. So I might as well just keep on going or I've already got this much. There's nothing that I can do here. There's nothing that I can do that's going to make this better. So why bother? Or why bring somebody else in? I think that was a big one for me that I kept telling myself. It's why bring somebody else into this space when it's so awful. Why do I need to bring somebody else into this? It's already awful for me. I don't want anybody else to feel like. this, I didn't want anybody to feel what I was feeling. I felt awful.

Until have somebody else feel that way didn't feel like an option. I'll give you a real life example. So I got charged extra for this massage envy membership that I have. And I was like, uh-uh, I just read my meat's book. I'm about to call them and I'm about to get my money back. And I'm going to cut, like, I'm about to cut them up, right? And it didn't work. I came quick real fast. So I'm trying. I think the more that I can get into and the more that I can familiarize myself with the terms and the knowledge and that stuff, I certainly have more of a drive to do it than I did before. I can say that 100%. I think one of my invisible money scripts was, I can't do this. Yeah. I can't do this. It's too overwhelming. You said to me yourself that you are an

emotional person and the way you said it was almost as if to relinquish control. Yeah. And an emotional person. Therefore, I'm not good with money. Yes. And can you think of anyone else in your life who's emotional and not good with money? I mean, my dad, but he's still good with money. He just doesn't use it. Does that count? I guess. Would you describe him as good with money? No, because he doesn't use it. Yeah. So he's actually not good with money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You got me. Yep. 100%. You're living out the programming of growing up with your family as trite as it is. But it's no surprise. Yeah. Yeah.

And when I hear you talking about the anxiety you felt about even bringing it up, because as you said, you spent 50% of the time on yourself, 50% of the time on Dan, and add those up. You were 100% preoccupied with what would he say. That fear becomes so looming. It suddenly becomes its own problem. And what do we do when we encounter problems? Most of us are not solution-oriented.

It takes a lot of work to become solution-oriented. So most of us, when we encounter the problem the first time, we do the same thing everybody else does. We run away. So I can see why the first time it happened. That I understand. The second time is much trickier. I want to dig into this idea because you've both mentioned potentially having a family at some point.

And this seems like a really important issue to get corrected before that happens. adding that kind of complexity with a child or children would be very, very challenging. I think short term right now we're trying to buy a house, so a house for sure. Long term, I think travel is a big one for us and wanting to be able to travel without worrying about the, without having a worry, you know, that we can just pick where we want to go and we can go. And where do you want to go? Oh, okay, well, it was on our, I mean, I want to, Spain, I think is the next one. We got to Spain. So a house and travel, very good. Dan, what about you?

I mean, the house is the biggest piece for us right now, just because we live it every single day, especially in this crazy market. Like at that top one, two, and three for us at the moment, just because we're so engulfed in it. I think, like, two for me is I see it as more kind of like a step after the house. is having a kid. Do you guys save together? No. Mm-mm. Do you invest together?

No, I haven't got it. Okay. Do you know why you don't save and invest together? All my money was going towards debt, and I couldn't. I was keeping that a secret. And so to have those things together meant that somehow that was, I saw a connection between. That was my, that's my initial thing. Nope.

That's not it. She thinks that's it, but that's not it. That first time when we walked in the financial advisor's office and I learned of all the debt that she never shared with me. So like that kind of made me feel some sort of way. One of the principles that I want to share with both of you is something I really crystallized when I went on our honey. You might remember this story from episode four of the podcast

where I sat down with John and Wendy to teach them about the importance of both. having skin in the game if they want to play together. Skin in the game. It means if you go on a trip, everybody who comes needs to plan at least something, even if it's just bringing the sunscreen. If you haven't heard that episode yet,

go back and listen to it for the full story so that you understand this rule. But essentially, the key principle here is that one way to get buy-in is to make everybody have to put a little skin in the game. If you're bringing someone along with you in whatever part of life, they need to put some skin in the game.

Now, I think that there's an opportunity for both of you to do the same thing here. One of the reasons that you both are not saving and investing beyond the secret debt and beyond all these things, is that neither of you have anything you're actually saving for. Everything you're saving for is really boring. Did you hear it? Do you guys remember what you told me?

I'm pretty excited about this house for me. That house is cool. Okay, I'm sure it's a beautiful house. I'm sure it's great. What about the future kid? What about it? That's Spain was nice. What about the kid?

You didn't tell me anything about what you want to spend the money. He did to indicate that it was going to be a male, which I don't appreciate. No, I did. Yes, you did. You said he, and we can roll the tapes back, but that's neither here and other. Well, okay, we can talk about the gender stuff later, but I have to tell you, Dan, I'm not excited by saving for a kid. What are you going to spend the money on for your son or daughter?

All right, you got me. Some J's. Hold on. I'm not trying to get anybody. I'm trying to get your dreams out on paper so that you both have a reason to save together. And when you do this, Dan and Jordan, you're not going to have to push each other, which is I found is a really losing back. especially when you are at divergent levels of expertise and interest, but rather you're going

to be pulled towards the things that create your rich life. So I want to do a different exercise this time because I was bored by what you told me. Oh, I want to travel. So does everybody. I want to breathe oxygen. You got anything else for me? Let's dream a little bigger. So instead of a couple of things that you're interested in, I want to ask you both to take 30 seconds And I want you to think about your bucket list items. The amazing things you want to do or accomplish. And it could be individual. It could be joint together.

Take 30 seconds. I want to have multiple properties in different cities for us to be able to travel to. So like I would love to retire well before 65 and have a couple different properties that I could either, that we could either Airbnb on the side and then enjoy with friends and family if we wanted to go visit the city. For example, like I would love to have a house in Savannah. I'd love to have a place in New Orleans, another spot in Minneapolis, et such. Fantastic. Way more compelling. I love this. So you have this concept. You have multiple properties and they're big enough that you could go with friends. You could let them stay while you're not there. You could Airbnb it out for a little extra cash.

What age do you want to retire at? Man, I'd love to retire at like 55. Right. Okay, this is a vision. 55, you're driving around to the, oh, let's go to New Orleans today. Ah, you know what? Minneapolis is tomorrow. That's a rich life.

Okay, hold on to that. I love that. Jordan, what about you? I have two. One's together, one's individual. Together goal. I hope you're not going to think this is boring. man, I want to take Dan to Italy. I want to do a full-on, like, top-to-bottom train trip at Italy.

Like, start at the top, start in Milan, Cinque Tera, come down to Florence, Siena, do the whole Kianti region. The South's a little scary sometimes, but I want to take, like, an entire, I just want to go top-to-bottom, Italy together. And actually, I'd like to bring my family, too. I like traveling with her family. I think it'd be a great time. I'd like to bring my family along, our families along, and do an entire top to bottom, Italy, full court appetizers. I want the appetizers. I want the cheeseboard and plate.

I want the bottle of wine. I want all that. I want that. I love it. I am inspired and my mouth is watering. Okay, hold on. I got to ask a few questions because this is the kind of trip that I'm living for. How long is this trip in your mind?

A month. A month. Okay, so that means both of you take a month off of work, whatever work is to do it. Great. It definitely can't be less than a month. Oh, at least a month. Beautiful. And you seem to know all the cities that you want to go to.

You know that you want appetizers. You know the kind of food and drinks you want. Is there anything else in the back of your head? You know I'm going to do this. In Italy? Yeah. It's got to be in the summer. Great.

Summertime. I would like, even like, oh, those, what are those, like, boats that you get to take the gondola? I definitely want a gondola involved there. Ooh, the Amalfi Coast. That's the other one. You got to hit the Amalfi Coast and do, you know, like, I think you wrap at the Amalfi Coast on the beach where you're relaxing. Right? Or, like, you spent all that time, hustle, bustle, all the cities up top, mid-regions, Kianti,

so you catch your breath there, and then you hit the Amalfi Coast at the end of, like, top it off, cherry on top. Who's coming with you? How many people? I think, oh, two of a, I might even, I'd be intrigued to, like, bring people in and out, you know? Like, we say, hey, we're going for the month, right? We're going for one month. This is where we're going to be hop in, hop out. It's like one of those hop-on, hop-up bus tours. I love it. Dan, what do you think about this trip? This sounds fantastic. Did you know about this idea that, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, his head? She's always wanted to take me back to Italy because that's where she's studied abroad

for six months. So like it holds a very special place in her heart and my extent of traveling to Europe was like the UK for a week. So I always wanted to go. Okay. Okay. You guys, this is exciting. This is visionary. This is the kind of stuff that gets you both a reason to talk about money regularly, to learn about the mechanics of money, and to start investing early and consistently. You know, it's great because one of the things I wanted to emphasize on our call today is nothing wrong with having emotions about money. And I've had to learn this. I grew up very utilitarian, practical. Like I said, I want to get to the model. The model does not have any emotional turmoil. It's just math. It's so simple. But what I've learned is money is emotion.

It's psychological. It's rooted in our childhood. Nothing wrong with that. But you also have to apply a level of mastery to the mechanics of it. It's just like driving, right? It can be scary, but you need to learn how to drive. Great. How do you feel about learning about personal finance? Better. I feel capable, capable and competent. to take in information and ask questions about the things that I don't understand. Yes, beautiful. You trust yourself. Yeah, this is a new language you're learning. Of course, it's going to be hard. You're making mistakes. You're going to trust yourself. And you have Dan, who's really experienced, totally aligned with you. So if you have questions, you can ask him

and bounce a right. Another thing is you are emotional about money. And so am I. And so is Dan. That can be a strength when you balance it with this new knowledge that you're, you're going to get from reading the book and practice. Yeah, I love the metaphor of like it's a new language. Like learning a new language. It feels like that. That resonates a lot. I think there's such a stigma in talking about money.

And I know that firsthand. And so this, I think, was another nice step for me in the space of like being able to naturally talk about money. This was an interesting conversation. There is still a lot for Jordan to unpack about how she was raised around. money. There's also a lot for both Dan and Jordan to construct in their new joint way of looking at money. But one of the things you heard me do just in the last few minutes is to really shift them away from talking about their problems, which exist and are real and definitely need to be addressed,

and to start talking about what they want to do with their money. In other words, it's typically a very bad strategy to sit there and only talk about problems. also a horrible strategy to tell people, you got to stop that. That berating people does not work. I found it's way more compelling to help people construct their own vision of a rich life and then teach them the foundations. Learn how a Roth IRA works. Learn your debt payoff date. And when you combine those two things, this beautiful rich life vision plus the basic foundations and mechanics of money, you're on your way towards a rich life. Here's what you'll find next week on the I Will Teach You to Be Rich podcast.

I hate it because I know we're paying so much interest right now here and there, and it's all money that we could actually be paying off the debt and putting aside and savings to actually buy things, not credit, or save so we can go to a trip or save for a future cottage or this or that. Instead, we're just, I feel like we're throwing money out the window. When she asked me for stuff, I want to say yes. She's my wife. I love her. I want to please her. If you ask me where I want to be in a year, hopefully I'll be here, but might not pray.