The Unplanned Podcast with Matt & Abby - Ramit Sethi on Prenups, Renting vs. Buying, & Joint Bank Accounts - Financial Advice for Couples

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

Ramit Sethi joins Matt and Abby to dive into financial advice for couples, discussing topics like renting vs. buying, signing a prenup, and the importance of investing early. They also explore the four money types, Abby’s tendency to worry about finances, and why combining finances might be the best decision for some couples. This episode is sponsored by Acorns, Hiya, Zocdoc and Needed. Acorns: Head to https://acorns.com/unplanned or download the Acorns app to start saving and investing for your future today! Hiya: Go to https://hiyahealth.com/UNPLANNED and receive 50% off your first order. Get your kids the full-body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults. Zocdoc: Go to https://Zocdoc.com/UNPLANNED and download the Zocdoc app for FREE! Needed: Head to https://thisisneeded.com and use code UNPLANNED for 20% off your first order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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or shake up your mood with an iced brown sugar oat shaken espresso. Whatever you choose, your espresso will be handcrafted with care at Starbucks. How often do you talk about money? Oh my gosh. Deeply, oh my gosh. Maybe never.

Maybe never. In most relationships, one person is the money person. And I have to tell you, this is a big, big mistake. Where do you start? First money conversation involves no numbers. It's literally just a positive conversation where at the very end you look at each other, give each other a hug, a kiss, you say I love you,

and that's it. Buying coffee is not gonna change your financial future. So it's okay to drop eight bucks on the latte? It really makes no difference. So many of us are obsessed with $3 questions when really we should be asking $30,000 questions. Ramit Sethi is no Dave Ramsey. He does not care if you spend $15 on a latte or if you decide to spend money on first class plane tickets. But what he does care about is spending

relentlessly on the things you love and cutting back on areas that you don't really care for. That perspective has helped him teach millions of couples and families how to be smarter about their money. He's also a New York Times bestselling author and has his own show on Netflix. We talk about prenups, combining finances and why buying a house could be one of the biggest mistakes you ever make.

The first thing Abby told me when I told her we were having a money expert on our show, she was like, is this guy gonna tell me I can't buy lattes anymore? Wait, have you heard of my work? That's literally the opposite of what I talk about. I didn't even go with the name yet. I was just like, oh no.

That's actually such a great example because whenever someone hears the words personal finance, the first thing most of us think is, oh God, some old guy who doesn't look like me is gonna come on here wearing an ill-fitting suit and look down at me, shake his finger, and say, you can't spend money on lattes. It's the opposite of what I believe. My belief, just to get it right out there right now,

spend extravagantly on the things you love as long as you cut cost mercilessly on the things you don't. So truthfully, buying coffee is not gonna change your financial future. So if you love it, you might as well get it. But we can talk about other things that will actually totally change your ability to live a rich life.

So it's okay to drop eight bucks on the latte? Yes, it really makes no difference. I think so many of us are obsessed with $3 questions when really we should be asking $30,000 questions. So most of us go around life literally for 50 years. Oh, I shouldn't buy this lemonade. I know I'm bad. I'm naughty.

We use all these words. Okay. But if I ask people, what's your savings rate? They're like, what's that? I'm like, what's your asset allocation? Huh? What exact month and year is your debt gonna be paid off? What?

So we are focused on these tiny little things. Did you buy a Monster Energy drink at the gas station? Irrelevant! Do you have the four key numbers you need to know? Four, just four. And do you and your partner have a shared vision of a rich life? If you get those things right, you don't need to you and your partner have a shared vision of a rich life?

If you get those things right, you don't need to worry about the price of a cheesecake or a lemonade for the rest of your life. But what if I work at McDonald's, okay, I'm saying this because I actually did used to work at McDonald's in college. But what if I work at McDonald's, I'm making 40 grand a year,

and I spend $10 a day at Starbucks, now I'm dropping almost 10% of my annual salary on Starbucks, wouldn't that be a situation where it's like, you shouldn't get the coffee? Yeah, you probably shouldn't do that. You probably shouldn't do that. But I have to say, that's a pretty rare situation. That's not the case for the majority of people in America.

And yet, when we talk about money, most of the examples we give are people in crippling amounts of credit card debt who make lower than the median wage, et cetera. And we should address that, we should talk about that because wages are a problem, et cetera. But it is extremely rare that someone's spending 10% of their income on Starbucks.

It's much more common that people make a certain amount of money, let's just say the median amount, and they will go, they'll make coffee sometimes, they'll go out and buy coffee once in a while, and whenever they do, they go, I'm bad, ooh, I need to be good, I'm being bad right now, and they feel wracked with guilt, but they have no idea about these four key numbers, they have no idea what their vision of a rich life is, and if they did, and if they put these practices into place with Solo and with their partner, they could probably spend more on the things they love

and not feel guilty. I feel like growing up, the word rich kind of had like almost a negative connotation in my household because we were like, what was it? Lower middle class. Lower middle class. Lower middle class. And so rich in our household was like the snobby country club members.

It was like, oh, we don't need that. We have each other. Midwest, right? Yes. Okay, totally. Midwest culture around money is very much that. I talk to couples every week on my podcast, often from all over the country and world.

And the idea that we're not like those rich people. We don't need that stuff, we're simple. But that's why I loved on your show how you said a rich life could be picking your kids up from school every day. Exactly. And I think that like I kind of want to hear you more explain what rich means to you

and like a rich life looks like. Okay, thank you. And I'm so glad we get to question this word because in our country, we have this paradox of how we treat money. We love rich people and love money. We follow them on Instagram, we follow them in celebrity magazines,

we're obsessed with them, but we also hate them. We hate the rich. And we have this love hate relationship with money that is quite confusing if you try to explain it to somebody from another country. Yeah. When I think about rich, rich can be traveling for two months a year, rich can be buying a beautiful coat or rich can be picking up your kids from school every afternoon. But the key is your rich life is yours and mine is gonna be very different.

And that's okay. For example, I split my time with my wife between here, Manhattan and LA. We could buy a house, we don't. Why? Because that's not our rich life at this chapter of our life. And so we rent, in fact I've made more money renting than owning, which is quite surprising.

We can talk about that. Every person's rich life is gonna be different and the more you get crisp about what your rich life is, the more you turn that dial, the more you're gonna love your life and the more confusing it's gonna be to other people. Like I caught your eye when I said I rent. You're like, what? Well, I knew, I knew when I listened to your podcast, you were on a podcast like a year and a half ago. I listened to it. It was very, very good podcast. And you said

that you were renting then I thought, well, surely like a year and a half later, like I'm sure the New York times bestselling books done pretty well. You've probably made some good money off that. So even now you're still renting. Wait, wait, so let's keep this sentence going, I love this. Surely you must have bought because? Because you're making money, you're doing well financially. Exactly, and so the implication,

or what I call the invisible script, the belief that we hold so deeply that we don't even realize it's invisible, is that in America, when you have money, of course you're gonna buy a house. But that's not necessarily true. In America, we believe when you have money, you probably buy a big car or SUV.

Not necessarily true and on and on and on. What I'm trying to get people to really internalize is you get to choose your rich life. If you want to live in a small apartment and go to Lincoln Center all the time, go to the ballet, go see Broadway shows, you can do that. Or if you wanna have a big house and have your parents live with you,

maybe that's part of your rich life. The more and more that I talk to people, the more and more fascinated I get when they have a different vision of a rich life than everybody else. So in your book you say that the 10th rule about money is to marry the right person. But in an interview I heard you say that you can almost argue that's the most important rule about money. Why is marrying the right person the most important rule when it comes to money?

So important. Okay, so I've been married six years. How long have you guys been married for? Five and a half. Five years. Oh wow, congrats, okay, this is cool. So it's funny reflecting back on what you looked for in a partner when you were dating versus what you would look for now. I think when you get married,

you realize there's so much more to a relationship than obvious physical attraction, now. I think when you get married you realize there's so much more to a relationship than obvious physical attraction, even do we like to travel together, do we like to eat the same kind of food. It goes much deeper and both of us have been, all of us have been married for a relatively short amount of time, but you start to realize you want someone who perhaps is reliable. My wife and I talk so much about how we are so happy to be married to someone who's positive. Like we're both just kind of naturally like,

we laugh a lot, we joke a lot. You need that, right? Because life gets tough at some point, one way or another, and you want to know you have somebody you can depend on who's just there. So when I, I have 10 money rules, anyone can go online and search Ramith 10 money rules. Please note, these are my money rules.

They're not anybody else's, they're just mine. And I'd like to do a little exercise with everyone listening and watching, which is I would like for everyone to create your 10 money rules. And I love rules, many of us think rules are all restrictive. So the first time I ask people to create a money rule, they go, no credit card debt,

don't eat out more than once a month. Like it's all these restriction things. And I go, okay, I let them do it. And then I go, look at those rules. How do you feel about them? And they go, I feel like I should do better. I go, do you feel good or bad? They go, I feel horrible.

I go, your money rules are supposed to make you feel fucking good, not bad. So let's throw this shit up. Start again. My money rules, I'll give you some examples. I start off, the first two or three are very practical. It's like save 10%, invest 20%. Fine, that's like just a practical thing.

You could make yours 2%, 5%, whatever. Then I start getting into the fun stuff. Unlimited spending on books and appetizers. Why? This is meaningful to me because when I was in college, I had many scholarships to pay my way through undergrad and grad school. And one of my scholarships gave me

an account at the bookstore and I could go in and buy any book anytime and walk out free. It felt like, for a guy, I love to read. I felt like I was in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Like I can have any book in the world. And so when I graduated. Just speaking her language, she loves books.

That sounds incredible. Okay, okay, let's talk about this. So I graduated and I said to myself, I'm giving myself the gift of continuing that tradition for the rest of my life. I'm gonna renew that membership. There we go, yeah. So ever since then, I have a Rameet's money rule

about Rameet's book buying rule, says if I ever see a book I like, buy it. No question, get it. Don't even debate it for five seconds. So I have a huge collection of books and that feels incredibly rich to me. Same thing for appetizers. When I was a kid, we were very middle class.

We ate out very rarely. When we did, we ate at a pizza place where we had a coupon and we never ever ordered appetizers because my parents, we didn't have a lot of money. They're immigrants from India. Well, now that I'm grown up, to be able to order appetizers,

it doesn't just feel like a $10 purchase. It feels like a million bucks. So I gave myself the gift of unlimited appetizers. So if I ever eat out with anybody, especially from work, I go listen, the only rule tonight is if you see anything on the menu, you have to order it. And it's that look in their eyes is the same look I got when I realized I can buy appetizers.

So these are the kind of money rules that we create. And then I have some very extravagant ones. One is business class flights on anything over four hours. I was listening to you talk about that while we were on the plane and I was sitting in economy, like, okay, maybe we should upgrade. Why did you decide to do that though? Because I mean, you're right, it's like quadruple sometimes

to get business class over economy. Because I can and because I want to. I feel like our sport is doing direct. Wait actually, I don't think we've ever, we've never once paid for anything other than economy have we? No and I don't think we, I don't, I don't see that being one of our rules. Like, like doing social media, like there's been two times maybe, maybe three times where a brand has paid for us to be in like the business class or whatever, just get a little bit more leg room. But I read that and I was like, man, this guy's,

he's ballin' dude, he's freakin' ballin'. I appreciate that. I'll tell you what, so if you're listening to this, you might be going like, must be nice, I can't afford that. Okay, not all money rules are gonna be applicable to you. I have ones that are even bigger than that. That's okay, that's within my means. And the second thing is, you might be listening,

and go, I don't really care about that. Like, I don't travel that much, or my legs are short, or I just don't care, I'd rather spend money on something else. That's why I don't care. Yeah, so that's also okay. You're like, that's not a value that I share. Yeah. Perfectly fine. So like for example, my wife, one of her money dials,

a money dial is a thing you love to spend money on, and if you want, you could turn that up. Her money dial is self-care. I'm talking about massage, blowouts, all that stuff. She loves it. I have no interest in it. It's just not for me. But I love hotels. I loves it. I have no interest in it. It's just not for me. But I love hotels.

I love them. I know every hotel I want to go to. I know the specific room I want to go to. I think the beautiful part about this is you and your partner don't have to agree on all of it, but you can find a way to make it harmonious.

So you have your own 10 rules, but your spouse, you recommend that each person has their 10 rules. I think every person should have money rules. What is a great reminder, it sort of takes all the decisions you make on a week, month, annual basis, and it rolls it up to these things that reflect your values. That's number one, but then my wife and I

have money rules together, and we also have some specific ones like for travel, for generosity. We have specific rules for the things that are important to us. So I'll give you a couple examples for folks to use. I have a bunch more in the book that you can just use. But one of them might be we tip a minimum of 30%.

If that's important to you, maybe if you worked in the service industry before, you go, we just want to be generous tippers. That's good. Fantastic. Another one might be, whenever there is an opportunity to see family, we take it. That's good.

And so if you're like sitting around debating, oh, should we go a couple days early to see the grandparents, et cetera, you just look at each other, you go, it's one of our rules. Of course we're going to do it. Thank you to Acorns for sponsoring this portion of today's episode. Do you want to start investing, grandparents, et cetera, you just look at each other, you go, it's one of our rules. Of course we're gonna do it. Thank you to Acorns for sponsoring this portion of today's episode.

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you've got right now. You can start with $5 or even just your spare change. And I think that's really great because it makes something as big and confusing as investing can be attainable for you and me. So head to acorns.com slash unplanned or download the Acorns app to start saving and investing for your future today. Paid non-client endorsement. Compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns. Tier one compensation provided. Investing involves risk. Acorns advisors, LLC, and SEC registered investment advisor. View important disclosures at acorns.com slash unplanned. So these are rules that are meaningful to you that might not resonate with somebody else. And that's how it should be.

And it works that way, right? Because you cut back on the things you don't care about by being aware of your... Rather than ignoring your finances and saying, oh, that's scary. I'm not going to look at the numbers. The numbers scare me. You look at the numbers, you see where you're spending money, and you cut back on areas that you don't care about

and splurge more in the areas that you do care about. Exactly. That you're happier and it makes you happier and more fulfilled. And it's a cycle, exactly. So for example, like my wife and I are not really into eating out that much. It's not really, even though we're in these big cities, so we don't spend a lot of money on that.

We'd rather take that money and spend it on things like traveling. Same thing with like some big fancy SUV, it's really not for us. Or even a huge house with 10 bedrooms. It's not for us at this stage of life. So you wanna be clear about what you love, and you also wanna be clear about what you don't.

But here's my little tip, start with what you do love. It's really easy to get into a negativity vortex, and you go, we're not fancy food people, we're not this. I go, listen, nice to know, but you can't define yourself by what you're not. Start by what you love. Not like, but love. Let's start there. That is so, so good. And I think that's a lot more effective at helping someone get on top of their finances because people don't get motivated. Sure, people can be motivated by fear, right?

If your finances are falling apart, fear is gonna force you to figure something out, but it's a lot more fun to focus on the positive things, right, and to think about, okay, I want to hopefully one day be wealthy, how can I get there? And rather than thinking about, oh, that thing's too expensive, I can't afford it.

Rather than always saying, can't afford it, Rather than always saying, can't afford it, can't afford it, can't afford it, it's like, what if you ask the question, how can I afford it? Love it. By the way, I can't afford it, I believe is a phrase that should be banned in households, especially if you have kids. I'll tell you why.

I speak to couples every week on my podcast, and I'll ask them, what do you remember growing up? What phrases did your family say about money when you were young? Over 80% of the time, it's we can't afford it. That's it. Now get this. Maybe it's true.

Maybe they couldn't afford it. But you hear it once, you hear it 100 times, you hear it 10,000 times by the time you leave your home. And you really see money from purely a source of restriction, of scarcity, of we can't, not a source of spontaneity and generosity and adventure. So many of those folks who tell me they grew up hearing that they often go on to do pretty well. They'll make money. They'll have some savings. They might have $5,000 in savings. Sometimes I speak to couples who have $8, $10 million.

They still feel they can't afford it. So parents need to be very careful about the phrases they use because it's not an offhand comment. Your kids hear it and they believe it and they internalize it and 20 years or 30 years from now they might be on my podcast because they have saved and accumulated a lot and they still believe they can't afford it.

I love that you have a new book now, Money for Couples, which thank you so much for bringing it, happy of it. I really appreciate that. As we've been talking, I've been thinking about a couple listening to this podcast right now who probably got married and things are really good. They were vibing well, they had great chemistry, they laughed a lot. You said that you and your wife laugh a lot. I love

that because Abby and I laugh a lot too and that's something that I love about her. She's so freaking funny. But they probably like, most people don't get married for the wrong reason. Okay, most people don't get married when things are bad. They get married because things are good, right? But what a lot of people fall into is, is money problems. Like things are good. They don't, they're not thinking about money when they get married. And then now all of a sudden they're arguing about money all the time.

It's a huge point of conflict. And so what do you do in that situation? How should couples who like genuinely do love each other deep down but they're fighting all the time about money and they don't know how to fix it? What should they do? I'm going to give you the short answer and then I'm going to tell you how to do it. The short answer in a sentence is you've got to develop a shared vision of a rich life. I can tell you that almost no couple has this. What do I mean by that? It means we know what we are working towards.

We know what excites us. And that shared vision could be as small as we wanna take a date night together once a month. If that's what's feasible for you right now, or even not that, we wanna buy an extra iPhone charger so we can have one in our living room and one in our bed. It could be as small as that. Sometimes that's the state we're at.

But we've come up with this decision together. When I talk to couples who are fighting about money, I can tell you the most common fights are, he spends too much money eating out. We don't have that money. Or she goes to Target, the Target obsession drives me insane. It's very gendered as well, I don't like it. The idea that like, oh, I walked into Target to spend $25

and I walked out with $600, ha ha, I don't like that. So they'll fight about this stuff, but they'll fight about it for 30 years. I look at their numbers, because I have access to all of their net worth, spending all of it, and I'm like, you guys, I'll talk to them very politely,

but I'll go, what do you think the problem is here? And they'll, he spends too much on iced tea every weekday. And I'm looking and they're spending 45% of gross income on their housing. And to most people, they don't even know what I'm looking and they're spending 45% of gross income on their housing. And to most people they don't even know what I'm talking about. 45, what are you talking about? What that means is they're overspending

in a couple of key areas, they don't realize it, so they think it's his or her bad habit. And this is why we have to have a shared vision of a rich life. If your shared vision is we're gonna go on vacation once a year, or we're gonna put our kids in tennis camp, et cetera. Perfect, let's start there, and then let's know our four numbers,

let's use our four numbers in our conscious spending plan, and look at our numbers. Most of us don't do this. In fact, 50% of the people I talk to do not know their household income. I'm gonna say it again, because people- Really? Yes, it's unbelievable.

No way. 50, not one five, but five oh, 50% of people do not know their household income. Gosh. How can you expect to live a rich life? How can you even expect to have a conversation about money if you don't know the very basics? And that's why I wrote the book.

It's that, yeah, I'll teach you the basics. That stuff's not hard, but I wanna show you how to do it together. Because you can have a lot of fun along the way. You can probably spend more on the stuff you love without even realizing it, but you gotta know your numbers and you gotta master your money psychology. I feel so guilty right now because like, we,

okay, so we're lucky to be in a decent financial position. Like we used to not be, we used to, like we were very poor when we were first married and living in low income housing, but I feel like we need to talk about money more. I know we don't talk about it enough. And I know that- You can hook me if you're like unlimited books. Unlimited books. I know when you said limited books. Wait, that's amazing. Wait, hold on. Let's talk about this. This is amazing. Right here.

I'm sorry. This is going to turn into my own podcast. I'm taking over this podcast now. This is the Money for Couples podcast. Okay. so how often do you talk about money? Oh my gosh, not a lot. I just get Abby excited when I'm like, babe, like, money, like you're doing good. Like I remind her, like, you know, business is good and like we're making, we're making good money. And I tell her, I tell her about our investments. I'm like, babe, we're able to invest, we're investing this much here every month, and she gets fired up about that. Because it feels really good to know when your money's working for you,

not the other way around. If you always have to be a slave to money and you're always working for it just to pay your bills, I feel like that's a horrible way to live. So how often? I feel like we talk about it very surface level, regularly, but deeply, oh my gosh. Maybe never.

Maybe never. Yeah, well can I tell you that, everything you're saying sounds really common. You are in good company, because first of all, I would say the general tenor seems pretty positive, which is great. Most couples only talk about money three or four times in their entire life.

I'm talking seriously. Not, oh, how much should we spend on this Christmas gift? They talk about it when they have kids, excuse me, when they buy a house. They talk about it if and when they have kids. And pretty much they skip forward to around age 58 when they're like, ooh, retirement's coming up, we should look at it. But they don't really talk about it substantively.

Let me give you an example of what I mean by that. You should be talking about money at least once a month. Formally, sitting down, you have an agenda. It's called the monthly money meeting. I have the exact agenda that my wife and I use. Every month, and you start off with a compliment. You start off by saying, babe, thank you for planning our travel.

Every time we go somewhere, you always make sure that we have a great hotel. Something that makes you and your partner feel good. Yeah. That's because we need to connect money with feeling good. Yes. That's every month. Then you talk about a couple of key numbers. Each of you have some ownership over the numbers.

Whether or not you're both working, each of you has some ownership. And then you talk about what's coming up. Oh, is our dishwasher on the fritz? I'm really excited about going to this restaurant next month. Whatever. Then, six months into the year, you do like a short tweaking session.

Is there anything we need to tweak? Is there anything coming up? How are we doing according to our projections? We still have time to adjust. Did we overspend on eating out? Let's make a couple changes. We can still be on track for the whole year. Perfect, light, easy, nice mid-year check-in.

At the end of the year, which is, you know, you really have your annual rich life review. My wife and I just did this. You sit down and we tend to do it somewhere different. We wanna be thinking big. So we're somewhere expansive Somewhere that feels inspiring to us, but it could be anywhere could be a quiet coffee shop And we really talk about what went well this year

We'll sometimes look through our photos will pick our favorite photos and memories just to relive it. What went well What do we want to do more of next year? What didn't go so well? Maybe we don't want to spend money on X or Y or, ugh, like that one thing we did, I don't want to do it anymore, what do you think? Okay, and then we talk about what's our theme for next year? What do we want to change next year?

What do we want to do? And this is where it might be traveling, it might be something with the kids, it might be something together. Let's do a relationship conference. Let's go somewhere. Let's learn something. I want to learn how to take better photos.

And you can now, now that you have the vision, what do we want to change, what do we love, what do we want to double down on, now you can look at your numbers. Notice that the numbers come after the vision. So if you talk about it monthly, every six months quick check in and at the end of the year,

you will be so connected over money. Abby, you said when we were on the plane ride here to New York City, you said that you related a lot. I think to like the woman on Ramit's TV show, your TV show, your TV show is How to Get Rich on Netflix. And so you said you connected to her a lot because she was saying how it felt,

like you wanted to feel safe when it came to money, right? I guess, fill me in on that. Cause like, tell me more about like your view on, wait, why are you looking at me like that? No, I'm trying to think of like the example you came up with, but I think like definitely like talking about money before, like definitely caused like worry in me. Yeah.

Like I was like, oh, like we should definitely cut back more. Like we could definitely save money in this way. And like, even, even watching the show on the plane, you looked at me and you're like, are we going to be okay? You're like, is, we have enough money in this way. And like, even watching the show on the plane, you looked at me, you're like, are we gonna be okay? You're like, is, we have enough money in our accounts? Like you were genuinely like worried watching the TV show and like, no, we're good. And I think it's cause you just spent a lot of money on,

more money than we usually do on Christmas gifts. We've been a little bit more spendy, but that was all stuff we'd accounted for. Can I ask you a question? You drive? When you drive, what are the two major controls you use with your feet? Gas and brakes. When you think about money, do you primarily think about cutting back?

Yeah, probably. Yeah. So this is classic tendency of one of my four money types called the worrier. And the worrier, especially somebody who grew up in the Midwest, often has one control for money. And it's less. Let's cut back. They're a worrier by nature, so are we gonna have enough? Is this too much?

I don't know and The way that they the only way that they can see to control it is Slam on the brakes now. I don't mind that once in a while. You do have to put the brakes on I don't like to slam on it, but I like to you know, be mindful Thank you to Haya for sponsoring this portion of today's episode Our kids love Haya Griffin has been loving Haya ever since he turned two. He got to have his own little refillable Haya jar that he got to decorate with his stickers. And then the eco-friendly refills are just shipped right to our door, which makes it really convenient for us.

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on their regular website. Go to hyahealth.com slash unplanned and get your kids the full body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults. Can I ask you, Abby, when was the last time you used the gas for money? Probably when you were buying furniture for a house. Well that, oh I guess, we did buy a new house.

We just moved into a brand new house. Did you do it intentionally? If I were to say when you were going through the process, are you excited about spending this money? I was, because we had set a budget, so then I felt like safe. I was like, okay, well anything within or under this, like we can have fun with.

Okay, are you curious what she means when she says the word safe? Cause I know you don't think about money that way. Yeah, I guess I am. What do you mean by that? Cause I don't feel unsafe when it comes to money. I don't feel worried. I don't know.

I'm like, if we spend over this amount, then like, I don't know. It just feels like, oh, it's just gonna run out and we're not gonna make ends meet, I don't know. What feels unsafe to you? Keep asking, keep asking. Say, tell me what you mean. Tell me what you mean.

Like, it feels like, it feels fun to spend money when it's like, this is, we have, you know, made arrangements already for this to be spent. But then if it's like just casual or over what we expected, then that feel like stressed out. Yeah. That, no, that totally makes sense. I think, yeah, no, that, that, that makes a lot of sense. I think when there are categories, like sometimes when you get your nails done, you're like, is this a bad idea getting my nails done? I'm like, babe, it's in the budget.

Like, we're chilling, we're doing good. Why do you think she asked that? I think it's really because we should have the monthly money meeting. I think we need to be on board together about what the vision is for our family with money. And I've always had it up in here in my head. But not out on paper.

And yes, and I know that we're on a good track, but my biggest fear, and it's funny, a lot of this comes back to fear, my biggest fear is like, let's say I get in a car accident and I go away. Abby has no idea what the vision is for our money. She has no idea what the plan is, because I went to school for finance,

I'm very passionate about money and investments. I think it's really, I think it's so much fun. And I think it's empowering for just people in general to take their life, you know, take life by the reins and have control of their life. But I think because of a lot of it's up here, if I were to like die, Abby wouldn't know where our accounts are. She wouldn't know where things are. And I think that's, that's not a good thing. Okay. Let's, can we talk about it? Yeah. So interesting.

Are you curious about this? Like I can see this is the first time you've kind of pulled on some of these threads, the safety one, so interesting. And it personally connects with me because when my wife and I were first really talking about money, we were, we, uh, we were talking about a prenup and, um,up and I brought it up and I can go through the whole thing but it started off pretty well and then it started getting pretty hard. Like we were fighting and I felt resentful and she didn't feel heard and she finally said like this is not going well. We need to go see a therapist. So we did.

Actually, we just went on, like, Google and we searched therapist near us, literally. We went to the first one, it was right outside our apartment. We're like, whatever. And she was great. She sat us down and she was talking to us and then she said, how do you see money?

She looked at me. I was like, such an easy question. This is my business. And I said, growth. I could literally see the rule of 72 floating in front of my eyes and compound interest. It was so obvious. And then she turns to my wife, asked the same question.

My wife said, safety. I said, what? Safe? What the hell? To me, that's the equivalent of saying beef or windowsill. It just has no connection for me because I see money completely differently.

I suspect you see money maybe more as growth or optimization. Right? Yeah. And so if the two of you see money differently, in fact quite similarly how my wife and I saw it, then you can connect on a surface level, but you can't go deeper.

And things will come up in odd ways. For example, let's just fast forward a few more years, your kids are a little older, you might go, let's put them in this activity, let's get them this coach, let's do this enrichment thing. And I'm sure you want to as well, but you might be the one who starts to say, Abby, I don't know, what if this, what if that?

And he might then go, well, we have the money, obviously, like look at these compound interest numbers, et cetera. And you will start to develop this dynamic where you suggest something, you then say, I don't know, I worry, and then he starts to reassure you. That dynamic is really common. And I think there's a better way to do it, which is let's first acknowledge how we feel about money,

how we see money, how we talk about money. Let's, there's nothing wrong with us. We all just have different views, that's okay. Let's realize that there are other ways to look at it. Let's create a vision together. What is our vision? We can always change our vision. Every year we have the opportunity to re-look at it,

change it, add to it, delete it. And let's then use our money to live our rich life. My wife will always feel that safety is an important thing to her. That's never going to change. But she's also added on the ability to see growth. I now understand more about connecting with her emotionally, and she's done amazing amounts of work to be able to converse about numbers. So I think I see a really positive future

for the two of you connecting about money. Thank you. You have started to explain investments to me. Wait, what did I explain? You wanna say it? I don't know if we should expose it. We don't need a- Quiz time. We don't have to talk about amounts.

I know, we've invested. We don't need to say amounts. We don't need to say which investment vehicles. And like how, when, like retirement ideas even, like, you know. Well, yeah, I mean, like a goal for us is to make enough passively from our investments to where we wouldn't need to work anymore so that like our work would just be purely for the passion of it. And yeah, is that kind of what you're thinking?

That made me excited when we talked about that. Yeah. Well, I love that. So finding the way to connect with each other about what gets you excited, because we don't need to explain everything with money on day one. Yeah.

And often in relationships, there's one person who knows a little bit more about money. Can I, can I tell you, you said something about if I got hit by a bus, Abby would, you know, be in trouble. Yes. Let's talk about this. In most relationships, one person is the money person.

And I have to tell you this is a big, big mistake. In every relationship, one person probably empties the dishwasher, another person maybe makes the bed or whatever, that's fine. Certain people are better at certain things or have more inclination for it, I don't mind that. But money is not like emptying the dishwasher. Money is much more like parenting.

You would never say like, oh, they do the parenting. Because it is complex and dynamic. It affects where you live, what you eat, who you are. And so we can't have one person being the money person. And I gotta tell you, when my wife and I got together, obviously I know more about money, it's what I do for a living. I insisted that we both get involved with money, both of us.

That's good. And I gotta tell you, it was freaking hard. It would've been way easier for me to just do it. I could do it my way, same way I did when I was single. I'm like, let me roll this thing out. It's like you fold your easier for me to just do it. I could do it my way. Same way I did when I was single. I'm like, let me roll this thing out. It's like you fold your laundry the way you want to fold it. It's like the laundry is my job. I'm going to do it the way I want to do it and we don't have to fight about it.

Yeah. And I think laundry is fine. Like one person probably does it. Fine. But like I did it for three reasons. One, if I get hit by a bus one day, I want her to be not just comfortable, but fucking good at money. I don't want some head from Goldman Sachs wealth management calling her up like a vulture. Oh, how about our 1.6% AUM fee? Fuck you.

No, she's gonna hang up the phone, but first she's gonna roast him. I'll be looking down from heaven, I'll be clapping. Great job, babe. Love you. That's number one. Part of my job as the person who knows more about money is to equip her, and she's done an amazing job, right?

So partners, we're a team. The next is I need a second set of eyes. We need to do this together. We need to check each other. Look over, hey, am I making mistakes? Turns out she's way better at certain things with money than I am. Thank God. And the third is just more fun.

It's just more fun to do it together. So like I said, every December we dream. What do we wanna do? What do we wanna do more of, less of? I can't do that alone. It's boring. Or I can do it, it's okay. But it's way more fun with my wife. So one person might be more knowledgeable. You even might be more inclined

to handle investments. Okay. I sort of do more of the investments, but my wife and I know and we talk about the amounts. We talk about our percentages, and those things she knows very well. Something I realized this while we've been chatting, I'm like, why do I not talk to Abby more about money? And then I was realizing like, oh, it's because, like I started to relax a little bit when Abby does like quite a few brand deals now like on her social media accounts that are just hers,

which is freaking awesome. Like she's, what's funny is Abby probably would have never gotten into social media if it wasn't for me, because it's more so, it was more so like my passion for video creation that led to us doing this. But she just happens to be like extremely talented at being on camera and she's so funny and so like,

she just has an addictive personality. So part of, I think part of my money fears went away when I was like, well, if I die, I mean, she's gonna be just fine. She's making so much money on her own. Like, she could go on some podcast talk about, you know, how hard it was on her when her husband got hit by a bus. You know that if you got hit by a bus, I would disappear. This is amazing. I think everybody, we hear him engineering his own premature death. Please don't do it! You don't need it! You're gonna be fine. I would not be on anyone's podcast if Matt got hit by a bus.

That would be the last you ever saw my face. If I got hit by a bus and you didn't like take advantage of that and like go on a podcast. Monetize it. She comes on wearing all black. It's a tragic time for us. But also I wanna make sure I promote, there's a couple of bereavement supplements.

Resources for it. If I get hit by a bus or like fall off a cliff, someone's like, please write a book about it. I just think that'd be so dope. Is this a guy thing that we love joking about death? Cause I do the exact same thing. It's so funny.

Exactly. And she's like, stop this. And I'm like, babe, it's like, I literally am joking about looking down on from heaven. It's like life's too short. We got a joke about something. I'm definitely going to hell after these jokes. Oh my God. Oh my God.

Okay, so check this out. Like the two of you, partners, not the money person. Like that feels really good. Now Abby, I'm curious, what would it feel like? What's an area of your life where you're really comfortable, competent, you just feel good, you're in flow? I feel like with the kids, with meals, like I feel like I'm really good at planning

and preparing meals and grocery shopping. You're an amazing mom, an amazing host. Do we have someone at our house like every week, like a grandma, an aunt, an uncle, a friend. Like our house is a revolving door. Abby's an incredible host. And you just, you know what to shop for, what to prepare. When you do that, when you shop and you think about

what to create, whether it's grandma or somebody has some dietary restriction, do you have like 50 documents in Google Docs or does it just come to you more like someone creating art? I definitely don't have Google Docs. Mm-hmm. I don't like that. It's more intuitive?

Yes. Okay, I love that. I think that we all have something we're intuitive at. I think sometimes men have less. Like I'm a pretty logical, freaking spreadsheet dork, and I find that when I travel is one time where I'm way more intuitive. Like I kind of, I go like, oh I feel like we should go

to Japan, or I feel this, and it's just like much more intuitive, I love connecting with that intuitive side. So to go back to you hosting, what would it feel like if you were that smooth and calm and in flow with money? I feel like that'd be a confidence booster for sure. What would it look like? If I looked at you and observed you in control,

feeling really positive about money in your household, what would I see? I feel like I would be able to make quick decisions about it because it would not be like this elusive mystery. Yeah, like right now it's kind of murky, right? Yeah. Should we do this? I don't know.

Let's worry about it for two weeks and then and then he'll convince you like it's or avoid it. Yeah. Okay, so you would be decisive, I love that. Give me a couple more. Would you wait for Matt to bring it up? I could start the conversation myself, bring it up. Nice, so you would be proactive.

Proactive. I love that, decisive, proactive, give me one more. Would there be things that you do for yourself? What do you spend money on for yourself? Uh, I get my nails done. They look amazing by the way. Show off those nails, babe. Show the camera.

Wow. They do look very nice. Thank you to ZocDoc for sponsoring this portion of today's episode. I have ADHD in case you didn't know. And I got diagnosed this past year. Thanks to Zococdoc. It was so easy to set up an appointment online. I just downloaded an app on my phone. Actually, correction, Abby downloaded an app on my phone because she's the one who booked the appointment. Then I got my

medicine and that was extremely, extremely helpful. It's definitely that season you guys. I feel like even our own family but all our friends have just been in and out of so many random bugs and snotty noses, itchy throats, coughing, puking, stomach aches. And so that's why I'm really thankful to ZocDoc. ZocDoc is a free app and website where you can search and compare highly quality and network doctors and click to instantly book an appointment and to be able to talk with a professional through these things and so quickly, you can sometimes score same-day appointments but usually they just need 24 to 72 hours. That is huge and especially when you have sick kids, you're not really wanting to get out of the

house and it can sometimes be hard to find availability. It's just so nice to have this resource in your back pocket as a parent and as an individual that may or may not get sick because we've definitely caught our fair share of these illnesses as well. You can filter for doctors who take your insurance also, who are located nearby, who are a good fit for you and your medical needs, and they're highly rated by verified patients. They have everything you guys. From mental health to dental health, from skincare to eye care, ZocDoc has got you covered. I use ZocDoc and you should too. Stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go

to ZocDoc.com slash unplanned to those doctors appointments and go to Zoc Doc dot com slash Unplanned to find an instantly book a top-rated doctor today. That's Z O C D O C dot com slash unplanned Zoc Doc dot com slash unplanned. Do you feel comfortable when you splurge on yourself? Okay, that's a no maybe not Yeah, like I'm like oh that that feels fine No. Maybe not. We didn't even need to see the camera. I feel kind of guilty. I feel good in sporting on the kids. Yeah. Like, and like, oh that feels fine, but. And I like sporting on other people too. But not yourself.

Not myself, I mean, not that I don't do it, but I do feel guilty about it. Okay, so if I can suggest the third thing I might see would be you spending money on yourself in whatever form, as long as you can afford it, and being super confident. It might be something like you tell Matt, hey, thanks for watching the kids,

I'm going to get my nails done, I'm so excited. No apologizing, no equivocating, no talking about how I got a good deal. It's just, this is part of what I do. Those are the things that I might see in your rich life if you were really in flow with money. I like this exercise and I use it as an example for everyone listening and watching because

we all have something in our life that we are confident at, that we're pretty good at. It might be cooking, it might be what we do at work, it might be parenting, traveling, whatever. And I love to be able to help people connect that to money. For most people, money feels confusing, it feels cryptic, it feels like everyone else has access to this secret language that I don't. And what I love to show people is, you know, if you're, like I talk to a lot of people

who are, they look visibly fit. I go, you look pretty fit. How do you go to the gym four times a week? They go, well you just make a plan. You have it on your calendar. You have the food prepped the night before, et cetera. I go, wow, what would it look like

if you could do that for money? I help them translate their competence in one area to money. And as you start to get more specific, you go, oh my God, I would bring up the conversations, et cetera. So for everyone watching and listening, try to imagine that transference of competence.

Try to imagine the area of life you're so good at, what would it look like and feel like with money? And the good news is, you can actually do that. You've mentioned a lot about how you're kind of like a nerd when it comes to spreadsheets. I'm the same way. I like looking at numbers and I love that. I think it's fun.

It gets me excited. Aren't you a weirdo? Like, aren't we weird? It's weird. Something wrong with us. I loved math in school. I don't know. It was just like one of my favorite subjects,

but like what should someone do if they aren't like that, but they wanna take their finances by the reins? Like, is there a money app that you would recommend? I know like we don't need an app. You don't need an app. I have no apps, no money apps on my phone. Really? No, why would I?

What do I need to log into my account? This is what warriors do. We're talking about the four money types. Warriors love to log into their accounts. Oh, what's in my checking account? Do I have enough? Even though they have enough. If they don't, that's a larger problem

that an app is not gonna solve. You don't need money apps. You don't need to distract yourself with $3 questions. You need to start the opposite level, start higher. So let's talk about four money types because you and I are the same. Four money types, okay. So the first is avoider.

It's pretty self-explanatory. Avoiders love to avoid talking about money. They use a series of conscious and unconscious techniques to do so. A lot of people listening, your partner might be an avoider. I say that because if you're an avoider of money, you already turned this freaking episode off a long time ago.

But your partner, you might say things like, how do I get him to want to talk about money? Every time I bring it up, he says, you handle that, babe. I'm not great at money. I'm not good at math. You do such a great job. That's just a verbal tick to get you to take back control

because they don't want it. You can make changes with avoiders and I can talk about strategies. The major strategy here is you have a candid conversation with them where you say, look, it's really important to me. I want to recalibrate the way we talk about strategies. The major strategy here is you have a candid conversation with them where you say, look, it's really important to me. I wanna recalibrate the way we talk about money. I need your help. I want you to be a partner in this.

I feel lonely. And then you both connect emotionally first and then over a series of some of the scripts in the book, you eventually hand off a couple of numbers in your finances to them. They now own it. Maybe they're in charge of tracking how much you all eat out. And they own one number, then two,

and soon each of you own three or four numbers. That's amazing, now you have a partner, okay? The second money type, worrier. Abby, care to tell us what a worrier does? I feel like I might be an avoider now that you just grabbed the word. Oh, shut up. I you just grabbed the voider. Oh!

I'm one of the bad ones. No, no, no, these are not. Okay, listen, no moral judgment. Like, all of these have positives and negatives, but the good news is you can change them, you can add to them, and it doesn't mean you're a bad person. It just means that we all have a certain relationship

with money. If we spent more time, we'd probably find out more about how you were raised and it would explain a lot. Worriers worry about money, but they rarely know their actual numbers. They have a feeling about money. Oh, there we go.

Often their parents said things like, we can't afford it, why would you spend money on that? We don't spend money on, like, we're not rich people, we don't need all that stuff, et cetera. They often worry so much that it becomes automatic and reflexive, so I'll ask a worrier, if you didn't worry about money, how would you feel about it?

And they're confused, like, I don't know. I go, if you weren't a worrier, who would you be? They have no idea because their entire identity around money is worrying. And sometimes they believe that worrying means I'm taking care of things. They reframe it to be positive. They go, well of course I'm gonna look at it like,

I don't wanna avoid money. I go, do you think that in order to be on top of your money you have to worry about it? Abby? Yeah, maybe. Maybe that's being conscientious. Yeah, there you go, exactly. I love the reframe.

So our minds have these very creative ways of reframing certain things to be positive. And my next question I'll always say to them, I'm gonna ask you, I go, look at me, I'm conscientious about my money, do I look like I worry about it? Right, so what's the difference? You know the numbers.

Exactly, I know the numbers and I have found a way to get excited about it, et cetera. So that's number two, that's worrier. The third is optimizer. I am an optimizer, you are an optimizer. Optimizers can be good to a certain point. They love numbers, they have spreadsheets, they love planning, when are we gonna retire,

what about putting money aside in the 529, blah blah blah. Great, that's led me to be financially successful. The problem is, optimizers can become very boring. They live their entire life in a spreadsheet. Yes, okay, look at this, look at the facial expressions. I'm like, gotcha. We, we can become very boring. They live their entire life in a spreadsheet. Yes, okay, look at the facial expressions. I'm like, gotcha. We can become very boring. We will plan and plan and plan for the most esoteric unexpected thing that's gonna happen in 2090, but we often forget about living for today. Yep. And also

optimizers like us can often speak in a language that doesn't connect with the people around us. Bingo. Yeah. Look at this compound interest return. It's cumulative, it's growing. I'm glad you said that because something that I've learned recently is you can say the right thing,

but to the wrong audience, and it doesn't communicate correctly. So I was communicating all these exciting things about money and growth and stuff that would just get me fired up, but I was using language that wasn't speaking to the person, Abby, as the audience that I was talking to, and she, and it would just scare her. It would just worry her, you know, and I think I'm glad, I'm glad you mentioned that because yeah, it's like I'm speaking a different language. She's like, what the frick are you saying?

Like, what is... This is the same thing that happened with us. Yeah. It totally connects with me. You might be saying the right thing. In fact, from the way you talk about it, it sounds like you enjoy it. You're probably pretty good at it.

I think it's so much fun. You know, I actually realized this while we were talking. Money to me means freedom. And the reason it means freedom to me is because I see how people with money can choose their hours, can choose what they do any time of the day if they get to that point where they don't have to work for money anymore. And on top of that, because I think first you need like personal freedom, but then it gives you freedom to do really good things in the world, right?

Like we're in New York City and I just saw people walking around outside that are homeless. And where we live, we don't see people, or maybe the proper, you know, term now is unhoused, but, you know, where we live, we don't see people all the time that are unhoused. And it breaks my heart. I'm just like, how can we fix this? How can we help these people? If you don't have money, you can't really do that much. I mean, you can volunteer your time, but if you have lots of money, you can do a lot of really cool, amazing things to make the world a better place. And that gets me excited. I like that. I like that a lot.

I can see also the way you think, like you said, I like freedom and then you broke it down into two subcategories of freedom. It's very logical, it connects with me. Watch this, Abby, the word freedom, does it get you pumped? Not as much. Freedom to be a full-time stay at home mom.

Yeah, that gets me excited. Love it, look at the bridge you just did. So freedom, great concept, to me, 80, 90% of the people I talk to, they go, freedom, I love freedom. I go, what does it mean to you? They go, I could do what I want, when I want. I go, so boring. Because to you? They go, I could do what I want, when I want. I go, so boring.

Because the next question I ask them is, what do you want? And then they just look at me blankly. What I love is going deeper. We can't just use words to describe our rich life. We gotta go deeper. So Abby, I love that you want to be or are a stay at home mom. Amazing.

And so if I were in your household helping you work on improving your money relationship, I might go deeper. I might go, Abby, what would it look like if we could make you being a stay at home mom easier? What would that look like to you? Quick answers, like right off the bat. Is there any answer?

If not, let's just say no. I don't think. Nothing, you love it. Okay, what would it look like if we could make being a stay at home mom more fun? I feel like we have been able to do that, but it was like getting a zoo membership. We got them a membership to like an indoor trampoline park.

Love it. Getting out of the house with the kids makes it so much more fun. Love that. And there's a lot of free things we do and then there's also like fun paid activities that we do. For someone that's listening that might be confused, Abby works, basically works part-time, would you say? You were like 20 to 30 hours a week? Yes. And so she spends a lot of time with the kids throughout the entire week. And I'm working with the kids a lot too. And you're with the kids, yeah, Abby's with the kids a ton. I'm with the kids in the mornings and then in the evenings,

but I work from like eight to five, Monday through Friday. But like for Abby, what people don't realize is, you know, there's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes when you have an Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat account that you have to run. There's a lot of stuff Abby does behind the scenes and I do too. So for her, you know, running that, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat account that you have to run. There's a lot of stuff Abby does behind the scenes and I do too. So for her, you know, running that,

doing social media is her job. It's a lot of work. And it is a lot of work, but she, yeah, so she's like basically a part-time stay-at-home mom. And I think one day, I know for Abby, she would love to be a full-time stay-at-home mom. Okay, got it. That's why I was like, I don't know if I should say

I'm a stay-at-home mom because I still do work with it. Okay, let's, I love the clarity. I should say I'm a stay at home mom because I still do work. But. Yeah. Okay, let's, I love the clarity. So to me, this is super interesting. It's like, you already have a great setup. The way you're doing it sounds like you're having a lot of fun and you're enjoying it. And maybe the next milestone is to be a full time

stay at home mom. Okay, if that's what you want, fantastic. And then I would talk about, first of all, what would it look like? Would that get you excited? When would you want, fantastic. And then I would talk about, first of all, what would it look like? Would that get you excited? When would you wanna do it? Would it be like tomorrow, next year, et cetera? And then what do we need to do with our money

in order to make that happen? And now, when you're optimizing and talking about investing, now you can connect it to your next milestone, which might be full-time stay at home. And then maybe you're like, what would it mean for our family to be more adventurous? Maybe we're taking a trip to be more generous. Maybe we're taking them to do service somewhere.

Like these are the ways that you can take your knowledge of Money Mat and connect with Abby. And then Abby, I would want the same thing for you, which is to not simply wait for him to bring it up, but for you to read the book, become really competent with money, because that's where confidence is gonna come from, and then to say, hey, here's what I'm thinking

for our family, here's what I'm thinking about for money, and then for you two to work it out together. That's when you are teammates, which is super connective. I like that a lot. I love how you, we kind of just had like a money therapy session right there with you like talking to us, which is so, so good. And I feel like the people listening, they're probably thinking, man,

I probably should do the same thing. I wish everyone could have the experience of having you walk them through. Well, I've sent this episode to your husband. Sent this episode to your husband. Listen to it together. So you're on the same page. Totally.

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thisisneeded.com and use code unplPLAN for 20% off your first order. Okay, so having a conversation kind of feels like, all right, where do you start? Like, figuring out your income or household income? First money conversation, I call it your first positive money conversation, involves no numbers. Common mistake, think about when the two of you met.

When people meet, maybe they're just early dating, we don't need to share our entire life history. We just need to have a little fun, see if we like the person, if they like us, and then we can talk about the next thing next time. Same thing with money. So we build this idea up that we need to pull out our entire investment thing, no.

Your first money conversation has four parts and it's very quick. This is like a 10 minute conversation and then wrap it up. So you can have this whether you are early in your relationship, whether you're married, whether you've been married for 40 years. Most couples haven't had a positive conversation, so we're going to do it right now. Step one, you go to your partner, you go,

hey, I wonder if we can talk about money for a second. I realize that when we've talked about money in the past, it's not going the direction I want it to go. Sometimes it feels like I'm attacking you, and I have to admit that sometimes I get way in the weeds, and I'd like to change that. Notice in part one, I have shared with vulnerability. Everyone's got something that you're probably not the best at.

Admit it. Like for me, I would be like, I know I get way too into the numbers and I don't like, I'm not listening as much as I should. And you're not on the attack. You're opening up talking about yourself rather than saying, you do this wrong. You do that. You overspend that target and I'm sick of it. You're gonna get nowhere with that. Yeah, you're doomed already.

So starting with some vulnerability, something that you realize, something that you maybe wanna change. Okay, next you go, right now, when we talk, when I think about money, I feel overwhelmed, I feel overwhelmed. I feel scared. I feel lonely, et cetera. How do you feel about money?

Share that. And then ask your partner, what about you? This is so important because when I hear couples talk about money, like a shocking high percentage amount of the time, it's just one person talking, talking, talking, and then there's no question at the end. It's just a monologue. And that's why nobody wants to listen to that. They just go, oh God, how long until this is over?

You gotta have a dialogue. So you ask them, what do you think? Get your partner involved. That's part two, which is again, how I feel about money today. Your partner might be like, I feel attacked all the time. I feel judged, et cetera. Listen to them, don't respond, just listen.

Third, how I wanna feel. I wanna feel positive. I wanna feel in control, I wanna feel connected. How about you? And your partner might not know, that's okay if they don't know. You know, you kind of just confronted them with this. That's okay. Give them some grace. But you go, that's cool. We could talk about it another time. And step four is simply, when should we talk about money next? That's it. Notice we're not talking about credit card debt. We're not talking about

ratio. None of it. It's literally just a positive conversation where at the very end you look at each other, you give each other a hug, a kiss, you say I love you, and that's it. And that feeling of the two of you holding hands is even more important than what you said in the conversation. Get that feeling going.

Start to make money something that is positive. And you have lots of time to talk about investing and you have so much time for that. But right now we just wanna start off by feeling good together. Yes. I just got distracted because did we do all four money types?

We skipped one. Oh we did, okay. That's okay, I'll hit it for you. That was very, that was very cool. I really latched onto that. Don't quiz me on the money types because I definitely heard. So to refresh,

avoider, worrier, optimizer, and the last one is dreamer. So let's talk about dreamer. Dreamers, for dreamers, success is always one deal away. They need to close one more gig, one more deal. Dreamers, they tend to become embroiled in get rich quick schemes, MLMs, et cetera. They just believe like,

this thing is gonna make me finally successful. They also have developed a very interesting language that stigmatizes like nine to five workers. They go, I don't want a nine to five. They look down on that and therefore they are too elevated to be able to get a nine to five. They have to do their own thing their own way. Nine to fives can be great.

I agree. If that fits into your goals as a human being, like what's wrong with a nine to five? Totally agree. And I say that as someone who is an entrepreneur and also employs a lot of people who work nine to five. I think it's amazing. It's a really good thing.

You choose what you want in your life. So I will tell you this, it's very difficult to be the partner of a dreamer because they are essentially living in a different universe. They don't wanna talk about money. They're not reading Money for Couples, the book. They don't wanna talk about a conscious spending plan. They will avoid it at all costs

and they will simply come back to you and say, it's all about this one next deal, this one next thing, et cetera. Here's the twist. Often, the only reason that dreamers can live in La La Land is that they are subsidized by someone else, meaning maybe they're not earning that much money. It often is their partner who is contributing

or their parents or their someway. To give you a simple example, if you left for three months and went somewhere, they would probably find a way to make stuff work, like they would get a job or they would make it work or they would crash. But often there is an enabler dynamic with dreamers that allows them to continue dreaming. If you find yourself partnered up with someone who maybe won't get a job or won't follow

through on basic things with money, then you need to have some serious conversations with yourself, with your partner. And I would probably suggest with the help of a therapist because it is very difficult to be partnered with a dreamer if you want to be financially successful. I feel like a lot of people though who are listening to this might be in a situation where they can't afford a therapist because obviously the issue is money.

What do you do in that situation if you can't afford it? Like who should step in? Who should be the mediator between the two of you? It's very difficult. This is a great question. So let's talk about a couple of things. First of all, there's lots of free resources. You can get my book from the library. My podcast is free There's plenty of other great resources online. I would encourage you to listen to those and read those just to start

next up is Finding a therapist is very difficult in America. It's expensive. It's it's difficult. There are a whole bunch of reasons for it But if possible, I would say that even being able to speak to somebody, a third party, can be so helpful. My wife and I have spoken to a therapist and I love talking about it because I wanna destigmatize mental health just like we all value physical health.

And you say it's expensive, I agree, but also consider what might happen without the help of a therapist. Divorce, which is also extremely expensive. Incredibly expensive. So at a certain point, if you're, you know, if you're, if this is a real problem, there are no good options,

but you need to find the option that works for you. And I'm not encouraging anybody to go into severe debt to see a therapist, I don't think anyone would do that. But it's important that you find a way forward. You can't simply wait for something to change on its own. Well, I love that you said there's free resources because I think like, I've heard like churches and temples and different like religious organizations,

I think, have free counseling that's available. Or it could just even be, you know, maybe a really trusted friend if you're in that situation where you can't afford therapy. Because yeah, that's what stinks about money is the money conversation doesn't happen on the first date, typically. Some people are weird and do have that conversation I might be weird though that would bring that stuff up

but like, you know for most people it's it's not a they don't talk about until things go south and That's why I love that's why I love the resources that you provide. I also love that you've been vulnerable Like you were saying earlier about talking to your spouse about signing a prenup, because that's something that you guys went through. Can you enlighten me more on what that process is like, because that world is foreign to me. Yeah, man, that was one of the scariest moments of my life, just bringing it up. So my wife and I, we were not engaged at the time.

We were, but we were pretty serious, and it was clear that we were on a very serious path. So we had a meeting, we sat down, I still have a Google calendar invite and we literally like had an agenda. This is me, the optimizer freak. I know, I'm a weirdo. This is like, optimizers are like, what's the agenda?

But we talked about all the things that you would talk about in a serious relationship. Do we want kids? Where do we wanna live? Like can you imagine, we were living in Manhattan. Can you imagine if one of us was like, I wanna live on a subsistence farm. What the fuck?

What are you talking about? We're on the 50th floor and you wanna go to a farm? It's good to know ahead of time. We talk about that. And one of the things that I brought up was a prenup. Now I have to tell you that I was terrified of bringing this up. I had talked to a lot of friends and buddies

and all kinds of stuff. And I kind of like really thought about what I was gonna say. So I said to her, I said, there's one other thing. You know me, you've known me, you know who I am, what I spend my money on, and by virtue of me having this business for like 15 plus years, and hard work and a lot of luck,

I've been able to build this business, and I've been able to build up a portfolio. It's really important to me that we discuss a prenup. I was like, I couldn't breathe. But it was important for me. And I wanna point out for anyone listening, I looked for advice online. There were so many blogs and stuff that said,

blame it on your family lawyer, blame it on this. I said no, like this is gonna be my wife. I'm gonna be honest, like you have to be able to have the courage to be honest. This is the least of what we're gonna talk about in our life. Yeah, you lie to your soon to be spouse and say, yeah, my family lawyer.

Oh, these lawyers these days, man. It's so cowardly. It's a bad way to start a marriage. So many people do that. Anyway, I was like, no way, I'm gonna do this. And so I practiced, and I spoke to her and she, she reacted the best possible way that I could have hoped. She said, wow, like I didn't expect that.

I don't know much about a pre-nup, but I'm willing to learn. Okay, fantastic. I could finally breathe. We then each got a lawyer. In this case, I paid for her lawyer, but she had her own independent lawyer. Sometimes if one partner can't pay for their own lawyer,

the other partner is obligated to, that's totally fine. Sometimes they might have their own attorney, whatever, but each person has their own attorney. How do you navigate that though? Cause like a lawyer is supposed to fight for you and your best interest, but then you're paying for hers. So you like want her best interest, but then you also need your best interest and you're getting married.

Like that just seems like such a tough thing. Well, it's really tough. Okay. That's why it got really hard for us. So I, um, wow, where do I start? We, so we talked about it. Of course, my wife and I talked about it and like, where do I start? So we talked about it. Of course, my wife and I talked about it, and like, what is this thing?

And we talked about real numbers, and we got the lawyers involved, and that's when it became pretty hard. Each lawyer was doing their job. I don't blame anybody. Each lawyer was representing their client. I like to be generous. It's one of my own personal values, generosity.

And so I'm not trying to take advantage of the person who's gonna become my wife. I wanna be super generous so we can feel good, wrap this up, and continue on with wedding planning. And I thought, I felt really good about it, and then we went back and forth, she didn't feel listened to. I started to feel resentful and that is when she suggested we go and see a therapist and that was a great decision.

I'm so glad she really suggested that because I was frustrated in so many ways. I'm like, I'm the personal finance guy. I thought this would be easier. It is so hard. It doesn't feel great. And I love her. But why are we fighting in this way?

Why are we not agreeing? When we went to see the therapist, it really unlocked so much for us. It really unlocked. And we ended up signing the prenup. We were both glad we did it. But I'll tell you what, the surprise is that the prenup is just the first part of it.

We then got married, we had a beautiful wedding, and we then moved in together and combined our money. And then that's when it becomes really like complicated in a different way. It's how do we combine our money? I was single for a long time. Now it's not just me, it's we. How do we decide on our shared vision for a rich?

Who's doing what part of the labor of it? What if we disagree on this and that? How do we set our accounts up? This stuff is complicated. And as an optimizer, I want a nice system. I want it to be organized. And my wife wanted us to connect more emotionally. And so I have to say, she did an amazing job getting knowledgeable about money.

She really rose up. She did such a great job. She got her own coaching outside, a coaching on money psychology, and she learned how money works. She did such an awesome job, and then I had to work a lot on connecting emotionally. And that was hard for me.

That doesn't come naturally to me. But it was so important because I know this is gonna be us for the rest of our lives together. I want to feel good. So one of the key decisions I made was that we've both got to do this together. I'm not going to be the money guy. And that was a great decision. We both now talk about it regularly. We've discovered she's so awesome at certain parts of money. I'm great at others and we combine like a

team. I would say that it took us a couple of years, couple of years to really be in flow, in sync, but it was totally worth it. I really wanna talk about combining your assets because there's so many different opinions on that. I know a lot of couples that have separate. Yeah, they do the Venmo thing. Yeah, for like their mortgage.

Wow. And we actually combined our finances before we got married, which you probably would. We had no money. You probably wouldn we actually combined our finances before we got married, which you probably would. That was, we had the money. You probably would recommend that. But before we get into that though. I don't think that's a good idea.

Probably not the best idea. But before we get into that though, I do want to ask, and I'm so still curious about prenups, I'm so curious. What do most people do with the prenup? Like is it, is the typical prenup. You make it disappear after a certain amount of time. Well yeah, do you have like, do you have like a timeline of like, okay, if we're together for 50 years

and the prenup disappears, or do most people do the thing of, yeah, actually just- Good question, yeah. What does it look like? Yeah, I actually am glad you're asking. After we signed our prenup, it was a lot of work for us

and it was like very emotionally stressful. We both talked about it and we were like, we wanna talk about this publicly. I asked her, is it okay if I go on public and share this? And she was like, yes, because this is stuff that is totally hidden. It's always behind closed doors. There's nothing really good written about it online.

The first, as far as I know, the first big kind of like expose or sharing of how it works is when I went on the Tim Ferriss podcast and talked about it. And so I'm very happy to share how it works. So first of all, prenup really is not applicable for most people. It's applicable if one or both parties have pre-marital assets, meaning you have some sort

of asset before the wedding, before the marriage. That would be things like maybe you own a house, maybe you have a business, maybe you have a large portfolio, et cetera. But if it's like the majority of my friends, especially ones who got married in their 20s, do not have a prenup, nor should they, because they didn't have a huge disproportionate asset base.

Maybe one person had $10,000 more than the other, but it's have a huge disproportionate asset base. They're like, maybe one person had $10,000 more than the other, but it's not a huge difference. What a prenup is, is let's discuss what would happen to the premarital assets in the worst case that we separate for some reason. And I know there's a real big distaste for the concept of a prenup. The way most of us think about it is like

some rich asshole, richy rich with a top hat, rolls up in his chauffeured limousine and like rolls down the window and tries to screw his partner over. That's a very kind of like caricature of how it works. Really what it is is if you think about like any type of business contract, you sign a contract of what happens if it goes well,

what happens if it doesn't. It's funny you say that because the first time I heard about prenups was my mom brought it up to me because we had some like extended family member, I forget their name or who it was, but one of our like extended family members married somebody, married into a very wealthy family,

and that family wanted this individual to sign a prenup. Yeah, makes sense. And I guess my mom's family members, parents or something, were not happy about that. They thought that was really slimy, these rich snobs, these bad people. And so that was the only thing I'd ever heard about them. So I was like, oh yeah, this is, why would you ever do that? That's bad. I like your curiosity.

I really like it. Because what you're saying is actually how most Americans think about it. They go, you're already planning to get divorced. You're planning for failure. That's how I thought about it. I literally had no exposure. I thought Indian people don't really get pre-naps etc. But that's not quite

true. It turns out that basically like the way I grew up, many people I know got married by like around 30, 35. It's just that they hadn't accumulated a large amount of assets. So why would they get a prenup? There's no reason for it. In my case, and for whatever reason, other people's cases, they might have bought a house or something, so it makes sense. I wanna say another thing. In America, we have this concept of marriage as romance. The idea that it's all about love and romance.

I don't mind that, I love my wife, it was romantic getting married, I love it. But my parents had an arranged marriage. Seven days, married. Married. Yeah, I love it. But my parents had an arranged marriage. Seven days, married. Married. Yeah, I'm not kidding. And seven, wait, seven days from the time their parents decided they were getting married.

From the time they met to the time they got married. Seven days. So, and culturally, even though that's less common these days, a lot of parents will introduce their kids, you know, and they meet and stuff like that. It's more of a relaxed arranged marriage. Not seven days anymore. The reason I bring that up is that for most of history,

marriage was not purely romantic. That's like 150 years old. Americans have a very short view of history. Marriage was economic, marriage was social. It was not just like, oh, this is so romantic. It was a business. Marriage was economic, marriage was social. It was not just like, oh, this is so romantic. It was a business. And I'm pragmatic.

Marriage is a business. It is the business of coming together and running a household together. And once we accept that, of course there's romance. Of course I love my wife in a way that is different than my colleagues at work. But it's also, wife in a way that is different than my colleagues at work, but it's also we have a business to run. Yeah. Who's doing this? Who's doing that? What happens if this happens? What happens if you're sick? We got to

talk about these. So when I finally understood that, then a prenup, especially with disproportionate assets or whatever, made a lot of sense. So the way that a prenup works is basically what happens if we separate? Those assets which were accumulated before you got married, what happens? If you don't decide, they just get split up or the state decides.

And a prenup basically says, hey, let's not let the government decide, let's decide together. So there's lots of different details of a prenup. It goes into if you have kids, which partner will leave the house until the school year ends. There's certain amounts that the higher earner might pay,

what happens about this and that. But you can come up with a variety of different things. The thing is it's gotta be fair. So it can't be like one person has like $50 million and the other person's left out on the street in the rain. That will never fly. Nor would anyone really try to do that. That's kind of more in like Hollywood.

You want it to be fair and one of the things that I said to my wife was, I want you to know that you're never gonna have to worry about money. That's what I said. And I meant it. The problem was I didn't have the skills to communicate it in a way that

connected with her. I was like, look at this spreadsheet. If we compound this 34 years, 7 percent real interest rate. What? I look back, I want to kill myself. Why did you talk like that? But the sentiment was there.

I want you to know that you're never gonna have to worry about, that we are never gonna have to worry about money. And I meant it. And now that I have the skills to be able to communicate that and really connect, and so does my wife, that is why I wrote Money for Couples. Can we get people excited for a second about money?

I know, let's keep this short, because I feel like I'm a nerd and I like this stuff, maybe everybody else wouldn't care. But can do like is there a certain illustration or example we could give of if you invest x amount every month for so many years this is what you'll end up with after it compounds like is there like a certain example you can give like that? Well we can do the actual calculator. Should I do it? Yeah search for compound interest calculator. Compound interest. Matt has me do this all the time. Maybe, here's, oh. And then you're like, oh God, again. And then he's like, what does that number say, babe? And I'm like, okay. Do the third, what's the, what are the,

give me the second or third URL, it's obvious. This is investor.gov. No, okay, that's fine, that's fine. That's fine, okay. So initial investment, what are we doing? All right, let's pick one of your listeners. Give me how old they are, 20s? 25, a 25 year old female who's married and has a kid. Love it 25 year old. They're making

What do you say? 60 70k? Yeah, I want to say should we say 60 to be conservative? 60,000 a year that's less than the median income. So let's say 80k 80,000. Okay, okay And they're young so they might not be making that they're young but let's just say cuz they're gonna get a little bit older Etc. Let's say What do you say? Okay, and they're young, so they might not be making that. They're young, but let's just say, because they're gonna get a little bit older, et cetera. Let's say, what do you say, 70K? 70,000 a year. Let's say that, we'll be conservative. 70K, so they're going to invest,

let's just say, for easy math, 7,000 a year. I know that's a lot, people going, this guy's a freak. Okay, make it 5,000 a year. Okay, so wait, crap, 5,000, the monthly contribution of 5,000. No, not monthly, annual. Can you do annual contribution? If not, we'll just adjust the math.

It's give me monthly, but. Make it 450 a month. 450 a month, okay, so $450 a month. So for everyone listening, if you put $450 a month away. Starting at 25 till they're 65, 40 years. Yeah, 40 years. Okay.

Matt is so excited right now. I love this stuff. He's like, let's get people excited. Let's get on calculator. Yeah, I know. You know, everyone just turned this podcast on. They're like, this is the worst fucking podcast, but I'm gonna do it, cause I love it.

Go on, two optimizers. And we'll be conservative. We'll say they didn't save, they spent all their money. They had zero in savings. So initial investment zero, 450 bucks a month, and this is for 40 years. Interest rate, should we do 7% to be conservative? 7% real return, good job.

Okay, and then. Hold on, so I'm sorry, Abby, you have to bear through this. It's okay, this is only you. You like landed in the snake's nest of two optimizers. We're really vibing right now. What amount do you think we're gonna have after 40 years of this? I have no frame of reference.

I don't even wanna guess. I just think it's so stupid. Everyone gets it wrong. There's no way to get it right. 25 years old, they're investing, 450 a month. How much do you think you're gonna have? Matt, I'm about to turn it over to you. After 40 years?

Yeah. Just sitting in that years? Yeah. Just sitting in that account? Yeah. Pick a number. 500,000. Whoa! Okay, that's a good pick.

That's a good guess. What do you got? Dude, I already saw the number, so I don't want to spoil it. Say the number. Well, okay, here's my question. Oh, God. This is me being dumb. Is this compound frequency should be annual?

Yeah, it doesn't matter. It's fine. Okay. Because it's saying after 40 years of putting aside 450 bucks a month, it's $1,078,029, which is insane. Okay, now I want, so what do you think about that? I didn't do very good. You did a great job. You were actually very close.

I want to give meaning to what this means. That's crazy. Can I say something though? Matt cannot control himself right now. I have to say this. The total contributions over 40 years is 216 grand, right? this means. Can I say something though? Matt cannot control himself right now. I have to say this, the total contributions over 40 years is 216 grand, right? You're putting aside 450 bucks a month, that's a good chunk. But what's crazy is the 216,000 turned into one, yeah, over a million, which is just like,

that's you five extra money. Okay, nobody cares, man. This is like so irrelevant. People are like, what the fuck is this guy talking about? Can I make this normal for normal people? Okay, listen, the beautiful part about that example is if you start investing, especially if you are early, like all the people listening here, you can accumulate a lot of money. In many cases, more money than you ever thought possible. I talked to a couple in the Midwest.

They had all the Midwest things that you grew up with and they were conservatively investing just like that, over time, every month, automatic. Not, it wasn't, they weren't trying at all, they were just put it in there automatically. They had never thought about how much they're gonna have. Never. I ran some very simple calculations for them

and I showed it to them. And the answer was something like $4.5 million. That's a lot of money. That's young too, like at age 60. And I said, what do you think? They go, they just didn't believe me. They were just silent. And I said, what do you think, $4.5 million?

They said, that can't be right. That's not who we are. Yeah. And one of the reasons that I love talking about money, especially when we talk about compounding and growing, is that your identity will change with money. You know this phrase, money changes people. We've heard it.

Money should change people. Money has made me more adventurous, more spontaneous, more generous. And I want you to embrace that. There's nothing wrong. You don't have to apologize for, wow, we have good jobs, we saved money, we're able to take trips and be generous generous with charities. Like that is a gift

I actually think it's a tragedy to live a smaller life than you can to go your entire life agonizing over buying a pencil Because you just couldn't be bothered to learn how compound interest works. No, that's not acceptable to me So now to bring it back to the numbers Yeah acceptable to me. So now to bring it back to the numbers. Yeah. A million dollars at age 65. If I ask people is that a lot or not, they have no idea. They always kind of say the same thing. They go, that's nice, like a little more.

I go, how much? 1.5. I go, how'd you pick that number? They go, I don't know. Yeah. It's just arbitrary. We have no idea. So I'm gonna give people a little guideline

on how to think about it. There's a, first of all, anyone can go online, type compound interest calculator, Ramit, and you'll find my calculator or whatever calculator pops up. You can type in some numbers and you can project how much you'll have. That's the first thing.

That calculation we did was really conservative because those people are gonna start earning more money. They're gonna be able to contribute more. You're right. They're gonna have, in my opinion, two to three million dollars without much work. Yeah, most people make more at like 35 or 45 than they did when they were 25. So that, I mean, I think what's cool is you can have a million dollars if you make like not the most money for, like, yeah, if your salary doesn't change at all, you could still be a millionaire in four years.

Yeah, multimillionaire. But the next thing is, what does it mean? So just as a quick guideline, there's something called the 4% rule, and in retirement, you can safely withdraw 4% of your money per year. So just to give an example, if you have a million bucks, that means you will have about $40,000 of income per year.

Now, if you all had to live on $40,000 of income, how would that be? We would not be able to do that. Yeah, that would suck. We gotta factor in a couple other things. Maybe if you own a house, your house is paid off by then. Once you start to understand that, you go, oh, that's why we should probably plan to live in our house

for a long time and not keep refinancing it, blah, blah, blah. The second thing is you're also gonna have social security. But the third thing is, now that you know that, you can see your future like a crystal ball. And suddenly you can go, hey, maybe we should put an extra 100 bucks a month. Whoa, that would actually give us 1.1 million.

Maybe we take every time we get a bonus and we put it in there. Suddenly we have two million. Or what if we work for an extra three years? The point is, right now you just look at these numbers, it just looks like a bunch of random numbers. But we need to connect it and make it have meaning for us. Yeah.

I love that you brought up buying a house because I feel like the house buying decision is one of the biggest hot topics for couples for married couples Unmarried couples just anybody in general who's in their 20s thinking about the future is like I want to buy a house It's the American dream, right the white picket fence, you know, you got the kids playing in the yard Buying a house is such it's also like a flex too Like if you're a young person and you own a house, I feel like there's like the status of like, oh, well I own a house, whatever.

And that's why I respect you so much for being the money guy who's like, you know, teaches people about money, but you don't even own a house. So can we talk about that? What's, what, what, yeah. Let's talk about the house buying decision. It is the single biggest financial purchase that any of us will make,

and virtually nobody runs the numbers. This is not acceptable. We make the biggest decision of our life based on licking our finger and putting it up in the air. We make it based on what you said, what you called the American dream. The American dream, that's not one created by the corrupt national association of realtors.

The American dream is what you choose it to be. And you might want a house, you might not. You might want a house later in life. That's totally up to you, but I don't believe in making the biggest purchase of our life without running numbers and simply for status reasons. My argument when it comes to housing is very simple. Run the numbers.

What do I mean by that? In some cases, buying a house can be a great financial decision. A lot of people have made money on house, that's great. In a lot of cases, especially now, renting can actually be a better financial decision. And we need to run the numbers on that. For example, in 100% of the top 50 US metro cities

in the US, it is currently cheaper to rent than to buy. Stop, you're kidding. 100%. And let me tell people the most shocking thing of all, I've been renting for 20 years. I've made more money renting than I would have owning. A lot more. Because you're just taking all the money

you save renting and investing in. Yeah, let me give you a specific example to put it all in context. Talking about Manhattan here, when I lived here pre-COVID, I'm a weird optimizer freak who tracks all real estate transactions around my neighborhood. So I lived in an apartment and there was a building right out my window, same view, same square footage, same number of bedrooms and bathrooms, very similar.

Let's just pretend that my apartment cost $3,000 a month to rent. Okay, let's just pretend. that apartment cost $3,000 a month to rent. Okay, let's just pretend. That apartment would have cost $6,600 a month to own. In other words, more than two times more expensive. Yep. So what did I do? I go, why the hell would I buy that? I take all the money, so like $3,600 a month

in this example, and I invested it. Investing is not comp, a lot of people going, what did you invest in some secret stock? No, it's very simple, index funds, I cover all the stuff in my book. And over time, that ended up growing so much that it made way more than I ever would have had by owning. Even if I were to own it and sell it,

I still would have more because of opportunity cost down payment all that stuff And one other thing lifestyle some people love doing things around the house My rich life is never walking into a Home Depot for the rest of my life. I don't want to do it I don't want to repair stuff. I don't want to fix it. I feel the same way. Yeah, so at this stage of our lives Having to just text a landlord and have them fix it, fantastic. Here's what I'm saying to people. Most people have no idea about even the basics of

your house should cost typically less than 28% of gross income. That's how you know if you can afford your house. Most people are like, oh, I like that house. Let's find a way to buy it. Let's see if I qualify. Wrong. If the lender qualifies me.

Yes, never listen to a realtor and never listen to a lender for financial advice. They're the worst people in the world to listen to. They serve a job, put them in a box, and that is their job. But you do not ask them for advice. It makes no sense. Why would you ask the commission-based person for advice? I love how when you get fired up,

your figure starts to do this. Your, your voice realtor's realtor's really hate me, but I'm glad I'm glad I'll see all of you in hell too. So I can't believe how many people literally go through the biggest purchase of their life and they never ran two or three simple calculations or they rely on the realtor to like give them financial advice. It's like the realtor is a salesperson. Thank you. They sell you a house. They make a lot of money off of you because they are a salesperson. I'm getting so mad right now, but I love it. I love

the rage. I love it. It feeds me. Are you uncomfortable right now? Are you okay? I'm familiar with rage. How do you feel about, I know you as a, you're amazing. Okay, you guys say run the numbers, what do you mean by run the numbers? Let's talk about it, I love that. Such a great question. So, the first thing I would do is, if I were thinking about buying a house, I would talk to my partner and say, hey, like, I'm kind of feeling like I'd really love to buy a house and I would have a conversation, a dialogue. Partner, because you've gone through the book, you've built this connection, you go like, oh, tell me why, what's interesting about that?

Like, where would you want to live? What would the house look like? And you're talking about this, right? You're not like, ugh, we can't afford that. That's a shutdown, we don't want that. Yeah. Tell me more. What would it look like? Oh, not like, ugh, we can't afford that. That's a shutdown, we don't want that. Tell me more. What would it look like?

Oh, I want a yard, we have a dog, whatever. Okay, cool. What do you think about the numbers? If you have built the foundation for healthy money conversations, both of you know your numbers, meaning you know your four key numbers, fixed cost savings, investment, skill-free spending,

and the person who's brought this up has done like a preliminary easy plan. Well, I think we could afford it if we weren't paying rent here, blah, blah, blah. Okay, cool. How do you run the numbers though? I'll tell you right now. You go online, you can search for buy versus rent calculator

and you plug in your rent. Let's say you're paying two grand a month in rent. Let's just say. And let's say that the mortgage would cost you, let's say 2,000 bucks a month. Okay. What would you do? You'd buy.

You'd buy, why? Because if you're gonna pay the same amount to own, why would you pay that money and not own the asset? Okay, what do you say, Abby? Yep. Same thing, okay. This is a Abby? Yep. Same thing, okay. This is a very common response. My answer, maybe.

Oh! Maybe, maybe not. So, most people would agree with you. In fact, 95% of people would say like, oh, if it's the same price, of course, why would I throw money away on rent? Why would I pay my landlord's rent? All these BS phrases.

Let me tell you why I say they're BS. Do you throw money away when you go out to eat at a sushi restaurant? No, you get great sushi, you have a nice time. Do you care that you are paying your sushi restaurant owner's mortgage? No, it's irrelevant to you. You're getting a service and you're happy to do it.

So why do we say the same thing about rent? Makes no sense. If you actually ran the numbers on a buy versus rent calculator, which are free online, you'd plug in the numbers, you would discover that in order to put a down payment on that house, let's say 150K down payment or whatever, what if you had invested $150,000 over 40 years?

How much would you have? A lot. Second, we have to account for maintenance. We have to account, right? There's a lot of maintenance that happens in a house. You have to track that. Sprinklers break, lights, even the gas to go to Home Depot, all that stuff.

We bought a rental property and it was a nightmare. We had so many things break. It was built in 58 and we had, like literally everything broke. Like literally everything. We had to like things break. It was built in 58 and we had like literally everything broke. Like literally everything. We had to like gut the house, redo everything, redo the roof, redo plumbing. It was like there's a movie called Money Pit. I feel like we lived that movie. Your pain is my pleasure. I love this. I love this to make my point. We got to factor all this stuff in. If you really want to get technical, you would even give your own time a dollar value

and factor that in. Most people don't do that, whatever. Then you have to factor in transaction costs, buying, selling, also furniture for the house and on and on and on. Why am I saying this? The last thing I want is for people to become house poor. You go your entire life like,

oh, we got to buy this house. And I go, why? And then it just turns out they're buying it because their parents told them like, that's what you do in America. What the, what kind of sophisticated financial decision is that? At least think it through and run a calculation. Then they buy it, they can't go on vacation anymore.

They can't even take their dog out anywhere because they have no money. We gotta be smarter than this. Like I'm very compassionate, as you can tell. I'm very compassionate if people feel scarcity around money. I'm very compassionate if the two of you don't see eye to eye on money. I have unlimited compassion for that.

I have very little compassion for people making decisions that will cost them over a million dollars over their lifetime and they refuse to run a few calculations. We gotta take responsibility. So when you finally run these numbers at a $2,000 versus $2,000, my guideline, I've created a personal guideline,

which is whatever the mortgage is, I add a full 50% to the price to account for maintenance, renovation, everything. Now most people won't pay a full 50% because again, I'm gonna hire people to do it, I'm gonna pay them money, I don't know how to use a hammer, everything. Now most people won't pay a full 50% because again, I'm gonna hire people to do it, I'm gonna pay them money, I don't know how to use a hammer, whatever. But if it's $2,000 versus $3,000 a month,

suddenly now you really need to be thoughtful about which one makes sense for you. Yeah, that's convicting because even as someone, I don't know, I like to think that I'm pretty frugal. Like I like to be conscious of what we're spending. And so, you know, as our income has gone up, I've obviously I'll splurge more in different areas, areas that I care about and stuff like that.

But when it did come to buying a house though, I didn't actually like run the numbers. I did some simple math in my head. Oh my God. To know that we, like we bought a house well under what we could have qualified for. So we were safe there and I'm like, okay, we can buy a way crazier house. We'll be conservative here because I don't want to be silly.

I want to be wise. And I also don't want to bank on my house being my main asset to build wealth. I think that's a really poor metric. I think if you're banking on your house being your retirement plan, I think that's a really poor metric. I think if you're banking on your house being your retirement plan, I think that's a really poor plan. Can I explain why that is? I totally agree with you.

So imagine you buy a house. The way most people think about it, they think of a house as a magic money beanstalk. We buy a house, somehow it magically appreciates, and then one day we have this, we could sell it for more money. Okay, right, that's pretty much how most people think about a house, that's as deep as it gets.

Answer me this, you bought a house, maybe you lived in it for 20 years, maybe you're 60 years old, maybe it's appreciated a lot, like many Americans. How do you get the money out? So if you sell it, all the houses around you are equally as expensive if not more. You could live there, but then all your net worth

or a lot of your net worth is locked up in your primary residence. Also as you get older, maybe you don't wanna maintain this big old house. So now you have a question, or you could buy it and downsize and move to Florida, get skin cancer and die. That's another option, but do you wanna move away from all your friends in your 60s or 70s?

Again, you can do it. You have lots of options when you have a house that's worth more, but I want you to think about this. I want you to run the numbers. I want you to plan ahead. We cannot simply make the biggest purchase of our life and then just hope everything works out. Like, okay, I'm gonna throw my dad under the bus for a second.

I love my dad, he's amazing. I'm not even throwing him under the bus, I'm just teasing him. But I feel like growing up, my dad was always fixing the toilet, fixing the sink, painting our house, working on the roof. He was always doing home improvement stuff

and I think he loves it, so I think for him that was fun to do that but you said everyone's time has a value to it and I think people forget that like you can spend you know a solid chunk of your life fixing up your house, you can spend a solid chunk of your life you know going to Home Depot and buying all these things spending more money to maintain the house you have so I think I think you are spot on when you say to run the numbers. Because people just don't think about that. I wanna emphasize to everyone, I'm not against buying a house.

I myself will buy a house one day, okay? I'm not against it. I simply want us to run the numbers, that's it. And I want you to first start with the numbers, if the numbers work out, if they make sense, then factor in all the non-financial stuff. There's lots of non-financial reasons to buy a house. Maybe you want a yard, maybe you have kids,

maybe you just like to redecorate, that's totally fine. I even had friends, they live in Jersey, they live close to here, and they ran the numbers and they're like, it actually makes no sense for us to buy, it would be better for us to rent in this expensive area, but we're gonna buy because we wanna be here and we know that our kids are gonna be in school here for X years.

We know we're losing money doing it, and we're okay with that. I said, God bless, at least you ran the numbers, the numbers don't always have to determine the right decision, but at least you've got to run a few calculations. And all you do is you just hop into a search engine, type rent versus buy calculator.

That's the first step. Okay. Honestly, that's more than 95% of people do. So right there alone, good job. If you wanna be more technical and thoughtful, I cover more of it in the second part of the book. Okay. But you wanna be more technical and thoughtful, I cover more of it in the second part of the book. Okay. But you wanna think about things like,

who's gonna fix XYZ? If we have more children, are we gonna need to move? If you wanna buy a house, I have several guidelines. One of them is, strongly plan to be there for at least 10 years. Yeah. Because the first eight to 10 years are you're paying like pretty much interest

and there's high transaction costs. On the loan, yeah. So there's like all these technical things. But bottom line is get educated is the biggest purchase of your life, et cetera. Are we boring you right now Abby with all this technical? Definitely she's bored out of her mind. No, I feel like I learned a lot.

Abby, let's talk about something that's more relevant to you, please tell me. I wanna know about the separate accounts. Yes! Yes, separate bank accounts. Enough real estate! Okay, tell me the- Because we bought a house and we messed it up.

No, I don't think you messed it up. I don't think we messed it. I don't love it. We do love our house a lot. I don't think you messed it up. Just from hearing you, even though you didn't run the numbers I was about to have a stroke when I heard that. I'm like, it sounds like you bought beneath whatever.

Okay, separate accounts, what can I tell you? Is it a bad idea? Like, because. All right, let's talk about accounts. So, let me put it this way. Imagine you're married and you wanna have a future together. Would you want to live in the same house as your partner?

Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Right? Of course. How come we don't do the same house as your partner? Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Of course. How come we don't do the same thing with our money? We often have separate accounts, we have remnant accounts from when we were single, or we transfer money or one person pays for the groceries and the, and the other pays for this and that. Bad.

It's not a great way to handle money. The central philosophy with your accounts is our future is together. If you're married, your future is together. Which means you should have your accounts set up accordingly so that you are unified. You're a team. It's very hard to be a team

and to really make decisions together if one of you has some account over here and blah, blah, blah. So let me talk about a simple way to set up accounts from chapter nine in the book. If you're married, there's good research indicating that combining your finances is healthy for your relationship and for your money.

Okay? So the simplest way to do it is you take the money that one or both of you makes, if you have one partner working or both, you put it into your joint checking account. It all goes there. And from there, it's dispersed to different accounts. You, of course, pay off your bills for the month.

You save and invest in your joint ways. But here's a little twist. You each have your own individual account with money that is no questions asked. Each of you has your own accounts. You mentioned nails, Abby. You wanna get your nails done every, whatever time period, how often?

Three weeks. Every three weeks. You have money every single month in an account that is just for you. In fact, only you have access to it. Only you. Your partner knows about it, same thing for you. You have your own account,

you have a certain amount going there, and you decide, and your partner, no questions asked. They're not going to ask you anything. You want to get your nails done. You want to do this or that. Perfect. So what you're doing is the majority of your money is going into your joint account. That's covering all your joint expenses, dinners out, kids, rent or mortgage, etc. car, even fun stuff that you're doing together, traveling, whatever, but you also have a little bit of individual money for yourself.

You do that, now your accounts are set up like wind behind you as you're running on your journey. And if you decide like, hey, we should get a new car or I really wanna take a trip, I wanna do this or that, now you too can talk about it in terms of your joint account but maybe you wanna buy a new gadget, a camera. Perfect, you can do that, and that can come out of your individual account

if it's just for you. Yeah, that is really good. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think that's always been my thinking behind it, but I wasn't able to understand why I felt that way. But I do know there's a lot of people that are in long-term committed relationships that do have separated that way.

And I think as someone that we combined super early, it was confusing. It just seemed difficult to manage. Like. Why? Because you always have to have a conversation of like, wait, are you paying that? Are you paying?

I think there would be a lot of gray area and it would just get kind of confusing. I love that you said that gray area. I hate gray areas. I want clear black and white. I don't wanna have to come and talk to you, my partner, about like, should we buy grapes? Like that's my personal hell.

Should we get these tomatoes or that? Because that's 50 cents a day. Why am I talking about this thing? Let's make a decision once and never talk about this again. I wanna talk to you about what movie are we seeing? What kind of fun are we gonna have? I do not wanna talk about the price of russet potatoes. You're gonna hate me.

I was the guy that would be like, oh man, if I drive like a mile more to the next gas station. Oh my God. You still do that. That's insane. Am I gonna save five cents a gallon? Oh, it's more, okay, now I'm gonna drive back and waste more gas money to go get the cheaper gas. You're to be on my podcast in 10 years i already can for sure uh so you still do that on the way to vegas i like how he goes i used to and it turns out he did it yesterday hey we drive

a tesla we drive a tesla now we we don't pay for gas anymore no but on the way to vegas you're like okay are you gonna be annoyed if i ask you to check gas prices oh i would have been like i'm not doing that i would have been like we have'm not doing that. I would have been like, we have too much money to ever talk about this again. Don't ever bring it up. Literally, I'm not talking about that. Don't make me start on him with bottled water. We don't buy bottled water.

Dude, I hate paying for water. I think it's stupid. I'm like, water's free. Okay, I will say one thing. It is funny what people just refuse to pay for. Yeah. And my wife always makes fun of me because I have several things

that I just categorically will not pay for even though I could buy them a thousand times over. So one of them is when I was a kid, we didn't travel that much and if we did stay at a motel, we never stayed at a hotel, it was a motel, my dad would be like, wait in the car. He would go inside, he would get the room

and then he would have us all sneak up to the room. The room was supposed to hold two adults, we put six of us in that room. So he would call them, first thing he would do is he would go to the room and he would call them and be like, can you send up some more towels? And they were like, oh sure, like how many do you need? He's like, six.

And they're like, sir, this is a motel room for two adults. He's like, just bring the towels. We just like extra towels. So we were taught early on, never open that thing, never. Like it was like kryptonite for us, it was the mini bar. Whatever mini bar they have at a freaking motel, we didn't open it. To this day, I won't touch a mini bar.

It's like, I can afford it, but I'm like, nah, that's too expensive. Like what do they sell those, like a little candy thing? Matt cracked into it last night and I thought the world was gonna get it. I spent $16. On what? Chips and popcorn. Chips and popcorn. That's crazy. It was gonna cost me. I spent $16. On what? Chips and popcorn.

Chips and popcorn. That's crazy. It was so convenient though. I was tired. I was about to go to bed. We were just chilling out in our bedroom. Hold on, hold on. I gotta remind myself, rich life.

Everyone's rich life is different. Yeah, okay, your business class, first class, we'll be on spirit. And this is really funny. We're gonna dip into this anymore. Isn't this proving my point? Your rich life is yours. Spend extravagantly on the things you love, et cetera.

I fly Frontier and Spirit. Wow, you fly Frontier and you splurge. At the mini bar. At the mini bar, baby. That's great, but you know what, I love this. I love hearing couples and people talking about all the things they spend a lot of money on, and then also what they simply will not.

I love that. It tells me who you are. It tells me what you value. It's cool. Like we don't like people think, oh, you know, once you make a certain amount of money, you have the best of everything. Wrong. There are certain things that I absolutely have the world's best of and I love them and

they're important to me. And there are other things I'm like, I'm not buying that. I don't want that I don't even want to think about that. So that is that is what makes you have a an Interesting nuanced rich life. I love that. I love that your philosophy is Specific to each individual's needs. It's not a one-size-fits-all. It's not a stop drinking your latte It's a specific plan for each individual and their needs. And I think that's so, so good.

And I think we need to normalize that in our society. Thank you. And I like that the focus is more on like, what do you want to spend money on rather than like, you can't have the things that you want anymore or you gotta cut back. Yeah, like I said, there's two, just like when we drive, we have the gas and the brakes and too many of us have been conditioned

that we only have one speed, which is stop. Ironically, we hit the brakes all the time, we feel guilty, we feel anxious, we feel restriction, but then we're still spending a ton of money on stuff. I don't like that. I would rather you learn the language of money, meaning read the book, understand the basics of how money works.

It's not that complicated, but it is a language like anything else. Like if you have kids, you learn about milk and bottles and all kinds of stuff. You have to learn this stuff, it's basic. Same thing with money, you gotta learn the basics, and then you get to practice it. You notice my language, you get to talk about money.

You get the opportunity to talk about money, you get the opportunity to talk about it with your partner. It's not a drag, it's not something to hide. It's like, oh my God, we get to design our rich life together. I think that's a gift. Thank you again so much for bringing us your new book. I'm so excited to read this. I can say if you are someone that is like overwhelmed with the thought of talking about

money with your spouse, this is very digestible. And like there's literally dialogue in here. There's checklists. It's not a lot of small writing. This right here is very, very digestible. So you did a great job. Thank you. Do you have an audio book as well?

I do, I read it myself. No way. Yeah, and I put some new stuff in the audio book version as well. So there's that one. It's of course on Kindle, audiobook. And I bring couples on each week on my podcast. Some of them are in $200,000 of debt. Some of them are multi-millionaires

and we share every number. You can watch it on YouTube, you can hear them. And to me, it's fascinating both in the book and on the podcast to be able to be a fly on the wall. And listen to how other people deal with money. It makes you feel not so alone. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that's the best way to put it. I feel seen knowing that like me not having the money conversations I should have had a long time ago with Abby, I know I'm not alone in that. Yes. And so that's really inspiring for me. It's not too late. Hey, I can do it. Like we can start making our monthly meetings about money now and we're

not alone in that. So thank you, Rameet, thank you so much for coming on the show. Yes, thank you. Everybody go check out his new book and definitely check out his podcast. I'm excited to continue learning more from you as as we continue our relationship. So thank you so much. It's my pleasure.