The Wealthy Barber Podcast - #40 — Heather & Doug Boneparth: Managing Money Together in a Relationship

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

Our guests this episode are Heather and Doug Boneparth — co-authors of the book Money Together: How to find fairness in your relationship and become an unstoppable financial team. Doug is the founder of Bone Fide Wealth in New York City and serves on the advisory councils for CNBC and Investopedia. Heather is a lawyer-turned-financial-writer, Bone Fide Wealth’s Director of Business and Legal Affairs and a rising voice at the intersection of love, money and family. In this conversation, Dave sits down with Heather and Doug to explore how couples can navigate money as a team — from shifting income dynamics and caregiving to power, communication, and the invisible labour that often goes unrecognized. They share why they wrote Money Together and why strong financial partnerships aren’t built with spreadsheets, but with trust, curiosity, and shared values. Whether you’re in a long-term relationship, newly partnered, or just want to understand how money and relationships intersect, this episode is packed with thoughtful insights and practical takeaways.   Show Notes (00:00) Intro & Disclaimer (00:55) Intro to Heather & Doug Boneparth (03:15) Why They Wrote “Money Together” (07:22) How Power and Income Shift Relationship Dynamics (09:13) Caregiving is a Real Economic Contribution (14:26) The Breaking Point That Forced Change (17:08) Division of Labour and How to Truly Create Space for Your Partner (21:57) How to Talk About Money as a Team (24:27) Start with Money Wins, Not with Spreadsheets (27:42) Both Members of a Couple Need to Understand Their Finances (29:04) Managing Your Finances Together is an Ongoing Activity (30:12) Teaching Kids Values, Not Financial Math (32:58) Money is Finite (35:36) Money, Divorce and Difficult Conversations (37:43) Growth Requires Discomfort & Curiosity (39:02) Strong Couples Are Resilient to Whatever Life Throws at Them (40:38) Conclusion

Hey, it's Dave Chilton, the wealthy barber and former Dragon on Dragon's Dent. Welcome to the Wealthy Barber podcast. Well, we'll be hosting some of the top minds in the world of personal finance. Yes, that's to balance me out. The podcast is about making the subject not just easy to understand, but dare I say, even fun, honest. Whether you're trying to fund your retirement, figure out how to build a down payment, save for your kids' education, manage debts, whatever, will be here to help you.

do it. Before we jump in, a quick but important note, nothing we discuss here should be taken as investment advice. We don't know you and your personal financial situation, so we're not here to tell you we're specifically to put your investment dollars. We're here to educate, get you thinking, and we hope entertain. But please do your own research and or consult with your financial advisor before taking any action. It's Dave Chilton, the Wealthy Barber with the Wealthy Barber podcast, which I must say it is hot right now. Thank you so much for all of the followers out there for all the people watching every week. We're getting great feedback, getting a lot of good questions submitted from people. So much appreciated. And it's been a lot of fun.

You know, we've had true stars on the show. And today is no different. Now, we've gone stateside today. We've made these people promise not to try to take us over at any point during the conversation. But we've gone state side and we've got a couple on. They say they're a married couple. They have a fantastic bookout, money together. I'm going to hold it up. And it's done very well. We're going to talk about its contents and the thinking behind it. They say they're a married couple that could be for marketing reasons. Perhaps they are. Perhaps they're not. Is that true? It's true. I should have brought the certificate to be right, but it's true. There are legal documents at play. It's Doug and Heather Bonaparte. And Heather is a lawyer by trade. I was mentioning

off there that pretty much every U.S. couple has to have one lawyer in the family and they've followed into that. And Doug is a personal financial planning expert. He has his MD They're both Florida gators. And in fact, you met at university. Did you not? Here we go. Here we go. Not a very good year this year on the football field.

No, we didn't want to bring that up. No, but we had a great year in basketball last year. I guess we're a basketball school now because. Yeah, suddenly you are a basketball school. Now, when Aden approached me, we had had several people suggest having you guys on. They said that you're great communicators, that you cover a very important subject we'll get into in a moment. I was excited. Then I did a little studying on you, too.

I saw the incredibly high quality of Doug's hair. And I said, we're not having that guy on the show. That guy's hair is better than mine. He is not on the show. We invited Heather to come on alone. She refused. So Doug is on now. He will be cropped out in the version you people are seeing on YouTube.

Thanks. But just trust me, he's looking good. You just got to crop him down a little bit. Absolutely. He'll be bald by the time this airs. Okay. I just want to say that this is a bad hair day. Oh my gosh, it looks fantastic. It really does. Now, Doug, you've got a great sense of humor. I mean, I follow you on Twitter, and I think your humor has helped you to stand out in the crowd and build your following. You've got some great one-liners, but you're obviously very knowledgeable, too. The big first question is, I always start with what made you write this book. Yeah. So it primarily stemmed out of what we were observing in our own relationship. You have a very smart attorney. You have a veteran financial professional that came out.

at a crossroads and their relationship that had us carefully examine what we were doing, the challenges that we faced to get our financial relationship back on track. And it's shared in the book, of course. And we had to ask ourselves, well, if these two people are at this juncture. Who are never at a loss for words are lacking the words to communicate the way we're feeling about how the power dynamics in our relationship had shifted over money over time. just the way that life had happened to us. If we were lacking that, what's everybody else doing?

Clearly, we need a new tool. No, I think that's very well said. And by the way, I've read big parts of the book and we're all like-minded. And then I really believe that people should be managing their monies together. I mean, I think mathematically it often ends up being a bunch better move. But also it's so important for the relationship itself. You actually go a step further and that you want them very both intimately involved, knowing the passwords, etc., discussing the investment choices,

and so on and so forth. So we'll get to your general philosophy in a second, but get a little more specific with me initially here about what kind of conflict or problems you were running into personally that led to, we better take a closer look at this. Yeah, so this is, you know, one of those COVID stories and pandemic stories where our whole lives are turned upside down.

And, you know, Heather took on the vast majority of things that had to do with our cruise ship to nowhere. She was the director of this. I always referred to it as the cruise ship to nowhere and I was the director responsible for it all. But I think that in any relationship, the unexpected can happen and completely turn your dynamic upside down. And when we were forced to examine which one of us really had the ability to take the lead and not just with our money, but with our time whose goals were prioritized, who received time and support and more of the attention. because it's never truly 50-50.

Like, we know that. That is not something that's realistic to strive for. And I think that we had realized that we were telling ourselves a very damaging message. And that message was one that was embedded in society and embedded in so many modern couples today around who deserves more at why. Whose time was worth more. So not only did we have. And Heather's right. You don't need like a global event taking place for these things to show up in your relationship.

This is just one that made it show up that much more. So I was the brand winner for a long time early on in our careers. I was a corporate lawyer. I was also holding down the stability of that corporate job and providing our benefits and everything like that so that Doug can go forth in the world as an entrepreneur and start his own business, get clients and build and take risks. And it's not a surprise to any professional woman that in the years that I had our children, I started to plateau professionally for reasons that were not a fault of my own,

for reasons that were very embedded in society and very embedded in the industry and in the, you know, just in the communities that I was in. And at that same time that I was plateauing, Doug Star was rising. And we went from me being the breadwinner to Doug earning three times my salary at the point that COVID began. So I think like it wasn't even something that we had. intentionally planned it was that life happened to us and the dynamics and our relationship shifted under our feet and we didn't have the words to access how far we had grown apart not only from each

other but from what felt fair and from what felt intentional in terms of how we managed not only our money but our life and our family and our household but walk me through that just because Doug is making three times more suddenly and his star as you say is rising why does that change the dynamics of the other aspects of your relationship so much. It could easily be said by Heather at that point working the equivalent of three jobs versus my one of just focusing on the business. She not only was being an attorney full time for a Fortune 100 company. She was the director of this cruise ship and holding down everything on the family fund.

And by the way, as long as I've been a financial advisor, Heather has been at my side. So I don't even think moonlighting as my partner does it. But she's been my co-pilot in almost any decision I've made here. Bigger picture, I think the thing that changes is time. And that's why time is such a huge piece of this book when we talk about equity. It really is. And couple equity. And I think that time is a missing component from so many money conversations when we're talking about partnership between two people.

And time was the thing that we did not reevaluate. So that was the thing that really caused so many. things to shift around in a way that we weren't happy with in our relationship because what had happened as a result of me, my time not being prioritized, my time going all towards our kids, kind of holding down the invisible load, giving him the time all the time he needed to work and to grow his business was that I stepped away from our family finances because it happened to feel like the only thing I was not responsible for when in reality, that's a really damaging, troubling thing.

A lot of people feel that way. That is a typical pathway into why a lot of people say, I'm not going to involve myself in the household finances and is ultimately a bad decision. Agree. Totally. You and I are on the same page there. Now, I mean, this is going to sound sexist, but the data says that women often get the short end of the stick.

Yes, 100%. They take on too much in most cases, that they still do more than their fair share in the kids front, even though they're working full time. And again, in your case, Heather's also helping you out in your business. How do you address that unfairness? I mean, recognizing it has to be the starting spot. Recognizing it is the starting spot. I mean, we want the narrative to change from even the way that we frame what it means to contribute to your family.

So when you hear, how do you contribute to your family? I think a lot of people will say, well, I contribute my salary, my paycheck. You know, caregivers are providers to. Absolutely. And until we view caregiving as an essential component to the interdependent organization that is a relationship, we will not be valuing the time of caregivers as much as we should. Yeah. Love it.

I completely agree with that. I've seen it in my own family to the nth degree. And you're right. And again, we need to talk about this publicly. I'm so glad that you're getting that message out there through your book, through all your interviews, because vital. This classic, you know, the guy's earning and the woman is holding down the house and doing the, you know, invisible, invisible load of labor around the house. You know, we still deal with this, which is decades and decades old. And it really just does not serve couples well today.

And I don't think it really has ever served couples very well because it is it is blown apart when you when you think about it like this. The reason that one individual is able to go out and earn that money or grow their business is because they have the support of their other partner. You know, you can't separate these two things. Right. But by the way, even in egalitarian marriages where both spouses are working and earning around the same amount of money, statistics show that women are still doing the lion's share of handling the responsibilities at home. Heather, you're being diplomatic. It's even worse. even in the marriages where the wife is out-earning the husband significantly.

Yes. The research shows the wife is still doing more than her fair share at home. Correct. Correct. It's kind of ridiculous when you think about it. Correct. And when we look at the gap in women's advancement in the workforce, we see that most in those jumps to management years, the promotion years. Because early on, the statistics also show that women are earning more college degrees. There's more entry-level jobs going to women.

So where is that gap? Where are we losing out? It is not a surprise that it happens to be in the years when we are starting a family. And that's because we are not reevaluating time. Men really need to learn to step into their role as a contributor in a way other than earning money. It's not just valuing women's times as caregivers. It's men owning the fact that they need to contribute in other ways than earning money. because that frees up our time, not only to advance ourselves in the workplace, but to step back

into our personal finances and to our money and to have that financial agency at home. And even to have more time to de-stress and have more time to grow. I completely agree with all of this. And by the way, I would go step further. Anybody who disagrees with this is not sitting across the table from a lot of couples and seeing their finances and the way things are playing out. There's obviously lots of exceptions. Some men are doing wonderful jobs on all fronts. But in general, your points are impossible to dispute when you see the actual evidence. And I think the truth is, is that it doesn't always come from this bad, nefarious place. I'm not,

I'm not someone who's going to say, like, that this was entirely Doug's fault. This was something that we built. I provided my care. I didn't, I also did not know how to articulate to him and to delegate to him. Like, I, this was, he enjoyed the care that I provided. That was great. It was awesome. It was definitely a two-way street and that I didn't know how to let go of control over certain things and say like, like, it is more important for me to step back into our family finances than it is for this food to be cooked a certain way. Yeah, right. This, this classic conditioning that we have, it still shows up in the content we consume. You know, you go back to the cartoons I watched as a kid. You're watching old shows from the 50s and 60s that are classic. Look what's being played out. I mean, you're almost pre-programmed from a young age to believe in these things. The Tradwife content on.

Oh, and it always comes back around. Yeah, it comes back, yeah. Yeah, some new rapper. And that's also not serving anyone really well just because you, you know, put on a good filter, had super high production, social media content around it. Right. And that's what we're fighting against, right? That's what makes this so hard is you're trying to ultimately build a

practice in your life that is capable of combating and fighting against all these things that you were conditioned to believe. It's very hard work. Heather, did you have a breaking point? Was there a day, a specific time where you just went, this isn't fair? We have to reassess all of this? There were a few. I mean, I would say, I do remember distinctly there was a distinct moment where I had stepped on one last sock left on the steps during COVID. And, you know, it's all, it, the jokes that were made became less funny over time. That was, but that was where I think I realized internally that this wasn't funny, that I was losing myself in my family, that I was losing direction in my career.

I was losing agency over our money. and I just wasn't happy. In terms of when we made a decision to make major changes in our lives that allowed for me to reclaim this equity and this real partnership and our relationship, this again, like we talk about how things also like happened to us.

So I was working in a corporate job. I was working from home. They were incredibly supportive during most of COVID. And then suddenly they, you know, the other shoe dropped and they said, we would like you back in the city. In New York City,

we live outside of New York City. Right. They wanted us back four days a week in the city. Which was more than what you were doing. Wow. What a huge adjustment when you have kids. Yeah. And, you know, I had turned to Douglas and I had said, you know, for all the stuff that we've been kind of dancing around and talking about, we have a major decision to make.

Yeah. Because I'm not going to continue on like this. This, and especially not adding a two-hour mega commute into. our lives. So something's got to change. And we either have to make changes professionally. We have to make changes in the way that we care for our children. But we're not going to go on another thing like that. And that, you know, before she even sat down with me and I got to give Heather a ton of credit that she was able to formulate the words and we were able to sit down together and address this very thing. It is fortunate that that moment of, hey, we watch it back, you know, from the jump, this was something I knew was not congruent with what we had built for ourselves.

That was a thing that took me outside of, you know, forget how comfortable I thought I, and I did have it really good. That would have pushed me to say, this is not going to work for us. So I think ultimately that's what brought us to the table to have the hard conversation about the major changes that would need to take place for us to get where we wanted to be and to create greater fairness that was clearly lost along the way. But I think fairness is such a great word because I think a lot of times it just isn't fair. It's that simple. Now, in general, again, I'm going to take criticism for sounding sexist

against men. I want to repeat, there's lots of exceptions. But a lot of times when these conversations are first had, even when the man goes, yeah, this does seem a little bit unfair. Making the changes and sticking with them proves to be very difficult. Inertia's in there. There's an element of selfishness, et cetera. It makes it tough to make the adjustments. How did you transition? Not well. Not well. Unwell. Very unwell. But there are things that you do. So I'm so happy you said that it says if you're reading my mind when we sat down and made that determination of which pathway we're going to go i instantly said to myself parties over right like there is going to be an immense amount of discomfort coming your way i had no problem with anything we agreed to

space needed to be created that was number one how do we get heather the space that's needed in order to from getting back into our finances to having time to take care of her needs to having the time to enter the business on the right foot. So for me, that was, you know, what it's not is saying, hey, honey, tell me what it is, you know, I need to do. Men, don't go to your wife. Just tell me. There is no worse thing that a man can say to his wife, then tell me what to do and I'll do it. Yeah. Glad you're on. I'm so glad you said that because that's what I would have done. So I would have been dead wrong. Glad your heart's in the right place, but is now just one more thing for them to think about and take ownership over, and that's not going to work. So this is a very important

concept from, actually, it is not our own. It is from Eve Rodsky's work in Fair Play System. This idea of when you have a task, you need to conceptualize plan and execute the task. Doug is an amazing executor. He always has been. If I tell him what to do, he will eventually do it, eventually. But so much of what I felt like was burdening me and consuming my time was mental. It was the planning. And of course, you know, during COVID, we went into COVID with a one year old and a four-year-old. Talk about emotional and mental load of decision-making. I mean, like, there was this whole, like, moral health component to it, too, that was very scary. And it was like a whole thing. I felt like it was like the weight of those decisions were really entirely on me.

But at a certain point, you know, Doug learned that when I said something like, this is our, this is the example we always share, he was going to take over our daughter's swim program. She was a competitive swimmer on a swim team. I didn't just want him. I hope this isn't the one-year-old because then you're the wrong kind of parent. This was the now seven or eight-year-old. Okay, that's better. She's older now.

The idea here was, Doug, you're going to take over swim, soup to nuts, beginning to end. meaning that the only thing she is going to do is show up to cheer on our daughter from getting ready for practice, from the car pulling, from watching practices, doing everything. Buying bathing suits, registering for the program. All of it. If it had anything to do with that activity, I think that's very cool. It falls in my court. So that removes the, well, do I need to leave now for, you know, what's the date? It is off her plate entirely. And that's how you effectively create meaningful space.

And I want, exactly. I wanted to share that one point, too, that this is just one example of when we talk about fairness and what it means to make room. That literally made room in my life for me to start engaging in things that were very important to our partnership and household again. It really was all consuming these things. Let me be very clear. Yes, I'm not doing it for her. I'm doing it for two things for us and I'm doing it for me, right? I'm doing it for myself because I am improving my life.

I get a lot of benefits out of owning tasks from beginning to end. In this particular case, this one example, you know, look what I get. I get this time with my daughter. She knows she's going to come to me for anything having to do with that. I feel good about that. For sure. She's leaving her alone to. And Heather wins because she gets that space back.

Overall, you have a net positive. And on an individual basis, everyone's net positive. If you can find stuff like that in your life when you think about fairness or division of labor, you know, why would you not create triple wins for your whole household? Find those things, implement this practice, and then go reap the benefits and gains that your relationship will receive from doing that. No, I love it. And it deepens your relationship with your daughter too. And also, I think she has more respect for the way you're handling yourself because you are being more fair. Sets a good example for the kids going forward.

I mean, there's so many other positives that flow from it. Give me another example, the kind of changes that this decision led to, that you're going to strike a different level of fairness. Sure. So, you know, one of the main things we wanted to do was get Heather back into the fold with our finances. So we were able to configure a routine, something that we strongly believe in when we talk about the subject of love and money and talk about in the book. These idea of the money date, how to appropriately structure your conversations around your finances so that you build a practice around. around money. And it's the same thing you need to do for your physical health, your mental health. It takes repetition. It takes consistency and it takes discipline. And we need to find those best practices, not just in general. So we could obviously talk about this. But we needed to find out what worked well for us specifically so that we could develop the consistency. So we wouldn't back out on a meeting that we scheduled so that we would actually look forward to it. That the first words out of our mouth weren't like, I don't want to be here of I want to be here. I want to be here. here. Look at the win we just had. Now, let's talk about being critical of the things that need improvement. We can walk anyone through that right now. But most importantly, we had to walk

ourselves through that. And we had to get in the refs. We had to do this for a year, two years, three years to say, wow, we've done this 16 times consistently. We know what we're doing here. So is it a monthly meeting? It's a quarterly meeting. Quarterly meeting. And how long does it typically take three to four hours, two hours? No, I'd say a couple hours is as far as it usually goes. I think up front, you can find yourself spending more time with it. Also, depending on how busy you are, we literally schedule this, you know, accordingly. So there could be stuff going on in the day. So three, four hours is top. The reason we, we felt that the monthly meeting wasn't working. Yeah. Was for several reasons. One, it's easy to cancel when you know there's going to be one the next

month. If you've got stuff going on and you're like, I don't know. And then two, you really want to be able to see and feel the change from one to the next. Yeah. We want to be able to see and feel whatever had happened over the last three months really meaningfully. And I don't know if you're going to get that month to month. I know you're not. This is what this is what I do in practice for those clients that want to engage in the

comprehensive planning quarter to quarter shows me meaningful change. It teases out seasonality. It definitely does a better job of giving me perspective over whatever data, we're observing. But when you're together, are you looking at your net worth statement, your spending summaries, are you looking at your investment portfolio to see what decisions are being made? And then are you discussing all of it and why you're doing what you're doing? E, all of the above and more. So, you know, you've got to get into the facts and figures, of course. I don't recommend starting here. I know a lot of people who would want to run away if the first thing you do in your meeting

is put forward a spreadsheet or a budget. That's typically not the best on ramp. You have to run. You have to do that. So yes, your net worth, meaning you now know where everything is, asset location, account location, their values, how money comes in and out of your relationship. Yeah, you should have an opinion on how your spending was. Did you meet your mark where you're running a deficit or a surplus? These are important things. But a note on that, I think it's really important. And this is why, again, we give a quarter between each of these meetings is you're going to start to see how your partner likes to digest this type of information. Is it working for them to see it just in an Excel spreadsheet, or maybe for the next quarter, maybe there's a different way we should be talking about this.

There's a story in the book about a couple. And he's a financial. He's an advisor. He's a financial professional who had the buy-in from his spouse. He says, I want to do this. I want to learn this. And he goes, great. Let me sit you down. They do the spreadsheets. And it just wasn't clicking. It wasn't connecting. It wasn't connecting. And he's like, why isn't this working? I have the buy-in. It's not even that. They're a place. to doing this. And he's like, you know what? Let me try this. Literally brought a whiteboard out and started drawing out what it is and it clicked. And the big lesson there is that you definitely need to find, to Heather's point, the way in which your partner likes to learn. And you're in the golden age of financial content and tools that you can use. So be curious about that part of your partner. So just back to this idea of the meeting, you know, easy things you can do to get, you know, productivity higher, focus on start the meeting with your goals or start your meeting with the wins, right?

Right. The on-ramp to having productive conversations is what did you do right this quarter? What were the victories celebrate to that? Framing matters. And beginning with the positive is so important. And he set the tone for the meeting. It's all about. Ending with positive too.

I always think it's end possibly. The compliment. The compliment sandwich. Absolutely. For sure. So Bill, you want to build that momentum in the front. And how about I'll give you another great example. You know, how do you want to start the conversation?

Man, we didn't do a good job spending this quarter. We ran a deficit. You know, energy's well down on that one. For sure. Hey, hon, you know that vacation we're dying to get on? You want to sit down with me and talk a little bit about how we make that happen? Her and I are like, vacation, goal that we really want. Yeah.

Okay, what a great backdoor into, hey, we got to take a look at our spending over the quarter to see how we can get a little more bucks into the vacation bucket here. Yeah, we don't need to go on this date. we don't need to do this thing. Now we're both saying the same thing, agreeing to things that otherwise would be a tough conversation, not critical to each other. These are the things that make for great on ramps into this practice before you obviously get into, here's a net worth statement and cash flow.

But is somebody still taking charge of certain things? So for example, you have more of an investment background. Are you still the one more likely to be building the portfolio to match up to the joint objectives? Absolutely. There was this article a few years ago. about every house having a CFO and a C O. And there's some truth to that here.

Heather's not going to spend her time on things that I do, you know, on an everyday basis. But that does not absolve her from at very least baseline understanding of why we are in the portfolio that we're in or the decisions we need to make to increase or decrease contributions. I need her input. She can trust me after understanding, you know, why are we 80, 20 or 60, 40, and this portfolio. Why did we buy this particular investment? And then she's going to wipe her hands clean of that. In the same way, I know she's mapping out, you know, what our family calendar is going to look like. I know what I need to execute on, but she's the macro planner here. I need to know from her because she's going to do those things and then I'm going to run with it.

We wanted to be very clear that you can own a task, right? Conceptualize plan and execute. And there are financial tasks to own in the context of a relationship, like the things we just talked about, but you can never delegate your understanding of your family's financial situation. No, I actually really, really like that. Has this worked? I mean, funny as that question sounds, you're looking back at it now a few years later. Are you happier, Heather, and as the couple thriving now under the new approach? Absolutely. Yeah, Heather brings this up a lot. You know, when you're developing a practice, there is no, and we've learned from everything we've been doing together. There is no aha moment or there's no moment where

it's victory. We solved it. Success. We don't need to do this again. Anything you do that's a long-term game, that's a practice, means that you're constantly going to be improving. So I'll say this, the more that I know, and maybe this is just because I'm a lawyer and I'm taught to ask questions and this is part of just who I am, I just want to know more, right? So I'm more curious. I want to be more involved. I've got deeper questions, more complex scenarios that I outlined for Douglas. It doesn't stop. It doesn't stop. Nor should it. And that's okay. That's okay. Do I sleep better at night? Absolutely. Do I feel like we won? There is no there's no winning here. This is our life. When I listen to you talk about this, will you extend this to your kids as they get older? So now they're

eight, they're 10, they're 12, they're 14. They're better able to understand. some of these sharing of responsibility, sharing of the finances. Will you bring in them into the conversations? Yeah. So I've had a few cracks at teaching kids money in the last few years are girls, the Girl Scout. He's been brought into the Girl Scout troop several times. I've done this with five and six year olds. Successfully and unsuccessful. Oh, man. But I've learned a lot on this very often difficult topic of how do we educate kids, you know, when it comes to money. And I think concepts like compounding interests and how markets work is probably lost on them. I agree. It's way too much nuance there. And I don't think it really served a good purpose at a 10-year-old

or younger level. Concepts and values reigns supreme. I will never forget our daughter asking why. I drop Heather off at the train station when we first left the city to the burbs. And Hazel would say, why does mommy go on a train every morning? And I would simply respond with, do you like what we do on the weekends and the fun that we have when mommy and daddy are not working. She says, I love it. That's why mommy goes on the train. The association of these concepts, right?

Of work equal, free time, freedom, the ability to do fun stuff. These are the types of things that you want. So we can be by example to get back to your question. I want them observing. And it's right in their face, right? We work together. We work at home.

We spend all this time together. They're getting upfront and close and personal with what we have going on. So they can pick up the nuance. outside of finance are you guys a big believer in date nights etc and how you have to get out together with some romance and some special events yeah you do a lot of that we well by the way heather i mean with each other not with other people of course i mean with each other yes no we did we were actually like we were definitely the couple that had a deep bench of babysitters since the girls were young um Doug and I have always prioritized time with each other I think it's an interesting fact that we both uh our parents are not married anymore, neither of us. And we prioritize our relationship, and I know

that our kids know that too. If we're good, they're good. Absolutely. And you guys have a great chemistry. I mean, you really do. You can see it when you bounce back and forth. We also just like, we still have fun. Like, we still, I think

we're still like most amused by each other. And so we are constantly seeking out activities and events and things and experiences that we can share to be amused together. Like, that's just the truth. That's fantastic. Now, going back to your, Doug, you were talking about young kids and values, and I love the train example.

One of the things I think we have to teach young kids is a very basic thing. Money is finite. And so there's always tradeoffs involved. When you buy X, that means you can't buy Y, et cetera. That's another one of those teachings on top of the one you talked about the tradeoff of time for all of those things. It's a core theme. I've written about this.

It's the key theme, isn't it? Yes. I have written about this a lot just on our substack in different places about patience, how we as parents for young children today have to manufacture patients because our children were raised in a world of digital abundance. And we don't realize that they don't have the context to understand that fact that things show up in Amazon the next day. That's all they know.

Right. They don't know a world where you have to go on, we have to take care of your things because you may not get another one. Many kids don't understand that. And we have to create those scenarios for them to understand. They could really benefit from a month of dial up internet. You know, like I feel like every kid should go into a dial up internet program where like everything is downgraded for a month and they'll appreciate it. And I say abundance, not just about things because I know that there's varying levels of socioeconomic privilege, but I'm talking about abundance and. information and how quickly you can learn things and how quickly you can access things.

But you bring this up in the book that often, you know, talk about this key concept about the sacrifice, you know, gaining one thing is often the sacrifice of another thing is what we're talking about here. It's not just with kids learning, but at the core of how we conduct our financial relationships, that tradeoff always exists. And I think the more comfortable or familiar you get with that tradeoff, you'll be. basically get to avoid a lot of, you know, icky feelings or resentment type feelings that you have with your partner because you recognize that I'm going to choose to do this or we're going to choose to do this.

And it inherently means we're not going to do that. And yes, for your kids to see that from the two of you, again, that lead by example function, you might find yourself building more durable kids as a result of it and combat this very immediate gratification world that we now live in, whether it's abundance or just supply chain management being a, amazing. It all leads to better, better kids and better parents. You know what? You, the three of us agree on almost everything. Does that scare you? That should scare you. No, I'm into this.

So this is working out well here. No, honestly, I think those are all wonderful points. You mentioned your parents had separated both sets of parents. Have you helped any of your friends, colleagues, clients potentially with divorce situations because again communication, solid communication, makes that a better process, always a tough one, but a better one. Some of the ideas you've advanced today, I think could be very helpful during that, very tough journey. Yeah, it's always an interesting day when a client says their adult parents are getting divorced and we have conversations and that's few and far between. But there is no shortage of clients and certainly friends who have experienced divorce. I mean, that's as common as it pretty much gets at this point.

I'll share this one point. As a lawyer who has sat through, I was not a family lawyer, but I have been into many, many mediations for very large cases where people want very different things. And I think the most important thing to know is that the best compromises leave both parties a little bit uncomfortable. For sure. I think talking to a friend or a client about divorce in the context of their finances, I think it's pretty bold to go there. And one of the things I can tell you about the work we've put into the book and just helping people with their relationships and money is being brave to go into spaces that aren't talked about enough. Before you're able to explore your relationship with your partner, you need to explore yourself. And you're talking about divorce and the things that have shaped you.

I mean, Heather gets into great detail about how her parents' marriage shaped her philosophy and beliefs around. money. And whether you are married or not, whether we're talking about our parents or our spouses or ex-spouses, like we want to leave people with this just this very real fact that no matter what, you're going to leave a mark on the people that are with it, that that were in your life. Yeah. What kind of mark do you really want to leave? No, I agree with you. And I think that that's just, that's an important, important context to carry through whatever life throws at you, even if that means going your separate way. I love that so much because we all know and have to agree to the fact that if you're looking for progress in anything, in any relationship, especially relationships,

you need to fess up to the fact that you are going to need to deal with discomfort and getting uncomfortable, right? If you're super comfortable with something, that's usually a cue to start to get uncomfortable with something. And I can relate to that because when we decided to make this change and pursue this together, I would need to deal with an extreme level of discomfort relative to what I was currently experiencing, which was a extreme level of comfort provided by this person right here. And I can tell you from my own experience, two years of work went into reconfiguring my brain in order to be able to say, cool, I knew what I wanted this. It doesn't just because you want something doesn't mean it's going to be easy to get to the result that you want.

As a matter of fact, it is a matter of fact. Therapy. Yeah. We're talking about therapy here. We're talking about physically working out. We're talking about making good choices that ultimately affect your ability to get to the goal you want. You know, nothing worth doing is easy. And if you found yourself getting to your goal and thought it was a cakewalk, your goal probably, you know, probably wasn't big enough enough.

It wasn't enough enough of a goal. Now, but I mean, at the end of the interview, I mean, the big thing to drive home, You're both happier now. You've made these changes. Your wedding, your marriage, pardon me, is stronger and you both ended up happy. I mean, that is what it's all about. Yeah, but it comes with the knowledge that we're going to go through something like this all over again. It might not be money.

It might not be our careers. That is what life will do to you. This is why we say there is no winning this game. There is just your ability and the privilege of getting the privilege of being. the privilege of being able to continue playing it. You're going to, you know, if it was a video game, you're going to the next level. And you'll have a new mini boss. And you'll have a, you know, there's just no final boss.

But we feel more confident than ever in our ability to take on whatever the unexpected is next. And I think that that's ultimately what we want for people. We want people to feel secure. We want people to feel seen and understood and to know that they have the tools to communicate better when that thing happens because it will. And be curious. And to be curious. I mean, be proactive.

Don't react to the things that are happening. You're like, hey, I was having this thought the other day. You might learn a story about your partner that you never heard. Those are my favorite days. You'd think after over 20 years of being together, I've heard it all. And she'll be happy to share the same story for the millionth time. And I'll listen to it and then tell her, you told me that. How many times did you think you told me that story?

And then guess what happens? I'll hear a story I've never heard. that is what keeps marriages alive and fresh and entertaining. It's just good stuff. Well, you guys are doing a wonderful job. I think you're shining a light on a lot of areas in the world of finance that didn't get enough attention. I love the approach to fairness. And I think we need to talk about that more. There are a lot of people out there who are not being treated fairly in what's even defined as a good relationship. The book, I held it up earlier. Everybody should check out the copy. Morgan Housel, friend of the show, a friend of Doug's actually

says it's a must read. And by the way, he doesn't hand out that kind of praise to many books. He is besieged with requests and obviously has to turn the vast majority down. So if he thinks highly of it, it's worthwhile reading. And final thought is, please, please don't ever get divorced. You guys will crush me if after all of these tremendous strategies you put in place and this chemistry that we've seen today, if it doesn't work out, don't even tell me. Okay, I don't want to hear about not. Not planning on it. And if it, yeah, it's just not going to happen here. We've, we've been through too much in our own, you know, relationships with our parents. We know the impact that it has. And this is why we're doing what we're doing. So we don't need to worry about that. Good for you guys.

Gators together for life. Yeah. You know it in all kinds of weather. We all still. And by the way, for two Americans, you handled yourselves exceptionally well today. So thank you so much. We'll have you back on the show anytime. On behalf of all Americans, we thank you. Yeah. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Yeah, exactly. Well said. I'm