I Will Teach You To Be Rich - 104. “We’re worth $1.25M, so why is he afraid to get a $15 gym membership?”

Episode Date: June 6, 2023

Stacey is 37 and Jesse is 38. They’ve been together for 18 years, married for 11. They started with nothing, but now they make $238,000 a year. Their numbers are healthy, maybe even too good. So what’s the problem? Stacy’s designed their financial system with no room for Jesse to participate in it. This episode is brought to you by: Calm | Go to https://calm.com/ramit for 40% off unlimited access to Calm’s entire library. LMNT | Right now, LMNT is offering 8 single serving packets FREE with any LMNT order. This is a great way to try all 8 flavors. Get yours at https://drinklmnt.com/RAMIT. Nomorobo | To protect yourself and your family from phone scams, go to https://nomorobo.com/ramit for a 14-day free trial. Rocket Money | Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions – and manage your expenses the easy way – by going to https://rocketmoney.com/ramit. Links mentioned in this episode • Download the Conscious Spending Plan • Get the Podcast Newsletter every Saturday • Get my New York Times best-selling book Connect with Ramit • Get Money Coaching with Ramit  • Get my no-numbers journal • Other episodes • Instagram • Twitter • YouTube If you and your partner have a money issue and you want my help, I occasionally select a couple to work with, free of charge. Apply for my help here. Produced by Crate Media.

Have you ever wondered why people suddenly seem to be so obsessed with creating generational wealth or all the unwritten rules of money that we have in America that we follow, but no one actually tells us why. Every week I'm going to be writing my new observations about money and psychology on a special podcast newsletter. You can get it for free at iwt.com slash podcast newsletter. You will not find this material anywhere else. So get on the newsletter for free at iwt.com slash podcast newsletter to hear about money and psychology every single week directly from me.

I find finance discussions intimidating, threatening almost at times awkward, I'm very avoidant to the conversations. Jesse is not a planner. Jesse would you agree with that? Yes, I'm very fly by the sea of the dance. How would you describe the way you feel right now? Matt at myself. As I don't think I realize what I created. What did you create? An environment where you know, just he doesn't see the big vision of what he's capable of doing. I'm sorry, Chessie, I love you so much, but like, it's so clear that you're so anxious on this conversation. The deeper we get in, because like, you're using, like, buzzwords to try and like, talk effectively,

instead of just being like, you're yourself. I want Chessie to be interested in what we're doing with our money. Then I feel like I created that. Like I've created this dependent relationship that's not sustainable. Meet Stacey who's 37 and Jesse who's 38. They've been married for 11 years and they live in Canada.

What makes them fascinating is not the fact that Stacey makes five times what Jesse makes. It is the dynamic between them. For example, when they got invited to be on this podcast, they first attended a screening call with my producer. And here's what Stacey wrote, I booked time Thursday for the screening call and added my husband Jesse's email to the invite. He may be able to join too. This is actually a huge red flag. We require both partners to be on the call.

We state that very clearly. So the fact that she took the lead and said he may be able to attend, got our antenna up. How would you handle it? If you had a relationship dynamic where one person took the lead on everything and wished that the other would get engaged, well, we're about to find out as you listen to this conversation with Jesse and Stacey. You can watch this entire episode on YouTube and I always love to do that because it lets you see their body language facial expressions which gives you a

whole new insight into the dynamic between the two of them. All right let's get to it. The day I applied to go to the show or to beat you the show, was a day where Jesse and I were arguing around. He was debating to get a gym membership. So he's had some physical ailments in the last couple of years. His physiotherapist recommended a gym or rather a treadmill. We didn't want to buy a treadmill to fit in the house. So there's a gym here, our house,

and me or Jesse's business that he can easily go to. It's like 15 bucks a month. And he hemmed and haught about like whether we could afford it. And I was like, we're not poor anymore. We can afford that. It made me realize, A, he doesn't understand that and B, that such an insignificant amount of money per month, he felt like he had to figure a way around not spending it instead of just talking to me about the expense. And so what happened? We had like a discussion about it. I was like, we're not poor anymore. Like, you can get this. And I think it still took him two weeks to actually buy the gym membership.

When you said, we're not poor anymore, what was Jesse's response? Yeah, I think, yeah, I know, but, but what? Like, but like I can figure out a way to like not spend this money or maybe I'll look into cheaper options, but I'm like, you're not really going to find a cheaper gym. It's already a discount gym. A lot of, a lot of very sensible reasons. Did it work? Yes.

Yes, but it took them, I think a couple of weeks to weeks to buy it and like pull the trigger. Jesse, what happened in that conversation? What do you remember the first glimmer of the treadmill discussion being? I dragged my feet on a lot of like random expenses because I'm always trying to save money. Why? I just have it in my head that, well, I mean, I don't personally make a whole lot. So I feel like the household doesn't initially make a whole lot, which is not really the case. It's about a week later.

I did finally pull the trigger, got the membership, and I've been trying to do as much stepping or walking, sorry, as I can to heal my ankles. Cool. I'm glad you got the membership. Thank you. Would you consider that discussion or series of discussions a success?

Yes, 100%, but I still try and tighten my belt and to Stacy's point, I do it nonsenseically at times as this instance was. I'm just a very uncomfortable spending money. Always been like that. Yes. Yeah. All right. Gotcha. When you eat out, do you eat every single thing on your plate? Yes. Your parents taught you that? My father, yes. What did he say?

Oh god. A lot of like father-esque things. Like if you don't eat that, their starving children in Africa was a very common line. Oh God. You can't leave the dinner table till you're done and sort of thing. Okay. Okay, cool. All right, I got it. I don't even like spending money on public transit. If it's within, you know, tens of kilometers,

maybe I'll bike it, doesn't matter whether or anything. And that's just to save myself six bucks. If it's raining, I think a more rational person, I feel would probably just spend the money for public transit, whereas I would prefer not to. Got it. All right. Hearing what you just told me, Jesse, and really listening to yourself and what you just said to me.

Do you hear any themes? I notice that I'm very, I don't want to say miserly, but that's probably a really good word about it to use. Miserly means what? I want to keep what possession I have, because I don't have, yeah, Mars leaves a poor word because I feel like I don't have a lot. And for the longest time I didn't, we're somewhat better.

I don't have a very steady income for the past year because I just started a new business. So it's been really messing with my brain on how much funds we have available to spend. So what else do you notice about your answers to me? If you were like a scientist examining the transcript of what you just told me, what would you note? That I'm uncomfortable spending nervous.

Uncertain. and nervous, uncertain. Because he's not involved in the finances, he doesn't know where that threshold is. He still thinks that threshold for what we can spend was the same when we were in our early 20s. I want Jesse to be like, I'm getting this gym membership. It's $15. This is the decision I'm making and just buy it. This is what I mean when I say focus on the $30,000 questions, not the $3 questions, or in this case the $15 gym membership questions.

Jesse's gone for such a long time agonizing over whether to join this gym, all for $15. Imagine the costs of worrying about a $15 purchase and all the opportunities that you're leaving aside. And with people who worry about tiny questions like this, it's never just one purchase. In fact, with Jesse, there was a worn out bag that he didn't want to replace. There was a desktop computer that he used until it completely failed. He bikes or walks around town to save $6 even when it's raining.

My point is not that you should just spend money on everything. My point is that some people live their entire lives trying to spend as little money as possible. And that has significant costs. How much time do you spend thinking about productivity? About what coffee to have in the morning, about how much email you can get through, about when are you going to slip in an extra 15 minutes to tackle those emails? I find that we are obsessed with productivity,

with high intensity work, but we spend almost no time thinking about how to build the skill of resting and relaxation. Think about it. What do most people do? They sit down on the couch, they watch a little Netflix. That's the extent to how much we really think

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at drinklmt.com slash remit, R-A-M-I-T. I was 18 just in my first year at university and just in my first year at 19. Yeah, no money. No money. No money. I was a musician dropping out of college going on tour. When did you start to make some amount of money, a comfortable amount of money?

26, 27. So let's go back to when you were in your early 20s, even 25, 26, 27. When you would talk about money, what were those conversations like? Our roles were very much reversed because Stacey was in school until she was 24, 25. 24, yeah.

24. And I had a full-time job just in retail. Since I was the, I'm not one for talking finances and I was the one with all the funds, we really didn't have a lot of conversations back then because we stayed in a really, really cheap apartment. So it wasn't that difficult to live the life we wanted without actually thinking about anything. And it seems like you were on the upswing with your income at that point as well. Okay. Yes. All right. So at what age did the roles reverse? Where you Stacy started making more money? 27. So you started making more than him? What changed when you started making more than him?

I made the life decisions. Like anything that was a financial life decision. So we had this huge lump sum for a down payment and then we went to find another home. I made the decisions around how we saved for that. How much we put down and did you get Jesse involved in those decisions? Shake it is that I'm like, I don't remember, probably not. Yeah, it's more like I do all the homework. Who is the one who tracks the spending, makes sense of the spending, manages the spending? So that's Stacy. Okay, who's the one who plans investments, decisions about big, okay, that's Stacy. So Stacy, you do everything with the money. Yes, I find it. So I'm like very much a type A planner organized. You don't say.

No, shocking. So you do the homework. What does that mean homework? We'd love some of money. How much? I said, yeah, remember 200 grand, you know, it was up to me to figure where could we find it for a home? What was going to be the best value so that we could live the life we wanted to live? And it was up to you because what? Jesse is not a planner. Oh, Jesse, would you agree with that? Yes, I'm very fly by the sea of the dance. And Jesse, what is your role as it relates to money in your relationship? Not a lot.

Now, I once remember I hired a consultant when my business was in trouble and he came in, he took a look at all the numbers and he said, tell me what you were doing when your business was at its peak and tell me why you stopped. So I walked him through all the initiatives that we used to do and I laid out all the very rational reasons that we stopped it. The cost of revenue was too high for this program, etc. He gave it some thought and he said, I recently spoke to another CEO, business is also in trouble. And he had very good reasons for every decision that he made, just like you. You can have all the right reasons and still get the wrong outcome.

In Stacey and Jesse's case, they both have stories that are not serving them and certainly not getting them the outcome they want, or at least Stacey wants. Stacey describes herself as type A, which by the way is not really a thing, and they both agree that Jesse is bad with money. But how would they ever know? They've never really given Jesse responsibility and accountability over money itself. You grew up four or lower middle class.

Lower middle class. And what about you, Stacy? What did you grow up? Both. Lower middle class. You grew up the same? Yeah. Are both your parents together? Are they separated? No, they separated when I was five. Yeah. Who'd you live with primarily? My mother. Okay. And what's your mom like? She is also very cautious about her money and spending. We both were raised by immigrant mothers and we were both raised to be like, make the most of what you have, work really hard to have what you have and like don't take stuff for granted.

Jesse takes that really to heart and I think I'm at a point in my life. We were both like that. I think we're on the same page. I don't think we'd be where we are today if we didn't have that mentality when we were younger. What do you remember her saying about money growing up? Well, we didn't like enjoy, like we didn't go on vacations. We went on one.

My entire childhood, yeah, like my parents sacrificed a lot so that they could help pay for my university, but I'm proactive where, so my mum and I think my dad who are still together, they think life happens to them. I think I control my own destiny and I've lived my entire life with that MO. So, you know, if just where'd you get that from? Flight or fight mode is like what I live in constantly. So I'm always thinking plan A, B, or C. Yes. Are they the same as you?

Yes, my brother. Yeah, I have one brother. I'd say yeah. So you both have taken control of your lives. You sort of carved out your own path. And would you say that your parents are still more passive? Yes. Oh, that seems to be the nerve.

Yes, bless them, but they are. They drive me crazy. They're passive, like what? They don't want to confront any issue. Restaurant sends the wrong thing. They just take it. They never send it back. That kind of thing.

Yes, they will get taken advantage of. They are retired, but don't take advantage of their retirements. Yeah. How are they doing financially? I don't know. Why? What? They don't tell us. What? Yeah. So I think most of the... Do you know how much money they made when you were growing up or whatever? Yeah, I think I say we were like lower middle class as well. My dad worked for the government, had like an average salary and it was just him, my mom stayed home. So you decided to take control your money,

your on top of it. How many different Excel spreadsheets and budgets do you have? Tell the truth. One Google spreadsheet, but it probably has 20 hidden tabs over the last 10 years. How do I know that? Yep, there's, And how diligent have you been in tracking your spending?

Let me guess extremely. Go ahead. Correct. We both have used an app that I love for the last 10 years to track every expense. Anytime you swipe our credit card, it goes in. And I trained Jesse to do. So you do that. Yep. The data. I am not as diligent as her, but yeah, it will track down to the penny even on cash. And what does that get both of you? It's very satisfying for me to have the

data to tell me what we're spending on. It actually helped us when we were filling in the conscious spending plan. Like, when you, you personally were filling it in. No, no, no, we did it together. We did it together. What, I don't believe that. 100% to be clear, she filled it out once by herself prior to having the conversation with your coworker. That's not doing it together.

What are you talking about? But we did do it together. We did it together again. Yeah. Okay, this is before she told me we were appearing on this podcast. All right. Fine. So you track everything.

You're tracking like the price of Brussels sprouts over time. So you can trend that for from 2010. But like how much we spend on groceries per month, um, you know, clothing, transportation. How many categories do you have more than we should? I like how many tell me tell me. Oh, hang on. He's going to pull it up right now. This is a mate. Oh my god. Look at that. She's like finally. It's been 13 years and finally someone asked me a question about my app. Okay. Tell me how many categories. Do you want subcategories to as well, Stace? Eight, eight, eight high level

categories. No, I want all of them. Don't don't be asked me. So wow, she just took like a deep swallow. Probably everybody watch. However long this takes, I'm going to run completely dead air. I will burn literally gigabytes right now. Just watching them. Look, he's still counting. This is unbelievable. 32. 32, cat, wow's still counting. This is unbelievable. 32. 32, cat, wow, so simple. You ever hear me say that phrase? Fight for simplicity in your finances?

You ever heard me? Yeah, she's going, yeah. She goes, yeah, that's a great phrase. I chose not to adopt that. That's great for other people, not for us. I'm learning. I'm learning. Okay.

This is hilarious, but also fucking insane. Tracking four categories like in my conscious bending plan is good. I'm learning. Okay. This is hilarious, but also fucking insane. Tracking four categories like in my conscious spending plan is good. Tracking 32 categories is absolutely bonkers and it gets you nothing. Correction, it gets you a sense of control, but does not actually get you closer to your goals. There's an epidemic of us doing things that make us feel productive but actually accomplish nothing whatsoever.

And tracking 32 categories is a perfect example of that. And you can tell because when I asked what they got out of it, there was a very long silence. Their tracking, excuse me, her tracking is more like scratching a scab off, a little tick that makes her feel better in the temporary moment. But it's certainly not giving them the information as to how to save, how to invest, how to spend their money going forward. It's not serving them, but because she obviously takes a lot of pride in this, it's now become a part of her identity.

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If you've been listening to this podcast and you've seen my Netflix show, you know that I'm a huge fan of spending extravagantly on the things you love as long as you cut cost mercilessly on the things you don't. And when you do this correctly, you can often free up $50 a month, $500 a month or even more. That can be an extra personal training session. It can be a date night with your partner. Or if you take that money and redirect it to debt,

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Okay. Good. I'm glad to hear that you did the Hezappan helping. Yes. Oh, yes. I think we still don't have the tools in our toolkit to communicate effectively about money. Because I feel like I'm always pulling Jesse along. I want Jesse to be interested in what we're doing with our money. Okay, that's honest. I appreciate that. And Jesse, what do you want in your own words?

want in your own words. To be less uncomfortable with money. Can I ask a couple questions, Jesse? Of course. Do you want to be engaged with money in the relationship deep down? No, I find, find, find, ask discussions intimidating, threatening almost at times, awkward, very avoidant to the conversations. And are you avoidant in other parts of life? Yeah, I avoid confrontation quite a lot.

Have you made that connection before? Yes, oh yes. All right, so deep down you don't want to engage with money. That's what you're saying. Yes, that is like my base. But, you know, through counseling, through talking for years, I know that that's not productive and I would like to change.

Okay. What's the consequences for both of you if nothing changes? A lot, probably a lot of resentment maybe divorce. Yeah, I'd say, I'd say resentment. I felt that before. The life we've kind of set up in the last year is I handle the finances and work. Like, Jessie works, do you know? Like, my job was like bringing in the income and Jessie takes care of the households,

social engagements, groceries, the things we need for the home. I think the other thing too is we started to talk about like planning our rich life, like what are our goals? Because when we were younger, it was just like, get a home. It was such a big goal for so long. Now it's like, what are the goals we're going to have for the rest of our life? Okay, we want to do this by this year. How do we work backwards from that?

And I find that I'm the one who always is figuring out how to work backwards from that. I'd like to see a little bit more input. Because it would mean what? I'm not the only one creating the life we want. And if you're the only one, what does that mean? I just don't, that doesn't feel like a relationship. What is it? It's like once, it's like room, like we're roommates, like we're not

creating our life together. She's very much just dragging me along for the ride. Are you enjoying the ride? I would be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying the comfort of that she has given us because she makes considerably more than me and is infinitely better at finances than I am, but I don't want that to be the status quo. Are you uncomfortable in any other parts of life? Parts of life that you're good at. Like last night I went out to eat Indian food, okay? And I got it really spicy.

So when I eat really spicy food, I start to sweat a lot. My eyelids are sweating, the back of my head is itching, I'm like wiping away like lots of sweat, right? I was physically uncomfortable, but I also love it. I'm good wiping away like lots of sweat right I was physically uncomfortable But I also love it Good at it. I know how to eat Indian food There are parts of life sometimes that we are uncomfortable at but we're good at it or we enjoy it Do you have any parts of life like that? Yes, so as a musician I am a

Very crippling stage fright, okay, and at least I would like to think I am very good at performing. Wow. A great example. I couldn't name the better one myself. So stage fright, that's very uncomfortable. But somehow you still get up there and you perform and you do well, right? I'd like to think so. Yes. How about you just say yes. Yes. Love it. Okay. So, is it possible that you might feel a little uncomfortable with money and you might also be a very good participant in your relationship? Yes. I hope so.

Okay. How about, let's try that again. Is it possible? Yes. Okay. How about, let's try that again. Is it possible? Yes. Okay. I agree. I agree. It's okay to be uncomfortable when you're first starting to learn about money and talk about

money, think about money differently. And you can be a good participant. To be fair, it was a rather important decision that I had to partake in because I had to close my check-in count in order to join hers when we combined our checking accounts. We think of our money as like a communal pot. It's not like Jesse pays a certain percentage based on his income versus me. Who made that decision? By the way. We've always done it that way since we were poorer. I do believe it was your decision though, we were enjoying the counts. Back back in 2012 I believe. Guy pulls out receipts. Part of what I do, I had an old boss that said the art of what I do

is precipitation, which is I facilitate, but I'm really manipulating people around efficient. Wow, that's so interesting. Any connection to what's going on here? Anyone? Okay. Do you see my point? Yeah. Yeah. You take something and say, here we go, this is what I want to do, and you even use words like,

this is what we want to do. We set a budget. Yeah. Let me know. Is it working for you? Well, I'd say the budget has worked pretty well. We do pretty well with our lives. The unintended consequence was Jesse's a pass of view or a versus a participant. Do you want him to be? No. What role are you playing in Jesse not speaking up forthrightly about what he wants?

Well, because I'm in control and probably because like we've been together for 18 years, just our life. It's an example. Jesse makes what? 20% of what I make. So like the life he has is from my labor. You know, California has had a drought for many years.

And this year, suddenly, there was a ton of rain. And all of a sudden, people realized that California is not capturing the rain water. The water just flows right out to the ocean. Everyone said, what we need to capture this rain water? Well, the system was designed decades ago to get rain water out to the ocean as quickly as possible. And guess what? That is exactly what the infrastructure does, efficiently and quickly. Like California, Stacey is getting exactly what she designed for. Careful tracking

over their spending, which she does. Total control over their money for her. Decisions they ostensibly make together, but she really makes. She's getting everything she designed for, except the one thing she claims she wants, for the two of them to do it together. If we both have goals, I wanna partner who participates equitably in achieving those goals.

Do you know if he has goals? Jesse, do you have goals? I have goals with my business and that's about it in my life at the moment. I'm not sure what else to say. What do you think hearing that stays you? It's a symptom of like, Jesse doesn't really like think ahead and just kind of like life happens day by day. We'll figure it out. Why does that concern you? Because then you're never thinking of like how life can be better. I try and like get Jesse to dream bigger. You try to get him to dream bigger.

How do you do that? By providing. I have worked really hard to provide a life so that he doesn't have to worry about money as much, so that he can do something more adventurous. So he just started a business last year and I like encouraged him to do that because he was working retail and I'm like, you can't work retail forever. When you say to him, you can't work retail forever. What message are you communicating to him? I'm probably communicating that like the path he's chosen is not ideal or like it won't lead to success. It like won't make you happy forever. It'll wear you down. It was wearing on his body. Do you think that he knew that deep down that retail was probably not good for him physically? Probably deep down. Uh-huh, but he wasn't making a change. Was he?

No. And so you decided to? What? Shovel, Motha-Croix. Well, let's ask Jesse. Jesse, take us back to the time where you were working retail. How much were you making back then? I...

65K at the very end. Okay. And did you enjoy the job? I enjoyed the job up until Coke had happened. And then we basically became a warehouse, even though I was retail management. They basically treated me like a workhorse and I broke my body. You're still recovering from that now? Yeah, two years later.

Still, I'm on the better end of it, but yes. I'm sorry to hear that. So you were kind of put into this labor role, and that was tough on you. How long did you do that for? Six years. Well, in that one position, I, sorry, for that one company, I've been retail for two decades. No, okay. Oh, you've been retail for two decades. Up there, about same. Okay. Did you enjoy it for two decades. No, okay. Oh, you've been retail for two decades.

They're about to end. Okay. Did you enjoy it for two decades? Yeah, I thought it was pretty good at selling stuff. Great. And what would you say to her about your day at work? Of course. So the state is already familiar, but I'll say it again.

My manager at the time didn't come in today, called out, and I had to do her job, my job, and probably at 10 other jobs, and I'm not getting paid for this, and I've complained to her boss about this for the umpteen time, and nothing is changing. Stacy, go ahead and respond the way you used to respond. Have you tried?

Oh, that's all I need. That's all I need. Thank you very much. What do you notice is happening in that dynamic? One person is venting. One person is trying to problem solve. Imagine that someone shoves you one time, 10 times. Imagine they shove you for 18 years. At a certain point, it becomes hard enough to even remember how to walk

on your own. Yeah. You think that might be happening here? Yeah. I think you hit the kneel on the head. You two are talking past each other. Stacy's looking off into the orbit right now. She's realizing- I did this today. She did it today. I'm pushing him off the cliff again. It's highlighted that I have years of habit to break.

Jessie, you see the issue? You have no fingerprints on your finances at all. You're merely a passive observer in your financial life. And she doesn't like it. And if he gets hit by a bus tomorrow, you're fucked. Actually, he's not. That is a conversation we have had. The life insurance. What do you mean? He can get a big old life insurance check. That doesn't mean he's gonna. That is a conversation we have had. The life insurance. What do you mean?

He can get a big old life insurance check. That doesn't mean he's going to know how to use it. That's true. Stacey controls everything financially related in their relationship, and therefore, disempowers Jesse. When Jesse has a problem, she tries to solve it thus further disempowering him. This is a classic example, only it's usually with the genders reversed. And Stacey really has a massive blind spot around how she's helping Jesse. Even in the last comment

where I pointed out that Jesse would be screwed if she got hit by a bus, her response was actually not. She really believes that handing over a check from her life insurance would help Jesse, who's functionally unable to deal with money. In his 30s, her disempowerment has lots of costs that are totally invisible to her, but I think she's starting to realize them. And Jesse plays a part in this. He's sitting back, relaxing,

Stacy's running around, tracking 32 categories. Why would he change? Life is good. The dynamic is really what stands out to me. So in order to understand it more, let's take a look at the numbers. Their combined gross monthly income is $19,867. Their gross annual income is $238,000. Their gross annual income is $238,000. Assets 1.32 million investments, 319,000 savings, 50,000. Their debt, a mortgage, is 435,000. Therefore bringing their network to $1.25 million.

How do you feel about $1.2 million in your 30s? I think I've done very well for myself. Okay. And I hope to grow it further in the next 30 years. Good. All right. That's a good answer. I love that answer. It's very confident. Did it feel real to you to say? No. A lot of it is in our house, so not a whole lot of it is liquid. So, what does that mean?

When I say the number allowed, I, my first thought is, how we, we're doing pretty well for our, for our age, where we're living. But then my second thought is, is not a lot of it is successful or usable, even in retirement. You like to worry? Less so than Stacy, but yes, still. What do you get out of it? Out of worrying? Yeah. I worry a lot that what you had just mentioned in Stacey and I've had that very same conversation many times before that if she suddenly is out of the picture for whatever reason, I am in a lot of trouble. Because if she were hit by a bus, by the way, I love this morbid conversation where we're

talking about one person's premature death who just happens to be sitting right in front of us. We're both European. We talk about death a lot. Fantastic. All right, great. So if she were to get, you know, hit by a bus, you still have $1.2 million, and you're a young, able-bodied guy. So it's not the number that concerns me.

It's that everything beneath it, which is you would have no idea how to manage it on a day-to-day basis, no idea how life insurance works, no idea what investments are, or how they interact with your savings. None of it, would you agree? I would agree. And more of that effect, I also don't even have a lot of working income because I just started a business in a market that is not known for making any money. And how long are you going to go on that business before deciding if it's worth it or not?

Ideally until retirement, the goal is to grow it through extension. Okay, great. How much do you need to make from this business? In order for me to like maintain where we are now. I don't know, just how much do you do you have a goal for how much you're going to make with this business? My goal is to double that within the year. 4,000 a month, okay, that's good. And would you be happy? Would you be satisfied at that number? I would, yes, but again, that is, I would be happy with that number

if I still have a loving and healthy wife. All right. Stacy, do you see what the dynamic that you have co-created has done here? She's nodding. Say it out loud. I think what I heard was one, I don't, like if Jessie does not have the means to manage financially, if I'm not around and then to what I heard is with regards to his business, just like small goals, small

sense of what could be. Yeah, like 4,000 a month, while impressive for a business to start. I mean, Jesse used to make 65,000 in retail. Like, shouldn't a business make more than you can make working retail? Jesse? Yes. I'm not blaming you. You haven't been given the authority. You haven't been given access. You haven't even been encouraged to take control of some of these aspects of finance, but it's now caused some really serious effects that are not even obvious right now. Let's also remember you're not in dire financial straits.

You have tons of money. $238,000 a year. Is that a lot? Or a little? What do you think? I'm proud of what I have achieved personally in terms of my own career success. But I never feel good about money. As I always think, we need more buffer. Right.

Oh, uh, if you make an extra 50k, maybe you'll feel good then. What do I want? No, absolutely won't. We'll talk to that. You did. That's so crazy, though. But what if you make a hundred K, would you feel better than no? No, because they will, I'll never feel like it's No, no, because I will I'll never feel like it's enough. I'll continue to worry like I if I was Richard, I'd be like the folks you have on the podcast who have like five million in their 30s and I would still be crazy. I could literally calculate the exact month that you're going to have That much and you're right. You will come back on the show and feel exactly that way It's a guarantee Unless we make some changes. Yes What do you think those changes and

broad strokes have to be stacey? I need to share responsibilities and actually share them and hand them off. Yes. Not continue to partially own them. I think the other thing, why I don't know if Jesse was feeling this way, but why I was quiet just now is like, I always thought encouraging Jesse to start his own business was such a good, like I thought I did a good thing, and I'm feeling like I didn't do a good thing. Also. Because I,

I probably like coach coach him in the direction to go instead of like really just letting him make his own decisions and then now he doesn't dream big enough. How would you describe the way you feel right now? Uh, like mad at myself. Mad. Why mad? As I don't think I realize what I created. What did you create? What did you create? An environment where, you know, Jesse doesn't see the big vision of what he's capable of doing. Whether that's finances and I'm sorry, Jesse, I love you so much, but like it's so clear that you're so anxious on this conversation, the deeper we get in, because you're using buzzwords to try and talk effectively instead of just

being yourself. And I feel like I created that. How do you receive that, Jesse? We'll confuse a little frustrated. The way I've created structured my business, it likely will never grow beyond a certain point. How much? What that dollar, I don't know exactly what the dollar amount is,

but probably not much more than four to six KMU. I know that that causes Stacey of a lot of anxiety and pain. Do you wanna talk to her about it? I feel conflicted, Stacy, because you pushed me, I feel rightly so into pursuing this business and I am happy that you did and I am happy with the company that I've created for myself. But it also pains me to know that I will be unable to financially contribute

as much as you ideally would like, as much as I ideally would like, like in a perfect world. So it's difficult. Do you have a question for her? Go ahead. Yeah. Ask the question that you're afraid to ask. When I lost my job and you said, Jesse, start your business. Do something that you love.

You have a number of hobbies. Make money doing one of them. And I pursued it. I felt I was upfront about how it would not be a great moneymaker. But I need to know if you you understand that. The thing I'm going to push back on you is I think yourself inducing that limitation before you start. You're saying it's never going to be bigger. You create your own destiny. And I didn't ask for a specific number, and you don't have to make a certain amount. But what really pains me in this conversation is I'm worried I created an environment where you're not even... It's not about trying. It's like you're... I don't know if like you really believe that having one location of your rehearsal studios or two locations is enough or you could even dream bigger.

I feel like you're hemming yourself in before you can even explore the possibilities. It's not really about what I expect because we can live off my income. That's why I pushed you to do that. If $4,000 is as much you're going to make in the next year and then that might be the next 10 years, I'm fine with that. Honestly, if I were in Jesse Shuse, I would be really confused right now. First, Stacy told me that, yeah, it's okay, I don't earn a lot of money. Then she told me I should start a business, which I did. Then she wants me to earn more money, but a few seconds later, she says,

it's okay if I don't earn more money. Stacey's message is that she wants control, but she also wants Jesse to participate. But when he tries, she says, not like that. This is all very confusing. It's quite the weight off my chest to hear that AppLoud feels like it's always something moving over my head. I worry because Stacey is the kind of person that is always concerned about money and not having enough of it and to your point, well, we make X amount, you've structured it

so that we are stable, but it seems like the narrative is always, we need to make more, we need to make more as a household. So it's good to hear you'd say out loud that it's okay if I fail essentially with income. Was that your intention, Stacy? Is that what you meant to communicate? No, I meant to say, well, I mean, yes, it's okay to fail,

but what I meant to say is, don't make decisions based on what I say. I want to hear your own thought. I think in this conversation, I've heard you pair it back. Some of the things I've said or Remete says, what I'm missing is like your perspective. Like, what do you want? Because when I hear you say like, I'm doing this business, I'm making a small amount of money, but I'm taking care of the home, I fed you that narrative. I don't know if that's what you really want. And I don't know if you're being honest, that that's what you want. Is that honestly what you want? Or is that honestly what you want? That is honestly what I want.

I enjoy cooking. I enjoy being at home because Cici works from home. So I get to see her a lot more than I used to when we were both working out in the world. What else? I guess it'd be like the fruits of your labor. Again, I'm sorry, I'm freezing buzzwords, but it's something that I can see that I'm, there's an A to a B.

Now that's an honest answer. I like that. That's a perfectly respectable answer. It's you're right. I don't get that in my business either. There's always projects that are ongoing, blah, blah, blah. It's rare that it's just done and clean and perfect. Stacy, do you think that you're having unrealistic expectations

for Jesse to suddenly become a long-term career planner? Yes. How long have you been trying to get him to think like you? Forever probably. So since we met, I'm sure. And you think he picks up on that? Yes. Is there's this narrative that he believes you need to have more money?

Is that true? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just anything's I'm like, money obsessed. And as if we've had this discussion before, he's like, you're obsessed with money to the point of like, it's like greed. But what we've talked about in the past,

and I guess just this like, still not clear, maybe, is like, why I obsess about money is for safety. I'm obsessed about it from a sense of like security. And I want to just make sure there's enough, not just to survive, but to be able to like retire comfortably. And is obsessing going gonna help you achieve that? It has, so far. So you should keep doing it.

No. No. It's gotten you here, got a million bucks in the bank, why not just keep doing it, obsess and make three million? Because clearly it's caused the sacrifice I'm like what I'm losing is in our relationship. Like I've created this dependent relationship that's not it's not sustainable. You are in your own words obsessed with money because it provides you safety work in your own words obsessed with money because it provides you safety. And you what, you want to change that obsession or you want to keep going. I'm not asking a loaded

question. I'm legitimately curious. I do not want that continually optimizing won't change anything. You optimize a lot? Yes. Like? Like I'm always looking at like, how much am I putting away in our investments? And I like want to increase how much we're putting away to retirement so that in, I think it's like 10 years will have enough that will need for retirement. And then I don't have to worry about putting so much away. Oh, and then you're going to stop worrying?

Yeah. Come on. Why are you why are you doing this yourself? You listen to every episode of the podcast. You read my book, right? Yes. Do you think I use the word obsessed with money management? No.

It's boring. It should be. Like, would you cook anything simple, like eggs or something at home? Yeah. Are you obsessed with eggs? No. Throw the egg on the thing, put a little butter. It's done, right?

It's a utility. Yeah. At a certain level of money mastery, you don't even have to be a higher, but at a certain level of knowledge and mastery over your psychology, money management itself is really boring, and it should be. The problem is that there's actually a real cost to doing that with your money. What might you get out of changing your approach to money?

I feel like I have everything to gain. Then why haven't you done it already? Because I've worn, you know, like the finances have been like my cross to bear willingly. Cross to bear, like if it's a negative thing. Yeah, or like it's like, it's my responsibility. Yeah. Tracking a budget for what?

Tweaking a spreadsheet for what? And also having all these negative conversations where you're always lecturing him. Yeah. Really should make more money blah, blah, blah, and then you don't even care if he makes more money. It's like, what's the point? Yeah. So we're waiting for you to have fun with money. We are going on a trip to Italy in about three, what's the two months? What the fuck, hold on, that's awesome. Okay, round of applause. All right, I'm getting the sense that I might have been wrong, but let's play it out. That is awesome.

How long are you going for? Three. Just five, three weeks. Damn, all right, cool. Who came up with the idea? This was a big plan, this has been planned for like two years. Wow. And you're both excited.

Have you ever been to Italy before? No. So cool. All right. What are you two in particular excited about? Generally just travel. As Stacey mentioned earlier conversation, she was growing up.

She went on A vacation. I did not go on my first vacation until I was 22. Where'd you go? Ah, a source. It's where my family is from. Portugal. Portugal. So you're going on this trip and has this gotten kind of the juices flowing in terms of like, ooh, where else might we go?

Exactly that. Well, okay. So Italy is the big one for this year. Next year is renovating our backyard and redoing our fencing at the house. So started thinking about that. Wow. That's so cool. And then the year after that is Japan. Yeah. Is there some reason that you take one trip per year? We don't even do that. Yeah. Is there a reason for that? I mean, it's not like you're making $20,000. You make $240,000 a year.

Because when I look at our numbers, I think we're behind on saving for retirement. So I want to focus more money towards retirement than travel. Yeah, good. The one thing that neither of you are really excited about, you want to focus on that. And the thing that lights you to up, let's wait another 10 years to do that.

You all realize how ridiculous that sounds? Look at the rest of this CSP. We didn't even finish it. Your fixed costs are 39% of your take home. That's one of the lowest numbers I've seen on this show. 39%. That's good. Do you realize that?

Yes. Maybe too good. It's actually, it can be so good that it's bad. I'm not saying that's the case, but I'm just saying, wow, you got a lot of extra money to play around with every month. Your investments, 21% of take home, that's extremely good. At 21%, it tells me either you're like way too frugal or you have a pretty high income. In your case, I think you have a very good income. That's fantastic. Above 25%, I would start to get a little wary. I would say, why aren't they spending some

money on life? I want to double that number. I'm not surprised. All right. And you can. And if you double it, you will certainly achieve your goals faster and you will be miserable and you will cost immeasurable, unmeasurable costs to your relationship. Number one, you're both depriving yourselves of enjoying these experiences, taking one trip every three year, makes no sense. And second, actually not giving ownership. This is an amazing opportunity to give ownership to Jesse. I say, Jesse, I notice you love traveling.

I love traveling. I would love it if you would be the person in charge of travelists helping us schedule our travel. Can we have a conversation about that? He's nodding, he's going, yeah, he's getting excited, I see that smile. Okay. It's a lot of layers here. I find it very interesting. What do you think? So when we started this conversation, you said, what did you want to get out today? I'm like, I'm hoping you see something we can't see. And you did. You've seen that I've optimized the system.

I'm getting exactly what I put in and reaping it. And I've created that for a really long time. What I'm recognizing is, if I look at this as a scale, maybe I have this 100% optimized, what it actually like is maybe 80. And there's certain areas where I would value Jesse's involvement, but it doesn't have to be in the details

and we can balance it out more effectively. Okay, that's pretty perceptive. I agree. Jesse, what do you think so far? Very much the same thing. I felt Stacy had a narrative she wanted coming in, which was, I think she wanted to have a conversation on how to better optimize our savings for our retirement and how to enjoy the latter half of our life, not just like 65 plus, but like 4 plus. Really? Is that true, Jett? Stacy?

Well, there were two sides to the mic. Well, what are the sides? Well, I knew like there were definitely hang-ups we had about money in our like our dynamic that needed a lens and then the other thing that this is the problem that I'm mostly worried about when we talk about finances. I'm worried that we will have not have enough for retirement and that we're like enjoying life enough. Yeah, okay, you're worried about retirement and you're not worried about the fact that

one partner is totally disempowered and disengaged the money. It's just another, this happens virtually every episode. You already know the answer to your question about retirement. I'll answer it anyway, but it's not a retirement issue. That's not gonna be your challenge in your relationship. Your challenge is staring you right in front of the face. What is it? That it's one-sided. Yeah. And Jesse, what else?

Odependent. That's a good way to put it. But when you say codependent, you mean what? Stacey has created a system where I don't have to be involved, but I very much should be and she very much would like me to be. Yes, that's accurate. So what would happen if you just flip the switch tomorrow and both of you reverse rules. Stacy, you're keeping the house clean. Look at if she's already laughing. And you better keep that kitchen, you know, spotless according to Jesse's standards. And Jesse, you're managing all finances.

You're planning, retiring, making all decisions. What would happen? Um, I mean, I would, I would, I would, I would, I would, I would, I decisions, what would happen? I mean, I would like to think, sorry, you want me to be more confident, I apologize. I would likely look at the budget as written and try to stick to it as closely as possible. I think I can handle that. I think he would learn and figure it out. Before I get to the follow-ups from Stacy and Jesse, which are fascinating, I'd like

to ask you to do two things which really help. The first, go to Apple Podcasts and leave a written review that really helps us. And second, get on the podcast newsletter where I share new material every single Saturday, go to IWT.com slash podcast newsletter and you will find a lot of material that I never share publicly. All right, let's get to the follow ups. The first from Stacy, I got out of the conversation what I had hoped to see something I myself was blind to. I walked away understanding that I had created a system for an inequitable partnership in our finances, and I've got work to do with Jesse to unpack and rebuild that relationship. I watched the first two episodes of the new show, and I do not want to have

the relationship met in a manly display. I was reinforcing an unbalanced power dynamic that I did not actually want. My biggest takeaway was that I have been swooping into save the day when it comes to money. It's created an environment of intimidation instead of curiosity. The day after your call I started to change that. We started take steps to give Jesse skin in the game when it comes to our finances. We readjusted our CSP yesterday evening. Instead of looking at our total income, we looked at Jesse's income and broke out the household spending

under his responsibility and allocated investment savings proportional to his income. He's gonna pay for and own the budget for anything household related. He will also set up a recurring deposit for his investment account based on 20% of his income. We also re-booked our regular financial check-ins.

We rescheduled it to a date we could commit to. Jesse will be taking ownership of the agenda. On and on, they go on to share more and more details. We looked at what we want to achieve in the next year and whether our savings targets would get us there. This left us with a much healthier 21% guilt-free spending allocation in our CSP. Thank you for the coaching and guidance step-by-step.

I know Jesse and I will create a more equitable financial partnership. Jesse wrote a follow-up and said, my feeling before going into the conversation was a fear that I was going to be blamed for not being involved with our finances and accused of being disinterested. I was surprised by your observations of our relationship dynamics over the past 18 years

and how they fostered these feelings of anxiety, avoidance, and disinterest. I was even more surprised by your insistence that we needed to start spending more money on ourselves in the everything else category of the CSP. The following night we sat down and discussed our budget and I'm now handling our day-to-day spending, including groceries, pets, house supplies, etc. We have a long road ahead of us, but we will not be skipping our monthly meetings any longer. Fantastic work to Jesse and Stacey. Thank you for the courage in coming on this show.

We all appreciate it. And for everyone who's listening and watching, go to iwt.com-slash-podcast-newsletter because I've got new material to share with you this Saturday and every Saturday afterwards. Thanks for listening to I Will Teach You To Be Rich. I'm Remedeste T. Please follow the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you haven't read, I will teach you to be rich. My book, pick up a copy. You can get it at any bookstore or any library,

and it will show you the specific tactics for how to build the I will teach you to be rich system into your personal finances.