I Will Teach You To Be Rich - 158. “We have $2M, why can’t we retire?” (Part 2)
Episode Date: May 28, 2024Rob and Adrienne are nearing retirement but worried about having enough. In Part 2, we dig into their Conscious Spending Plan to reveal a massively successful investment strategy that remains shrouded... by deep lingering fears, $3 questions, and hard-to-break bad habits with money. This episode is brought to you by: Rocket Money | Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions – and manage your expenses the easy way – by going to https://rocketmoney.com/ramit. DeleteMe | If you want to get your personal information removed from the web, go to https://joindeleteme.com/ramit for 20% off. Hatch | A million things don’t want you to sleep, Hatch does. Get $20 off a Hatch Restore at https://hatch.co/ramit. Facet | Get affordable, accessible financial planning with a flat fee membership. For a limited time, the $250 enrollment fee will be waived when you sign up at https://facet.com/ramit. Superhuman | Get a free month of lightning fast email at https://try.sprh.mn/ramitsethi. Links mentioned in this episode • “We spent $80,000 more than we made last year” (Part 1) Connect with Ramit • Get the Podcast Newsletter and exclusive Q&A about the show • Get Money Coaching with Ramit • Download the Conscious Spending Plan • Listen to my book—now on Audible • Get my New York Times best-selling book • Get my no-numbers journal • Other episodes • Instagram • Twitter • YouTube Submit a question for the newsletter iwt.com/askramit 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.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
This episode is sponsored by my partners at FASET. FASET is an SEC registered investment advisor.
The FASET provided scenarios discussed are based on inputs provided by Rob and Adrian
and are based on industry standard assumptions. Investing involves serious risks and past
performance is not a guarantee of future performance or success. My opinions are included and should
not be interpreted as a recommendation or investment strategy, legal or tax advice.
The information provided is for illustrative and educational purposes only.
I kind of wish I hadn't blown that money in the 90s. I'm hoping it lasts for 30 years.
That's the primary question, right? Will this money last for the rest of our lives?
Yeah. The biggest piece is the fear. I mean, I just sort of hope that when we have a plan that we know what we can spend on all
these trips that the fear will go away.
But Rameet, you're skeptical.
Your emotion is not going away from numbers on a spreadsheet.
If that was going to happen, it would have happened about a million dollars ago.
The only way you actually get to do this and enjoy it is if you
learn to manage your fears, Rob. Nothing else matters.
Adrian, why do you think we've avoided seeing a financial advisor who can answer
our retirement questions? I think because we already know the answers.
I think because we already know the answers.
Welcome to part two of my conversation with Adrian and Rob.
Adrian's 59, Rob is 62 years old, and they have one big question.
Are we going to have enough?
When I talk to people who are in their 50s and beyond,
this is the single biggest question that they have.
Like most people, Rob and Adrian believe their question is about dollars on a spreadsheet.
But as we learned last week on part one of this conversation, Rob is incredibly fearful
around money, even though he and Adrian have paid off tens of thousands of dollars of debt
and they've built a sizable portfolio. Please note that he's been worried
about running out of money for 15 years,
but he has never run a detailed calculation,
and he's never hired a financial advisor.
Why?
On today's episode, I wanted to give him specific scenarios
for how their life might look,
depending on their financial choices.
I asked our partner, FASET, to run
several analyses taking into account their age, goals, and spending. If you are looking
for specific answers to your own financial scenarios via a financial advisor, especially
if you're considering retirement or you have a large portfolio or an especially complex
financial situation, go to facet.com slash Ramit,
and know they do not charge AUM.
Now let's get to today's conversation
where Rob and Adrienne start off
by discussing their vision for a rich life.
They've been living in scarcity for so long
that this is really hard for them.
I remember you coming to me recently and saying, oh my gosh, we're making a lot less money.
And I said, It's okay. We did it. This is what we've been doing our whole... We've
been saving for this moment when your business was not going to be working. And so now we've
got this nest egg.
And supposedly, if we only spend 4% of it, it's going to be
okay.
So I remember you asking me and I said I thought it was going to be okay.
I thought this is what we've been saving for.
This moment.
Tell Rob again, your vision for a rich life.
What my vision is, is that we have this one precious life to live and that we
Use our hearts to extend our generosity out into the world and that we are
people that create a better world for
Those around us through our charity through love, and that we also spoil ourselves
and create freedom for ourselves and relaxation and that whatever we feel confident that whatever
we spend our money on that we're allowed to do that, that creates a rich life for me.
I would say I can see how my fear had I
Mean because you're leading off with generosity that I can see why my fear would
Hold us back
I'm down with it because we don't
Have to bequeath this money to anybody at the end and so we can give it away while we're alive
Being more relaxed is going to be the key to me being able to
play ball with you on this.
And that as long as I'm worried about this stuff, that I won't be able to be more generous.
Fear just stops me in my tracks around stuff like that.
Stay on the generosity.
I love where you're going Rob.
Get deeper into her vision of generosity.
What does she mean?
How do I know what she means? Okay. Do you want to describe to me more a little bit about
what you were specifically talking about heartfelt generosity. Great. I would love it if we gave,
our niece and nephew weddings are coming up
that we gave more money than we actually said
we were going to previously give to them for our,
I would love to give more money to them for their weddings.
I would love to tip extra when I go out to eat with people.
I would love to also, I don't know, I mean, I really, if I had to dream, like a dream,
I mean, I would love to create like, if if I had the money, if we actually, if this is
actually real, to create, like, a scholarship for some people that I know would love to
take, like, coaching programs that I love and, like, or to take, like, classes or things
like that.
I would love to create a, be able to, like like be that kind of... Have that kind of generosity
in the world. And also really like support causes that mean a lot to us like, you know,
environmental causes and things like that, you know, really definite. And we do give
money to charity, but like to give a little extra more money to charity.
Let me pause you there. Adrienne, I love what you're saying. You know what I haven't heard
at all is any specifics. So you mentioned tipping, I love what you're saying. You know what I haven't heard at all is any specifics.
So you mentioned tipping.
I don't know how much you mentioned a scholarship.
I don't know how much charity.
I don't know how much.
Right.
If we're talking about an extra 2% tip, let's just say and be done with it because that's
easy.
Look at Rob's face right now.
Rob's like, what the f*** numbers are you talking about?
Just tell me the number.
I have the calculation open right now. talking about? Just tell me the number.
I have the calculation open right now. Fear was coming up and she was describing all of this stuff.
Well, that's why I felt like we had to create a plan.
This is very important.
This is amazing.
So, Adrienne, you're painting this beautiful vision.
I love it.
It's powerful.
It's compelling and it's personal.
That is a beautiful set of ingredients for a rich life.
Rob did a great job.
Rob, first you were clouded by fear.
It's like a cloud.
That's what I see.
Fear, it's a cloud like a poisonous gas you can't see through.
And you inhale, look at me.
And the toxin gets into you.
It makes you unable to hear.
It even makes you unable to see.
It's a noxious green gas cloud around you.
That's fear.
That's how I see.
But we cleared it away and you were an excellent listener.
So let's try to ground this a little bit.
Let's start with the tipping.
I love tipping.
I love people who tip.
I hate cheap tippers.
What percentage you have in mind in your rich life?
I had 25%.
Love it.
So do we all agree from now on you're going to tip 25%?
Is that the new rule?
Yeah.
You sure?
I don't want to pressure anybody. It's your money. It's not mine. Is that the new rule? Yeah.
You sure? I don't want to pressure anybody. It's your money. It's not mine.
Tell me if you're worried. This is the time to speak up.
I'm not worried. I know. I mean, this is what I've been tipping mostly. So yeah, it's fine.
All right, Adrienne, how do you feel about that?
I feel good about it now that I know that I'm allowed to do it too.
Totally. What do you learn from that example, Adrienne, in describing your rich life?
I learned that Rob and I don't ask each other a lot of questions.
Correct.
You two are not asking each other any questions.
So it's like one person is just saying something and then the ball just drops like dead.
There's like dead silence here.
And what I really want is for the two of you to get curious.
Like, oh my God, what do you mean by that?
Wow, wait, that's amazing.
Hipping?
Why only 25?
Like, what if we did 30?
How about at Christmas we do 50?
You're almost one-upping each other.
Are you asking, are we thinking big enough?
Or like, hmm, I love the idea of two trips a year, but like, how do
you see us also being generous with our niece and nephew? I'm begging you to, it's like
you're trying to cook a meal. I need you to get your hands in those ingredients and start
moving things around. I need this to be tactile.
What just happened is really common. In many relationships, you have one person who dreams
and the other who crosses their arms and plays the role of the dream crusher.
The dream crusher says things like, what about X or well, I don't know, or well,
we might be able to do that. But if you watched my Netflix show, How to Get Rich,
you saw it with Sarah and Reggie.
And thankfully, they were able to shift their role
from dreamer and dream crusher to partners.
If you find yourself in this dynamic, it's so common.
I want you to zoom out, zoom way out,
and recalibrate your relationship dynamic.
Ask your partner, hey, what do you notice
about this dynamic?
Ask each other what roles you play today
and what roles you would like to play tomorrow.
That's how you recalibrate that dynamic.
We'll be right back after this short break.
One of the core parts of a rich life
is to spend extravagantly on the things you love
and cut costs mercilessly on the things you don't.
So here's my question for you.
Do you really love that photo editing app that you signed up for 10 months ago and only
used twice?
See, most of us are paying for things we don't care about.
What if you could take that money and redirect it to something you do love, like a great
dinner out or a massage or filling up your investment account.
Well, Rocket Money helps you do that by helping you find unwanted or forgotten subscriptions
so you can cancel them and then redirect that money to something you actually do care about.
Rocket Money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions,
monitors your spending, and helps you lower your bills so you can grow your savings.
Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in cancelled
subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all the app's features.
Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to
rocketmoney.com slash ramith. That's rocketmoney.com slash ramith, rocketmoney.com slash Ramit. That's rocketmoney.com slash Ramit,
rocketmoney.com slash Ramit. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while,
you know that I love Delete Me, a subscription service, one that I personally pay for that will
go around the internet and remove your personal information from being sold online. I love it
because I don't want my personal information all over the internet.
And you can see for yourself,
type in your name and city on Google
and you will see a ton of personal information pop up.
Full name, address, phone numbers,
sometimes even your parents' information.
All this information is being scooped up
and sold by data brokers online.
And that's not okay.
Delete Me works to remove it all for you.
And they've just introduced a new feature. You can add family members to your
account. For example, if you have older parents who you know are vulnerable to
identity theft, you also know they probably won't sign up themselves and
type all this stuff in there, you can do it for them. Just add them to your
account. Same goes for your kids. So you can create a unified hub for family
privacy information. All you need to do is log into your Delete Me account and
assign a unique data sheet to each family member tailored to their
specific online footprint. So if you want to get your personal information and
your family's personal information removed from search results on the web, go to joindeleteme.com slash Ramit for 20%
off a plan for you or your entire family. Again, that's joindeleteme.com slash Ramit. R-A-M-I-T.
Let's get back to Adrian and Rob. Adrian, why don't you ask Rob what his rich life is?
And Rob now has the benefit of going second.
So he has heard a lot of the work we've put in here, which is great.
It's all an exercise.
We're learning how to talk about this for the first time.
So no worries.
Rob, what would you like your rich life to be?
If you could dream about it, what would it be like?
I feel really happy about the generosity piece, giving good gifts and so on.
I feel like the relaxed and happy part for me would entail a lot more massages. maybe next year's trips would be fewer, longer, and really cut out some time for the two of us.
What else do I want? Relaxed, happy, generous. Being able to discuss our finances in a way that reduces the fear would go a long way. Because the
thing that's striking to me is just how much my fear is impacting you. I mean, I just sort
of hope that when we have a plan that we know what we can spend on all these trips that
the fear will go away. But Rameet, you're skeptical.
Your emotion is not going away from numbers on a spreadsheet.
If that was going to happen, it would have happened about a million dollars ago.
So, I love where you're going with it though.
What do you think are three or five ways that you might be able to more effectively manage
those fears?
Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that exercise that we did the other day that
you walked me through, like the 10-minute exercise, maybe we need a regular practice
because that really helped me.
But working together on some of these things, creating more body awareness and getting me out of my head.
If you can help me get out of my head, I think that would be really helpful.
Although I hate to put that on you because it's a lot to ask of somebody.
Well, maybe we can do it together.
You can do it with me and I can do it with you.
Yeah, sure.
How else will I reduce my fear?
I mean, I think the quarterly money day, once we've got this plan laid out, will at least
let me know that you're thinking about this stuff.
What else here?
How to get rid of fear.
How to get rid of a lifelong fear.
It's funny, as much as we talk, we don't talk about that specifically.
We don't talk about our upbringing.
We have talked about it, but not maybe enough or as targeted as maybe it needs to be.
Because I feel like for us to be learning about this stuff on a podcast,
after we've spent 18 years working on this together, it means some things that we've
not been saying for the 18 years, probably we should practice saying somehow, you know,
digging deeper into some of this stuff. So I think I hear you saying like that we could have more conversations where we get
more curious about each other.
What's the thing you could do to solve fear?
You've so far given two.
I need body awareness.
Okay, body awareness, money meeting, having a financial plan. I mean, I feel like we both don't know if what we're spending is going to be all right.
All the stuff you talked about, the spinning, the ignoring childhood issues, not having
the tools to communicate effectively with each other.
What's the obvious one here?
You want me to say counseling?
Yeah.
Counseling? Yeah.
I think it's obvious, but it's your rich life.
This is actually what we're doing this year.
We do have a coach.
That's what our whole entire year is about.
Amazing.
This counseling thing.
Wait, how did that?
Hold on.
Amazing.
Great.
I love to hear that.
Yeah.
It's not that I'm shilling for therapists or whatever. No, to hear that. Yeah. It's not that I'm like shilling for therapists or whatever.
No, no, absolutely.
Can you tell me this whole like it's this year of like counseling, what is that about?
That's so cool.
Well, we're just, we just taught, we hired a coach, actually, who's really cool and someone
from our community. And then we just decided to commit to this...
It's an emotional program that's on Zoom. It happens every other Tuesday
where we get together with a whole entire community of people and we talk
about different issues. And then we also have private counseling as well on Zoom.
Awesome.
So that's kind of what our year, this year was dedicated to.
I was a little bit surprised when Rob said that we weren't doing anything that he wanted
to do this year because I feel like we're doing a lot together that we both, I thought
we both decided on together.
That's because in your relationship, the numbers eclipse everything else.
You could go on an amazing vacation and all you remember about it are the numbers.
You can be doing all these amazing things, but the only true central focus in your relationship
as it relates to your rich life is the numbers.
And that will not change no matter how much money you have.
Your money is going to double.
You know the math.
Rule of 72, it's going to double.
It will not change until you tackle the actual symptoms.
I'm glad you're doing this coaching class.
I think that's amazing.
Does the rule of 72 though, does that apply even if you're not putting money into the market?
Totally irrelevant to a more important point.
Even when people are on the cusp of making a breakthrough, they will unconsciously fight
to go right back to where they feel comfortable.
Nobody turns on a dime and makes massive lifestyle changes overnight.
It's two steps forward,
one step back. That's normal. I want to say, I wish they saw a therapist instead of a random coach,
but I'm still glad that they are doing this. You're proving my point, which is that in your
relationship, numbers eclipse everything else. Do you see what I mean? And it's hard. It's really, it's easier
to ruminate and spin. It's hard to be like, what's actually going on in here? I love that
you're starting to tackle it. But in my opinion, of all the stuff you talked about, relaxing,
using your heart, helping the planet, getting to have fun and relax, massages, trips. The only way you actually get to do this and enjoy it is if you learn to manage your fears,
Rob.
Nothing else matters.
Part of it is a lack of vision and part of it is fear.
I feel like the fear is almost like the fog you're talking about.
It's a general fear.
I don't know that if I have a specific
I guess what i'm saying is
Um rob we can see that this is costing you a lot, right? It's costing you
Trips most importantly your fear is costing you the ability to connect with adrienne over
A rich life vision one that you've both worked incredibly hard for
I'm a little surprised that you're not attacking these fears with overwhelming force.
Like, it is the number one thing to do.
The.
If it were me and it was like, should I keep tracking my yellow pages and my apps and logging
it?
I'll be like, stop doing all of that.
And instead, focus two hours a day on this.
I do think that this coaching program is going to help a lot this year because that's the
number one thing that she said to us was presence.
Great.
That was the first thing that came up for us is to be working on that as well.
How did you decide how much you're going to spend on this coach, by the way?
I mean, we talked about it together.
Yeah.
Okay.
It was, it was anyway, I was going to say it was it's 30 grand for the year, but you
don't care about the number.
So in this case, I do 30 grand.
All right.
And yeah, listen, if it helps you.
Yeah.
Together connect would be the best 30 grand you ever spent.
It's already been amazing.
Honestly.
Awesome.
We'll open up their conscious spending plan right after this.
Nothing like getting woken up in the morning by an absolutely blaring alarm going.
You're like, this day is already hell
and it's six o'clock and three seconds.
That's not a good start to the day.
Thankfully we have better options now
like the Hatch Restore,
which is a peaceful nudge
to gently wake up every morning and actually be in a good mood.
Hatch helps you prioritize rest and also create bedtime habits that make you feel ready for
sleep at night and energized in the morning.
Unlike a traditional alarm or sound machine, the Hatch Restore uses a soft glowing light
paired with soothing sounds to help you wind down peacefully.
And it wakes you gently with a sunrise
that gradually changes color and gets brighter,
stimulating your natural sleep patterns.
My coworker and her husband use the Hatch Restore
and they tell me that when they're getting ready
to go to sleep, like when they're brushing their teeth
at night, they push a button
and they get this sunset colored glow
and this sound that tells them time to wind down.
Then 15 minutes later it turns off automatically and it plays white noise
to help them fall asleep and stay asleep. Hatch has put over 5 million people to sleep from babies
to adults and right now Hatch is offering my listeners up to 20% off and free shipping on your Hatch device purchase. Visit hatch.co slash Ramit for up to 20% off.
That's hatch.co slash Ramit.
I have this hilarious slash sad thing that happens to me
almost every single week in my Instagram DMs.
Somebody will write me, they go,
hey, I'm paying 1.25% AUM to my financial advisor.
I know you've talked about not paying a percentage
to a financial advisor.
I just wanna know if it's worth it or not.
Where can I ask you a question?
I go, just join my money coaching program.
It's like 69 bucks a month.
I do live Q&A every single month.
And they go, oh, well, I'm not really sure
that I can afford that.
Listen, the person writing me this exact question will probably spend over a hundred thousand dollars in lifetime fees but they are afraid to spend 69 dollars for one month of money coaching.
Now listen, I don't mind if they join my program or not. That's not the point. The point is, isn't it fascinating that people would rather pay a percentage and not even
know how much they're paying than to write a small check?
That is how so many financial advisors charge by percentage, and it costs you way more than
you realize.
I want to introduce you to our partners at Fasset.
They realized what's wrong with this AUM
or percentage-based model,
and they did something about it.
They're making financial advice accessible to everybody.
With Facet, you get flexible access
to a team of financial planners,
CFP professionals,
and a team of professionals providing guidance
across retirement planning, tax strategy,
estate planning, and more.
And instead of taking a percentage of your portfolio,
they charge an affordable flat membership fee.
And FASET does not charge you to invest with them.
FASET CFP professionals are fiduciaries,
meaning they are required to prioritize what's best for you.
That means when you make more and you're not
paying a percentage, you keep more.
Now, FASET will waive the $250 enrollment fee for new annual members,
and they will add $500 into your brokerage account when you invest and maintain
$5,000 in the first 90 days of membership. Check out their new membership options at
facet.com slash remit. Again, facet.com slash remit.
If you are looking for a financial advisor, if you have a large
portfolio, a complex tax situation, or you need specific guidance on something like retirement
planning, check out facet.com slash Ramit. Sponsored by Facet, Facet Wealth Inc. Facet
is an SEC registered investment advisor headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. This is not an offer
to sell securities or investment, financial, legal, or tax advice.
Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance.
Terms and conditions apply.
Let's talk numbers.
I'm gonna go through their CSP.
And if you wanna follow along,
you can download your own template
of the Conscious Spending Plan completely free
at iwt.com slash CSP.
Do you mind if we go ahead and look at your numbers?
Sure.
All right.
I'm excited to look at the numbers.
Rob's like, enough feelings!
Take me to the CSP, the promised land.
All right.
All right.
So what was it like to do the CSP together?
Did we do it together? Did I show you it?
Here it is.
Oh, what? You literally gave her a printout and you said, here you go?
So you prepared it, Rob, and then you showed it to Adrienne for her approval, which Adrienne,
you approved all of it, correct?
Sure.
All right. So you guys didn't really do it together.
All right, fine.
We didn't.
You all know what the instructions said, right?
Do it together.
Why do you think you didn't do it together?
Because I'm not a rule follower.
I don't know.
That's not a good answer, but there's no point getting into it right now.
Just know that half of the value of the CSP for me at least is in seeing how couples do it together
Or if they do it separately as Rob and Adrian did which actually explains so much
Back to their numbers and please remember she's 59 years old and he is 62
Assets
34,000. Investments, $1,896,754.
Okay, $1,896,754.
All right, next.
Savings, $58,788.
Okay, next.
That zero.
Great. Total net worth?
1,000,000 or yeah, 1,989,542.
Nice. All right. So just under $2 million net worth.
What do you think about that?
I think it's good. Cool. Rob. What do you think about that? I think it's good.
Cool. Rob, what do you think?
I think it's great and I'm hoping it lasts for 30 years.
That's the primary question, right? Will this money last for the rest of our lives?
Yeah.
And y'all thought Yeah. And you all thought, if we come on the show, we'll get Ramit Sethi to give us an answer,
yes or no, and then once we know, we'll hopefully feel better, right?
Yes.
Okay.
Do you still believe that?
That's the actual question that you need help with.
I think that's one small piece of what we need help with.
If that were the question keeping you up at night, there are plenty of ways to get that
question answered, right?
You didn't have to wait to talk to me.
What would be some of the other ways to get that question answered?
Rob went onto the Bogle heads And asked that question and they said,
yeah, it should work out.
All right.
So?
I mean, I've read a ton of financial blogs
that talk about the 4% rule.
Why are you guys not spending money
on solving your problems?
I'm really confused.
Like this is a money problem.
It's a math problem. It's like, let me pay someone
to model this out for me. Just tell me the answer and tell me the variables. That's it,
right? This is a classic financial advisor problem. And you almost never hear me saying
like get a financial advisor. But like this is the clearest use of a financial advisor
ever.
Because we live in the middle of nowhere and we don't have a financial advisor ever? Because we live in the middle of nowhere and wouldn't know how to
don't have a financial advisor nearby for one.
That's a bad answer.
That's a because we've gotten soon.
Thank you.
You don't even know where I am right now.
What else?
What is it really?
Why are you posting on forums and not getting a financial advisor?
Why?
To try to save money because I'm scared to spend the money?
Is that it?
I don't know why we haven't done that. We almost did it once.
Pay somebody an hourly to take a look at our numbers.
This was when we still had the house, probably five, six years ago.
We're at a different place now and probably we'd be more beneficial now than back
then. I mean, on some level, paying somebody an hourly to take a look at our numbers and project
out what we're going to have in retirement and so on, it would be useful on some level now.
And I don't know why we haven't done it. I don't have a good answer.
Here we have a couple with literally millions of dollars.
He's worried about money for the last 57 years and he's agonized over his business for the
last 15.
His number one worry is, will we have enough?
And yet he has not spent a single dollar trying to answer the question.
This is what I mean when I say that the way you feel
about money is highly uncorrelated
with the amount in your bank.
Guys, this is a problem.
This is what happens when you read too many fire blogs
and go way too deep into the world of frugality.
You can't even imagine using your money
to make your life better
because you've only been taught to play small,
to save, to cut back, to do it yourself.
This is a problem that could be solved in like two weeks.
And if you have millions of dollars, the amount you spend to get this answered will literally
be replaced by interest within a single month.
The point of this podcast is to help you understand
how complex our relationship with money can be.
And Rob and Adrian are making my case for me.
You can have millions of dollars,
but if you don't look beneath the surface
and ask the tougher questions,
like what's all this money for?
What stories do I believe?
What is our rich life?
And how can we use our money to start living it?
You will forever be stuck
We'll return to the story after these messages
The way people want to know about productivity hacks reminds me of how people were desperate to know what kind of shoes Michael Jordan wears
Listen guys, no matter what shoes Michael Jordan wore you you wearing those same shoes is not going to make you dunk like Mike.
So me telling you I use a gratitude journal, which I don't, or setting an egg timer to
get work done every 25 minutes, which I also don't, is not going to help you be more productive.
There's one thing I use which actually helps me be more productive.
It's a piece of software.
I pay for it myself.
It's called Superhuman.
It helps me get through my inbox lightning fast. be more productive. It's a piece of software. I pay for it myself. It's called Superhuman.
It helps me get through my inbox lightning fast. You can use it with your existing service
like Gmail or Outlook. And honestly, when I see people using another email service without
keyboard shortcuts, it's like watching someone from the Stone Age try to type. I'm just like,
you do that? That's how you respond to emails? No, superhuman saves me over 10 hours a week
and here are a few things I love about it.
It splits my inbox into streams.
So all my important emails go to one place.
It's not cluttered with subscriptions, promos, et cetera.
There's a keyboard shortcut for everything.
I literally never lift up my hand.
I can't even see the keys on my keyboard right now.
They're so worn in because all I do is type.
I love it.
That's all I do.
I sit here, I type, I go, yeah, done, done, done, JJK, done.
No mouse.
If I see something I don't have time to reply to right now,
boom, H, remind me tomorrow, remind me at 4 p.m.
J or K, cycle through messages, V,
add it to a specific folder.
Do I sound like a psycho right now?
How excited I am about different keystrokes.
That's how you should be if you wanna be more productive.
Talking about a Pomodoro alarm clock.
No, I sort through 50 emails in 60 seconds.
That's keyboard shortcuts.
A lot of people watching this going,
this guy sounds a little unhinged.
I don't know if the superhuman marketing team
wanted him to be talking like this
when he was talking about the product.
Doesn't matter to me.
That's how I talk when it comes to productivity.
Another cool feature I like, by the way,
is their AI feature.
It can summarize long emails at the top
in a few bullet points.
So when I have people who send me 13 different messages
about how they have a Roth IRA but not a traditional,
should they do a 401k, et cetera,
it just says, this person is extremely confused,
has never read your book,
never opened up chapter three, six, seven,
and then I go, oh wow, I'm not gonna reply to that, but nice to know. Thanks AI. So if
you want to buy back your time, Superhuman is a no-brainer. Again, I spent
my own money on it. You probably should too. Right now all IWT listeners get a
free month of Superhuman. You can get started at superhuman.com slash Rameet.
That's superhuman.com slash R-A-M-I-T. Back to the conversation now where
I press them on why they haven't taken action yet. 15 plus years you've been on this journey.
You've accomplished a lot. You have $2 million of net worth, most of it liquid. It's very impressive.
$2 million of net worth, most of it liquid. It's very impressive.
You have a question that has been plaguing you.
I use that word intentionally.
It's not a question that's just been on the back burner.
It's a word that has plagued you.
You ruminate, you worry, you agonize.
It's caused odd fights.
This has been almost 20 years.
And you have an easy solution.
You could knock this out by Friday.
You could have had this answered at any point.
It would have cost you less than $5,000, which you make an interest.
Why?
Why have you not done it?
I don't have a good answer.
You want me to, I mean, if you think my fear is stopping me from looking at this.
I don't know if you don't know the answer to something, how might you find the answer
to it?
Search for it on the internet.
Is there anyone else on this call we might be able to ask?
Oh, okay.
All right, Adrienne, you tell me why haven't we done this?
Ask her again, but ask her in a way that actually invites her answer.
I want you to really lean into this.
Okay, Adrienne, why do you think we've avoided seeing a financial advisor who can answer
our retirement questions?
I think because we already know the answers, we've been studying it for so long that I
feel like we're pretty, that we probably know what they would say.
I'd be open to it.
I mean, I think it's a good idea, actually.
I don't know why we haven't done it either, actually.
It's a good idea actually. I don't know why we haven't done it either actually. It's a really good question.
But I think also too, there's just a level of trust like around who to trust.
How can you talk about trust when you haven't talked to five financial advisors and interviewed
them?
Right.
Exactly.
So you haven't even gotten to the trust part of it yet. Yeah.
I mean, I guess I just watched other financial advisors. I thought...
Seemed like **** honestly. Hey, me too. They gave you some report, they go, oh, that'll be 1.15% AUM.
It's like, f*** you.
Why?
I don't need to pay that much for that.
Exactly.
However, I have seen a financial advisor myself.
Did you know that?
Yeah.
Mr. Don't Pay AUM.
And most people don't need a financial advisor, which I believe.
I myself have hired a financial advisor.
I paid him hourly.
He charged a very healthy rate.
I was happy to pay it.
I said to him, I know this investing stuff.
I know this personal finance stuff.
But I want a second set of eyes on my asset allocation to make sure I haven't missed something.
Here are my key questions.
Come back, let me know what you find.
And he did find some stuff.
He said, overall, great.
A couple of things.
Consider this.
Wow.
What did I do differently than what you have been doing?
What you did brilliantly is be a student and ask for advice.
Yes.
Even a guy who has written a bestselling book about money had to be humble enough to realize
there are things I don't know.
Totally agree.
What else?
Rob?
He took action.
Yes.
Why haven't we done it?
That's the question.
Inertia, fear of what they might say, that if they start recommending things we don't
want to do.
Did you avoid going to the doctor?
Not anymore.
I used to.
I heard that.
Look at Adrian's face.
Amazing.
Amazing.
Amazing.
Stop doing that.
I noticed that.
Every time I ask you, you go, well, I used to, but now I'm better.
Stop benchmarking yourself.
I just went to the heart doctor last month. I'm going to the general physician in July.
He goes, I went to the heart doctor because I had a heart attack.
Look how great I am. I went to the heart doctor.
Only on this show do we laugh about someone having a heart attack.
Rob, you didn't have a heart attack, right?
No, not at all.
Thank God.
Because if so, that was going to make me look really, really bad.
Bad joke.
Yeah, sure.
That would have been...
Yeah, that would be bad.
Okay.
I'm glad you went to the doctor.
Adrian's face tells me...
Adrian, do you want to care to comment?
I mean, it's his choice.
Great answer.
That says everything we need to know.
The reason I'm getting at this, you know what I'm getting at here?
A lot of men in particular, they don't go to see the doctor.
They're always putting off.
I thought it was like a funny sitcom joke.
And I realized, I started talking to them, I started looking into it.
There's a lot of fear.
What if the doctor tells me that I actually haven't been doing things right?
That actually I'm sick?
That actually I've got like 10 cavities?
Whatever.
You know, Rob, you've used the word fear a lot today, which I appreciate you being candid
about.
It clearly is a major issue.
The fear that a financial advisor might tell you, you haven't been doing it right all along.
That's legit.
That's the same as a lot of people
saying, I don't want to hear what my doctor has to tell me. That's why I asked the question
and why I'm amused at Adrian's response. I'm glad you're going to see the doctor. That's
awesome. I also want to point out that the major difference between what I did and what
you did is I took decisive action.
That really is my wish for you.
You could spend literally the rest of your life ruminating and worrying.
You half joked Rob, but it wasn't really a joke that you've been worrying about money
for 57 years.
You don't have 57 more years.
I don't want you to have to worry.
Money is not something that has to worry you. You have $ more years. I don't want you to have to worry. Money is not something that has to worry
you. You have $2 million. And yet for something as simple as spending $3,000 to $5,000 to get a
definitive answer on the one thing that has been plaguing you,
neither of you were decisive enough to do it for the last 15 years.
were decisive enough to do it for the last 15 years. If it were me, if I was 59, 62 years old, I would be in a rush to live my rich life.
Especially because as you know, life isn't linear.
When it goes bad towards the end, it goes bad fast.
And that's it.
So I'm in a big rush if I'm you.
I see the finiteness of life.
And, you know, liking it to a basketball game, we're in the fourth quarter now.
Their real problem is not the numbers.
It goes far deeper than that.
But even though that's still true, they want numbers. So I'm
going to give them numbers and I'm going to give them some very eye-opening scenarios.
I went to our partner, Fasset, and I asked their advisors to run three scenarios for Rob and Adrian.
We provided a bunch of information, including their CSP, portfolio, insurance, and on and on.
And then my team took that report and we worked with FASET to tailor
these scenarios to Rob and Adrian's life. For example, we know that they want to be more
generous. We know that Rob wants to cut back at work and we incorporated all of these things
to give them very specific options that fit them like a glove. If you are looking for personalized help from financial advisors who do not charge
AUM, check out facet.com slash Ramit. Now your CSP has something very interesting about
it, which is your income has gone down because Rob, you cut back on hours at your company.
So your income has gone taken taken quite a hit, correct?
Yes, I didn't fight it. So as it slowed down, I just let it do its thing. I decided that
trying to pump it back up was not, and this is sort of one of the luxuries of being in
our situation that I didn't want to spend my 60s fighting to make every last buck.
Cool.
I like that.
All right.
And Adrienne, you are not earning money.
I believe you are in a class right now.
Is that correct?
Coaching program?
Well, I actually finished the coaching program two years ago.
I had one year of being a coach last year and I made not too much.
So I'm beginning my second year of being a coach.
Not earning yet.
Do you anticipate you will earn at some point?
I don't know.
I've been struggling.
Like, the marketing is really challenging to me.
So, yeah.
All right.
So your gross monthly income is $4,506.
You put a note here, this is income from Rob working part-time in his business.
You drew $70,000 from your $2 million in investments and you've been using that to cover your monthly
living expenses through the year, right?
Right.
All right. So you withdrew part of your investments.
So you're making about $54,000 a year gross.
About $45,000 net.
Your fixed costs are 124%.
But again, the CSP breaks under certain conditions.
Just to highlight a couple things. You rent, your renting, because you sold your house,
your rent is $25.50 per month.
That's $2,550 a month.
That's like 62% of your gross income.
These numbers don't make any sense if we were using a typical CSP analysis.
That's why I was so excited to get a chance to talk to you. just so we know you're you have about 60 K and savings. All right fine
And then it appears you have two thousand five hundred dollars a month for guilt-free spending
Is that getting spent? Yes, really?
Absolutely. Yeah this year we have we have ten trips planned eight of them are flights two of them are car trips
hotels weddings all kinds of stuff.
It's about $30,000.
And I went backwards.
I was like, I budgeted the $30,000 for the 10 trips.
And we then made it into a monthly number.
First of all, very impressive.
That's awesome.
Love it.
Are you excited about the trips?
Some of them.
That's a good answer.
If you want my feedback, I'll give it to you.
It's short.
I'm certainly going to talk to you about the retirement question.
That is the primary question I know you want.
But in terms of your expenses, I mean, the groceries are pretty expensive.
You probably have several hundred
dollars you could cut if you really needed to there. The question might be, if we cut
our groceries by let's just say, 500 to $1,000 a month, whatever the number is, where would
we redirect that money? Overall, that's the only real feedback I have. You have no debt.
You rent, your savings are solid relative to your fixed costs, and
your investment is 2 million bucks, which is really the primary area that we need to
focus on now.
Okay, any questions?
Well, I spoke to the advisors at FASIT.
So FASIT is our partner.
They're the ones who do financial planning,
they charge a flat fee, they don't charge AUM. And, you know, I'm very selective about
who I work with. So I went to them, I said, I would like you to take a look in detail
at Robin Adrian's numbers, take into account their age, take into account a variety of
different factors such as social security, and run the analysis.
Tell me, can they have enough money?
So we actually went back and forth and we created a few scenarios I would like to run
past you.
Keep in mind for these scenarios, any good advisor is going to make assumptions.
Assumptions could be right or wrong.
Typically, they're going to assume you live longer than you actually will because you
don't want to be like 98 years old and running out of money.
That's a big financial planning no-no.
So they're going to make assumptions on that.
They're going to make assumptions on when you withdraw social security and a variety of other things.
Could be right, could be wrong, but typically they're good places to start.
Shall I walk you through what Fassett found?
Please.
Alright.
So first off, I've got a scenario for you.
You told us, Rob, that you could retire this year if you wanted to.
You could just stop working and let's see what would happen with your numbers.
Okay, let's take a look.
In this scenario, scenario one where you retire right now. Let's see how it plays out.
If you're listening to this episode, I would encourage you to watch this part on YouTube
so you can see the graphics and the details.
You can just go to YouTube and search for Ramit Sethi and then click follow to subscribe
to my channel while you're there.
Assuming you stop working this year, you keep your expenses where they are at 4900 a month
No wiggle room
Okay You continue to travel for coaching retreats, etc
$30,000 a year and
You live until
95
okay, we're assuming that because you're in good health and
Again, you don't want to run out of money before you die. What do you notice on screen Rob? When I'm 90 years old I'm
still gonna have 1.2 million dollars. I notice that I don't understand this part.
Okay. Tell you what that's fair enough. I appreciate you saying that. Why don't you
talk it out? Talk it out loud. Let's see if you could make sense of it but go
ahead and talk it out.
Let me put my glasses on.
Sure.
What's that little red dot you see?
That's the amount of money that we have.
Yeah, that's today.
That's how much you have.
Today.
Yeah.
And then at 67 and 70, we would have 1.7. And at 77 and 80, we would have 1.7 and at 77 and 80, we would have 1.5.
1.5 million, just a little specific.
Yeah.
87 and 90, we would have 1.2 million and at 94 and 97, we would have negative 114,000.
So what does this tell you?
We're in pretty good shape unless we live to 97.
Yeah, that's exactly what it tells you.
That's exactly right.
So actually, I think you can understand this chart.
I think you're pretty savvy.
You read it exactly right.
Let me tell you a couple of details here.
If the market continues performing the way it has, okay, when Adrian, when you die in this assumption at 94, which
is quite a long life, you would have negative $114,000. If the market does not do well,
you could run out of money as early as age 82 and 85.
Okay. You would be able to leave nothing to your nieces or nephews.
You would have no flexibility on expenses.
What you spend is what you spend no extra flexibility, no extra days on vacation, things like that.
Overall, it's fairly risky, but it could work.
Okay.
So this is the scenario if Rob quits his job today.
Yep.
Okay.
I think it's a little tight.
I don't think I'm retiring now if I look at that chart, because the whole point of this
is not to run out of money.
I've kind of always known that my 20s and my 30s were sort of a wasted couple of decades.
I had some beliefs similar to that guy, Fernando Fernando who you recently had on your podcast.
I wasn't even making his income, but I had similar viewpoints on certain things.
And to show up in my mid 40s with $60,000 debt, that didn't come from nowhere.
That's lost time that probably if I had been saving, you wouldn't be looking at a chart
that shows a negative
114,000 somewhere down the line
What do you wish you had done with money? Oh
Boy, I mean I would have been a different person I
Had an
import business
in the late 80s
an import business in the late 80s that I probably saved 150 grand on by the time that was done. And I kind of just blew that money in the 90s. I kind of wish I hadn't blown
that money in the 90s.
Yeah.
Back then, I wouldn't invest. I had gold coins in a safe deposit box in a bank, that kind of stuff.
And so I didn't know about investing.
I didn't trust the authorities.
I just figured Wall Street was a scam.
All of that stuff.
I just had all these beliefs that would limit my ability to invest and make money.
Limiting beliefs.
What about you, Adrienne?
Um
Yeah, I mean I
I wish I had started
Understanding money is in an earlier time and understood more about it for sure
I'm still not unhappy with what I did though. You know, I've been in the world of massage therapists for a long time. I mean it
kind of breaks my heart honestly to see the massage therapists and what happens
to them. And they're like such great people and they help so many people heal.
I remember this one friend of mine who had cancer, she came in and she said,
Yeah, I had $5,000 with a financial advisor and they just told me that the market was
terrible and I've lost almost all of it.
And I said to her, honey, it's been a bull market.
How can this be?
She just looked at me like, I don't know what you're talking about.
And it just kind of breaks my heart sometimes.
The people who are right-brained, it's like we're left out of that conversation maybe
by choice, but partly because we don't think that it's possible to understand what it is.
It's possible to understand that world.
It is.
And it is possible.
It is.
It's not a different language.
It's not something that only certain people can understand.
Everyone can. Artists, creatives, painters, writers, tech people, everybody.
And in my mind, we would never say, oh, I'm right-brained or left-brained. I can't be a good parent.
I can't be a good friend. I can't be a good partner. We would never say that.
Like, no. I have to. I can't be a good partner. We would never say that. Like, no.
I have to.
I'm going to.
It's important.
And I feel the same way about money.
It affects everything in our life.
Where we eat, where we live, where we send our kids, who we are.
I can't accept someone saying, I'm just not good at money.
I'm just not good at math.
No, we can all get good at it.
All right, let me show you another scenario. You told me you love to travel
Okay, you told me that you want to strengthen your relationship. You want to be more generous in this scenario
Rob you said you currently work like three to five hours a week making about $250 an hour. Is that right?
Yeah, between 150 and 250.
I can't tell.
All right.
So you could keep this up until you are 70.
I'd like to give you a second to just look at the chart and then let's talk about it.
At the end of life, we end up with over a million dollars doing it that way.
Yep. And remember that's if you live until 94, 97.
I mean, it continues to grow.
I mean, it grew last year,
but I felt like because the market was doing so well
last year, that was the only reason it grew last year.
This has for the next seven
years or eight years, it has the balance growing as opposed to leveling off so early.
It seems more relaxing to know that everything's going to be okay.
I guess.
Okay.
Well, I love that comment.
What do you...
How do you know this chart is more relaxing?
Because there's not a negative sign on it.
That's honest.
You can see that the number starts dropping precipitously towards the end of life, but that's a very very long life.
You can see that it's relatively stable throughout.
Yeah.
Right? That's which is nice.
That's a testament to how hard you two have worked especially coming from a position of being in debt that late in life.
Coming together, paying it off, keeping it consistent, managing your expenses. Nice work.
You've put yourself in a position like this.
It's really quite impressive.
Just a couple of thoughts on this scenario.
If the market does poorly, you might run out of money at age 88 and 91.
But that's still a lot better than running out of money at $82.85 like we saw in the
last scenario.
You would have to keep your expenses at $4,900 a month, consistent with where they are.
It's a tight budget, but you could do it.
I'm confident you could do it.
You're working three to five hours a week, Rob.
Not bad for the next eight years.
But that means nothing can happen to you.
You can't get sick.
You can't get injured.
Nothing can happen to you in this plan in order for it to work.
What do you think about that, Rob?
Think about how you feel about having to work three to five hours a week for the next eight
years.
I'm doing it now.
It's fine.
I mean, I work, I, I, uh, um, I don't feel put up on, I mean, it's such a small amount
of work.
Um, and in general, if I don't worry about every last client, every last account, every last
job I get, then if I can relax into it, it's all right.
Great.
All right.
But I wanted you to be able to really lean into your rich life.
Tell me you wanted to travel more.
You wanted to have some sort of convenience, you wanted to be
generous and help your nieces and nephews.
So we worked out a plan with the facet advisors where we said, what if you continue to travel
at 30k per year. What if you took that $4,900 a month in expenses and added another $600 a month buffer?
So now you have $5,500 a month you could contribute $30,000 a year into
529 plans for your nieces and nephews for a total of $200,000 towards education? Shall
we look at scenario three?
So it's basically the same as the last one except for we're spending just a little bit
more.
Is that what it is?
Yeah, that's a good assessment.
More money.
So remember that the numbers, you're not only spending more, you're also contributing considerable
amounts towards nieces and nephews 529.
Mm-hmm.
Generosity.
Yeah.
Okay.
I notice it's 20 hours a week until 65.
I bet you do.
Yeah.
I bet you do.
I'm kind of confused about that.
Yeah.
In this scenario, you have to work more.
20 hours a week and the income has to go up.
So let's talk about the implications of this plan.
This is essentially a way for you to spend quite a bit more money living.
But I want to make clear the trade-offs that faceted advisors came up with.
In this case, you're traveling, you have a lot more spending flexibility, you're way
more generous with your nieces and nephews, you end up with over a million dollars, well
over a million depending on when you die.
That's a legacy that could be left to family, charity, whoever it is you decide.
Honestly, you could also decide, I love my nieces and nephews, but frankly, I like going
to Barcelona more.
So maybe we'll give them a little bit.
We're going to cut that amount a little bit and have a very nice siesta.
That's up to you.
Let's talk about what it would take.
In this case, you'd have to ramp up your income.
Rob, you'd have to go to 20 hours a week,
but only three more years.
So, working much more,
but for a compressed amount of time.
You would essentially need to generate $5,000 a week as a household.
The question is, could you do it?
I'm not sure.
I'm really not sure.
If she manages to launch her coaching business and it starts to pull in real money, that's
different.
Then it's possible.
I mean, I know I only made $54,000 last year.
I'm probably going to make $70,000 this year, I'm guessing. But next year
will probably be another slow one. So if I wanted to try to bump those numbers up, it's
going to take a lot more effort.
Do you want to ask Adrienne what she thinks?
Well, you heard my take on it. I mean, your take on your side of the equation i'd be interested in. Yeah
I would love to be able to um contribute to that
in terms of getting my business to work and
Getting um or or getting another massage job or whatever
So if that's what we decide that we want to go with.
What do you notice about these three different scenarios when
you think of all three of them together,
the pluses, minuses, the tradeoffs?
What do you notice?
The first one where I just stopped working
and we hit a negative number 30 years from now or whatever,
that doesn't work.
And the last one, where somehow
we're making $250,000 a year again, seems unrealistic to me in this moment. So I'm not
sure that works. The middle ground seems like the most possible of the three, just because
I'm not willing to stop working if it's going to jeopardize our retirement. And the last one I'm not willing to stop working if it's going to jeopardize our retirement.
And the last one, I'm not so sure is doable.
Okay.
So I'm in the middle.
Let's get to here.
Yeah.
I mean, also Rob said that you have like some kind of thing that helps people with their
businesses or coaching or something
like that.
Yeah, Earnable.
That's a program we have that helps people start businesses and find customers, turn
it into a profitable business.
Yeah, we love helping people start their businesses.
Coaching, consulting, product businesses.
We've helped many, many thousands of people do it.
If you want to start earning more money to live a bigger, richer life, I put together
a guide on finding your first profitable idea.
You can get it at IWT.com slash find an idea.
So maybe that's something that we could like look into as well.
Yeah, I think that would be great.
How do you feel about these scenarios that you just saw presented to you?
I'm like right down the middle.
I don't feel disappointed.
I mean, I wish you could, you know, I don't normally look back on my life with regret.
I mean, I wish the 20s and 30s would have been different, but it's who we were at the
time.
I'm not willing to risk running out of money, so I'm not going to just quit. And I'm not necessarily expecting to make tons of money like I used to, so I don't want to plan for
the bigger scenario. But the middle scenario works, and I'm good with it.
I don't feel scared about the middle scenario in any way.
But I don't normally think of making plans like something's going to happen to me.
I don't think that way, generally.
My silence is meant to help you realize that you too have to have conversations on your own.
That in your conversations, which I hear a lot of silence, I don't hear either of you
asking each other, hey, what do you think?
What do you think?
Here's what I'm thinking.
But I'm not sure about this one thing.
This thing really worries me, but you're always great at that.
What do you think?
You worry.
Adrienne, you reassure.
Each of you have that job, that role.
It does not matter how much money you have.
Have you noticed that?
Rob, when you were starting your business, you worried.
And Adrienne reassured.
Now your business has grown way more, your portfolio
has grown way more, hundreds of millions of dollars more, still playing the same song,
still dancing the same dance. Now the question is, do you want to keep doing it?
The one thing that does strike me is that I don't want Rob to feel like everything's on his shoulders.
Because we've had a track record of prioritizing something and going after it.
So why not prioritize our life right this moment?
That's such a cool way to look at it, Adrienne.
I didn't make that connection.
That you both went after it.
There are very few couples I've met like the two of you who just went after it. There are very few couples I've met, like the two
of you who just went after it together. And I even love these little details you shared
with me. It was so cool. Rob, you mentioned to Adrienne, I have all this debt, I don't
know what to do. And Adrienne's like, no, we're going to combine our finances and we're
going to tackle this. And you're going to watch Susie Orman every single week with me and we're
Gonna do this together, and you did it. Do you know how rare that is?
It is so rare I can count it on one hand out of all the people I talked to that they do it together
And they crush it
Now you're on to the next part of life you earned. What a tragedy to live a smaller life than you have to.
We have our freedom. We have our money. We have time. I mean, we have everything sort of in place now, finally, right?
And so, yeah, I don't want that to change.
If you have everything in place, why do you worry about money every single day?
You always ask the hard question. change. If you have everything in place, why do you worry about money every single day?
You always ask the hard question. I mean, it feels like we're close.
We're so close to like it being like pretty easy for us.
Over the course of two episodes I heard Rob and Adrian
specifically Rob talk about how he just needed to know the numbers and I spent a lot of time digging into their
relationship with money including their upbringing and their money dynamic together and
Eventually, I gave them exactly what they wanted. I showed them the exact numbers in the exact scenarios they asked for.
But did you notice?
Didn't really seem to change anything, did it?
Their conversations with each other
were still filled with silence.
There was no rainbow that appeared,
where Rob suddenly sees the angels singing
and feels good about money.
That's not how it works.
A rich life is something you have to actively pursue
to live today, tomorrow, and 30 years from now.
Now, I'm very proud of Rob and Adrian for having such a candid conversation with me.
Remember, they paid off tens of thousands of dollars of debt together, and they accumulated
a lot of money together as well. The next chapter of their life though has to be different.
They already won this battle. So now they have to turn the page and focus on healing
their relationship with money and living their rich lives. Let's hear their followups now.
First from Adrienne.
Here's the things that I learned after being on your podcast. I was thinking, why is your
saying we need counseling? We've had a lot of counseling.
It took me a second, but upon reflection,
I was like, oh, what's actually going on here
is there is a power imbalance,
and then I'm giving my power away.
So getting curious around how do we create
a more equitable power balance in our relationship
without creating a war? We don't have a spending problem. What in our relationship without creating a war.
We don't have a spending problem. What we've got here is a joy problem. How do we enjoy
things? It's kind of like we're eating a big meal and not even really tasting that meal.
So I'm creating a lot more enjoyment in the future. And lastly, the thing that I noticed is that fear
is like a tyrant in the room,
and it is driving that power imbalance and that lack of joy.
My plan is to create a shared vision
and get curious with each other
around that shared vision in the future.
So thank you, Rameet, you're a powerful coach.
Appreciate you.
And now Rob's follow-up.
My biggest takeaways from our conversation is that I realized my fear keeps me from living
in the moment and I don't listen as well as I thought I did.
I also realized what it's like for Adrienne living in the same house where my fear and
moods are always present.
Spending the last 18 years paying off debt and striving for financial independence hasn't totally prepared me for this next phase of life we're entering.
My biggest surprise was just how much my fear dominated our conversation.
I usually experience it like background noise,
not really conscious about how it affects my day to day.
It's not rational and managing it going forward
is a big priority.
And the other surprise was just how much easier it is
to watch for meets podcasts and learn from others
than it was to look within and confront my own stuff.
And as far as my plan, my first priority
will be ongoing work with our coach around fear.
Second, we'll be finding and paying
a fee only financial advisor
who can provide a more detailed retirement plan.
And finally, changing our money conversations
or a lot of them away from our yellow pages and toward a shared vision of how we want to live.
Thanks, Rameet and all the best.
Big thanks again to Rob and Adrian and I want to thank our partners at FASET for their detailed
analyses of the finances. If you're looking for a financial advisor to run your numbers in detail, check out FASET.com
your numbers in detail, check out facet.com slash Rameet. They can take all of your financial documents.
They'll ask you about your goals and your plans,
including vacation, children, housing, retirement,
all of it, and they can help build a specific plan for you.
Check them out at facet.com slash Rameet.
That's facet.com slash R-A-M-I-T.
Thanks for listening to I Will Teach You to Be Rich. I'm Ramit Sethi.
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.