I Will Teach You To Be Rich - 176. “I’m 8 mos pregnant. He only wants to talk about how much the baby will cost”

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

Jason is a 40 y/o COO. Megan is a 34 y/o flight attendant and they’re about to have a baby. Megan wants to take 1 year maternity leave—Jason is stressing about how it will affect their finances. While they have a $3M net worth, they’re both in credit card debt and their lack of joint finances makes it hard to make a plan.  This episode is brought to you by: Wildgrain | Get $30 off the first box - PLUS free Croissants in every box at https://wildgrain.com/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. Trustworthy | Save 10% on an upgrade to keep your family’s information safely stored at https://trustworthy.com/ramit. Rocket Money | Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions – and manage your expenses the easy way – by going to https://rocketmoney.com/ramit. Superhuman | Get a free month of lightning fast email at https://try.sprh.mn/ramitsethi. Links mentioned in this episode • Download the Conscious Spending Plan • Pre-order my upcoming book: Money for Couples Connect with Ramit • Pre-order my upcoming book: Money for Couples • Get the Podcast Newsletter and exclusive Q&A about the show • Sign up to attend a live event on my book tour • 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 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.

Every week on the show, you hear me coach a couple through their conscious spending plan. And I love looking at their CSP because it gives me so many clues. Why a couple is feeling anxious about money or why they're really fighting about a $17 Amazon purchase. A lot of couples come here wondering, do we have enough for retirement? How do we build an emergency fund? If you want my help on your CSP, I'm actually hosting a live group coaching call this month called How to Create Your Conscious Spending Plan. It's happening on October 17th, and the only way you can join this call is if you are in my money coaching program. I'll do a live walkthrough of setting up your conscious spending plan and you'll have the chance to ask me questions

during the live Q&A. So if you've been listening to this podcast and if you, whether you're single or whether you're in a relationship, have wanted to set up your CSP, but for whatever reason you haven't gotten around to it, this is the perfect chance to do it. You can access this live call as a member of my money coaching program. To join, go to IWT.com slash money coaching. That's IWT.com slash money coaching to join me in this live call on how to create your conscious spending plan this October 17th. If you're in the New York tri-state area, please listen up.

I'm looking to coach more couples live in person on this podcast. If you and your partner want to be personally coached about a money disagreement that you have, I'd love to work with you. Whether you can't get on the same page with your spending, one of you has tons of debt, maybe you're about to have a huge life change, like a baby, a promotion, a career change, and you are stuck on how to handle the financial side of it.

And you live in the New York tri-state area, I want to hear from you. Please apply at iwT.com slash apply. That's IWT.com slash apply. Anytime I spend money, it's all guilt full. There's never a moment that I think I deserve this. Today, meet Jason and Megan. I'm trying to keep up with him and with lifestyle,

but I also know that I can't actually afford that. We should be able to have some agreements on how this works. He's a 40 year old COO. She's a 34 year old flight attendant, and their finances have gotten very sloppy. We have not done an excellent job of executing the post pay cut plan. Can I actually afford this? No. But am I still going to do it? Yes. But what's really stressing them out, Megan, is eight months pregnant. The maternity rule for work, it was like, I'll take three months off,

and then it was like, I'm going to take six. Oh, the company gives me 12. Oh, now it's 15. How much is the baby going to cost? I would like to have a doula at our birth. Where is that money coming from? And they make the changes to their finances and their relationship to work together. With baby coming, how do we figure out how much work is needed from each of us to support the fam? Do you have a plan? No, I just don't go to work. That's the plan.

All right, let's take a look at the CSP. Wow. $3 million in assets, but of that $3,073,000, $3,053,000 is from partner one. Partner two has $20,000 in assets. Hugely unbalanced. Okay, it can work. It's just something to note. Savings at $27K, pretty low relative to the other numbers and then debt at 778,000 which is fine with all the rest of the stuff. So total net worth of 3.1 million dollars. Okay at age of 34 and 40 extremely impressive but kind of odd

Like why is there only 27 K in savings when you have three million dollars in assets? That's odd Just to clarify we have three million million in assets? That's odd. Just to clarify, when you have $3 million in assets, those assets cost money. So if this is real estate, which I assume it is, you get one repair, that's $20,000. So people who have a lot of assets should have a lot of liquid money to be able to maintain those assets. This is something that you have to remember as you start to get more money and you start to buy more things. I'm talking about assets. You have to remember those assets aren't free. They take maintenance, they take staff, they take all kinds of stuff. So it's a

bit odd, but we'll figure that out. Wow. Okay. Income is $21,000 a month gross, but of that $17,000 comes from one partner who I assume is the person writing the application. What the hell? Debt payments at $1,200? Why? Why do you have debt? Why do you have credit card debt?

You have $3 million. It makes zero sense. Okay, I'm going to give a fresh perspective on the CSP. First off is they're not really saving and investing very much at all. On the other hand, this couple may have very consciously decided, hey, we're going to be asset rich. We're going to invest or buy a lot of assets and we love our guilt free life. We love traveling or buying cool stuff, eating out five times a week, whatever.

And maybe that's what they decided to do. It's okay. If you have $3 million in assets, you can make certain decisions that you would not make if you're making $50,000 a year with basically no net worth. So I have a lot of questions to ask primarily about, number one, what are all these assets? Number two, why do you have such low savings relative to the other numbers? And three, where's all this guilt free spending going? I just want to know.

Looking forward to speaking to them. We were in the midst of discussions about what's going to happen when baby comes from a lifestyle change, income change, and expense change. So we're actively talking about that together. I was asking Megan, what's your plan for when baby comes? What does your employer offer? How is income going to change? Because I wanted to plan ahead and know what, if anything, I need to do about it. So we started there and had to ask that question lots and lots of times. Why? Because I couldn't get a straight answer. I didn't like my answers. What were those answers, Megan? They were, well, I can't take this much. And then I kept learning more of how much. So I

didn't have a concise answer originally. And then I learned what the maximum benefit is and what the maximum amount of time I can take is. And that's where I emotionally landed. Yeah. The way I would describe it is I learned about her plan through over hearing her explain her plan to her friends. So originally it was, I will take the first three months off, you know, basically through winter and then the next friend, it was, yeah, probably about six months I'll take off and then I'll go back to work to some degree. Then the next one, it was a year and then the last was 15 months. And so my eyes just got bigger, bigger, bigger.

And when you say they got bigger, why? What's the implication? The longer there's a lack or low income is the larger problem that I'll need to solve or a bigger dollar amount I need to cover. Meaning her income will cease and you're going to have to be the sole income earner and that becomes stressful. If she just said, I want to have baby and not go back to work. Cool. Let me work on that. And then I'll, I'll see how possible that is. And I'll come back to her with the impacts, right?

Okay. It's just so you understand that means no more of this, no more of this, no more of this. This changes, you know, I need a new job, whatever it is. Right. And, and let's go through the impacts. And, and then she'll come back and say, well, okay, maybe I could do this, right? And then I'll have another scenario. But what's been difficult is without a plan and then time to plan, it becomes impossible to solve that. And then that makes it impossible to come up with changes or get ahead. Right? So here we are at, what's it, like seven weeks or something?

Yeah, babies coming out in seven weeks. I want to hear from you, Megan. Tell me about your perspective on these discussions. Didn't tell Jason that I wanted to have a baby ages ago. And in the last five years, I've been financially preparing for that. And once I learned the finer rules and what I could actually do is when it became more of a conversation and more of like a, I don't actually think I need to, my income

doesn't really impact our lives very much because we've focused on putting more money To my 401k and saving for my lonely future rather than our together future So what if Jason asked you? Like how long do you want to be home? It seems like it from his perspective. He's not getting a straight answer. Is that accurate or do you see it differently? I would say initially, yes, it's accurate. But my answer of I will go back by baby's

first birthday has been very steady for the last six months. Oh, okay. So your answer is one year I want to stay home. Yep. And then I'm to stay home. Yep. And then I'm back to work. Yep. If you had to do an educated guess right now, what capacity would you go back at after a baby's first birthday? I would go back at 50 to 55 hours a month, whereas 120 is full time that we've calculated

in the past. Okay. Does that work, Jason? It's very doable. It's not going to like screw anything up, but it does have impact in stuff you plan for ahead of time, right? So what you're going to do or what additional income do you need to come up with or what do you need to turn off for a time? So you're saying, hey, if she goes back at 50%, probably we can't afford to do all the things if she was working 100%. Right? That's fine. Do we all agree on that? I don't agree with that because we're adding this new factor of a baby in. So can we go

back to doing all the things we've already already added like a whole other variable. So whether that's childcare costs, like if I'm working at a hundred percent time, where is this baby gonna be? Do I wanna be away from this baby? I don't wanna be away from this baby for a hundred percent of what I have been doing in the past. Yeah, but we also have some ideas like, what amount can you work

without introducing childcare cost? Right? And how can we work that out? Do you guys find that you talk about certain things and spin a lot, but don't make decisions? Yes. Wow. That's shocking. Whoa, Rameet. Whoa. What I asked is, can we all agree that if one of you is not working at 100%, then you can't spend the same as if that person was working at 100%.

It seems like pretty basic math to me. If one of you is not making as much money as you used to, you can't spend as much. That's... I agree with that statement. So let's talk about how we got to this position. So I can already tell, Jason, you're the optimizer. You love the numbers, right? And Megan?

Traditionally been very good at it. I can like set a number for what full time is, like how can I swing this and how can I flex in my savings? I'd rephrase that to be Megan will run the numbers to figure out how little she can work to get everything she wants. Okay, that's fair. True. Okay.

I agree with that. Actually, you're right. You're right, Jason. Meaning you try to be as efficient as possible. You want to work as little as possible and get the maximum financial benefit. Correct. Fine. Nothing wrong with that.

Okay. That's good to know. With baby coming, lots of things are different. And some of these decisions, well, some are happening, right? We don't have a choice. They're going to come. But what we really want to understand is how do we better plan and then execute what comes next, primarily with income is a big one, right? How much does Megan need to work and then, you know, do I need to change in and when and then what needs to change in lifestyle and expenses. In the past we haven't had to be so diligent because had much higher incomes. With adjustment to

lower income, we did have to make many, many adjustments and say, what do we cut out? How do we make this work? And I feel like this is the next step of that. What adjustments did you make when your income went down? So Megan took a side job and we started renting rooms in our house to get additional income. And then we also cut back on a bunch of spending. So like travel, way fewer trips.

We we cut back on some subscriptions to to think expensive subscriptions. We cut back on attending live sports and events and yeah, what else makes... I think we only really cut out two subscriptions. What subscriptions? We gave up one theater. Okay.

Okay. And you gave up Symphony. Oh, okay. How much are those out of curiosity? Each of those is, is in the, probably a thousand to two thousand bucks a year. But we also, we also gave up, we had a season hockey tickets. Oh yeah. I didn't like that one.

Yeah. We gave up season hockey tickets. That's expensive. That was like 17,000 a year. That was really expensive. 17, how much? 17,000. $17,000 here. That was really expensive. $17,000. How much? $17,000. $17,000 for hockey tickets? Yeah, Remy. I agree. Wait, wait, wait.

Look at your face. That's my face too. No, no, no, no. I'm not judging. I just don't know anything about this. $17,000 for two seats? What are we talking about? Yeah. Two seats, 44 games. They're like 200 something bucks a piece per seat per game.

Is this like in a box? No. Holy s***. Yeah, that's pretty standard here. Like almost the entire arena goes for that much. Did you say $17,000 per season? Yes. Man, I had no idea.

I would have been wildly off. Every single person who's listening, including my friends, like I have friends who are agents for like baseball agents and stuff. They're like, this guy is so dumb. Wow. I appreciate it. I get to learn on this show. I get to learn things I would have had no idea about. That's amazing. All right. So you cut back on those things. That's cool. And was it difficult for you to have these discussions and to make the decision? The stuff with the houses is difficult because I want to get more income there and Megan's like, get everybody out of here.

This is my space. What about for you, Megan? Was it difficult to make those decisions? No, I didn't want hockey that badly. Hockey's lame. So you took a pay cut. What was the salary before and the current salary? The before was, depending on performance for the year, was $350 to $450. And after it went

down to $185. Wow. Wow, that's a significant drop. What happened there? So left, left a job where people turned evil and went to a place where people were good. But it was from a larger publicly traded company to a startup. Okay. So it was the evil company, a whole life insurance company. No, not that evil. Okay. So that evil. Okay, so got it. So that's a big drop. Makes sense. And then, you know, we heard that Megan, you had been kind of cutting back on time and

just give me a sense of the scale. Well, if you're working 100% time, what are you making versus 50% time? Or 5k down to like 2k a month. Okay, got it. The scale is like you cut your pay by 30,000 or 40,000. Right? Meanwhile, we're talking about, you know, you cut your pay by 300,000 or 200,000, something like that.

Okay. All right. So big changes. Got it. Jason wants certainty. He's the planner. And as the person who's the money guy in the relationship, he wants to know concrete numbers. How much are you going to work?

How much money are you going to make? Just give me the numbers and I'll plug it in the model. He chases Megan for the answers. Megan avoids the answers. As you can see, they've entered into the chaser-avoider dynamic. What's interesting is how cagey Megan is. Most avoiders just openly avoid conversations about money, or they use a variety of techniques, for example, getting mad and saying things like, can't we go a single day without talking

about money? Megan does this trickle truth sort of thing by saying, I want to stay home for five months, no six months, no 15 months. Now understandably, no first time parent knows exactly what having a baby is going to look like. But importantly, you have to be able to make at least some assumptions, which you can always change later. Am I going to stay home for one month or two years?

We need to be able to put something down on paper and then we can change it if needed. That is how you make a plan. So from my initial conversation, it looks like Jason just wants a number and Megan doesn't want to give it. But I suspect it's more complicated, especially when Megan reveals she's talking about a few thousand dollars difference. Welcome back. Let's keep going. Does everybody remember during COVID, people started baking their own sourdough bread? It looked amazing.

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slash Ramit. That's wildgrain.com slash Ramit, or you can use promo code Ramit at checkout. I have a friend of mine who was taking care of his granddaughter the other day and he was looking for a movie to watch with her. He found something on Amazon Prime and then he refused to pay for it because it was $3.99 to rent the movie. Now keep in mind there's the same person who pays a lot of money to a financial advisor paying a percentage of his considerable portfolio. Think about it. He's paying hundreds of thousands of dollars, probably more, but he won't pay $4 for his granddaughter to watch this movie.

but he won't pay $4 for his granddaughter to watch this movie. Anybody else find that crazy? Yet so many people are working with a financial advisor, paying tens of thousands of dollars or more without even realizing it. That's because the industry set it up this way to be intentionally confusing. You never get a bill saying, thank you for choosing us. Here's your invoice for this quarter, $5,000.

Nope, they just take that fee right out of your account, listing it in your activity statement along with everything else. Oh, and since it's a percentage of your investments, as your investments grow, so does your fee every single year. So when I ask most people, how much do you think you pay to your financial advisor? They just shrug.

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Again, facet.com slash ramith. 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 of product. The first time Megan and I had a really good, productive financial conversation

was prepping to buy the house. Fantastic. Yeah, because we wanted very different things in a house. I wanted it to have downside protection and cash flow and do all these different things. And she's like, I want a house for the family. And so we had a really good discussion of what we each wanted. And then we looked for what was out there that had everything we wanted. And then we ran all the numbers, made sure we had the down payment, made sure we could have a backup plan that,

hey, if something really did change, this mortgage is covered no matter what. Yes. Hey, for everybody listening, all you real estate denialist who always argue with my basic premise that all I want you to do is run the numbers on the biggest purchase of your life. I hope you're listening to this couple.

You don't need to earn $600,000 a year, okay? All you got to do is simply run the numbers. Okay, good job. I'm very proud of you both. So here you are. It's kind of interesting to me. You already went through a $250,000 plus pay cut. Aren't we only talking about like losing a few thousand bucks now?

Here's the thing. Tell me. We have not done an excellent job of executing the post pay cut plans. There's been several something happens over the past few years that are, yeah, that make things difficult. Like? Megan got injured and was out of work for the majority of a year. I was hit and run and somebody flipped my truck.

So then I was injured and had no vehicle to commute in and had to do that. I don't know, other little things. We've had a series of floods in our condo. Yeah, our place has flooded three times. And insurance only covered one time so that the second two were self-insured. Okay. So, you know, stuff like that. You're basically saying, look, when we made like over half a million dollars a year, if

things came our way, we could deal with it. We had plenty of cash flow. At this time, it's getting tighter and tighter. We still have cash flow, but it's getting a little stricter. We're not particularly great at following that plan, but we're concerned. We can't be thinking the same way as when we were making multiples of our income. We have to be tighter, right? Yep. You have to be tighter. And when these things happen, we will need to do something. And sometimes those things go on credit cards.

And then we have to fight the credit card machines. Megan, what, what is your central challenge? I mean, it sounds like you have a vision, you want to stay home for a year. you want to go back at 50% time. My challenge is not living in my realm. I've had enough windfalls where I can wipe out all my credit card debt and it's fine. And then they just fill back up. You have credit card debt right now? Yes, I have $13,000. Oh. I just looked at all of my other money sources.

I'm like, I just take all this and pay it off. Yes. Why don't you? That's a great question because maybe Bitcoin is going to come up for me and maybe I'm going to be a whale. Yeah, maybe. I do think that's an interesting question to ask you, Rameet. In those situations where you can redirect, would you redirect? Or would you only redirect if you have confidence that you're not going to get back in there?

Wait a minute. I'm kind of confused here. Did you combine your incomes? No. We live separately. Why? Financially. This is the first time he ever let me know how much money he makes.

What? That's not true. We ran all the numbers together for the house. So way back in 2019, 2020. Okay, that's acceptable. You're all married and having a kid, right? We're not married. He's my lover.

Okay. Of eight years. Together, okay, that's good. Why are your finances separate out of curiosity? I guess, cause you're not married? Yeah, no, haven't had a need or reason to. Okay. And you own a house together or is it separate?

His name's on it. Yeah, my name's on it. Yes. Okay. Do you make payments? Do I feel entitled to it sometimes? Okay. Do you pay for it, Megan?

Emotionally. Notice these peculiar responses that Megan keeps giving me. Now, we need to acknowledge that Megan probably grew up with some unusual messages about money and she's about to have a baby and they're talking to me for the first time about this intimate topic so I don't mind people being nervous. But I think it goes much deeper than that. Megan is an avoider and avoiders have a series of conscious and unconscious techniques they employ when conversations make them uncomfortable. You're going to hear lots of them through today's discussion.

Now, before we hear Megan's answer, I need a quick favor from you. Hit that subscribe button because it really helps my team and me grow this podcast. How about financially? Financially, yes. Traditionally, yes. I just direct deposit money from my paycheck. All the expenses come basically in our pay for it. Why is your financial situation more confusing than mine? That doesn't make any sense. I

have a very complex financial situation, but I have simplified it a lot. Okay, let me make sure I understand the relationship status. So unmarried, own a house that's in your name, Jason, and having a child, any plans to get married or combine finances? It's fine either way. I'm just asking. No. Okay. What if any benefits there are to combining something? Like I guess I have a bit of an expectation that there's probably going to be a need with Baby to have some sort of... To have Megan have access to funds. Typically, though, she'll just take

a card of mine. We don't actually go change accounts and stuff. It's just like, hey, take this card in general You can definitely Go through life without combining your finances or getting married Of course, I would never sit here and tell you you have to get married or you have to combine I do think that You will find that over time, especially with a little one that your lives will structurally be set up to be individualistic and even diverge.

And it really helps if you were to have your finances combined because it actually helps you make these joint decisions. Like right now, there's a lot of negotiating and going back and forth. And part of the basis, and part of the reason for that is that you're not actually operating as a unit. You know, it's like, what can I get away with?

And like, hey, I need clarity on your numbers so I can plug it into my calculator. Like it's not together. One of the easiest ways to change that is just to put your money together. Now it becomes very tricky because putting your money together without being married has all kinds of implications and co mingling. I get all that plus the property and you know, there's all kinds of stuff. The simplest thing, not saying you have to do it is simply get married, combine your finances. That is the simplest thing. But I'm all for people having alternative perspectives and alternative views that doesn't bother me at all.

We can make it work. I think the simplest is here's a card to an account that has cash in it, spend what you need. It could be that basically the envelope system, which is like, we agree that every month there's X dollars in the account relating to these categories, yourself, your personal care, perhaps baby, perhaps whatever responsibilities you focus on. I'm focusing on these things. Yeah, you could make that work.

No problem. How do you deal with things like, say, like eating out or the hockey tickets for that matter? Like who decided on that one? Because clearly one person wants them and the other's not as into it. How do you decide on those kinds of things? If it's something small, usually we'll either just do it or she'll ask it. You know, she'll ask or whatever, hey, what about this?

And then it's usually like, yeah, fine, whatever, let's just do it. What about the big things like the hockey? Then we talk about it and try to figure it out. I guess like with my most recent car, it was a discussion. Where's the money coming from? How are we going to pay for it? It usually goes, Megan, what do you want? I want this.

How much does that cost? I don't know. Great. Let's figure it out. We figured that cost this much. That means this many dollars per month. Wow, that's way too much. Cool.

I think that this much would be doable. I think you can get something like this for that cost, right? And Megan, what is with the I don't know response? In my mind, I just think it's always going to work out. I don't feel like I'm ever going to be homeless, carless or any dire straight situation. One thing that Megan has available to her is a fully scalable income mechanism with these kind of multiple roles. It's like you can work more nearly infinitely, right? And if you want to change your income and buy a car in the next three months, you can just out and get overtime.

Okay. We've also planned this. I see enough people who I work with who are divorced. And by the time they raise their kids, they go their separate ways after 20 years. And they're the women who stayed home with the kids, flew minimally, and now they have no money for retirement. So I've always known that I've expressed those concerns, but Jason in the past, and him and I were always on the same page of protecting my future self. So I've always been really

grateful for that, but also like it's been part of the plan to make sure that future self is taken care of. That was probably the first financial discussion we had was very early on. It was what are your finances? You know, we kind of had that chat and you know, do you have a match? Are you using it? We had that chat early on and so I encouraged her to max everything. I was like, don't worry about stuff that we need to pay for.

I'll take care of all that. And she did an excellent, excellent job at that. The way you set up your finances will affect the rest of your lives. In my opinion, the way they're talking about their accounts, where Jason basically gives her an allowance without combining income, is going to set them up very poorly going forward. Who wants to have to ask their partner for an allowance? And who wants to have that conversation 300 times a month for groceries and diapers and

a car and Starbucks? Jason has taken on the role of the money guy in this relationship, and he's even continuing it with his idea of how to set their accounts up. And yet, he's frustrated he can't get a straight answer out of Megan. He doesn't quite see that when you don't both have skin in the game, it's very hard to recalibrate that relationship. This is why I insist both partners participate in a monthly money meeting. Sure, one might take the lead on investments,

but both of you should be actively involved in the finances. We'll open up their conscious spending plan after this. Now, back to the show. Three things you'll find in my office, books, pens, and ultra obscure Japanese artisanal crafts from a metal worker that I will never use. Now what you will never find in my office, huge filing cabinets. Just think about it, would you rather have a huge filing cabinet or a beautiful picture of a cheetah? Now a lot of us have those old style filing cabinets from holding on to all these paperwork items we need,

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slash Ramit. On every episode of this show, I ask couples to fill out a conscious spending plan before they speak to me so I can get an idea of their finances. And for some couples, especially if you haven't spent much time talking about money together, this can take a while to put together. You got to find your logins, you got to look up pay stubs and find all the details for your CSP. Well, I recently found out that many of you use our sponsor, Rocket Money, to easily plug into your conscious spending plan each month and see how your spending is stacking up.

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. And there's a section that breaks down your spending, like how much went to utilities, rent, shopping, groceries, subscriptions, etc. So you can easily see where you're spending and how that spending stacks up against previous months. One couple on my podcast was able to fill out their CSP by just taking those categories Rocket Money was already tracking and plugging directly into their CSP. Great example of convenience.

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 Ramith. Okay, let's move on to the CSP. Megan, can you read the word in bold and then the combined number next to it? the word in bold and then the combined number next to it. Assets $3,073,000. Investments $859,095. Savings $27,455. $1,780,715. $1,780,715. $1,780,715. $1,780,715.

$1,780,715. $1,780,715. $1,780,715. $1,780,715. $1,780,715. $1,780,715. $1,780,715. $1,780,715.

$1,780,715. $1,780,715. $1,780,715. $1,780,715. $1,780,715. $1,780,715. $1,780,715. $1,780,715.

$1,880,715. $1,880,715. $1,880,715. $1,880,715. $1,880,715. $1,880,715. $1,880,715. $1,880,715. $172,000. Yes. Got it. Okay. How do you all feel about those numbers? Not good enough. Not good enough. Anxious. Oh, wow. Why? Why is it all? Why is it so negative in here right now? For me, it's the cash flow still feels really tight.

It just feels unsure, unstable. Okay. Anxiety provoking. Can I ask a couple questions because I want to understand these numbers. So it says that you have three million dollars of assets. Can you break that down for me? Yeah. So that's we have a condo, we have a house,

cars, and then business. Condos like 400-ish, something like that. Houses, like a million-ish. Businesses, million-ish. Cars, what the f***? How much are these cars worth? They range the most expensive ones, like 60, 70. Most are in the 20, 25 something like that.

How many cars are we talking about? I think it's seven, including Megan's. This can't be real. You have seven cars? Eight with Megan's. Is this a joke? No. I wish it was for me.

Why? Why am I here? Hold on. You know I have a master's degree and I'm here talking to a couple that's worried about cash flow and I have 8 goddamn cars. What the f*** is going on here? Why do you have so many cars? I used to own and operate an automotive business. So I had cars and tools and stuff for that. And then with kind of work changing and stuff, I put it into like sleep mode but have not

fully wound it down. Oh, wow. So like when you said we haven't really cut our spending commensurate with our income going down by $300,000. You were referring to the 8 cars. All right, we'll get back to that. Investments are what? I have 7k in crypto. Okay.

What else? My most committed index funds. Please tell me God. Yeah, mostly. All right. And then savings is whatever. What's the debt? Break that down for me.

Debt are, yeah, the two mortgages and then on my side, there's like 26K on the credit card right now. Let's go to income real quick. Jason, what's the combined income? 21,408. Okay, so that's $256,000 a year. Did you all know that that's how much you make? Definitely. Yes, I know that. I told you I didn't know how much he made till recently.

In your case, you have a slight justification because, you know, you're not married, I guess. But if I was having a kid with somebody married or not, you know I would know their finances. I would have done a triple drill down into their investments. I would have been like, you invest in this dog fund? They have a 1.5% front end load. What the? But that's just me. All right. We all look for different things in our partners. At $256,000 a year, how is it that you all have like $40,000

of credit card debt? LUDs, wrecked car, all that stuff. All right. So accidents. That's one thing. What else? Megan, why do you have credit card debt? Because I carry too much. I don't live All that stuff. All right. So accidents. That's one thing. What else? Megan, why do you have credit card debt? Because I carry too much. I don't live within my what I make. Also your work, you're working less than you were, but not changing expense habits. Correct.

Yeah. Haven't changed. Yeah, so to Megan, the costs and things stay the same, but the variable work went down. Right? So my encouraging is variable work, get it back up. Well, I think the larger problem is that you are the one having to tell her to get her income up. That's really the problem. Like, why is Megan not in charge

of her own independent finances if the two of you are not married? I'd argue I am, but I also feel in the moments where there's a question of who should pay for what, if Jason doesn't have a card for me to use for a household expense, or if there's no room on a credit card, I will just cover it. If that is what's getting you in part into this credit card debt, that's just sloppy

financial management because a couple making $256,000 a year should not have the issue of there's no room on a card. That's crazy. Okay, that is that's insane. If you're going to live independently, not married, that's totally fine. However, you got to have a really defined set of rules like an SOP. It would be like a McDonald's franchise. Sounds perfect. Let me explain what an SOP is you unstructured m******. An SOP is a standard operating procedure.

It is a manual for how to do a task. McDonald's employees have tons of SOPs, which is how they can hire someone who walked off the street and have them making fries very quickly. Same for airline pilots who religiously use their checklist. I f***ing love SOPs. I have an SOP for when I rebalance my investments. I have an SOP for how to handle unexpected income. My wife and I have an SOP for who loads the dishwasher and who empties it and when. Oh no, for a meat that's so unromantic.

Things should just happen. What are you talking about? Think of the things you do repetitively it could be who mows the lawn or goes to the gym It could even be when you talk about money, which as we both know is never which is why I shared my exact Monthly money meeting agenda in my new book money for couples available for pre-order now The point is you can systematize and schedule the important things to you, which leaves you abundant free time to use guilt-free for the things you love. Is anybody seeing the similarity between the conscious spending plan and creating SOPs for your life?

Am I the only one who's becoming enraged and starting to sweat while sitting in front of a camera alone at the fact that more people don't use SOPs? What the hell is wrong with me? Let's get back to this episode. Yeah, I love a good SOP in the household. SOP for who empties the dishwasher, what time. SOP who's doing the dishes, the laundry, like write it down. Don't leave it up to romance and certainly not like,

oh, let's talk about it. Cause the last thing you want to do is like, babe, can you give me money for Formula 409? No, just SOP it, make an agreement. And then if you need to revisit it, revisit every six months. What concerns me is the fact that you're all okay with having like credit card debt with a baby on the way. About to get real.

I don't know if I'd say okay with it. The biggest chunks are what the unexpected stuff that wasn't budgeted like we got we got rid of all the student loan debt. That was a big one. Right. Then we got rid of all the credit card and then it's like the next next thing. But it's it's I look at it as 100% income related because it's hard to go down and then stay down. You're gonna have to change the way that you both interact with money and probably create

a new framework for how you deal with your finances individually and together. This doesn't make any sense to me with the income. If you guys were making like 100k, okay, I would be like, we got to slash and burn, but you're actually making like way more than that. So there's something going on here and I can already see some of it. Let's look at the fixed costs. Fixed costs are at 62%. That's pretty good.

You're at 20% for your housing costs. Not bad. Not bad. All right, fine. Transportation is 400 bucks. Oh, plus fuel. That's 1029. Okay, fine. Debt payments are killing you at $1,204 a month. That's a lot. In fact, just for easy math, let's zero that out. Watch what happens to the fixed cost number drops to 53%. Okay, so that's good to know. We could tackle the debt, no problem. Groceries

at $7.15, okay, clothes at $40, phone at $178, and subscriptions at $336. If we actually look into the breakdown of how each of you is spending your fixed costs, Jason, you're at 61%. But Megan, you're at 66%. Do you see that? So your blended average is 62%. But Megan, your number is actually high. So that's a problem. If the two of you were married, then we'd be having a discussion about how to do this as a team. But with the assumption that you're going to continue as is, then what that implication is that each of you needs to be responsible for your own finances. Agreed? I think our intent is that we build this plan as a team.

Okay. So, for example, when I think maybe this is obvious, but when her income goes to zero, her fixed costs come to mind. Alright, so you are approaching this as a team. That's actually great clarification. Cool. Alright, so if that's the case, then then that raises some very interesting questions. So let's take a look here on your fixed costs, then probably Jason might need to shoulder some more of

Megan's fixed costs. If that's the case, because your income is way higher. Like just to put, put the numbers out there, Jason makes 17,000 a month gross and Megan makes 4,000 a month gross. So something to think about. Let's keep going down the list. Investments are at 2%. Are you doing some pre-tax investments? Yes. How much have you taken out for each of you? Mine's like 13.7%. 13.7%. Yes. And what about you, Megan? Mine was at 11 and I just reduced it to the company match at 7.5. Great. So that's great. That offers some margin to play with. We can look at all that stuff later. But right now your post-tax investments are basically very nominal at 2%. Fine. Your savings are at 3%. You're saving 200 bucks a month for your emergency fund and 150 for your gifts.

You basically have three months of emergency fund. That seems a little low. Agreed. Yeah, we've had to tap the savings for the stuff that's been happening. So. That seems bad. Yes, exactly. So you have to tap it. You also are at the sort of low end of an emergency fund and you have a baby coming.

Plus income is going down. A lot of risk at once. So let's focus on what matters. That. You have a lot of risk. Okay. And then what the f**k? Your guilt free spending is 33%?

And I believe that. Is that true? $4600 a month on guilt-free spending. Yeah. What do you all spend it on? That's where we have like the, uh, the, the theater tickets are in there. The sports ticks. That's the eating out budgets in there. Theater should be a plural. Theater should be plural.

Sports should be plural. Just have to say, I love I love this show. I love the show because like I talk to people who have like they bought a seventy eight thousand dollar truck and their income is sixty thousand dollars. OK, I have that. And I have a couple, you, who has ballet, multiple theater tickets, and $17,000 for hockey tickets.

Like, this is the most diverse show on the internet. I f***ing love it! Everybody who's always leaving comments, oh, Rami, boohoo, always talking to rich people. Well, actually, in this case, you guys are pretty rich. But we also talk to people from all over the country, all over the world, all over the socioeconomic spectrum. I love it. What do you all think of this CSP plus a baby? I've never seen a CSP like it.

Every CSP is different. It actually to me is like the fingerprints of your life. Yeah, really shows what you value. And here, it's clear. Ballet, eating out like it's very clear. Now, can we fit it? We'll talk about that. But I can sure see who you are from this CSP. It tells me so much. All right, Megan, what do you notice about the CSP? I don't think it's all encompassing. Like, when we list out the things that we guilt free spend spend on, it doesn't have all the things that I think about and all the goals and the things that are going on to credit cards. My Epic Pass is coming up, so for our ski season and also any traveling, we're still

doing a lot of very cool things. And there's like the occasional Michelin star restaurant and that's not in the budget in general, but also just like, I don't feel like it's accounted for. I want more detail. That's what I see in my CSP. Well, you want more guilt free spending is what you want. I want more guilt free spending. Yes.

That's good to know. I think that that's a pretty candid answer. How would you address that? In years past, I would write out a list of all the things. I put it in order of priority. And then that's as far as I get. Writing it down and prioritizing it is not actually the point. The point is just to have an honest, accurate assessment of where your money's going.

Okay? I'm guessing you're underestimating your guilt-free spending by at least $2,000 a month. If it says $4,622 a month, maybe it's $6,000 a month. So for me, I always say in order to live a rich life, you got to be honest, honest with yourself and honest with the people around you. First thing first is just to actually put those things in here. It doesn't make you a bad person. You don't need to prioritize it. Just put the numbers in here. It's currently at 33%. If we made it $6,000, it would be

43%. And that immediately is a red flag. Okay, it's a red flag because it's higher than average or higher than the recommended percentages. Which probably means you're compromising on your savings or investing goals. Now, if the couple, if you already had maxed out everything and you were just coasting, you don't need to invest anymore. Fine. Spend the money.

Go have a nice time. But I think in your case, you got a baby coming up and that's going to have its own unexpected expenses. Right? Looking at the CSP, I feel like our pre-tax, you know, our gross to net number looks quite good. You have other problems. One is that you're in credit card debt.

Both of you. Like, I don't know about you, but if I was making $256,900 a year, I would have a no debt policy in my house. We are never getting into credit card debt. That's just unacceptable for our family. That's like, that's the equivalent of saying like, we're not going to urinate on the rug in our, in our house. It's just not going to happen. This is crazy.

That's how I feel at $256,000. There's no debt. That's ridiculous. Yeah. What do you all think about that? Is that too strong of a statement or do you agree? I love that. Is that too strong of a statement or do you agree? I I love that. I agree.

This is overspending like it almost always is when I see people in credit card debt. So. To me, this goes deeper than, you know, like an SOP here and like, should we work an extra five hours or like, it's not about that. It's about the fact that I think you've gotten sloppy with your spending. I don't think you have a clear vision on what kind of money policies and culture do you want to create in your household. And I think it's slightly complicated by the fact that you do combine your income, but kind of not. You're a team, but you don't technically combine your income.

So it's like, yeah, who gets to say what the rules are? It's very murky. The whole thing is murky. I hate murkiness. Very muddy. It is. I want clear lines of demarcation. This is our rule.

This is our policy. If this, then that. So first of all, how does that sound conceptually to you? Megan, do you like clear lines of demarcation or no? Yes. You do? I do. I'm surprised. In theory. I'm surprised too. In theory I do. No, I don't believe you. I don't believe you. I feel like you try to squirrel out of that and you go like, I don't know, like it depends.

Because in the end you kind of want it your way and you're like, it's going to work out my way. I don't want to give us a straight answer and get pinned down. Wow. Do you agree? Yes. Or disagree? I agree. Like even in your answer, even in your answer, you can't say I agree. Like, I agree.

What the f***? Agree or disagree? like, I agree. What the agree or disagree. Ideally I agree. What is that? If we had rules, like if we had these procedures, that'd be great. I would love that. I love operating within my rules. I do. I love that with Mike.

Could you follow him? That's the thing. I'm not sure. I know it comes from how I grew up and how I was raised is how this comes up. Because I understand I can work a lot and I can get money and I can pay for things and live within my means. But then I also know that it's been demonstrated to me that you can just put it on a credit card or like, it's okay to have massive amounts of debt.

Like I know that's not okay. Conceptually like ideally I don't want that when I'm debt free, it feels really nice. But then it's also like I get sloppy and then I get the slippery slope and then I just don't live within my means. We'll be right back after this short break. Now back to the show. After 20 years in business, there are a few things that I have a lot of patience for. For example, my Netflix show.

I waited to find the right team, the right network and to get it right. But for other things, I have very little patience. If you're late to a meeting by five minutes, I've already gone. If you get to the front of the Chipotle line and you've been dilly-dallying around, looking at your phone and you don't know what to order, it makes me want to know what went wrong in your childhood that brought you to this place. And finally, clicking around with a mouse to manage your email.

Have you ever seen somebody using Outlook or Gmail? Their mouse takes like two hours to go across the screen, and then they click once, and then they're typing like this. Are you kidding me? You just wasted 15 seconds of your life, and you still have 197 emails to go. Instead of doing it that way

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it. Right now all IWT listeners get a free month of Superhuman and you can get started at superhuman.com slash Ramit. That's superhuman.com slash Ramit. R-A-M-I-T. Why don't you live within your means, Megan? I don't think I'd ever ask Jason to pay for something for me, something specific. Jason wanted me to go mountaineering with him. Or whatever the activity is, I refuse to be taught by him. So I'll hire

people. But so to learn how to ski and to learn how to rock climb and not near like, because my things that got put on a credit card, because I wanted to be able to keep up in his lifestyle, but I could I afford that? No, but like the opportunity cost was there. So it's this I'm trying to keep up with him and with a lifestyle. But I also like know that I can't actually afford that. It's just sloppy, slippery slope of can I actually afford this? No. But am I still going to do it?

Yes. Have you ever had a series of discussions about this? No. Why? When I express frustration or like costs of things that I would like to do, like I would like to have a doula at our birth. There's questions like, well, where is that money coming from? And so then I think, well, I want it. So I'm just going to put on my credit card because that's important to me.

Can I afford it with my income? No. But I also know that because we keep our things so separate that like, I know that he's covering so many other things in our finances. I don't feel entitled to any of his money. When I say I want to do something that's specific to my needs, rather than feel the pushback, then I'd rather just avoid that conversation

and I'd rather just put on a credit card and I'll figure it out somehow, kick it down the line, whether that's in years past, Jason will say, I'm gonna get a bonus and we'll just wipe out all our credit cards and that's gonna be fine. And that's great. But like the last bonus could cover his credit cards and say, but we put a lot

of mutual expenses on my credit cards. And so I just hold on to it and keep paying off what I can. As you're saying this to me, what are you hearing? A whiner? Inequality in our understanding and just operating in gray space rather than being firm? I agree you're operating in gray space. There's a lot of murkiness. There's a lot of things unspoken. Yes.

What else? I try to be accommodating. Go ahead. Lots of moments where I'm not. Putting. The logical rules down. If I want to do this, I should actually like plan to do this. And just because it sounds great now doesn't mean I need to do it right now. There's a lot of focus on the individual in the way that you conduct finances.

Like, yes, you do you, I do me, but sometimes we combine. But if I, Megan, can't afford like a ski jacket, I would have to ask, I would have to bring it up and then I sometimes get pushback which makes me not want to ask at all. It's this default of every single time there's a purchase decision, I have to agonize over which card is it on, who's going to pay, what if I can't afford it. It's exhausting and it's actually not working. You're in credit card debt again. You have a baby coming. Your income is going down. Like it's not working.

And it's actually not the sign of a unified money management system in a couple. Jason, what did you hear? I heard that I think for the first time, that her decisions are, I'm just gonna do it on the credit card because I don't wanna talk about it. That caught you by surprise, right? Yeah, yeah.

Because in the past, she just gave the example of, oh, I can't afford that, I can't work for it. And I said, great, how much does that cost? How do we make it work? She tells me the cost and then, great, I can figure that out. But that's a dollar problem I can't afford that. I can't work for it. And I said, great, how much does that cost? How do we make it work? She tells me the cost and then great, I can figure that out. That's a dollar problem I can solve. But we haven't done that discussion in years.

Megan, why are you crying? Pretty normal state these days with pregnancy. But I just had a lot of feelings and it brought up a lot of things that I've just been avoiding. Oh, okay. Are part of those that sometimes like having to ask and then get the question, where's the money come from? How much is it gonna cost? Is that upsetting sometimes? Yes, it is upsetting.

And so it brings up a lot of like, well, I can figure out something I can do, a band-aid fix. And it's all gonna work out later. And my bandaid fix is I could just put it on a credit card. Nobody in a relationship likes to have to ask for money. And then they certainly don't like to be questioned. Like, where where's it going? It feels very diminutive. It feels very like parental child. Okay. At the same time, Jason is like, well, I need some numbers here. I need to be able to operate somehow on the finances.

You can see this dynamic that's been created. Jason is trying to get information. Megan is like, I don't want to deal with it in this way. I'll just do it myself. And it's produced this dynamic where neither views like feeling good about your money decisions. It's certainly not a smooth running machine, which is what I would love for the two of you to have a clear understanding who owns what part of the spending, how much have we agreed clear boundaries of like, this is how much we're

going to put towards XYZ and much fewer questions back and forth about can we afford that like that question should not be coming up. What do you think would be a way for you both to feel good about money? My immediate response is to have more of it. But I don't really need more of it. But to have a plan to have an understanding of where our budget is. It's never been shared in this intentional detail before. Okay, well now you have it. So what do you need going forward? I'd like it to all be combined. That would be very nice.

I think an envelope system could be very nice for us. It would help. Like anytime I spend money, like when you say guilt free, like it's all guilt full. Like there's never a moment when I spend money that I think like I deserve this. Extremely insightful. Megan says, I don't feel entitled to his money. The invisible script here is talking about my needs makes me unreasonable, so I'll just do it on my own. See, we're all raised with this idea of independence in America.

And independence can be good, but hyper independence taken to an extreme leaves you a pregnant woman in credit card debt who feels guilty even talking about money. Meanwhile, Jason wants numbers, which is fair to ask for, but his approach is not connecting with Megan at all. Megan has a ghost. If you remember from episode five of this podcast, Sheena had a ghost of I need to pay off debt. And anytime her partner Peter wanted to talk about how they can spend their money even for a special event like an anniversary

He was talking to her ghost not to her. So can you identify Megan's ghost? Let's listen to her describe her childhood for a clue. Please be warned There will be a discussion about suicide in the upcoming story What do you remember about? there will be a discussion about suicide in the upcoming story. What do you remember about earliest memories about your family talking about money? There's never enough of it. I remember my parents arguing and like one racing to the bank and the other like I got in the other the second parents car to chase them because one was going to empty out their

checking account. They later divorce, but it's still like, that's scary. What did you take away from that? If now as an adult looking back? I've been operating and like I have to protect myself. Like I know that no relationship is guaranteed to last for forever. And so like the hesitation and always knowing to protect myself for my future, like is very much a part of the every paycheck understanding of what I put away and what I save for my future self.

You said protecting your future self, right? Yeah, my dad got laid off when I was a kid, like 14 ish. He killed himself when I was 21. He never was employed between those ages. He was supported by selling off properties that he had owned with his dad and my uncle. And then toward the end of his life, it was asking his dad for cash. When he chose to take his life, it was like a money thing. Like he owed back child supports, like he couldn't protect himself.

So like I have that very much understanding. I also know that like my mom and her husband have extreme amounts of debt and they don't have any retirement savings. Like they don't have a way to protect themselves. This is very much forefront of my mind since I was 21 years old that I have to have a plan to protect myself at some point. I did years of service after university because I knew that's how I could beat down a bunch of student loan debt. So I took like a volunteer job because I gave me education grants at the end of it. I don't have parents who can float me thousands of dollars if I were to ever be in a situation

where I can't pay for something or like I'm choosing to not get a job. You mentioned the word protect many times. Yeah. Protect yourself, protect your future. And now that I understand your family dynamics, that really makes a lot of sense. I'm so sorry for what happened to your dad. I can only imagine your relationship with money. Before we hear Jason's upbringing, let's just acknowledge the horrific experience that Megan

had growing up. I'm very glad that she's in therapy and I'm truly honored that she would come on the show to have a discussion with me. I think we can all start to understand that we have no idea how we would react if we had the same childhood as Megan. Now I wanted to understand more about her invisible scripts around money. I am curious if protecting yourself is the one of the primary ways you describe your relationship with money. How does it feel that you are the lower earner in this relationship, not married, pregnant, and if something happened in this relationship,

like you would be on your own? That's also probably one of the reasons why I've not wanted to share finances with Jason in the past is because I know that he has a mentality to fight tooth and nail. And in the event of the demise of our relationship, if he knows all the things about me and all about my finances, he would win any argument based off of finances. And that didn't matter until I chose to make a person with him. Is this relationship on the way out or something?

You're like two months away from having a baby. No, but it's also like I'm a planner in the sense of like, I feel like Jason and I make a really great team and we have a lot of fun together. And, but I also, I didn't trick them into having a baby or anything. Like there's a lot of things that I'm like, I really want to go into all of these big life decisions intentionally. And it was all very intentional. But I also know like. People get divorces and people break up and people. We're going to be different people in 15 years and maybe like we still like each other and we still respect each

other. And hopefully that's the case. We've grown together and not apart. Would it be scary to you to say out loud, I want to be with Jason forever? No, no, because I try to trick him into saying that back at me because I tell him that. Oh, that's surprising to me. But he doesn't necessarily say it in the right words that I would like to hear back. I think that is more scary for me than for her, but I also have more confidence in like our ability as a team to do and execute these things we want to do. I think we're good,

good, happy and want things to continue. Megan, I'm curious also that you said, you know, use the word protect a lot, but you don't seem to protect yourself when you overspend. True. How do you reconcile that? You don't know if I reconcile it. I just it's just a naughty habit of trying to bridge the gap of whatever that is. If we're choosing to go to Ireland for the weekend and we're booking our very discounted tickets, I put it on my credit

card. Should I said yes to put it on my credit card? No. Could I have really afforded that? No. But is there a rationalization that Jason and I go through when we're like, well, we're going to spend the same amount of money anyways on like eating out for the weekend? Should I have asked Jason just to pull out his card for that? Like if that was our choice as a couple, yes. But in those moments, I'm not going to. You've already lost at that point. If you have to sit and decide who is pulling out their credit card.

That's a systems failure. Are you in touch with your mom? You mentioned that her finances are in trouble. Yeah, yeah. I'm very much like my mom in the sense of, well, I have a plan. This is the ABCs of it, but this outlier opportunity came out. So I'm just going to spend anyways. And it just gets tacked onto the bottom of this place. So like, does this plan really exist? Theoretically? Do we follow it? No. And that's kind of how I also operate.

Yeah. You have a double whammy as well because in your job, you can work as much as you want and make a lot of money. People who work these hourly type of jobs or jobs where they can, you know, more time equals more money, they end up getting a very distorted sense of reality. And it's bad on both sides. One, they don't really think credit card debt or anything is a problem because they're like, I'll just work a few extra weekends.

It's no big deal. But then second, when they are not working, they are constantly thinking about how much money they're losing. So it's not just a trip to go skiing. It's like, well, that trip is actually costing me $6,000, right? I see the nods on your faces. It's an extremely perverse, unhealthy relationship with money. Unless you are strongly rooted in how money works, what are your values, and then your job, whether it be flight attendant or whatever, it becomes something that serves your rich life.

Your finances are not... Not great. Like they're not meeting you where you need to be. And more importantly, the dynamic that the two of you set up is not serving you, especially with the upcoming major financial disruption. I asked Jason now about his upbringing with money. When I was a kid, I would make as much money as I could and save it and not spend anything.

So it's very much save, save, save, save, save, don't spend. Started a business at 14. Paid from 14 on paid for all my own stuff. Did take loans to do school because parents didn't have anything. So didn't get the contribution there. What did your parents say about money when you were a kid? My father, the only thing he ever said was buy low, sell high. So it was find the value deals.

You're going to buy something, make sure it's a value deal. He made, mostly made the money and my mother did the balancing and the checkbook and all that, paid the bills. But it was very separate things. He just kind of sent the money to her and she took care of it. And what do you think about that? Looking back, it was generally fine. Um, when, when you became a adolescent and started needing stuff on your own, it was like on your own, right? Figure it out. So that's what I did. Figured it out. But like, okay, a lot of our parents, they had the same dynamic, right? One person, usually dad earning money, mom would maybe get the check and sort of administer the household. Isn't that kind of happening in reverse then?

Like she basically makes her paycheck and sends a little bit to you and you administer the household? Yeah, but it's not, yeah, not the full picture, obviously. Because she has her own expenses, etc. Yeah. And if her own expenses were within her means, great, no problem. I don't think we would have a problem. Wouldn't be kind of where we are.

Yeah. Well, let's not forget you have $26,000 of credit card debt too. Yeah. But I also have means to take care of it. Like if we said, at the end of this call, we're like, that's the number one priority. We need to do it. It's done before the end of the year. I agree. That's fair. At the same time, if Megan were not pregnant and needing to take care of the baby, she could theoretically get on a plane and rapidly pay it off too, right? Totally. Yeah. So, you know, okay, I agree with your point,

technically. I think that biologically, we got to acknowledge, you know, Megan is Megan, you're going to be home for a while. And if that's just reality. Yep. So I guess, I guess I want to know, I guess, I guess I want to know how much do you want to bring your money together? Because I can help you in any way you want. If you want to keep your money separate and you want to set up some rules, we can tighten them up. It's not a problem. We'll create some simple guidelines. You all understand where you stand, but ultimately each of you is responsible for your own finances.

Like that's, that's simply that you're basically running a business partnership. It's like, here's what you're responsible for. Here's what I'm responsible for. Transfer this much money each month, etc. You can do it. We can make it work. But each person has to hold up their end of the bargain. And it's like, if you don't, we need to talk about what happens then.

Okay. I think that's the truth for both sides. So for example, if we combine and then we plan on 15 months later, Megan does go back to work and she doesn't. That impacts the plan. Similarly, if it's separate, hey, here's... I'll take all the fixed costs. Here's your...

Keep your savings rates and stuff high the way they are. Anything that comes down and hits your account is your guilt free for whatever you want. Right. We can do it that way. But similarly, if, if you overspend that, that creates a problem. And I feel like those problems all come to me. Right. So eventually they all become my problems.

So right. Which, which is my point. It is a problem that all financial problems become your problem. Yes, they should not be only your problem. It should the the risks and rewards should be distributed, not necessarily 50 50, but everyone's got to have some skin in the game. That's exactly why I don't do the family finances solely for my wife and me. Yeah. I could. I made sure not to. My wife is extremely adept at the finances. She does parts of it. She does parts of it way better than I ever could. And we talk about it. We are rowing

the same direction. I think a good example there is when we did the math on the house, we did the, what can we afford? What's comfortable and good and easy, which was way less than we could afford, of course. We didn't want to spend what was possible. So we bought under our means. And then we did all the picking out together and all that. But then when it came to actually understanding the mortgage, the costs, when those costs hit, what accounts they go to, how they're paid for all that, she did not want to participate. Well, I have to say, I would neither if I was not owning the house. And Megan, you didn't want to be a part owner of the house?

I was there for signings and things and read documents and but no point was there. There's never a do you want to be on the house? Like there's never that conversation. It was always a understanding that like it was going to be Jason's house. It was going to be his name. There was never like, well, do you want to be a part of this? And I offered my cash for it, but he declined and said no. So there was never like a, do you want, Hold on. Did you offer your cash and he declined? Yeah.

Why, Jason? Because she couldn't afford it. That my goal at the time was get her savings, get her investments up, because it was it was not. It wasn't set up right. So it's like, get get your. I get it. financial house there. I was like, we already planned for that.

I already saved for that. We have it all in cash. Jason, you remind me of me in my 20s. Like in a good way and a bad way. I'll tell you what I mean. Okay. The good way is like, you're, you know, you have a high income. You are clearly interested in personal finance, and you've accomplished

a lot. You own the house, your investments are $694,000. Like, it's all very impressive. Okay, there's a little bit of debt, but like, fine. All that is all manageable. It's good. It's really impressive. And obviously, you're going to financially speaking, be very wealthy, etc.

When I was in my early 20s, I was a very utilitarian guy. Like that poster you have behind you, if I even had a poster hanging on my wall, it wouldn't it wouldn't even have a frame. It was just like, tack that up. Who gives a right? Why do you know? Why do you know? Poster. That's that's a frivolous, you know, that kind of thing. And it was like very efficient. Yes. Like, let's get the numbers and then like, boom, move on.

And I hear some elements of that in the way that you talk to Megan about money. And the thing is like, yeah, of course, you need to understand the numbers. Yes, you need to have ratios. Yes. But I learned it took me a long time that it's so much more effective to meet people where they are. Okay. Remember, Megan has had a very traumatic experience with money in her past. Then to like paint the picture. What's the vision? Connect emotionally. Like you'll have a baby coming. That raises so many questions, especially for women. So we've heard Megan use the word protect over

and over. There's definitely so much to be covered there. Connect. That's what I learned. And then finally, on the very back end, I'm talking like the last 5% is like, get the numbers dialed in. Like that's the polish. What I hear though is the opposite. It's like, like she comes to you, she's talking about something you go like, how much is it going to cost? And she's instantly turned off. Like so many people are meeting her where she is, is like, well, like, hey, let's talk

about it. Like, what do you think? What would make you feel good? Here's what would make me feel good. Gosh, this makes me a little concerned, but I'm not sure how should we handle it together. It's really shifting these conversations into a joint unit, us against the world. What do you think about that? Interesting. Megan's been assertive about what she wants her decisions. That's super helpful to me. I'm like, got it. Can work with that. Right. That's helpful. The

vague stuff is very difficult. Yeah. I understand that it's frustrating to get squirrely answers. I get that. And we can fix that. We can work on that. But I think what I'm really saying is starting off with like, how much does it cost? Let's get the numbers. It's not producing the result you want. And I'm going to just ask Megan, like, does it feel good? No. It was also like, when I'm asked like, well, how much is the baby going to cost? I said, well, I don't know. I don't have that. I've never had a baby. It's also very Googleable. Totally. I believe that the person who makes more money, especially if they make vastly more than their partner, oftentimes they are more financially savvy. Not always, but often. I believe it's their responsibility to work with their partner and help bring them up

to a level where you're both effectively partners. And sometimes that means you got to deal with stuff where like, like, of course you're like, Jason, you're like, just give me the number. Trust me, I get it. When I first got married, I was like, just give me the number. And I'm like, oh this is not working Okay, it's not working. I have to connect with my wife I have to

Understand where she's coming from. I have to slow down in order to go together And you might have to slow down in a way that feels like so unproductive to you I'm very passionate you can hear it in my voice because I know what that feels like. It feels like I just need a number in cell C13. That's all I need. But actually, what we're realizing is this whole conversation is so much bigger than a number, isn't it? Okay, so Megan is eight months pregnant.

They keep their accounts separate. Both Megan and Jason are in credit card debt. Jason owns the house, and they don't communicate effectively about money. Honestly, a lot of couples are in somewhat similar situations. Most couples only have an honest conversation about money maybe five times in their entire lives. And one of them is when they have children. Now beyond the upcoming baby, which is really causing a lot of these conversations,

you will notice the traumatic upbringing, the stories that they've created about each other, and how they are really not connecting. It just feels very transactional. Next week, we'll continue this conversation, and I promise you will be surprised.